Musk makes Twitter a platform for conspiracy theories and his tantrums. What can you do?
Twitter is an ad platform that makes money selling your personal information to advertisers. Plain and simple. Follow these ten tips to protect your privacy on Twitter. and stop unknowingly promoting trolls. Check out Mastodon, an ad-free Twitter-like platform where you won't be subject to a billionaire's tantrums.
Twitter assumes you think the people you follow are important and promotes them to your friends. That Twitter account might just be one you are researching to see why they are promoting racism, the insurrection or fascism. How do you follow people privately on Twitter without helping them spread their hate? How can you minimize the information you share with Twitter that it can use to sell to advertisers?
Make it harder for Twitter to exploit your private info
Ten ways to protect your privacy on Twitter
- Don't disclose your location
- Restrict who can tag you in photos
- Remove yourself from unwanted lists you've been added to
- Use two factor authentication
- Follow people privately without disclosing your identity
- Restrict who can send you direct messages on Twitter
- Keep the SPACES you're listening to private
- Make it harder for people to find you on Twitter
- Make it harder for Twitter to show you personalized ads
- Don't share your inferred identity
Remove yourself from unwanted Twitter lists
Follow Twitter accounts privately without accidentally promoting trolls
Mastodon: Community owned, ad-free social networking
Mastodon is not a single website. You need to make an account with a provider (called servers) that lets you connect with other people across Mastodon. It's fast, easy and free.
"Sharing your thoughts has never been more convenient. Publish anything you want on Mastodon: links, pictures, text, video. You have 500 characters. You can adjust the thumbnails of your pictures with focal points. You can use custom emojis, hide things behind spoiler warnings and choose who sees a given post. Messed it up? You can delete & redraft for quick corrections. Without an incentive to sell you things, Mastodon allows you to consume content you enjoy uninterrupted. Your feed is chronological, ad-free and non-algorithmic—you decide who you want to see! Check the Terms & Code of Conduct.
I created a DemLabs Mastodon account https://masto.ai/@DemLabs in about 10 minutes on the server https://masto.ai/home
Twitter and/or Mastodon
This blog was inspired by a post by Rafael Shimunov. (Occasional guest host of What's Going On @WBAI 99.5 FM. Board + Jews of Color caucus member. @JFREJNYC, co-founder @TheJewishVote. Art at @artvwar.) Follow Rafael on Twitter or Mastodon
"I think until Twitter is no longer the venue where our messages are closest to proximity of policymakers, journalists and others, it is too valuable a place to cede symbolically, and too much of a monopoly to boycott effectively. I think it's important to support people who are deciding to preempt increased hate speech by leaving, and also continue to use the space to challenge, educate, organize or confront. We should also be elevating tactics to increase safety and decrease their power. Stop following our adversaries, especially those with smaller followings, and move them to lists if you want to keep tabs on them without helping them rise in algorithms normalizing and promoting them."
Mastodon is as simple as email
The word Mastodon is just an umbrella term. You don’t even need a phone app and you can always just use your desktop if you want. Think of all of these addresses as kind of like email. It’s like emailing your friends in public. It doesn’t really matter whether your server is Gmail or AOL for work. And similarly there it doesn’t really matter which server you are on as long as well moderated and administered and trust them. It is run by a network of volunteer operators who are crowdfunded. So instead of a single corporation owning the platform with thousands of servers, this is a nonprofit volunteer system. Here ordinary people host a server using compatible software and agree to content rules. The server are connected so you can follow anyone, regardless of how you signed up." - Murshed Zaheed
Support Mastodon
Since Mastodon does not serve ads and we do not sell data we rely on your support. Find a complete overview of their costs and donations on mstdn.social hub
TakeAway: Protect your privacy on Twitter and consider a free Mastodon account.
Deepak
DemLabs
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