Newyddion Tŵt News
Automated accounts must be marked as such in their account settings (https://toot.wales/settings/profile).
We welcome national and local news and weather accounts that are relevant to our member audience.
We believe that participation in social media should be a rewarding activity, one that brings joy and connection. As such, while there are topics and content that are worthy of discussion, we hope our members are mindful of those who do not want their social media feed to be divisive, inflammatory, or upsetting.
Tŵt Cymru | Toot Wales (“Tŵt”) is a collection of Web services whose mission is to connect Cymru and its diverse community, at home and abroad, encouraging and enabling the use of the Welsh language online. We strive to provide a welcoming, bilingual platform that is free from hate, discrimination, and abuse. To that end, the following guidance reflects the wishes of the Tŵt staff and membership. In all cases, when using the Tŵt services we ask you be respectful, be mindful, and be nice.
Discussing politics on Mastodon is fast becoming a hot-button topic. I’ve seen a lot conversation lately about whether or not “politics'' should be behind a CW and there’s one side asking for “politics” to be CWed and another side declaring it to be the most important thing in the world and should never be CWed. (skip the intro and go straight to the play)
I do not see or hear the ninety percent of people who rarely speak up. As with all things, a small selection of voices is speaking up one way or the other (ref. the 1% rule).
We’ve worked hard on explaining the subtleties and expectations in our Community Code of Conduct, but nonetheless it’s important to note two things:
Significant changes are coming, here's a guide to some of the most meaningful
During the upgrade our look and feel will be different while we accommodate the new user interface.
(reposted from August 2018)
Tŵt is a bilingual online social content platform, very similar to Twitter in some ways, and very much not in others. You may well be thinking the same thing I heard a more than a few times during its development; “do we really need another social media platform?” and I hope you’ll read on to see if indeed there might just be a good answer to that question.
First, the similarities.
Tŵt allows anyone to create a member account and post messages up to 500 characters to the network; we call these “Tŵtiau” or “Toots”. These messages can contain #hashtags and links, as well as video and image files. Members can subscribe to other members on the network, and reply to anything in their content feed.
Familiar ground for many, but what makes Tŵt a meaningful alternative?
Technologically the differences are privacy and ownership. Unlike Twitter, Tŵt makes it simple for authors to control who can see their content, who can follow them, and they can completely remove themselves from the network at will. If desired, all content can be retrieved and even transported to a competing service providing it uses the same underlying software.
Philosophically, Tŵt is completely open source and is operated as a non-profit; no advertising, no dues, no fees of any kind. And Tŵt comes with clear guidelines about what is considered unacceptable content.
A quick note for new members jumping ship from Twitter. First off: welcome! We are incredibly glad you have come to see what Mastodon and Mastodon servers like Tŵt are all about!
We have a quick start guide here: https://blogs.toot.wales/toot/getting-started-dechrau-arni
There are answers to our most frequently aske questions here: https://blogs.toot.wales/toot/frequently-asked-questions
In all cases, you will find a community of friendly people ready to help you navigate a slightly different experience than you're used to on Twitter. Ask your questions in the app and you'll have an answer in no time!
This is not Twitter or an attempt to clone Twitter. It's the same but different, and is intended to be so. We are micro-blogging for people who want to control their social media feeds, be free of harassment and abuse, and want to join a more communal, supportive service that is non-toxic, non-corporate, non-surveillance.
We hope you enjoy your visit, and please feel welcome to stick around, subject to our Community Guidelines: https://toot.wales/about/more#community-guidelines
[This document will be published in three parts, such that Part 1 can be referenced in future conversations, Part 2 deals with a very specific set of account concerns, and Part 3 addresses some long form questions posted to the moderators on Tŵt.]
Several members of toot.wales, as well as users from other Mastodon instances posed several questions and comments around our response to their concerns over one of the accounts that some people felt deserved stronger moderation than they were perceiving. These questions are preserved and answered below.
[This document will be published in three parts, such that Part 1 can be referenced in future conversations, Part 2 deals with a very specific set of account concerns, and Part 3 addresses some long form questions posted to the moderators on Tŵt.]
As a preamble, I want to remind anyone reading this that I chose to not block Gab before they came online. In the run-up to their launch there was a lot of conversation about defederating them. And within a couple of minutes of them coming online, we had them blocked. But not before they contravened our Community Guidelines. That’s a principle I cannot waver from. I’ve been around the block a few times, I’ve seen my assumptions been wrong more than a few times, and I’ve seen people change over time. I had very little doubt what was going to happen when they came online, but nonetheless the way I operate, the way I work, they would be blocked the second they contravene our stated Guidelines. Anything else – to me – is unfair, hypocritical, and a dangerous precedent. I am not the judge of all things, I am merely the current administrator of an Internet service with a stated code of conduct.
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The first account I want to discuss is from an account that posts what one user-submitted report labelled “religious spam”. Here is one of the three toots for which we received a report:
Everything we do is motivated by the life, teachings and ministry of Jesus We believe that every human life has equal value and that every person should be empowered to reach their God-given potential. To do this, we all need to belong to flourishing communities
These words were reported as “Racist spammer”.
If I were to put my non-moderator hat on, I would silence this content. I would mute this account. I would take a one-click action to never see this person’s thoughts again. I have no interest in it, and I find it disagreeable to me, personally. I do not enjoy being preached at.
And this, to me, is one of the strongest tools Mastodon users have that other services either don’t or have weaker versions of. Mastodon makes no inferences about what “should” be in your feeds. No algorithms deciding to “surface” content for you.
You decide. You own your feed. You own your experience. If you don’t like something, you never have to see it again.