But then you have the question of what do you define as critical mass and which specialized instances to exclude.

Don’t get me wrong, I support your idea and I generally think an instance should always be pre-selected for a new user (with an option to pick your own). Some of it should definitely be based on geo/regional factors.

Threadi is too small for that, if it had 2 million MAUs (50% English / 50 % other langues), what you are proposing would be semi-viable.

Between Lemmy / Piefed / Mbin, we have something like ~50 K MAUs tops.

That preamble is quiet the something.

I would recommend deleting your current posts, writing a brief intro (300 words tops) that also links to a FAQ and the full text of your concept.

It’s impossible to read in its current state.

Any more info on this?

From reading their FAQ if seems like an ActivityPub implementation for Micro-blogging but with other features and integration with other Fedi networks (sort of like mbin?).

A quick scan of their main public instance shows higher than average amount of far right content, but not overwhelmingy so (and the examples were from other servers, not clear if its Pleroma instances or smaller mastodon servers that get blocked on major instances).

What am I missing?

AV1 content is rather rare and encoding even 1080p content (from BD) is pretty slow unless you have a 9985WX Threadripper Pro (which costs over $11 K retail where I live).

And AV1 client support (HW decode) is lacking compared to HEVC/x265.

Don’t know which country you live in but $160 for a 14 TB HDD is a good price. It’s been a while since I lived in North America, but from memory this is a good price for US/Canada.

One general tip for saving space is to get x265/HEVC content, as it tends to be most space efficient on both an absolute and a “quality per GB basis” (some caveats of course, but I digress). That being said you may want to make sure all your clients support x265 (I prefer to simply never have to transcode and have all clients support Xvid/x264/x265 and all major audio formats).

We have a war on, so probably not the best destination right now.

I would prefer if they were not based in the US, both for jurisdiction reasons and cultural reasons (no offense to sane Americans).

No, I said ADL is not to be trusted, there are clear reasons for this.

They deny the Armenian genocide because it’s convenient for them.

The link you cited isn’t convincing in the least.

ADL is not to be trusted on this issue.

I strongly disagree. Even the section on his articles about trans kids shows that Singal is able to show a measure of nuance and understanding with respect to the critiques of his work.

Not to mention the more global context. Are you sure that non-english speaking trans folks would have the same attitude (i.e. they may have their own opinions and priorities)? The reason I mention this is that I have some exposure to the local LGBT community and their attitudes don’t always align with “Western” expectations.

Bluesky is of course just another American social media company. If they are not shit now, they will be once they get bigger. The American model has reached a dead end and it’s not suitable for good products, competition and real innovation.

Side note, it’s been a while since I’ve lived in the US, so my knowledge of local “culture wars” is from online sources, but the article is incorrect in claiming that Jesse Singal is a transphobe. I say this as someone who often disagrees with him.

I will add that many of the commentators in his substack are unhinged and likely transphobes.

but I’m not sure if piefed instances are compatible with it yet.

I don’t believe they are. I tired posting a piefed community and it didn’t seem to work.

I never said anything about US democrats (who are centre-right) or leftists. And where did I say you are American or even that you are a conservative or Democrat. Why are you bringing this up?

I said something very specific, that US conservatives are beholden to oligarchs and even their alleged deeply held beliefs do not pass the basic smell test if you’ve lived in different countries / speak different languages and so on (this is true irrespective of you political views). It’s like claiming the United Russia party has deeply held beliefs. This is a ridiculous proposition.

Making claims that “US conservatives support the marketplace ideas” is exactly the kind of thing that brings up massive red flags. Conservative/Progressive refers to broad political alignment. You can have people in both camps who support the marketplace of ideas and those that don’t. You can also have people who like to make statements about supporting the marketplace of ideas for superficial reasons.

Is that really true though?

When living in the US, it seemed American conservatives seemed mostly to be oligarch shills and with very shallow and performative beliefs.

Mind you, I think there needs to be balance of sorts between left and right, competition to keep both sides honest. But this doesn’t apply to American “conservatives” who at least at the high level seemed to mostly consist of demagogues.

The “marketplace of ideas” phrase is a perfect example of the theatrical and performative nature of American conservativism.

So would you be OK with treating transphobia in the same way? Not bother with it in an attempt to find common ground?

You should also include their support for russian genocidal imperialism.

Let’s hope one day Nutomic, Dessalines and all other degenerate tankie roaches end up in a russian prison. It will be a good lesson for them.

I would say the test of public discourse should have limits. For example “North Korea is a great place to live and their regime is a vanguard against western imperialism” should not be treated as spam/trolling. I would argue the same for “genocide of russian speakers in Donbas”.

But I digress. You are right in that we must have the opportunity to state facts about Gaza even if it means damning outcomes for the Israeli polity (i.e. factual recognition that Israel is a genocidal settler colonialiat state).

Fair point.

I still don’t think the Feddit administration (in the broad sense of the word) is Zionist, but I will admit that I could be wrong.

For what it’s worth I’ve always leaned on the side of the Palestinians, even before the russians invaded in 2014. I just think some caution is needed with using the term Zionist (especially when there is a solid chance of changing their views).

Unless these are new threads, I believe I’ve read through them.

I am not convinced they are Zionist or whitewashing Israeli genocide (in the manner of tankie degenerates).

I genuinely believe that it benefits no one to casually label people zionists.

I will give you an example from my native country, Ukraine. After Hamas went on their stupid rampage, a lot of Ukrainians supported Israel (I don’t understand this since the Israeli government is largely pro-russian). People even equated Hamas with the russians (e.g. mass organized killings of civilians).

That being said, once they saw what Israel did in Gaza, many (not all) started taking a more critical look at their support for Israel.

I am just saying, it’s not good to label people when their views can be flexible and are sometimes driven by ignorance.