We’ve joined Insta, but don’t follow us There

We’ve all seen the pictures from Trump’s inauguration – Elon Musk, CEO of Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram; stood in the front row. And of Musk giving a Nazi salute. The CEO of TikTok was not in those pictures, but he was also there. It seems like every corporate social media platform is already collaborating with a government that puts all of our queer siblings at risk.

But, on the other hand, so many of our queer siblings are on those platforms and we want them to see what we’re posting. So we can tell them about our events. And also about alternatives that are safer for them. We can’t reach them if we wall ourselves off.

Our compromise is that all of our posts to insta are going to direct readers to this website. And, although they won’t all go to the front page of this website, all of the insta posts will get copied over to everyone following @jaq on the fediverse.

The fedi-what?

Maybe you’ve heard of Mastodon or seen that something called Pixelfed is suddenly the number one in the app store. These are both part of the same non-corporate social media universe – the fediverse. You can join any part of it and follow friends on any other part.

Mastodon is one way to access social media that’s not under fascist control. You can use it to post pictures, videos and audio, but it’s often word-based and appeals to people who used to like Twitter. You can learn how to join it from this post: https://jaq.blessing.exchange/2025/01/how-to-join-mastodon/

Or, if you prefer the image-first interface of instragram, check out how to join Pixelfed from this post. https://jaq.blessing.exchange/2025/01/how-to-join-pixelfed/

Where to join

There are many good places to sign up, each of which has its own moderation policy. Ideally, members and friends of JAQ want to signup somewhere friendly to both queers and Jews.

One such place on Mastodon is lgbt.io. That instance is specifically queer and has a few Jewish users. One of the moderators is also a mod in JAQ.

Another Mastodon instance is babka.social. The specifically Jewish and about 60% queer. Like many Jewish communities, many of the users and a majority of the mods are liberal Zionists.

A Pixelfed instance that’s run by a Jewish trans woman is https://pix.lgbt/.

There are many other good instances, however, because the moderation policies vary, do get a recommendation instead of joining one at random.

Going forward

You can have many kinds of fediverse account if you want, but you don’t need to. Pixelfed users can follow posts from Mastodon users and vice versa. This is what makes it the “federated universe” (aka, the fediverse) – because everyone can follow and interact across platforms.

The multitude of instances and platforms is also what makes it immune to oligarch capture. The corporate-owned network Bluesky is (kind of) fine right now, but it could be taken over by a new fascist owner tomorrow. By contrast, the fediverse is jointly owned by hundreds of independent operators. Even if Elon Musk bought lgbt.io, he wouldn’t own babka.social or mastodon.art.

Who to follow?

Obviously, follow us: @jaq. And then see if you can find this post. Who has replied to it saying they’re friends of JAQ? Perhaps you might follow them and also leave your own reply.

Next Steps

There are a lot of how-to guides, such as this short one from Mastodon, or this longer unofficial one.

Also, please do tell your friends on insta where to find us. And then tell them where to find you on the fediverse.