A quick communication to our wonderful friends in #Gaza.
A few of you may have experienced limitations/suspensions on your accounts, especially on the main instance.
First of all, I want to reiterate that this isn’t anything personal against you or a sign that `@staff` is not sympathetic with the #GazaVerified initiative - they’ve shown quite the opposite so far.
Actions against accounts are only taken when several reports (usually for spam) are received and the moderation team is left with no choice.
However, these restrictions are usually lifted when we talk to instance admins and explain them the situation, and those of you who are impacted pledge to use mentions more responsibly.
Mastodon is still a platform that welcomes you, and we’ll make sure that this will keep being the case.
Second, a common message I’ve heard in your appeals is “but we only tagged our friends and people sympathetic with our cause“.
After so many reports, I started finding it increasingly unlikely that any of us would ever report you for spam - and repeatedly.
So I’ve taken a closer look at some of the lists of users that some of you commonly tag and I’ve started to notice some patterns that may explain the reports (or at least some of them).
Unlike centralized platforms like X or Instagram (or even Bluesky, where most of the people are on the main server), instances matter here.
So my username (`
@Fabio Manganiello`) is different from `
@fabio`, or any `@fabio@something.com`. Those are different people with accounts on different servers.
I’m bringing mine as an example, but I have noticed several occurrences where some of you probably tagged people by typing `@username`, saw a couple of options in the dropdown, and unsure on who is the right one you included a few of them.
When you send that message, those people will get a notification - and they may not be me nor any of your friends.
If someone keeps getting notifications from strangers to donate to an initiative they’ve never heard of, and without any way to tell if you’re genuine or not, after a few times they may simply report you for spam. And that explains limitations and suspensions.
So please, when you send messages that include many mentions, always make sure that the handles you have included match those on our profiles. That may prevent a lot of unsolicited notifications to people who may not be very sensitive with your calls for help.
Finally, we do our best to boost your voices, and we’ll keep doing so. But we also want you to have your own voice heard on a social media platform that is actually open to listen to you, with no need for our boosts. If you build your own following then you won’t need a few of us to boost your posts - people will follow you because of what you say or show to them.
I built the @gaza_verified_accounts bot exactly to boost your voices, so anyone who follows that bot sees all of your posts, even if they don’t follow each of you individually.
If you post your genuine stories that actually move people, then that bot is likely to be followed by many - and your own voices heard by many.
One last thing, you don't have to tag @gaza_verified_accounts@mastodon.social or @gaza_verified_campaigns@mastodon.social explicitly. Those are automated accounts and I never check their notifications.
It isn’t easy for me to deliver these messages by the way.
I can only imagine in a remote corner of my mind how tough things must be for you.
I can only imagine how I would behave on the Internet if it was my own life to be in peril, and if I had to fight for basic necessities on a daily basis.
I feel like I shouldn’t be here preaching technical details about social media or netiquette to people literally going through hell.
But I’m here to make sure that your voices are heard, that they touch as many people as possible, and that they keep being heard.
Stay strong, we’re on your side ♥️
@Aral Balkan @npub1d6t8...vdlg
