Elon Musk celebrates ‘hall monitors’ fleeing Twitter, asks them to stay away

A term has emerged to describe the journalists who police Twitter for anything politically incorrect – “hall monitors,” referring to grade school students who volunteered to patrol hallways for misbehavior.

Many journalists upset with Elon Musk’s changes to Twitter, such as his unbanning of controversial figures like former President Donald Trump and fact-checks for all sides (even the Biden administration), announced they would be moving to Mastodon, a decentralized system of self-hosted social networks.

But journa.host, a Mastodon server for verified journalists, has since become the source of woke infighting and journalistic “gatekeeping” to the amusement of Musk and media critics, reports Fox News.

In one instance, former Slate podcaster Mike Pesca was banned from the popular server after linking a New York Times story on gender transition that “complicated” claims that puberty blockers are harmless and/or reversible.

“Seems (like) a huge difference from Twitter,” he joked.

Parker Malloy, the transgender blogger who attack Pesca and called the New York Times piece “anti-trans,” was later banned herself after calling transgender journalist Even Urquhart a “bootlicker.”

The chaos on journa.host by self-proclaimed moderators led to jokes on Twitter that Mastodon had become a cloister of “hall monitors.”

“Among the many irritating things about Mastodon is that it enables status-chasing journalists to gatekeep their peers by judging whether they have enough clout or are useful to other people's career ladder-climbing,” digital media consultant Heidi N. Moore wrote in response to an article about the platform.

FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver agreed, retweeting, ”Mastodon seems like a honeytrap for hall-monitor personality types. Honestly if Elon gets all the hall monitors to migrate to Mastodon that might be his greatest contribution toward the betterment of humanity.”

Musk himself responded to Silver’s post, replying, “Musk himself responded to Silver’s post tweeting, "What could be more fun than a social network consisting entirely of hall monitors!?"

"Hope all judgy hall monitors stay on other platforms – please, I’m begging u,” Twitter’s new owner said in a separate tweet.