Hello friends 👋, and welcome to yall.theATL.social, a Lemmy instance.

I’m Michael H, the founder of theATL.social, a Mastodon instance that hosts posts, users, and content relating to, and about, the Metro Atlanta area, from the City of Atlanta to North Georgia.

I live and (remotely work) in southwest Atlanta, and have more-or-less lived in the city since I started college at Georgia Tech.

theATL.social was started because the Twitter meltdown substantially erased the robust civic engagement and discussion that occurred on the Twitter platform.

yall.theATL.social was started because the Reddit IPO-related meltdown has started down the same path as Twitter, and thus has the potential to halt and erase Atlanta-related topics and discussions on that platform. And, I’ve always found the moderation on /r/Atlanta to be a bit overbearing.

My general philosophy on moderation is that users should have the space to express their thoughts, ask questions, and engage in discussion without concern that their opinions may agree/disagree with the moderators’ own opinions. At the same time, posts should not hurt people or threaten to hurt people, either through threats, hate speech, or cruelty. This approach has worked well on theATL.social, and I hope will work well here also.

Feel free to reach out anytime - via email michael@theatl.social, or DM on here or Mastodon.

And, most importantly, have fun!