The uptick of interest in Mastodon due to Musk buying Twitter doesn’t make sense. Only the left is angry about the acquisition. The right is gleeful. What the left is angry and the right is gleeful about is the idea that Musk is a “free speech absolutist” and might unban Donald Trump and other right wing / fascist media personalities.
Guess what: in the fediverse, it would never have been possible to ban Trump in the first place. Sure, leftist servers could have stop syndicating his posts, but this would not have had much more of an effect than individuals blocking him on Twitter if he had never been banned there.
Further, Musk hasn’t actually unbanned him yet. If this mastodon push was somehow successful, and everyone switched over, then Trump would be truly unbannable. He would run his own instance, and it would syndicated to all his fans. The people who are mad about Musk might not syndicate Trump’s posts but this wouldn’t matter.
Guess what: in the fediverse, it would never have been possible to ban Trump in the first place. Sure, leftist servers could have stop syndicating his posts, but this would not have had much more of an effect than individuals blocking him on Twitter if he had never been banned there.
Further, Musk hasn’t actually unbanned him yet. If this mastodon push was somehow successful, and everyone switched over, then Trump would be truly unbannable. He would run his own instance, and it would syndicated to all his fans. The people who are mad about Musk might not syndicate Trump’s posts but this wouldn’t matter.