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“Mastodon for Harris” is a Success Story for Fediverse Activism

https://wedistribute.org/2024/08/mastodon-for-harris/

A grassroots fundraising campaign for the 2024 election is trending towards half a million dollars raised by Fediverse members.

“Mastodon for Harris” is a Success Story for Fediverse Activism

The Mastodon For Harris campaign has raised close to $500,000 within two weeks of being live. It is probably the largest attempt for political organizing on the Fediverse, and may provide a playbook for other efforts going forward.

47 comments

BrianTheeBiscuiteer

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First time I donated this cycle. Wanted to support a good candidate and boost the Fediverse profile. At this point just seeing the logo for the site formerly known at Twitter makes me sick.

dexa_scantron

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Same!

PlainSimpleGarak

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You actually give your hard earned money to a millionaire? I'd rather burn it.

BrianTheeBiscuiteer

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A millionaire being opposed by billionaires? Yeah, I'm fine with that.

PlainSimpleGarak

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"Opposed"

Sure.

I keep forgetting Lemmy is ok with millionaires all of a sudden.

luciferofastora

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The difference between a million and a billioj is about one billion. Millionaires aren't the biggest bloodsuckers by a long shot, so the focus right now is on damage control by opposing the parasites.

gravitas_deficiency

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Hey, you know what?

Lemmy for Harris. Let’s do that.

pineapplelover

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I can pitch in a dollar

bappity

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Harris has had some INSANE levels of support. This is historical.

KillingAndKindess

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I mean, I myself was so fucking depressed that it was between the two, so literally anything that the Democrats would put up other than Biden I'm automatically going to be thrilled about. I could think of a few better options, actually quite the handful of better options than Harris, but you bet your sweet ass I'm still going to vote for her and support the ever living fuck out of her cuz fuck Trump.

SkyeStarfall

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Maybe the Dems will finally learn that listening to their base helps

ytg

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People are very justifiably terrified of Trump. And Kamala is really something new and fresh

WanderingVentra

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I kind of want to join Mastadon to help contribute both to the growth of this campaign and the fediverse in general.

Anyone know a good equivalent to lemm.ee instance on Mastadon? General purpose, prioritized federating with everyone over heavy handed moderation (like lemmy.ml or lemmy.world)?

Marleyinoc

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Check out @mstdn.social, I think it's an early one. I don't know how heavy handed it is but I've not had any issues and see a variety of content.

WanderingVentra

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Thanks!

mesamunefire

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I know mastodon.social is the big one.

Blaze

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Probably better to avoid it then

meldrik

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I hear good things about fosstodon.org

where_am_i

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Even the fediverse community is now about US elections.

I'll tell you what your "fediverse" is all about: USA. And mainly Trump vs Harris.

It's like nothing else exist. fediverse my @$$.

FeelThePower

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a lot of instances are really just Redditors who refuse to use reddit. this is especially apparent with the USA defaultism. the best thing you can do is curate the feed with blocked communities and only stay in subscribed, but as we can see here it even bleeds into totally unrelated shit sometimes, so.

LarmyOfLone

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It's like the domino theory. If the US falls to fascism, so will the rest of the western world!

Aqarius

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"Mr. President, we cannot alOow a tankie gap!!!"

pyre

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ikr, why do people care? it's not like us politics affects anyone outside the us. this is one country that notoriously doesn't meddle in any other country's matters one bit, and has no armed forces or even political influence outside its own borders.

sudneo

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I think this is a very real observation, with not much that can be done.

The best non-USA people can do is to participate and share/produce content which is not US-centric (ideally in their native language too). Unfortunately many communities, even non political ones, often still default to a US-centric perspective and culture, which makes it hard for people to participate.

It's hard to dance around it, more people are needed.

Blaze

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!yurop@lemm.ee is quite active, on top of the languages communities like !dach@feddit.org or !forumlibre@jlai.lu

MrMakabar

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!europe!europe@feddit.org comes to mind as a somewhat political community, with a non US focus. It however has a lot of Germans in it.

Fedizen

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The US is one of the largest english speaking communities worldwide so its maybe not too wild to expect this from english subcommunities. There is a significant amount of japanese mastodon servers and german lemmy servers

tuoret

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Yeah, I've blocked every US-specific community I've seen on the everything feed but it keeps spilling into seemingly unrelated communities too. And it's only going to get worse.

Elevator7009

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You'll never wholly escape it without only sticking to Subscribed in my opinion. In comes something from ADHDmemes, oh look, complaint about medication accessibility, in a way specific to the United States of America's healthcare system. Any post where people might complain about a serious issue probably has someone attributing the problem or an underlying problem to some political/government thing in the USA, and complaint/miseryposts are not solely limited to USA Politics communities. If you do manage to combat it mostly by just blocks, hats off to you.

Jakeroxs

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Yeah it's really annoying that USA people talk about USA problems on the internet, then you have to call them out for living in the country they live in and complaining about the problems they deal with. It completely blocks out any other discussion from people living elsewhere because... Reasons?

I really don't get this, like is the implication that other countries have problems too that are blocked out in mainstream communities because there are simply more Americans here?

It's not like we're specifically trying to snuff out any discussion of other countries/cultures issues, we're just dealing with the shit we have to deal with.

Elevator7009

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I'm a US citizen myself. I don't begrudge people the right to talk about things affecting their lives in an appropriate space (maybe don't post US politics in "non-political memes" lol). However, I also thought I'd empathize with the person I replied to and provide my method of keeping US politics out of my feed, seeing as they don't want to see it. Wanting to avoid certain material yourself ≠ calling out others for making it or wanting to consume it themselves, although I can definitely see how the person I replied to might be more on the "calling out" side than just on the "avoidance" side (not 100% sure of their intent!).

I can tell you that for me, it's because a lot of online discussion of politics tends to encourage me to doomscroll and makes me feel bad in a way news articles don't, so I try to keep my Fediverse feeds politics-free. I stay informed elsewhere. I understand the need to vent out frustration! Things suck sometimes! But I also understand wanting to avoid seeing that kind of stuff, whether your reason is like mine or more akin to "I'm not interested in this and my feed is full of it."

Blaze

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As usual, a nice comment

Elevator7009

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Aww thanks :)

Jakeroxs

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Definitely fair, I was moreso thinking of an example similar to the ADHDmemes discussion about how bad our Healthcare system is in general, I've seen similar things to that and then someone from another country come in and clearly be irritated that the discussion happened.

I personally blocked feddit and a few French communities because I can't speak German or French lol, if it was in English I might be interested in seeing the discussion even if it's not directly relevant to my personal life. 🤷‍♂️

Emperor

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The Fediverse is a big beast with a lot of local instances that have nothing to do with US politics (I may be biased as I do help run one - see, eg, !uk_politics@feddit.uk) and the majority of topic specific communities are less US-focused. Hell, you even have !noyank@lemmy.ml. So you can change things around by expanding and/or pruning your yiur subs.

deFrisselle

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Welcome to Enshitification

Mio

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I am surprised of this.

WhatThaFudge

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The comments on here vs the comments on the cross-post really shows the diversity of the fediverse on different instances.

SirDerpy

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As Lemmy has scaled it's approaching average. The masses have chosen to demonized minority opinions not for profit, but for short term comfort. They'll enshitify socially. It'll be faster than profit max as there's no delay to begin.

Feathercrown

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We live in a society

SirDerpy

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The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.

skullgiver

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Feathercrown

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I mean, it could be spent on outreach to inform people that Harris is more than just "some woman", for one.

skullgiver

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[This comment has been deleted by an automated system]

Feathercrown

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We can sit here and argue over what "should" happen all day. The point of funding is to make sure that what should happen, does happen.

Alphane_Moon

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So did Harris' campaign open a mastadon account (this shouldn't be all that difficult or costly) following this initiative?

I am not the from the US, just curious. More official government accounts on Mastadon is good thing.

I did recently notice that I could follow some people on Threads on one of my Mastadon account, that's a good thing too.

UniversalMonk

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Good! Maybe I will try this for the Jill Stein campaign then!

lambalicious

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Millionaires and politicians simping for money on Mastodon, while otherwise people who are actually disabled, homeless or in need struggle to even get their posts begging for contributions seen?

Wow, didn't expect that of all thing that would enshittify the Fediverse, it would be a politician going for the left.

deadsuperhero

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That's not really enshittification, is it?

I was under the impression that Cory Doctorow's definition was largely based on how social media platforms entice people with "free" offerings, then gradually tighten the screws over time to make service worse. This usually happens when a platform becomes the dominant player.

lambalicious

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Eh, language evolves, terms that follow normal grammar constructions eventually are expanded beyond their niches (see: "forbade" and all those verbs that start with "for"; as well as "embiggen" etc).

"Enshittify" is literally just "make something shittier" ("en-" + "shit" + "-fy"). Sure it was coined for the idiosyncracies of this absurd timeline, and we are all glad for that -- but really it's just a correct word that has always existed it just went unused.

Now, if you want to pedant, sure let's go that way: Mozilla is also a platform that "entices people with a free offering" (Firefox), then "gradually tightens" (or, really, loosens) the screws over time "to make that service worse" (Pocket, Robot, post-Auralis UI, AIs, etc). This "usually happens when a platform becomes the dominant player" (in this case, basically the only big Gecko browser).