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@alice I created a small bot, obey the rules of once an hour a text. Marked as bot in the profile and in the hashtag.

Hope these type of bots are exluded from your call for action?

@alice Is there any good guide on alt text? I am under the personal impression that my alt texts suck

@alice good rant. Valid. May I add - dear admins, keep your instances free of bots otherwise you might see your entire instance blocked by others.

@alice 🫂

@alice

Yes. Please. There's a reason, I've never been on Twitter.

"Don't post other folx' nudes without consent."

I'ld like to change that to:

"Don't post other folx' pictures without consent."

There is no fundamental difference between peoples pictures with or without clothes when it comes to consent.

I feel I should clarify something from my original post; I *want* Fedi to be a place of support and mutual aid. We're all better when we help each other.

My issue is with accounts whose only contributions to Fedi are photos of suffering children and pleas for urgent assistance. I have reported so many Gaza mutual aid scam accounts from folx using the same photos with different names across dozens of accounts.

It's a needle in a haystack problem; *some* of these accounts are real people in need, but *so many* are scams. I'm sure there's *someone* out there on Fedi that desperately needs $300USD for their 6 month old child's insulin his month, but it seems unlikely that there are several each day, and that they're all asking me using the same post template.

So what I'm saying is: if you need mutual aid, please differentiate yourself from the scams and bot accounts. One way to do that is by engaging with folx like a normal person, and not by jumping on trending posts or into my DMs with mutual aid requests that look like *every* search result for a profile with "chuffed.org" in the bio that's been suspended for spamming folx mentions.

I want to help, but if your plea looks like a scam, I can't. I don't have the resources to thoroughly research every person who asks me to support their Chuffed campaign, and if I promote accounts and campaigns that exhibit bad behavior on Fedi, then my followers stop believing in my ability to point them at good causes...and when that happens, no one gets the aid they need and deserve.

The best way to convince me that you're not a scam is by treating me like a person, not a collection of followers that can boost your reach.

Queer issues are where I typically focus my resources, but I do stand with Palestine. The ongoing genocide surrounding Gaza is horrific.

@alice from here it seems I've given you your 451st boost on this, so, congratulations I suppose on reaching a literarily significant number.

@alice There are two (afaik) bots that I deliberately follow, for my own mental well being. The Frog and Toad bot and the Murderbot bot. The rest can get in the damn bin.

@alice re #2: I always feel really bad when I have to block an account requesting mutual aid, but I have a clear boundary in my bio, mostly to filter out bots. If you feel the need to tag people in your requests, be careful and make sure it's people who consent to that! Or just use hashtags and groups, and most of us that you might be tempted to tag will still see it

Re #3: if you feel no one wants to see your own body, you're probably wrong! We all have different tastes, and consent is tasty 😋

@alice @jw

@alice

If I had the account names I'd ban them as well!

@alice

I have a warm space in my thread for bots like @possumeveryhour or @toomanyfoxes . They are explicitly and obviously bots, and they do a specific thing reliably.

Bots that pretend to not be bots are awful and should be banned.

1/

@alice Not that it’s happened to me, but marking NSFW content as NSFW is also a big one. Thankfully, defederating from servers that DON’T enforce this rule is a lifesaver, but it’s good practice nonetheless!

@alice Five stars, no notes.

@alice ❤️

@alice A digital code of honor with a flavor of loving anger…
If half the people followed it, the other half would finally sleep in peace.
Thank you, from the heart of Gaza and from the tent 🤍

@alice to each they're own

@alice

@alice Good rant.

@alice ❤️

@alice Well said! Also thank you, now I know what a Sea Lion is, never heard of such a thing (in this context)

@alice I should add: don't abuse message editing. Once I saw a poster editing a humour post adding a line to cause a gender war (e.g. "men should not reply" after many men replied). That's bait and switch. It's disrespectful. That's not lovely.

@alice
Thank you, Alice ✌🏾

@alice

I can't be the only one who had to look up sea lions (searching for it along with "reply guy" got me past the cute mammals). Here you go:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

Yay learning! And thanks, Alice, for your championing of the community here in the Fedi!

@alice

Re: Reply Guys

People get to the Fedi from the walled-garden social media platforms of Billionaires. They're used to having their feeds curated by algorithms, which censor them, keep their feeds full of friction-less, flattering posts, calculated to make the platform "sticky", for the sake of corporate bottom-lines. When folks get to the Fedi, they're suddenly rawdogging the planet's voices, and are shocked that strangers can read their posts, worse reply to them.

1/n

@alice I'm just triggered by the endrant closing without a startrant opening. Feels wrong. Unmatched brackets.
(JOKE))

But i am thinking of starting to filter some of the links to the more annoying ad filled sites.
Oh an bots that repeat the headline text twice and then again in the links preview.

@alice hit the nail on the head for some of the recent(ish) troubling trends I've been encountering here on fedi!

@alice I just saw, muted and reported my first ever spammer and spam post this morning.

@alice

Great post. While we’re at it (as I’ve posted about a few times), make this #fedifirst - As in, post here on Mastodon with your content. Don’t force me to go off-site so that you get ad revenue.