Fediverse: @realDonalTrump's account on Mastodon.social | Hacker News Reader

Fediverse: @realDonalTrump's account on Mastodon.social

mastodon.social

2 pointsapp4soft8 comments

Is this some kind of a joke? And mastodon purports to be a decentralized, censorship-free platform?

Mastodon is decentralized because there's no central server or authority in the network. Anyone can run a server. Whoever runs a server, has control over that server, such as deciding what moderation policies to enforce and who to provide a service to.

Until the Big Tech giants (Google and Apple) came along and demanded them to comply with their App Store policies or face removal. [0]

You can now see who really runs things here.

[0] https://www.vegard.net/google-bans-mastodon-apps/

If Google and Apple want those App Store policies and to remove certain stuff, that is their choice. If Mastodon.social wants to remove some accounts, they also can do that. However, others can run their own Mastodon instances if they want to do, and on Android there is sideloading possible at least, so you can still install it (or other programs) if you want it, even though Google does not want it on the Google Play.

So, I think that it isn't too much problem (at this time).

(Although I do think that their policy should be amended if needed, so that apps which do not connect to a specific server should be allowed if the servers containing content they do not want are not preset. This way, you can still have them, although you will have to enter the server names by yourself if you want to access ones that the App Store disallowed.)

Not a joke.

Never exists account - https://mastodon.social/@1234567890examplecom2021

> The page you are looking for isn't here.

Suspended account - https://mastodon.social/@realDonaldTrump

> The page you were looking for doesn't exist here anymore.

----

> And mastodon purports to be a decentralized, censorship-free platform?

Here is a thread[0] with more details on Mastodon:

> I think you're mixing decentralised and unmoderated here. You're free to run those accounts from another instance or provision your own. But you can't force someone else to carry that account, just as I can't force your Mastodon instance to carry mine.

So, at least on mastodon.social instance (maintained by official Mastodon Dev Team) account of `@realDonaldTrump` already suspended.

How many also suspended `@realDonaldTrump`? How many instances not suspended him yet? Who knows...

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25696772

That account was created in October 2016 and deleted by its owner in 2019. Since we don't keep personal data of deleted accounts I cannot tell you who it was but I am 99.999% sure it wasn't actually Donald Trump. Both deleted and suspended accounts return HTTP 410 Gone. I don't know why this is getting posted now as news.

That being said, the actual Donald Trump would not be welcome on mastodon.social, nor would he be welcome on most servers that I am familiar with. He would likely have to host his own Mastodon server.

> That being said, the actual Donald Trump would not be welcome on mastodon.social, nor would he be welcome on most servers that I am familiar with. He would likely have to host his own Mastodon server.

And that is a reasonable statement.

UPD: Just corrected the title.

> He would likely have to host his own Mastodon server.

Seems like his SMM's are reading this thread... and now are looking "at the possibilities of building out our [Trump's] own platform in the near future."[0]

Let's just hope that they would not use Mastodon for that or any other Fediverse network.

[0] https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image/106821806-161015612532...

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/08/trump-tweets-from-potus-hand...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com