anyone familiar with counter social? aunt crabby tweeted:

[orleans]

Link to tweet

just wondering

[cilla4progress]

1. Thanks I'm over there -

will go and see if I can find her.

[orleans]

2. so what's your take on it? nt

[cilla4progress]

3. Still getting my bearings.

I'll keep you posted

[Lunabell]

4. Just joined up!

They call them toots. I hope it takes off and fuck you fascist, racist musky boy.

[Brother Buzz]

5. There is NO read only mode at counter.social

Not for me.

[CentralMass]

6. What is the downside of that ? I don't know if I follow.

[Brother Buzz]

12. I'm NOT giving them my email address

[CentralMass]

13. Ok I see. However every other major platform requires an email address, doesn't it ?

When I saw this thread yesterday I looked it and stopped short of signing up for the same reason. Not wanting to use my email to sign up for another platform I probably don't need while havd concerns about giving out my email once again.

[Brother Buzz]

14. DU didn't until the unfortunate hack

And you CAN read DU without joining. Transparency, Baby!

I might be inclined to sign-up if I could read a bit and see what is going on. Until then, I'm sitting this one out.

[CentralMass]

15. I agree. I am not going to sign up for anything without knowing more about it.

[Brother Buzz]

17. We won't have too

If counter.social takes off, everything worth reading will be dutifully posted at DU, just like all the DU Twitter threads

You know what I mean, Vern?

[AntivaxHunters]

21. lol it takes all of 20 seconds to get a new email addy

Literally.
Proton Email

[48656c6c6f20]

23. Use a burner email account

I have one account that has zero personal information attached to it and is used for verification purposes only, even the email address is random characters. Although if they require a phone to authorize new account creation you're boned a little bit. But even that has a work around. Burner virtual phone number haha.

[XorXor]

24. And if the site has paid features (or just donate) then services like privacy.com are awesome

Privacy.com lets people create virtual cards that are tied to their real bank account. It allows spend limits and has the ability to pause a card if needed. Most neat is that someone can use any name and addresses they want and the charge will be approved. There are some risks with that, of course, but that's where the spending limits come into play.

[Emrys]

7. It's run by a "gray hat hacker" known as The Jester

His twitter feed: https://twitter.com/th3j35t3r

I don't have a problem with him, but some on DU seemed to a few years ago when he came up in a different context.

He's one of those who used to be somewhat right-wing at one point, but bailed on the Republicans when they went totally loopy. Here's his pinned tweet:

Link to tweet

JΞSŦΞR ✪ ΔCŦUΔL³³°¹
@th3j35t3r

Ten years ago, I got my 'news' from Fox. Some folks are dredging up some of my old tweets from back then. I'm happy to confirm I haven't watched Fox for years and no longer have the same opinions as when I did. Furthermore, I do not now, nor have I ever supported Donald J Trump.

I've paid him attention off and on for quite some time, and never seen anything that gave me bad vibes, though he can be quite enigmatic.

Counter Social sounds interesting, but I've not felt the need so far to commit to another online venue. He's a brilliant programmer, and some of the functionality of Counter Social far surpasses Twitter, and it looks like he'll continue developing it.

The site seems quite transparent in terms of personal privacy, and he boasts a zero tolerance policy for trolls and spammers.

He talks about Counter Social quite a bit on his Twitter feed if anyone's curious. It's seeing an upsurge in membership at the moment, which is no surprise in the circumstances.

[XorXor]

19. I think you meant to say counter social in a few places where you said truth social

[Emrys]

22. DOH! Yup. I caught one of the misnames, but I'll edit it now, as it's a significant difference!

Thanks.

[eShirl]

8. I joined when he first started it and used it a couple times; the userbase was sparse back then.

That was like a couple years ago. No complaints, but I don't think I'll join back in because I'm happy now with reddit (after being suspended by twitter in January 2021 and never going back).

[tishaLA]

9. I tried when the Musk rumors first started

but I hate the interface. I'm hoping the Bluesky thin that's forthcoming will be a better fit for me.

[AntivaxHunters]

10. BlueSky is a NO! It's a Twitter project

Read the thread!
BlueSky is NOT a Twitter competitor but rather a COLLABORATOR.

Link to tweet

?s=20&t=jEA3N-Oph0N6waRYfPmpSA

[tishaLA]

16. Welp, that was horrifying.

Guess that puts the kibosh on my Bluesky idea.

[orleans]

18. omg -- what a thing! musk is nuts. nt

[EYESORE 9001]

11. I just signed up there

Hope it doesn’t suck.

[XorXor]

20. I've been a member on there for awhile now

I joined it years ago because I followed the owner of it, and figured I'd see what he was working on. th3j35t3r is an interesting dude who is ultimately just a dude who gained some noteriety in the past for various "hacking" activities (or claims). In recent years he is mostly just a guy who strongly dislikes Trump and people of his ilk, and who is trying to build some social networking site. I find him to be a bit odd and touchy at times, but overall not a bad person. I have a theory that he might occasionally drink a bit and then start posting music videos that represent his currently feelings/emotions, and then when he comes out of it he deletes his trail. Nothing wrong with that, but you know, just a dude behind the avatar. I could also be totally wrong about that theory..... He could be the dog.

As for his site, it's alright. It's a forked version of Masterdon that was cut off from federation because the project owners of Masterdon didn't like CoSo's policy of blocking certain country's IP ranges. The theory of blocking those IP ranges being that it would reduce state sanctioned trolling and even hacking from those countries. Anyone who has ever worked in a SOC or NOC monitoring network traffic will knows what countries these are. I have doubts on the efficacy of that approach, but it's not done with any racist or xenophobic intent.

That being said, the place is pretty chill and has a nice community feel to it. In a lot of ways it feels more like DU than Twitter with respect to how users interact. Some of this I suspect is because of it's still relatively small user base and also the self-selecting nature of the users. Also, the occasional questionable actor who does show up is often dealt with quickly. I'm unsure how well such personal moderation by the owner will scale if there is a huge influx of users.

I'm not sure that a huge influx of long-term users will come about, though. This is mostly because the interface isn't the greatest. I think it might even be mostly stock Masterdon. I personally am not a fan of it. Which sucks because I do like the community it has formed. I haven't seen anything to suggest the owner is open to making some basic interface changes either. Not exactly sure why that's the case..

Anyway, it's worth giving it a shot to see if it's something you like. It's nothing groundbreaking, but the people are nice.