Follow Us on Mastodon, @[e-mail]

We've set up an account on Mastodon (to supplement our Twitter account, not to replace it)—please follow us there, @[e-mail]. It should be set up (using moa.party) to automatically post all our Volokh Conspiracy posts; I've tested that using a link to a sandbox account of mine, but I suppose this post is the real test.

Liberdon's content limitations seem relatively modest, as these things go, and I understand them to be warnings about what will get people banned (a risk I'm willing to run) rather than promises on my part not to engage in certain speech. I also hope that the site operators interpret those guidelines sensibly, for instance recognizing that quoting slurs from court cases, such as noting that Snyder v. Phelps involved "God Hates Fags" signs, isn't covered by the prohibition on "ethnic/racial/homophobic slurs"), though of course that's up to them. I'd still at some point like to set up my own server, just so I'd have complete control over what we post (recognizing that others may choose, if they prefer, to block our server as a result); but for now, this seems like a good way to experiment.

Thanks to Gary McGath @GaryM03062 for pointing us to liberdon, and to commenter Shawn Levasseur for recommending moa.party.

Comments

[Ben_]

Good luck. I hope you don't have to weather too many censorious attacks by The Good Guys.

[DaveM]

Frankly, I completely miss the point of VOLUNTARILY leaving Twitter (not referring to those who are cross posting.) Being forced to post elsewhere because you aren’t allowed to speak your piece I understand. But what message are you sending by leaving when you don’t have to? That you only want to speak to people who might agree with you? That’s not speaking, that’s seeking a pat on the back. It’s glad-handing.

Well, OK. But if you just want validation why not use Facebook or Instagram?

[John F. Carr]

Somebody I know is leaving Twitter because

1. She is sick of seeing MAGA content. Even after she blocks posters they keep reappearing in her feed when other people she hasn't blocked reply to them. Twitter does not have an effective "I never want to see this user's content" setting.

2. The people she follows and occasionally interacts with are leaving. Or "leaving", crossposting everything to two networks.

She quoted with approval somebody else's comment "suggesting Mastodon to most people as a Twitter replacement is like if you ordered a steak at a restaurant and the waiter handed you the map to a cow pasture and a bolt gun."

Much has been said about making advertisers happy. The first item is about making users happy by giving them their own moderation tools. Not everybody agrees that everything Silicon Valley censorbots let through is good.

[Brett Bellmore]

1. Remember that Section 230 actually contemplates user chosen filter software:

“(b) Policy

It is the policy of the United States—”

“(3) to encourage the development of technologies which maximize user control over what information is received by individuals, families, and schools who use the Internet and other interactive computer services;

(4) to remove disincentives for the development and utilization of blocking and filtering technologies that empower parents to restrict their children’s access to objectionable or inappropriate online material;”

Section 230 actually anticipated a model where platforms would only minimally moderate user content for obscenity and harassment, with third party filters chosen by the users doing the bulk of the work of sparing users exposure to content they found unpleasant.

Unfortunately, the platforms rapidly adopted business models dependent on monetizing control over what the users were exposed to, including pushing unwanted content on the users. And so, rather than cooperating with third party filters, they actively work to defeat them. When I used FB regularly I was using a third party filter, FB Purity. FB would regularly alter their code to break it, because they didn’t WANT the users to be able to control what they saw.

I understand that one of the changes Musk contemplates making to Twitter is, just exactly, giving the users more control over what they see. Instead of imposing on them a one size fits all solution… Where what it really fits is the platform’s own interests.

It's really a pity that this part of Section 230 was stillborn. It really is the answer to your friend's problem.

[Dr. Ed 2]

A serious caveat -- be damn sure you have all your security settings right because you are a known enemy of the people and there will people trying to screw with you because of that.

It's sad -- but true.

[Sarcastr0]

As a representative of the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy (SOROS national 568), I can tell you we won’t be using our insidious tendrils to silence Prof. Volokh; he’s cool.

Especially after that ice age technology joke.

[Ed Grinberg]

Prof. Volokh and like-minded people are keeping you (the censorious "Good Guys," as Ben put it above) from silencing your political opponents. All strength to his hand!

[Jonathan Affleck]

I created an account at the following URL.

https://liberdon.com/about

I never received a confirmation email.

I then tried to login at the following URL.

https://mastodon.social/auth/sign_in

From this sign_in I was able to get the confirmation email sent.

Liberdon.com claims to be a public utility, which has a legal meaning.

Anyway, I was able to search for @[e-mail] and found the Volokh Conspiracy.

[Eugene Volokh]

Thanks! But where does Liberdon.com "claim[] to be a public utility"?

[Jonathan Affleck]

The public utility claim is in linked Mastodon documentation.

Here is a description of Mastodan from Twitter.

https://twitter.com/joinmastodon/status/948651162366103552

Mastodon seems like an update to Usenet.

[Jonathan Affleck]

It's still important to force a social medium platform to obey the law.

One should be able to read the current draft of my petition to SCOTUS for a writ of certiorari to the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit at the following link.

https://www.facebook.com/Joachim.CS.Martillo/posts/pfbid02siqvLgoteu8Df9TcW1kJcHGde9cEacEaXsiqcRahoCn3NCkXpc2oS83xVy6ax1rUl

[Jonathan Affleck]

When my litigation goes back to district court, I intend to address

1. Civil Rights Act violation,

2. common carriage violation,

3. state action doctrine violation, and

4. public forum doctrine violation.

There will be an interesting assortment of defendants especially if the case can be litigated in a three judge district court trial, which is described in 42 U.S. Code § 2000a–5 - Civil actions by the Attorney General.

[Eugene Volokh]

Maybe you mean moa.party, which does say that "This Moa instance is run as a public utility." I don't think that has any legal consequence; public utilities are regulated under their own regulatory schemes, which generally define a limited set of entities that qualify as public utilities (see, e.g., Cal. Pub. Util. Code secs. 211, 216). But in any case, that's moa.party, which is completely separate from liberdon.com -- I mention them both just because I'm using them both.

[Jonathan Affleck]

It's probably better to avoid use of legal terminology that one does not understand.

[David Nieporent]

Very much so. Especially if one is trying and failing to litigate.

[David Nieporent]

Liberdon.com claims to be a public utility, which has a legal meaning.

As the Babylon Bee's one joke continually points out, identifying as something does not actually mean you are that thing.

[SRG]

Happy to see you there!

[Jonathan Affleck]

I used Mastodan to comment on the Bowie knife article, but I don't know where the comment went.

I made the following reply.

"As far as I know, before McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894 (2010), applied incorporation doctrine to the 2nd Amendment, a state had the ability to limit the right to bear arms."

[Jonathan Affleck]

I found the reply, which appeared under @[e-mail].

Mastodon's interface seems somewhat cumbersome.

[Bubba Jones]

Moderators are typically overworked, uncompensated, and autistic.

You most certainly get deleted or banned by someone who does not understand the difference between advocating and discussing.

Even better will be the bots that just systematically filter suspicious posts that are never reviewed by a human.

[Brett Bellmore]

I'm getting tired of the increasing use of "autistic" as an insult. I know a couple genuinely autistic people, and they're quite nice, even if they do have some problems.

Because moderators are overworked and unpaid, the job tends to get filled by people who find moderating to be its own compensation. IOW, busybodies and moral scolds.

Which is not remotely the same as "autistics".