Something about starter packs that I think gets lost when they're discussed on Mastodon:

Mastodon Migration

This does seem to be the crux of the problem. It comes up all the time. Mastodon has a reputation for being hostile to black people, and this is something that is very hard to reverse. Of course, it will be impossible to reverse if we don't try.

Ryan Randall

@nullagent @mastodonmigration @ErickaSimone All really good points, and thank you for pointing out what the clumsy "sundown town" analogy misses!

One part of what I didn't write, but what "sundown town" as a comparison conveys to me as a well-intentioned, often semi-clueless white guy, is that it's an example of how racism can exist in ways I'll rarely be in a position to directly perceive.

(Like, I grew up in St. Augustine, FL, and only really started learning the many civil rights struggles there decades after I'd moved away. "Nice" white people there certainly didn't talk about that with white elementary kids, although I'm sure my Black schoolmates had already had many "talks" about it with their parents.)

Anyways, I think you're absolutely right about the causes here on the Fedi being a mix of technical and social/cultural/economic reasons.

I'm increasingly thinking that what ends up broadly appealing is whatever comes after Mastodon. Maybe Bonfire?

Stefan Bohacek

@puppygirlhornypost2 Yes, there are definitely some great alternatives that are in many aspects better.

I guess that's really just one part of the solution. Finding someone willing to create a community built on one of these platforms, promoting it, supporting its growth, all that feels like a very difficult challenge.

I know I won't do that. I'm happy to contribute a bit, but it would be a full-time job for a whole team of people.

@mastodonmigration @mattly @ryanrandall @jenniferplusplus

iAmAnEngarneer

@nullagent @mastodonmigration @ErickaSimone @ryanrandall are there any prospects of mastodon earning money and not being a hobby other than direct instance subscription? This was a problem in the early internet that never really got solved other than advertising which i'm here to avoid. As a wise bus driver of mine asked me in 1994 "so how do you make money on the internet." I never had an answer.

Andromeda Yelton

@mastodonmigration @mekkaokereke Some hypotheses as to why bsky has been more effective at this (I'm a dev but I'm white so take this with many grains of salt):

* they put some visible effort into making sure that their early user group included Black people, at least one of whom did a lot of recruiting. That wasn't always smooth BUT it means there's a founder effect & a Black population there that can support culture/community. 1/

Amber

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] yeah I never meant to imply it’s gonna be easy. I just wanted to show historical examples of it happening in the past. I do think it’s the way forward to address the problems earlier in the thread. People are incentivized to develop for bluesky because it’s open about development. Mastodon feels like it squashes development, I’ve been seeing a bunch of old GitHub issues for mastodon on my feed lately. Someone was complaining that Eugen took her pull request, remade it and then added the feature without crediting her. I think this is downright hostile towards people wanting to develop for mastodon and the fediverse (a lot of people new to fedi think it’s only mastodon and I find I have to explain to a lot of new users on remote mastodon instances transfem.social runs sharkey which can communicate with mastodon but isn’t mastodon). I really want to see that disrupted. Imagine everyone referring to email as "gmail".

Andromeda Yelton

@mastodonmigration @mekkaokereke * Mastodon is weirdly hard to build on top in that the community has strong hostile reactions to projects that violate The Mastodon Way; this makes it open source but kinda not really?? Bsky is a lot more open to "someone built a thing!" and if you don't like it you just don't use it.
2/

Mastodon Migration

@mekkaokereke

People should take a look at the link in the above post ️. This https://clearsky.app is a really interesting 3rd party app that helps #Bluesky users monitor their follows and starter pack lists.

Stefan Bohacek

@puppygirlhornypost2 Oh yeah, I got that, sure. Just putting my own thoughts down on this.

And you're right, I've been seeing the same conversations around how Mastodon handles the development. I do have a lot of respect for what they've achieved. But I definitely agree, they need to step up, or the community will have to start looking elsewhere.

@mastodonmigration @mattly @ryanrandall @jenniferplusplus

Jon

Agreed -- and some suggestions about how each of us can contribute to this in 5 things white people can do to start making the fediverse less toxic for Black people. @[email protected], you've got a big platform, so a specific thing you could do on this front is to share anti-racism tips as well as the other topics you cover.

Also, there is a very legit Black community here, and a good way to help people and communities thrive is to contribute funding (for those who have the money) and to amplify their subscription, product, and donation links. I've got several links to Black-led instances and Black-led software projects in that article ... and, it's also helpful to support individuals. @[email protected] is a great example of somebody who's done a LOT for the fediverse over the years and in return has gotten mostly abuse ... here's a Liberapay donation link, and there's a shop and subscription option on https://www.artistmarciax.com/

@[email protected] @[email protected]
@[email protected]

Mr. Completely

@mastodonmigration @dave @ErickaSimone @ryanrandall it has a *fairly earned* reputation. Just to clarify, not that you said otherwise.

Lord Hurkle-Durkle :bc:

@mastodonmigration @dave @ErickaSimone @ryanrandall

Can we define what we mean by "hostile to black people"?

Are we talking about micro-aggressions, or are we talking about outright exclusion/racism?

*edit: For an example of toxic discourse, I encourage you to read the rest of these threads below and my interaction with others here.

If you do not want to help me understand, then I don't want to talk to you either. Block me all you want. But I will never learn anything if that's what you do.

GunChleoc

@engarneering There's @subclub trying to build a funding system for artists etc.

Of course, they immediately got dunked on by the "monetization == evil" folks.

I guess it's the same sort of people who will complain about mutual aid posts.

This type of dunking also has to stop. There's a difference between needing money to survive and being an adtech company juggling hatemongering surveillance algorithms.

@nullagent @mastodonmigration @ErickaSimone @ryanrandall

Robert Kingett

What are those ActivityPub projects because I'd love to point people to other projects than Mastodon. I know about Bookwyrm etc etc, Friendica, @dave @mastodonmigration @ErickaSimone @ryanrandall

Ryan Randall

@GuyDudeman (Taking other people off the list so their mentions don't get flooded.)

When I say "hostile", I mean all of the above! Mastodon's decentralization has counter-intuitive effects, after one is used to what happens on more centralized platforms.

For instance, there are a bunch of small, overtly racist / misogynist / etc instances that have amplified harassment campaigns against prominent Black people on here. If you're on a server with more proactive blocking, you'll never know about it, even though the targets certainly will if they're on a less actively-moderated instance.

For a lot more history, you might start by reading about Dr. Flowers' experience, one of many stories linked in https://privacy.thenexus.today/start-making-the-fediverse-less-toxic/ by @thenexusofprivacy

The Nexus of Privacy

Thanks for the tag! And yes, it's both. Flowers and Mekka both talk about "HOA racism", the more casual stuff including micro-aggressions ... there are bunch of examples in my post.

In a lot of ways the hard-core harassment from bad instances is easier to deal with -- instance-level blocking has its downsides but is great for this use case. But there are other instances that have a pattern of racist behavior that aren't widely blocked.

@ryanrandall @GuyDudeman

Víctor R. Ruiz

@mttaggart @kims @mekkaokereke @ecosdelfuturo It’s pretty obvious to me that the Fediverse needs a more welcoming alternative. Maybe a Mastodon fork with a different set of developers that are more open to contributions (OpenOffice vs LibreOffice comes to my mind). But, of course, who has the time and resources to do that is the major issue.

Lord Hurkle-Durkle :bc:

@thenexusofprivacy @ryanrandall

"there are a bunch of small, overtly racist / misogynist / etc instances that have amplified harassment campaigns against prominent Black people on here."

Maybe that's it. I've only ever been on Mastodon.social and beige.party really, and haven't seen the kinds of attacks that you're talking about, probably because of good moderation.

So really it's more of a moderation problem than anything, I would suppose.

Because even in real life, there are racists, but they typically moderate themselves at the grocery stores, whereas online they can let their true feelings and opinions fly, without regard to seeing the other person as a person.

I appreciate the link. I'll give it a read.

Lord Hurkle-Durkle :bc:

@thenexusofprivacy @ryanrandall

I also want to say that we should absolutely be blocking whole instances if they're allowing even one problematic account on them. Make it a bigger punishment and I think there will be less tolerance and more moderation? Maybe?

Dave Alvarado

@GuyDudeman @mastodonmigration @ErickaSimone @ryanrandall those are the same thing.