As much as I would love for Mastodon to grow, I get why people are avoiding it like the plague.

Silver Huskey

@milkman76 @majorlinux Had a bunch of my friends try Mastodon. Many of them found it confusing, and just left. I tried my best to explain it and even wrote tutorials. Only a handful stayed.

Then others were run off because of anti-black racism. (A lot of Instances are just terrible. In my quest to find a home, I saw so many places using slurs. Hard R too.)

I've accepted that I'll be here and on Bluesky. That's okay, I don't believe in using a single social media platform.

RussianDeepStateSock

@silver_huskey @majorlinux yeah, this. Im nb, a writer, tech worker, hard leftist, and I keep hearing (but not really seeing) this. Ive heard this identical thing for 8 years now, on and off, since the first large migration of users began, which threatened the large corporate networks who want ALL the data to train their "AI" with. That's right around the time when the "its too hard" and "its filled with racism" people showed up.

RussianDeepStateSock

@silver_huskey @majorlinux Im not entirely sure about this. Im antifascist as fuck and I look for a fight with racists and people from that ideology every day that Im online (which is every day), but I dont see anywhere near as much of that here as on any of the other corporate, non-decentralized networks.

Also mastodon dot social is connected to threads, which is facebook, and can re-expose people to the standard racism and bigotry that exist there.

Marcus "MajorLinux" Summers

@milkman76 @silver_huskey Funny thing is, my experience with Threads and Mastodon are inverse to yours.

I have found way more leftists and LGBTQIA+ folks there than I have here and have interacted with their content.

Here, I've seen more liberals than I can shake a stick at and was literally hate bombed on July 4, 2023. That's two days before Threads was even a thing.

So, I don't know what to tell you.

RussianDeepStateSock

@majorlinux @silver_huskey you got "hate bombed"????

Ive been trying to get hate bombed here for literally 8 years, as Ive been doing online for the better part of 25 years. I go uninvited into large mainstream threads and write hard left politics, speak on the Israeli genocide of palestine, LGBTQ rights,m etc etc, but I get back 1/1000th the hate here as on any other network Ive used.

Not you though?

Silver Huskey

@milkman76 @majorlinux The problem is that you cannot see everything that's posted on other instances. Here on my instance, I don't see a lot of stuff. However, on the mastodon.social instance, I can see much more. It's in between that kind of fragmentation that racists hide. They also send others private @'s which no one else can see.

Find a black person here who speaks out about anti-black racism on the regular, check out their replies on their own server instead of your instance. It's there.

Marcus "MajorLinux" Summers

@silver_huskey @milkman76 I mean, I'm literally saying it happened, but I can't be believed.

This is why Black and Brown people left.

RussianDeepStateSock

@majorlinux @silver_huskey hmmm but I hope you, like me, understand bad jacketing and misinfo, and how it would definitely be in the best interests or large, dominant corporate social media and systems to try to damage the reputation of a decentralized network filled with leftists and people who fled their networks. This would be advantageous, indeed.

Marcus "MajorLinux" Summers

@milkman76 @silver_huskey If I, a Mastodon administrator, paying for his server with his own money, is telling you this literally happened to me, why won't you believe me?

If I, as a Black man, am telling you that other Black people I have talked to told me the reasons for them leaving Mastodon is because of the harassment and tone policing they have received on the platform, why won't you believe me?

Why do I have to prove it to you that it exists?

Why isn't my word enough for you?

Jon

@[email protected] yup. And the racist asshole in this thread is a great illustration of why ... I admire your patience engaging with him but some people just don't want to open their eyes. Sorry you had to deal with that shit.

Jon

@[email protected] yup. And the racist asshole in this thread is a great illustration of why ... I admire your patience engaging with him but some people just don't want to open their eyes. Sorry you had to deal with that shit. Every discussion of racism on Mastodon leads to new examples of racism on Mastodon.

Demian

@jdp23 @majorlinux I must have their account blocked already since I’m not seeing it

Jon

Others blocked him so it's no longer visbile in the thread, it's the usual bullshit about how "I haven't seen any racism here, why should I believe you?" You can maybe see a few of his posts as parents of https://infosec.exchange/@thenexusofprivacy/113331478274334629 (which I know won't do any good with him but others might see it).

@[email protected] @[email protected]

Demian

@jdp23 @majorlinux ugh!
I don’t think I realized that’s how blocking works here. Thx

Jon

Blocking works that way except when it doesn't. On blahaj.zone I can still see the whole thread. It could be because blahaj uses Sharkey (which has very sucky muting and blocking) or maybe there's something else going on. ‍️

@[email protected] @[email protected]