Francis 🇾🇪 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @francis@greenplenty.social

Okay let’s give this thing a go.

In my column on Friday, I highlighted the shocking fact that Britons now have the worst access to healthcare in Europe, and this is causing worsening health

*1 in 6* UK adults needed medical examination or treatment in the last year but were unable to access it (due mainly to waiting lists), higher than in all 35 other European countries

This link is free for the first 300 readers -> https://enterprise-sharing.ft.com/redeem/da24c14e-795e-4ef7-9e5f-66e9c6178d97

At #Twitter Inc. we love charity. We live in a world where not every person is born with the same opportunities in life, and some people lack what others have.

Therefore we will start deducting 5% from our employees' salaries, to pay for our dear CEO Elon #Musk's frequent hair transplant surgeries.

That's not to say complaints about UX are wrong. Nor that we should be cavalier about the barriers created by jargon. Rather, I just wish people were more willing to fight for and build an internet for people and communities, not an internet that is fundamentally a billionaires sandbox.

For me, it's not that Mastodon is perfect or even good, per se, it's that it's worth fighting for.

So it seems that trolls of the Trumpist frozen peach variety, mostly those who set up their own Pleroma instances when Parler got taken down, are undertaking a semi-coordinated effort to target journalists who sign up on Mastodon for a couple of reasons...

* Trump has taught them that professional journalism and critical thinking are elitist and bad so lets harass them until they go away

* they are trying to prove some sort of point that this place can be just as toxic as their beloved Frozen Peach in Chief's microblogging site

If you are a journo and you get dogpiled by trolls DO NOT ENGAGE with them at all! Immediately:

1. REPORT them to your instance mods, THEN
2. Block them

Step 1 is very important! This isn't twitter or facebook...mods will take swift action, and if they don't you can migrate instances to better moderated ones...

Greetings and Welcome to the Fediverse.

Your first mission, should you choose to accept it, is to start finding people to follow.

You really don't have to be super picky right now. You just want to start getting your feed busy so you can start organically finding content.

Additionally, if you've decided to use the Tweetdeck-style advanced interface, make sure to set up one or more columns with hashtags you want to follow! That's another big way people discover content on here!

Mastodon doesn't default to having an in-your-face content algorithm, which does mean that you need to put in a _little_ more work to find stuff you want to engage with. This is a good thing!

Your second mission, of course, is to actually _engage_ with stuff you like, instead of just liking and walking away. Having conversations with "randos" is a lot easier and less awkward on here, and people are more likely to respond to you. Talk to us! Even (especially) if we have a lot of followers! This is how you get the other end of the puzzle (people who follow _you_).

Enjoy your stay and I hope it's safe and cozy <3

#twittermigration