Switter!

[QuinnLane]

So, last night something magical happened. Switter arrived. Switter is a sex-work friendly social platform, like Twitter.

https://switter.at/web/getting-started
https://switter.at/about/more

It's been made for sex workers and clients, and has really taken off! 12 hours ago there were 153 users.





I want to throw out some helpful information all in one place.

Mastodon = the platform/host.
Instance = the server. There are many servers on Mastodon.

Will Switter be effected by FOSTA/SESTA?
We’ve specifically set up Switter to be based outside the US with our domain residing in Austria where sex work is legal. FOSTA/SESTA should not effect our platform. (taken from their FAQ)

Is there an app?
Yes! You can also use this from your phone browser.

Can I link my Twitter and Switter accounts?
Yep! Find your Twitter friends here & use this to crosspost. You can choose to only post from one to the other, or have both post to each other. The crossposter is also very useful to schedule Tweets, as you can schedule via Twitter Ads and anything that's queued up will also post to Switter when it posts to Twitter!

How do we DM?
To send a DM/Private message - click the little World symbol beside the photo/privacy settings and you can set it so only the person/persons you're @ing will be able to see it. A DM is also highlighted on your feed.


I'm so confused about the local & federation options!
I was too. Local = viewing Toots from Switter.at & federation = all across the Mastodon world!
This explains it through a chart.

Are there hashtags?
Yes! And you're encouraged to use them. FSSWs are encouraged to use #tour and #location tags to help clients find them. Use the #introduction tag when you join!



Mark your media as sensitive through Preferences. Apparently due to the fact that instances link together, our NSFW content has been showing up in other areas that could expose minors or people who do not want to view it, to our content. Switter is looking into the possibility of having this as the default setting for the instance, but until then, this is the best option. You can change your settings via Preferences or by clicking the privacy setting for that particular Toot. You can also add content warnings!



You can also pin MULTIPLE Toots to your profile.
Toot character limit is 500.
I believe the gif/upload limit is 8mb by default across Mastodon but apparently that can be changed across instances by the instance admin.
Having something like bit.ly will show as plain text, you need to include the http:// for it to register as a link.


I think that's the basics! Please note that this is still early in the launch & admins ARE working with us on things and taking suggestions. Patience is key!

But hey, sex-work friendly Twitter alternative for all those who are shadowbanned/banned/sick of Twitter's shit!

 

[Miss_Lollipop]

Thanks for posting this!

So i feel like Switter is a great idea but it can't really replace twitter for me unless I can get the same kind of following there that I can on twitter. :/ I can't imagine it'll have the same kind of traffic (though, that said, im shadow banned so twitter is a bit useless t here)

 

[Guy]

Thanks for posting this!

So i feel like Switter is a great idea but it can't really replace twitter for me unless I can get the same kind of following there that I can on twitter. :/ I can't imagine it'll have the same kind of traffic (though, that said, im shadow banned so twitter is a bit useless t here)

https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-recover-a-Twitter-account-from-Shadowban

 

[SaffronBurke]

https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-recover-a-Twitter-account-from-Shadowban

Many sex workers who've had their shadowbans lifted, got shadowbanned right away again. We're basically stuck in shadowban status because of our jobs at this point.

 

[AmberCutie]

Thanks for posting this!

So i feel like Switter is a great idea but it can't really replace twitter for me unless I can get the same kind of following there that I can on twitter. :/ I can't imagine it'll have the same kind of traffic (though, that said, im shadow banned so twitter is a bit useless t here)

For me the issue is that my most supportive followers and target audience type people are not going to be as willing to install this app/use this site vs a widely used mainstream site like Twitter. It won't have the same type of traffic at all, and even with my media being lesser seen due to default sensitive media settings and default "show the best tweets" crap, (I'm not calling it shadowbanned because that's a different thing than what we porn pushers are experiencing) I think Twitter will continue to be more helpful to me and the way I run my own hustle.

 

[Lintilla]

I signed up mainly to grab my username. I'll do more than that if it lives for awhile, but I definitely am not enthusiastic. Mastodon was a big thing for about five minutes a year or so ago, and more or less died out for most people very quickly. It's described above, but to briefly restate things, email is to Gmail what Mastodon is to Switter. Mastodon is decentralized, Switter is a specific instance of Mastodon. The thing with that is... I joined and watched several Mastodon instances die slow or less slow deaths last year. They start up with the idea of it being something easy to run, and with the ideals of upholding free speech. That's nice in theory, but in practice it's more difficult. The server costs more to run than they expected, free speech turns into chaos, whatever. There are rules against certain content on Switter already (https://switter.at/about/more). Assembly Four (whoever they are?) gets the final say on things at the moment. I've never heard of them before now, I have no reason to trust them. I've already seen scat on Switter. Will that be allowed to continue or not? I'm not judging there, but I do think that most people don't want to see scat, or certain other things, so what happens with it? The rules can change. I've also noticed some timeouts and generally slow loading times. How will that be dealt with, and who will pay for it? Mastodon in general is also not the easiest thing to adapt to. It didn't catch on a year ago, I'm not all that optimistic now. If you really want the decentralized version of Mastodon, you need to do it the same way as email. Just like you can email me at lintilla@lintilla.net, I could have my own Mastodon instance. That's still too much of a pain in the butt, for sure.

 

[VeronicaChaos]

I signed up mainly to grab my username. I'll do more than that if it lives for awhile, but I definitely am not enthusiastic. Mastodon was a big thing for about five minutes a year or so ago, and more or less died out for most people very quickly. It's described above, but to briefly restate things, email is to Gmail what Mastodon is to Switter. Mastodon is decentralized, Switter is a specific instance of Mastodon. The thing with that is... I joined and watched several Mastodon instances die slow or less slow deaths last year. They start up with the idea of it being something easy to run, and with the ideals of upholding free speech. That's nice in theory, but in practice it's more difficult. The server costs more to run than they expected, free speech turns into chaos, whatever. There are rules against certain content on Switter already (https://switter.at/about/more). Assembly Four (whoever they are?) gets the final say on things at the moment. I've never heard of them before now, I have no reason to trust them. I've already seen scat on Switter. Will that be allowed to continue or not? I'm not judging there, but I do think that most people don't want to see scat, or certain other things, so what happens with it? The rules can change. I've also noticed some timeouts and generally slow loading times. How will that be dealt with, and who will pay for it? Mastodon in general is also not the easiest thing to adapt to. It didn't catch on a year ago, I'm not all that optimistic now. If you really want the decentralized version of Mastodon, you need to do it the same way as email. Just like you can email me at lintilla@lintilla.net, I could have my own Mastodon instance. That's still too much of a pain in the butt, for sure.

I really like the idea behind mastodon, and before hearing about it I practically described the same idea to a friend (open source decentralized social media) but I'm not incredibly optimistic about this. For one, it's pretty confusing and not user-friendly. I'm not a computer genius but I'm far savvier than the average user, so if something seems complicated to me...it's doomed. The social is the most important part of social media; it needs to be designed to be easy to use and understand. I installed the android app "MastaLab" and it's super glitchy.

Also, maybe I'm wrong, but what's the purpose of the federated timeline if it's not for seeing all "toots" from every instance? What's the point of it at all? I joined social.mastodon just to see the main instance for comparison and I'm getting completely different federated timelines, and I can't figure out where the toots are coming from.

I also dislike that you have to sign up separately for each instance. I get why, but then suddenly if I want to be in "normal" land I have to have a separate account? I want to be able to follow social.mastodon from switter, and not just be limited to sex work social media.

All in all I dig it the idea, but it's way too complicated and glitchy right now. And yeah, we have no idea who's behind switter, or if they're trustworthy. The link to their rules doesn't even work.

 

[JennyFae]

I see this as an opportunity. I have only a following of 1.3k after a whole year of camming. I only get about 100 views a day per tweet. Therefore, twitter is pretty much useless to me. If we all work together and push our regular customer to switter using incentives like "Free nudes" and "Porn clips here!" we could probably get it to work. Since I am invisible on twitter, i'm deleting my account soon and going to switter full time.

 

[Guy]

I signed up mainly to grab my username. I'll do more than that if it lives for awhile, but I definitely am not enthusiastic. Mastodon was a big thing for about five minutes a year or so ago, and more or less died out for most people very quickly. It's described above, but to briefly restate things, email is to Gmail what Mastodon is to Switter. Mastodon is decentralized, Switter is a specific instance of Mastodon. The thing with that is... I joined and watched several Mastodon instances die slow or less slow deaths last year. They start up with the idea of it being something easy to run, and with the ideals of upholding free speech. That's nice in theory, but in practice it's more difficult. The server costs more to run than they expected, free speech turns into chaos, whatever. There are rules against certain content on Switter already (https://switter.at/about/more). Assembly Four (whoever they are?) gets the final say on things at the moment. I've never heard of them before now, I have no reason to trust them. I've already seen

I see that their TOS does not ban bestiality porn. Yikes!

 

[QuinnLane]

I see that their TOS does not ban bestiality porn. Yikes!

Please remember that this IS being run by like... three? people. They've also got other projects and such under their belt.
They've been adding things here and there, doing updates, and I'm sure it's just something that skipped their minds or someone forgot to add
So far they've been GREAT at taking suggestions & answering our concerns.

I just sent them a Toot reminding them to add it, though!

 

[SaffronBurke]

My inner child is strong and I keep giggling about people "tooting".

 

[QuinnLane]

Everytime I Toot, I have this vine playing in my head.

 

[Moffle]

My inner child is strong and I keep giggling about people "tooting".

And you're not giggling about how they misspelt shitter? Now a shitter toot would be a thing....

 

[Guy]

Please remember that this IS being run by like... three? people. They've also got other projects and such under their belt.
They've been adding things here and there, doing updates, and I'm sure it's just something that skipped their minds or someone forgot to add
So far they've been GREAT at taking suggestions & answering our concerns.

I just sent them a Toot reminding them to add it, though!

They didnt add a rule agianst bestiality porn in their april 7th update.
https://t.co/89dmvxxwAR?amp=1

 

[QuinnLane]

They didnt add a rule agianst bestiality porn in their april 7th update.
https://t.co/89dmvxxwAR?amp=1

Okay, so they missed my message, no big deal, they get flooded with hundreds a day. It's still preeetty obvious that you shouldn't share that kind of thing & if we report anything like that the mods will take it down & ban the person who posted it.

 

[dilligaf0]

And you're not giggling about how they misspelt shitter? Now a shitter toot would be a thing....

Isn't that called a "shart"?

 

[Moffle]

Isn't that called a "shart"?

I dunno, I'm wonking to it anyway

 

[Lelo1]

Snapchat >.>