Witches.town
witches.town (WT) is still, as of this writing, a Mastodon instance.
WT had been a somewhat quirky instance (e.g. the limit for toots is 666 characters rather than the standard 500, and special symbols were apparently given to users with exactly 666 followers) with a very loyal membership.
Shutdown
@TheSupreme@witches.town, sysop of the instance, announced on 2018-04-02 that she will be shutting it down on 2018-04-30 – closely followed by a later toot noting that she was unwilling to let someone else take over the service (thus contradicting the "burnout" explanation), but without saying why.
There had previously been a surprise takeover on March 27 in which @TheSupreme removed all the other sysops, giving the following explanation:
Half of the moderation team was thinking of leaving and was not doing much anyway, the other half was getting endlessly stuck in "non-decision wait and see mode". This alone let some heavy shitstorms live their lives.
The thing that made me dissolve the team yesterday was a decision made by an admin to suspend the account of a trans woman based on an old smear campaign pushed by 4 chan with the subsequent support of the majority of the team.
Giving credit to 4chan, the gamergate and the alt-right is never ok. So I stepped in.
The code customizations used by WT are currently still available on GitHub.
Toots
all times are EDST
- 2018-04-02
- 12:05 That's it. I'm burnt out. I terminated the server lease. (cache)
- 10:03 Reaaaally hot take about transidentity. Be careful, you're about to get yourself burned. (cache)
- @Alda@itch.fr is apparently the main account for @TheSupreme@witches.town (see 03-27 toot).
- 2018-03-27 I am taking back the management of WitchesTown. (cache)