Ask HN: What would happen if Trump used Mastodon instead of Twitter? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What would happen if Trump used Mastodon instead of Twitter?

6 pointstrestenhortz9 comments

Would it be the boost that open Twitter-like platforms need?

Can Mastodon handle the scale needed?

Would open Mastodon client pop up?

Could anyone control what is said?

The deplatform calls might be targeted at the hosting company, many instances will block his one, and the Mastodon ecosystem will split because many LGBT people use it and they don't like him. It is more likely that he will move to Gap, Parler, or something like that which markets itself as preserving free speech.

I don't know about the load capacity of the activity pub protocol, but Mastodon is built on elixir and it might help somewhat.

preserving consequence free speech.

Can you clarify? I've never met "consequence free speech" as a term. If you mean that there are real consequences from his free speech, I'd agree, but I'm not sure what do you mean with it.

The leftists are saying because Trump challenged the legitimacy of the election results, they feel sanctimonious that instead of investigating claims they have the right to attack Trump voting US citizens (75 million) as a group whether politically or in unamerican ways such as in attempting to block free speech, arresting them, burning and destroying their businesses, attempting to get them fired from their jobs, etc.

Leftists live in cities around people that have similar values to themselves, whether LGBTQ, pro legal prostitution, free drug use, anti-white hate. When they confront Trump supporters, their mental model is that there are a few hundred people in that group who deserve "consequences" and that they personally are legitimate in effecting those consequences. They frequently don't leave the inner city and cannot really conceptualize tens of millions of people.

>cannot really conceptualize tens of millions of people.

That's tens of millions of armed and angry people.

Those who think it's "un-American" to go after someone's employment for political reasons are unfamiliar with America. Check history.

I mean, I'm not American, so I don't have much skin in this game, but from the outside, just no.

Challenging the legitimacy or outcome of an election is one thing. Democracy wouldn't survive if you can't challenge it.

They've had their challenges. They went to court 60 times and were dismissed or lost 59 times. Notably, the lawyers never actually claimed voter fraud in court because a courtroom has consequences for lying.

Furthermore - I think you'd be hard pushed to find any civilised democracy where a bunch of armed yahoos storming a building full of politicians is a valid "challenge". It's really more of an insurrection, which is pretty much the opposite of what democracy is about.

As for the actual topic: "Consequences" is nothing to do with your political beliefs or where you live.

There is no law against, for example, a person believing that "the jews deserved it". In most places there aren't laws against them saying it either. But, if they do say it, there's also no law protecting them from every possible consequence of saying it: e.g., being banned from a synagogue, or being called human garbage, or, if you happen to be using a private organisations equipment to broadcast that view, having the mic taken away - be it literal or figurative, such as a social media account.

Free speech is generally considered to be the ability to say things without government censorship, imprisonment, physical harm, etc. The type of thing the US first amendment is meant to protect.

What right wingers often seem to want is "consequence free speech", where they are protected not just from the above, but from any negative responses or criticisms.

Mastodon seems to be built on Ruby, rather than Elixir [0].

[0] https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon

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