Qoto.org
qoto.org: "Question Others to Teach Ourselves. A STEM-oriented instance."
- site: qoto.org
- status: silenced (November 2022)
About
qoto.org is a STEM-oriented Mastodon instance. While having a lot of valid science content, they have also unfortunately chosen a "free speech" approach to moderation, which means that anti-science content and toxic users are allowed to proliferate. Numerous users (on and off TootCat) have brought this to our attention.
The domain was registered on 2008-05-31, long before Mastodon existed, and appears to have initially been used to present content[1] from Syncleus, Jeffrey Freeman's think-tank[2].
On 2022/11/17, Jeffrey Freeman (believed to be the admin or possibly owner) used a tool published by the now-defunct Kiwi Farms online-terrorism organization to identify instances which had blocked QOTO, and sent out an email to the admins of each asking to have the block removed. The email, unfortunately, did not really address the issues, and made a number of questionable claims.
History
- 2022-11-17 email from QOTO sent to numerous instances, requesting lift of limitations
- 2022-11-12 On request from a new user, this was changed from block to silence.
- 2022-11-?? Instance suspended. "An inclusive free speech instance," transmisia, COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, etc.
Footnotes
- ↑ 2011-09-23 archive: qoto.org home page
- ↑ 2011-07-16 archive: Syncleus: Our Team: Jeffrey Freeman, CTO, President, & Chairman