Lizzy (@mousebumples) @Mousebumples@social.cleverlibre.org

Periodical reminder for recent migrants from the bird platform 🙋 I am still learning!!

⭐️ A favorite is a message to the sender that you like the message. Nothing more. It does not amplify.

🔂 Boost means you find the message interesting *and believe others should see it* So boost like there is no tomorrow. Be more “boost generous” than you were in the old Retweet environment. No algorithm to help.

Now boost this 😄 #boostermania #boostingworks #boost

If you're joining Mastodon now, here's important advice:

1. Join a small instance
2. If you're part of a big instance, consider joining a small instance
3. If you have technical know-how, self-host your own instance
4. If for whatever reason you want to stay on a big instance, make your own back-up instance (like I have)

MOST IMPORTANTLY: If you don't know what an instance is, learn about it immediately.

Twitter users are all like “I don’t know if I can trust a bunch of career sysadmins and network engineers to run their own Mastodon instances” — meanwhile Elon is just running around the Twitter data center going “what’s this button do?”

It's Friday, which means it's a good day to start setting up lists in your Mastodon to make it more usable!

My one-tweet Mastodon starter advice:

1. Pick a server where people are likely to post generally about stuff you're most interested in.
2. Follow interesting people on other servers, who will boost interesting stuff into your home feed. THEY are your algorithm.

@TonyStark
I’m a introvert, so making calls is hard for me. Writing #PostcardsToVoters is a great way for introverts like me to get involved.

If you are crossposting your posts from Twitter and you are seeing this message - please consider this - please don't.

The crossposting from your #Twitter feed to Mastodon feels clunky and disruptive. It also indicates you are treating this community just as your broadcast platform for your takes and your brand. It's not a great look.

Please consider being PRESENT here in the community. Saying this with love. Thank you. #Fediverse

As Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Stripe, Shopify, Lyft, Netflix, and Microsoft lay off workers, let it serve as a reminder that free snacks, beer kegs, and ping pong tables are not real perks.

Do you know what is? Being part of a union that will defend you.

hi wonderful people

i know a lot of folks are detoxifying and the birdsite incentives sometimes made it seem like only posting your own stuff was wise. Maybe never boosting others over there made sense.

It's different here. Here, #PeopleAreTheAlgorithm

Which means, if you interact with me, and I look at your profile and it's full of yourself. Well...kinda speaks for itself.

Boosting others here helps re-knitting lost and creating new networks of care. Be generous and share your discoveries.

I was explaining Mastodon to my wife and how it's different from other social media sites. I explained that I find it to be an inclusive, welcoming place. I explained that nearly everyone I follow is either gay or neurodiverse or trans or disabled. I explained that it's the first place I feel like I can actually really be myself and that people here are welcoming and supportive of me being myself. And that's why I've been so happy lately. She said "why don't you tell them that?" and I said ok!

"Try reading the following out loud:

Hashtag screenreaders for the hashtag blind and hashtag VisuallyImpaired read every hashtag HashTags out loud and so it's hard for people with hashtag VisualImpairment to get the sense of the post because it's being constantly interrupted by well-meaning hashtag accessibility hashtag allies.

Easier to read with a block of hashtags at the bottom:
#screenreaders #VisuallyImpaired #blind #allies #Hashtags #accessibility"
--original author unknown

OK #Mastodon. I've seen several toots on #accessibility for #screenreader users, however, I've not seen one from a screenreader user (as far as I know). I've used ZoomText, Outspoken, JAWS (AKA JFW), Supernova, NVDA (Windows), and VoiceOver (both on Macs and iPhone). I don't have experience with Windows Narrator or TalkBack. I would like to rectify and clarify a few small things.
First off, any awareness of accessibility issues, and endeavours to make things more accessible is great. Keep going!
But…
Blind/low-vision people have been using the internet as long as everyone else. We had to become used to the way people share things, and find workarounds or tell developers what we needed; this latter one has been the main drive to get us here and now. Over the past decade, screen readers have improved dramatically, including more tools, languages, and customisability. However, the basics were already firmly in place around 2000. Sadly, screen readers cost a lot of money at that time. Now, many are free; truly the biggest triumph for accessibility IMHO.
So, what you can do to help screen readers help their users is three simple things.
1. Write well: use punctuation, and avoid things like random capitalisation or * halfway through words.
2. Image description: screen readers with image recognition built-in will only provide a very short description, like: a plant, a painting, a person wearing a hat, etc. It can also deal with text included in the image, as long as the text isn't too creatively presented. So, by all means, go absolutely nuts with detail.
3. Hashtags: this is the most commonly boosted topic I've seen here, so #ThisIsWhatAnAccessibleHashtagLooksLike. The capitalisation ensures it's read correctly, and for some long hashtags without caps, I've known screen readers to give up and just start spelling the whole damn thing out, which is slow and painful.
That's really all. Thanks for reading! 😘

Did you know? When Bill Clinton banned assault weapons in 1994, mass shootings dropped by 43%. After George W. Bush and the GOP let the assault weapons ban expire in 2004, mass shootings increased by 245%. — These numbers tell a story.

This is true commitment to the bit. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-63600184

For the past month, Democrats have been getting finger-shaking warnings to drop all the abortion talk, as the male-centric punditry was convinced voters don't care that much about reproductive rights.

Last night proved the pundits wrong. https://www.salon.com/2022/11/09/are-still-angry-over-the-roe-overturn--abortion-rights-win-big-across-the-us/

I mentioned this in a private message to someone recently about why a small handful of servers block qoto. I wanted to reiterate it here for the new comers on QOTO who dont know the history:

So there are some servers out there that demand every server int he network block every instance they do, and if a server doesnt block an instance they block then they block you in rettatliation.

Their reason for this is quite flawed but it goes like this.. If we federate with a bad actor instance and we boost one of their posts then their users will see it and defeat the purpose of the block. The problem is, this isnt how it actually works. If they block a server and we boost it, they wont see the boost, thats how blocks work.

The issue becomes even more complicated when you consider the fact that these servers, by virtue of their policy, have huge block lists where they block tons of major servers. So in order to satisfy them we too would have to block a huge number of servers.

This means you have a choice, you either join a server that isnt blocked, but has a huge block list themselves, or, you join a server that doesnt block and be blocked by a small handful of servers. Obviously that means on QOTO you will have bigger view of the world than you would on any of these others servers. In fact QOTO has onne of the largest federation footprints of any server in the network.

I want to also explain why we choose the decision we did. Years ago when this controversy started and servers across the fediverse started blocking there was a divide of people taking sides. WOTO was one of the few servers that didnt take sides and allowed people read content from any server (but with strict hate speech rules). This caused a huge influx of people,s pecifically from the LGBTQ community, onto our server. It turns out many people relied on us not-blocking for their physical safety. There were big name biggots (like milo yanappolus) who were on the network. They used their accounts here to watch his account for doxing so they could warn themselves and their community and protect themselves accordingly. In fact we added a feature just for them called subscriptions which allowed them to monitor accounts without following them so they could do so anonymously.

In tthe end for the safety of the LGBTQ community here we refused to engage in mass server blocking and instead encouraged our users to block servers on an individual basis and provided access to block lists for them to do so. But some really misguided servers blocked us anyway.

Thankfully the servers blocking us are few and far between and are limited to only the most excessive and aggressive block lists. As I said, QOTO has one of the largest federation footprints on the fediverse,

#mastoadmin