@freemo Haha I think only he and J I know from being over here. And I don't think this is even J's main instance.

@realcaseyrollins I just change servers constantly. Gameliberty is the freest Mastodon instance in our sphere, but most people prefer to run Pleroma because it's more lightweight and admin friendly, if you want similar sites a more active internal community there are options, but they're going to be Pleroma.

Right now I'm interested in the direction of Gab's software, so I'm residing here and on Glease (plus coom.club, but I'm still undecided on how to move forward with it so it's down for now) @freemo

@NAZl
The major problem with Gaß is it is hosted by #Cloucflare. An very seedy entity based in San Francisco and who host platforms that appear to create extremists.

Cloucflare also serve Google #Recaptcha, which helps to train #selfDriving vehicles.

Thirdly they block people who use #TorBrowser for improved #anonymity.

As such we choose to #boycott Cloucflare services.

@realcaseyrollins @freemo

@dsfgs Cloudflare isn't a host, they're a proxy, and you can use Tor with them, although it doesn't work that well. But they're really the best service around for free that deals with DDoS mitigation. Would be much more expensive to run the site without them. Remember what happened to 8chan? @realcaseyrollins @freemo

@dsfgs But to be clear, Gab in particular does block Tor, which is fucked up and I don't approve of it, but I'm ultimately more interested in the new software they're creating than the poor policies of the site itself. @realcaseyrollins @freemo

@NAZl
It is indeed horrific that a user needs to be identified by #Cloucflare in order to progress, and we believe this opens users up to #targetedAdvertising and/or targeted #propaganda/#indoctrination.

There are #openSource methods and #captchas to help hosts determine that a user isn't a bot. There's no excuse in our view to use shadowy Cloucflare.

And of course we cannot forget their commitment towards training #selfDriving #weaponry.

General avoid/#boycott

@realcaseyrollins @freemo

@dsfgs The alternative suck ass tbqh. It's unfortunate, but have you seen how much spam is on Gab even with the best measures? I think it's probably necessary to keep the site going. Although I agree that in the long term it's best to move away from them. Way too powerful as is.

>I reply to this fully aware that you might be a bot @realcaseyrollins @freemo

@NAZl
Interesting isn't it - spam on that platform. With all the protection of some mysterious entity that rose up by seemingly out of nowhere that noone in media talks about.

Think about that - there are alternatives.

Who's a bot?

@realcaseyrollins @freemo

@NAZl @dsfgs @freemo There are other instances with the same software that you could use.

@realcaseyrollins I'm not aware of any other Gab instances that aren't defunct. There's Gab, Gab Develop (which is what I'd like to be on, but I don't have a good reason to request it and they have inconvenient domain blocks in place).

Way back someone had made a backup instance for when Gab was totally broken when they first ported, and then someone tried to make an instance that was "Gab, but without Nazis" at one point, but I believe both are dead. @freemo

@realcaseyrollins (Soap Box doesn't count, it's a regression towards vanilla Mastodon as far as featureset goes, the only unique thing it keeps is the UI) @freemo

@NAZl @freemo I believe you're referring to #GabFed? Yeah, I remember that, I used to be on there

@realcaseyrollins Maybe, I don't remember, except that me and a few other people bullied the guy over it because the idea of a Gab backup without hate speech is like making an Instagram without attention hungry thots. Literally why even go with that branding? You should just make a Mastodon instance at that point. @freemo

@NAZl @freemo Wasn't stripping the branding the whole point of #Soapbox tho? That and stripping its multitude of bugs.

@realcaseyrollins I'm not talking about Soap Box, which frankly, has a host of issues on its own, I'll go into those some other time. I'm talking about a guy who explicitly wanted his thing to be an alternative for Gab users, but didn't allow hate speech, and somehow didn't make the big brained connection that that would never fly with the Gab user base.

Not that I care, really. I'm not necessarily looking for a Gab alt, I'm using Gab and Glease because I'm supporting both with my wallet, and frankly if I don't use them I'll forget and I'll be charged until the end of time for something I don't use anymore. I'm just clumsy like that. @freemo

@realcaseyrollins Actually, I will go ahead and mention my issue with Soap Box briefly.

A big one is when Gab forked Mastodon, they removed many features, like bookmarking, the multiple timeline view, delete and redraft, etc. They supplemented this with neat features like edits, quotes, a dedicated news site, groups, among some other things. But Gab paid no mind to how these things would play in federation, they end up being counterproductive in that context, so Alex removed basically all the unique Gab features without reintegrating what was removed from Mastodon. You're left with a product that is functionally the worst of both worlds in some respects.

That's not to say it's bad software, it isn't, and his branding focus is a common sense measure that Mastodon should have implemented a long time ago, but as a user, unless you're just in love with the UI there's no benefit of Soap Box over Glitch with simple timeline view. Even then, the UI is worse than Gab's tbh, even though it's mostly the same, there were a good few tweaks made, and they're mostly counterintuitive, especially on mobile. @freemo

@NAZl

Bookamrking is not a mastodon feature btw.

@realcaseyrollins

@freemo Uhhh pretty sure it is. I have a timeline made of solely bookmarked posts on Gameliberty and Coom @realcaseyrollins

@NAZl

No it isnt. I run the QOTO mastodon instance and had to go out of my way to modify the source code to add that feature. Glitch.social has some modified code for it too. GL may use glitch

@realcaseyrollins

@freemo @NAZl Most instances don't have bookmarking.

@realcaseyrollins Uhh mine did and I just used vanilla Mastodon. @freemo

@realcaseyrollins I've mostly been on Pleroma tbf but I don't think I've ever seen a Mastodon without it, and it's also in Pleroma's dated MastoFE iirc so it's been around for a while. @freemo

@NAZl

Then your talking about something other than bookmarks, or you are mistaken and didnt really use vanilla mastodon.. It most certainly is not a default feature.

@realcaseyrollins