The official blog of the Ten Forward Mastodon instance

Category: Meta

This category contains posts about the Ten Forward instance itself and which don’t fit into the accountability categories.

Hetzner Considered Hostile: A PSA

Hetzner's logo.
Hetzner’s logo.

On 8 October 2024 I received an email from Hetzner. This was a forwarded abuse report. As is standard practice in the web hosting business Hetzner forwarded this to me so I could take action on it.

This was no ordinary abuse report. This was targeted harassment from a threat actor that has been harassing me and my friends for a long time. Now they have started targeting Ten Forward itself in an attempt to cause disruption in the day to day operations of Ten Forward.

On Mutual Aid and Class Division in the Fediverse

Recently a fediverse user posted about the gaucheness of political fundraising on the fediverse when so many individuals on the fediverse are not getting the mutual aid they need and deserve. This has been the starting point of a wider discourse about mutual aid.

I want to zoom out a bit and talk about a wider issue that has been on my mind for a while. The issue being the presence of a strong division of classes within the population of the fediverse and how this class division presents itself when it comes to the topic of mutual aid.

Palestine, Antisemitism, and the Fediverse

Over the last couple weeks as the genocide in Palestine unfolds before our very eyes I have been thinking about writing this post. I have hesitated and even as I write these words I feel like I should not be writing this post.

This is because the most basic of support for the Palestinian cause and the mildest of criticism of the state of Israel can result in accusations of antisemitism being thrown around as a way to silence legitimate criticism of the oppression Palestinian people face on a daily basis.

My hesitation aside, as a moderator of a fediverse instance, the topic of antisemitism falls well within my purview and as such I think it is important to talk about how we moderate antisemitism on the fediverse. To educate myself on the nuances of antisemitism both contemporary and historical and from a multitude of perspectives I read On Antisemitism: Solidarity and the Struggle for Justice, a collection of essays from a variety of authors which include both Jewish and non-Jewish authors alike.

Future Forward

When I first started Ten Forward back in April 2017 I didn’t think I would end up running it for more than a year, two at the most. Very few of my attempts at building communities truly succeed long term. In fact, the only other one that succeeded is EntropyNet which is a small IRC network I started with a couple friends in 2011 and is still going strong.

Ten Forward is of course an entirely different type of social network from what IRC offers and the requirements of maintaining a Mastodon instance are significantly more resource intensive than running a IRC network.

With the six year anniversary of Ten Forward’s creation still in the rear view mirror the fundamental question that has been on my mind is – “what do the next five years of Ten Forward look like?”

Let’s get into it.

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