Honestly baffled

mekka okereke :verified:

Yes, but I have concerns about Mastodon too. Most of the instance owners on Mastodon do not create a safe space for Black people. Many of the rest don't even notice the distinct lack of Black people. Only the most stubborn Black folk stay here. ‍️

Mastodon expects Black people to come here and face death threats and abuse while Mastodon gets it together. For most Black users, especially Black women, the answer is "LOL! Absolutely not. BFFR."

1/N

mekka okereke :verified:

@mastodonmigration @RustyRing @james

Again, many of the people on Mastodon have a hard time empathizing with a Black user on Twitter.

The "BlueSky might go bad one day!" Is a future hypothetical. But "Mastodon is not great for Black folks" is real today.

Why would a Black woman choose to come here when BlueSky meets her needs? To come here where people that advocate for her safety are attacked and abused, very few other Black women are here, and she gets told to CW everything she posts?

2/N

mekka okereke :verified:

@mastodonmigration @RustyRing @james

Not rhetorical... Seriously, why would a Black woman choose Mastodon over BlueSky? Most of the answers are some form of "To do extra labor to help other people, and communities other than your own."

None of the answers are "Because this is the best thing for you and your community, today."

Maybe they're tired of saving everyone else. Maybe someone else should save them this time.

That not rhetorical question is what drives the Fedi changes I sponsor.
3/3

Mastodon Migration

@mekkaokereke

So, the point seems to be we all need to care about building and protecting communities other than our own. Black women need to be welcome and safe here so that we all are safe here. And, if successful, it will benefit all communities, because together in aggregate we will be stronger. When the new shiny object comes along, we will be motivated to stay and improve things, not go off in search of safety, which may be an illusion or transient, but maybe better than what's here.

Negative12DollarBill

@mekkaokereke @mastodonmigration @RustyRing @james
Not for nothing, BlueSky was the platform which allowed the n-word in usernames and didn't even apologise when people complained.

Mastodon Migration

@negative12dollarbill @mekkaokereke @RustyRing @james

So, it seems like that is kind of beside the point. The argument that things might be worse over there is unconvincing to those who think things are really intolerable here. The only way out of this is through it. While it may be true that things are worse somewhere else, the challenge is making them better here.

quintessence :blobfoxcomfy:

@mastodonmigration

Just to chime in, I think the central idea that everyone should have, especially those who have taken on a duty of care to community and/or are training others to do so is:

Safety does not trickle down, it trickles up.

You should orient your policies and procedures to center the least safe, i.e. the most vulnerable, and therefore those who are safer and less vulnerable will also be protected by the default of that implementation choice.

1/2

CC

@mekkaokereke

quintessence :blobfoxcomfy:

@mastodonmigration

It's worth mentioning that successfully implementing this can and will vary significantly depending on the space you are stewarding (or participating in). Kudos to all striving toward this goal.

2/2

CC

@mekkaokereke

StephC

@mekkaokereke @RustyRing @james The starter packs are great and would really help not only new users get started, but would also enable a community to move here relatively easily as a group.

I finally joined BlueSky as a bunch of the covid science, medicine and engineering folks went there, and in a few minutes, I was painlessly following many of the same people I did on twitter.

The Nexus of Privacy

Agreed.

@mastodonmigration re your post earlier in the thread, here's how I phrased it in https://privacy.thenexus.today/start-making-the-fediverse-less-toxic/

"So please pay attention to these dynamics as well, and make sure you're listening to and supporting Black women, trans and queer Black people, and disabled Black people as well as Black guys and cis, straight, abled Black people.
The good news is that taking this intersectional focus will make the fediverse less toxic for everybody. As the Combahee River Collective said in 1977
"If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression." "

@quintessence
@mekkaokereke

Jon

White people is what got us Trump lolsob. And judgemental white people criticizing Black people for not coming to the anti-Black environment here is one of the whitness-related that drove away my friends who *did* try it -- and kept my other friends from trying it when they heard about it.

(And these are friends who have started their own social networks in the past, so it wasn't the complexity. It was the whiteness and anti-Blackness).

@noondlyt @mekkaokereke @james

RustyRing

@mekkaokereke @mastodonmigration @james

Thank you for being stubborn, Mekka.

I agree that the situation you describe is untenable. Thank you for making me aware of it. Sounds like a classic tail-chase: I haven't witnessed this behaviour because I don't see many Black people here. Why don't I see Black people here? Because of this behaviour.

El Duvelle

@RustyRing You haven't witnessed the racist and abusive behaviour because, currently, Mastodon users cannot see all the replies of any given post, due to the way Mastodon works.

A solution has been implemented on our instance, and I can now see all replies to a post if I want and it makes a huge difference! I can see the spam, the nasty posts, and the well-intentioned users just repeating the same thing over and over again because they can't see that someone else already said it.

We hope that it will be incorporated to the main mastodon code asap (https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/113492013112472961 by @jonny).
#FetchAllReplies

@mekkaokereke @mastodonmigration @james

Brian David

@dorkette888 @mekkaokereke @RustyRing @james Since follows and custom lists can be exported, it seems like the technical ability to have starter packs is already there. For example, there could be a site called "Mastodon Starter Packs" where people upload and label their lists.

Julian Fietkau

@bcdavid Some WIP fediverse starter pack projects are pursuing list imports. I myself run https://directory.hci.social where you can bulk follow ~200 HCI researchers.

I find that the import process is too long and complicated for the starter pack use case. (Click the "️" button to see what I mean.)

I put forward a concept for one-click followable AP starter packs yesterday: https://github.com/pixelfed/starter-kits/issues/1#issuecomment-2480729430 Hoping for implementers to chime in & maybe cooperate.

@dorkette888 @mekkaokereke @RustyRing @james

Julian Fietkau

@elduvelle All of this is true, but there is a caveat: abusive replies (the really bad, intentional kind) are often posted with "followers only" visibility, meaning even with "fetch all replies", still only the harasser, their friends, and the harassed person can see the reply. Even the mods might not see it until it's reported.

My stance is that "followers only" replies make no non-abusive sense and need to be filtered by default.

@RustyRing @jonny @mekkaokereke @mastodonmigration @james

Julian Fietkau

@elduvelle I'm on a single-user instance so I don't know what the typical moderator experience is like. I'm curious: when admins/mods look at a local thread, can they see "followers only" replies that they are not explicitly tagged in? I guess in general they would not be visible, but it would make sense for the purpose of moderation if admins could always see all replies to people on their server, including non-public ones.

@RustyRing @jonny @mekkaokereke @mastodonmigration @james

El Duvelle

@julian admins cannot see the followers-only posts if they are not themselves a follower, AFAIK. So those kind of posts would still have the potential to go unmoderated, I'm not sure what would be a good solution for this.
cc @jonny in case they know better..

Julian Fietkau

@elduvelle @jonny Ideally this would be tackled through changes in the Mastodon code, to always show non-public replies to public posts to moderators viewing the thread so proactive moderation is possible. Probably not an easy code change would be my guess. 🫤 Plus there'd be implications on people's privacy expectations to discuss, since this lightly brushes against "admins can read your DMs" discourse.

jonny (good kind)

@julian @elduvelle idk i don't necessarily think that giving moderators privilege to view things that wouldn't be obvious to people is a great idea, but it should be possible to just filter those kinds of replies in the first place if people don't want to get them.