I’ve been on Mastodon for a long time, and I haven’t seen a single Nazi. If your Mastodon is “empty or full of Nazis,” my guess is there’s one of four things going on:

• You aren’t following/followed by good people. Use hashtags, boost toots, follow people back, follow accounts that try to share interesting accounts or hashtags.

  • A subpoint here might be to make sure you’re liberally applying the ban and mute functions for bad actors. For especially bad ones, report them.

• You aren’t following hashtags. Similar to the above, there’s no algorithm. You decide what your feed looks like, and following hashtags for subjects you’re interested in will help you find good people and good commentary (this is much healthier than letting a dumb algorithm decide what you’ll find “most engaging,” anyway)

• You are looking at the Local or Global feeds too often. Depending on your instance’s federation rules, you are more likely to find those aforementioned “bad actors” here, since these feeds are not curated.

• Your definition of “Nazi” is the one that means “anyone left of Marxists,” or, “supports Democrats,” and if so, that’s watering down the meaning of the word and giving cover to the real Nazis.

Whatever the case, if the people you’re seeing aren’t sharing your ideals, pick a different instance or spin up your own, and/or do the things I suggested (insomuch as they are relevant to you). My Mastodon feed is filled with artists and just generally positive people trying to do some good in the world.

• https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/11/i-prefer-to-meet-people-where-they-are-says-reasonable-sounding-white-dude-holding-court-at-a-table-in-the-back-of-a-nazi-bar/