Thank you everyone for participating in wolfballs 1.

This has been a wild ride.

When wolfballs first started there was basically no free speach sites up.

Ruqqus was shutting down, scored did not allow community creation, saidit was always off and there was basically no where you could post people dying of vaccines.

It was a hard time for me. My job was threatened with a vaccine requirement. A threat I successfully fought off with a religious accommodation request.

I was scared, I felt powerless, and I wanted a place everyone could come and talk about all the crazy stuff that was going on without being threatened with weird censorship. Like doctors post being deleted.

Times have changed.

Twitter is a much better place. As we’ve seen from Eliza Blue there is still abuse. But the fedivserse is better too with new great instances like Poa.st

Scored has a lot of censorship but it is still better than reddit and you can actually get more than 20 upvotes on c/gaming.

rumble is now a viable competitor to youtube. locals is ok, gab has cemented itself as the king of say anything within American legal boundaries. (But no tities) , truth social is a thing and when people want to talk about election problems or vaccines killing there are now mainstream places to do that. There was not before.

There was a lot about moderation I did not understand though.

For one there are a lot of real nazi’s on the internet. I thought most of them were fake trolls just shit posting for lulz.

When I thought free speech I thought that doctors, lawyers should be able to give their professional opinions without fear of censorship.

That people should be able to give opinions on trials that are not popular but are supported by evidence.

Things get much more complicated though. There appear to be government actors and company actors who try to prevent sites from growing by posting purposefully provocative content.

Also the reddit format is really a relic from the early 2010’s and modern bots don’t allow it to function the way it was intended.

Up/down votes are meaningless when I can deploy a thousand bots to make content what ever score I want.

That is why reddit is full of weird products on the front page and they use so much shadow banning to try to keep that sort of behavior at bay.

In order for a categorical social media to work it must involve curation which is just another word for selective censorship. So the format isn’t really good for freespeech anyways.

I will explore more decentralized social media but it will look different and I will be under a different name.

It’s time to hang up the mask. Masterofballs unfortunately will die. Due to vaccine induced myocarditis i’m sure. However it is not the end for Mr balls because he will one day be reborn into something else. Maybe something better.

wolfballs will stay up for a few days for people to clean house, grab any memes you left and I’ll try to keep a backup somewhere and leave a way for people to contact me if they forgot something.

I hope everyone can check out exploading-heads or other cool instances.

Thank you everyone

MOB

  • Kaiser Rotepille@wolfballs.com
    8·
    2 years ago

    @sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net @Owner_of_donky@donky.social @Monarque@wolfballs.com @Scruffy_Nerfherder@wolfballs.com @squashkin@wolfballs.com @Spotted_Lady@wolfballs.com @x0x7@wolfballs.com @mucan@wolfballs.com @Neinmooliyans@wolfballs.com @iamtanmay@wolfballs.com Would any of you guys like to start a free forum on gab, we’ll all be mods together equal in power and prestige

    • Kaiser Rotepille@wolfballs.com
      3·
      2 years ago

      I opened a free forum there a few minutes ago, what are the rules there and also i hope you trust my mod skills but on the tech side of things im useless, ill help u build up exploding heads but want a commitment from u that you wont shut it down anytime soon

      • Kapow@exploding-heads.com
        2·
        2 years ago

        Welcome aboard. The rules are in the sidebar and pretty simple. They are:

        • Be authentic.
        • Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here.
        • No porn.
        • No ads / spamming.
        • No doxing
        • No threats or personal insults
        • No discrimination

        Quite a few Wolfball members comment regularly on our posts and I cannot recall having any problems with their comments from a moderation point of view.

        We do not have any plans to shut down. Exploding Heads is my contribution to the fight against censorship and ruling class corruption.

  • iamtanmay@wolfballs.com
    7·
    2 years ago

    Thank you 1000%, Wolfballs was incredibly helpful in some truly dark times, when Covid mania got me kicked off all social media just for looking for protests to protect my right not to be imprisoned in my home

    The community has been awesome ! Definitely going to miss it a lot ! Best wishes to you and your family

    God bless !

    Shout out to @wigglehard@wolfballs.com @sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net @Owner_of_donky@donky.social @Monarque@wolfballs.com @Scruffy_Nerfherder@wolfballs.com @squashkin@wolfballs.com @Spotted_Lady@wolfballs.com @x0x7@wolfballs.com @mucan@wolfballs.com @Neinmooliyans@wolfballs.com

    Thanks so much for all the fun times and keeping me company ! If there is some way you would like to stay in touch - maybe some other platform, let me know

    • Masterofballs@wolfballs.comOPM
      4·
      2 years ago

      Of course. If someone else wants it and has the means to host a instance im happy to transfer it. Otherwise it will turn into some of kind of news letter page for sites that are good for uncensored post.

  • DePepe@wolfballs.com
    5·
    2 years ago

    That is incredibly sad. Lurking in Wolfballs has been one of my favorite pass-times. Everyone let us know what instance you are joining next, I’ll miss all of you.

  • SJ0@wolfballs.com
    5·
    2 years ago

    That sucks. You’ve built one of the bigger, better communities on the lemmy side of the fediverse.

    There’s decent instances out there folks, don’t give up on this side of the fediverse.

    Created a freeforum on my instance in memory of the most fun community on the fediverse, though lotide isn’t polished like lemmy.

  • Mucan@wolfballs.com
    4·
    2 years ago

    Dang refugee again. Maybe it is time to go to one basically too big to fail. Twitter is somewhat good as it seems.

    Sad to admit but you are right about this style of posts and the abuse it causes. In the end it might be best to have a way to follow individuals and then just expand from recommendations be it from them personally or generated ones from the sites. It just makes me a little anxious when i have no clear free speech platform from which i could hear news about the shot killing people preferably before it is too late.

      • Mucan@wolfballs.com
        1·
        2 years ago

        I think I’m pretty comfortable with Twitter. It’s super annoying that you can’t sort your timeline by date and that, at least for now who knows after it has been trained a little, some pretty irrelevant comments being shown to me.

        I’ve got pretty sure after seing someone mention the 41% suicide rates of trannies under a discussion about the dead space remake new gender neutral toilet signs. His post even had a picture of one of the people of dead space who hanged himself near the neutral toilets which makes it even more brutal and funny.

        I had my old account there and with a few people i was already following like Raging Golden Eagle and Proxer (some german anime watching community) i had already some stuff in my timeline i wanted to watch. Also my account was still following project melody and i managed to get a glimpse of her twitch livestreams. It was great.

        All in all I’m super happy so far but there are some retarded people and opinions for sure so to an extend i hope twitters algorithm will learn a little so i will only see the shit when i start to look for it.

  • Diarque@wolfballs.com
    3·
    2 years ago

    My gab: https://gab.com/Lovstuhagen

    I’ll give my Twitter, Facebook, or email to some of the people here who may ask me through private message - only names I recognize, OF COURSE…!

    My personal message: I do not regret all the time & effort because building the community was worth it, even if it was small.

    And it was special. I do not think I have it in me to post at this volume ever again.

    I really appreciate all the people who commented and upvoted. I also appreciate the lurkers. I appreciate all the Fediverse users who were here in any capacity.

    We did a good job and we will all continue to do well down the line.

    God bless you all.

  • Owner_of_donky@donky.social
    3·
    2 years ago

    I think there is hidden message here

    Thank you everyone for participating in wolfballs 1.

    Wolfballs 1? So there should be wolfballs 2. Did you finish developing the new platform?

    Jokes aside. As I said in my happy new year post I had pretty fun moments here. Thanks to everyone who was here. Thank to MOB for hosting this instance absolutely free of charge. Thanks for everyone who kept this place moral and calm. Thanks to @iamtanmay@wolfballs.com for pinging me because I decided to have break from social media but this is a special occasion. Thanks for making my dream of being a part of small community of clever people become true. Thanks for pulling me into the self hosting rabbit hole 😂.

    In 2-3 years I might be able to afford to host wolfballs and its domain if MOB is still contactable.

    Everything has an end. Including all the good things. Thanks again

    • squashkin@wolfballs.com
      2·
      2 years ago

      wolfballs 1 isnt necessarily a joke, there was a thought of making a new project with different name and it may still be in the works

      hosting an instance can be pretty cheap also

      • Owner_of_donky@donky.social
        1·
        2 years ago

        I know about the new wolfbals that is/was in WIP. The joke is that this isn’t a goodbye but just “see you in the next episode”.

        Sorry, I can’t make jokes 😅

  • kiwiheretic@wolfballs.com
    3·
    2 years ago

    Not sure I have as much faith in Twitter as you do. Also it’s not really a discussion platform although that may change.

    I’m curious where everyone is moving or has anyone found another platform where you can discuss important issues with the same laid back approach?

  • Scruffy_Nerfherder@wolfballs.com
    3·
    2 years ago

    WOW. I hope there is a Wolfballs 2. Thank you for this site, it was fun. Probably a lot of work on your side of things with little remuneration. Crap.

  • Alice@wolfballs.com
    2·
    2 years ago

    Oh my God no!! :( I’m so fucking sad this was my go to. I understand and you’re awesome dude I’m really hoping there is a wolfballs 2. MOB don’t fucking give up. You’ve really got something and I want to see and help you flourish

  • Owner_of_donky@donky.social
    1·
    2 years ago

    Alright, I have the knowhow and the finances to continue to host it. The only problem is that I have to wait at least 2 years.

    If MOB is contactable in that time and has no problem sharing a backup of all the codebase and database why not continue the current instance.

    • squashkin@wolfballs.com
      1·
      2 years ago

      a name change might be nice if ya wanna create a fresh instance

      I have to wait at least 2 years

      because of costs? I think it can be pretty cheap to run, like couple hundred a year, mob didn’t even ask for donations which was an appreciated kind gesture. you can host an instance from home for almost nothing (electricity? cost of buying a rasp pi) although it has downsides. hosting is just like whatever dreamhost costs a month

      • Owner_of_donky@donky.social
        0·
        2 years ago

        No. I live with my parents and use their internet. My mother has worked in a place where she has seen a lot of bad thing happen using only the IP of public online services. She is kind of scared and I am also just a bit scared. I also haven’t read the local laws for online services. I will be ready to host the instance only when I move out and/or read those laws.