Damn it, #Mastodon subculture has a crap reputation and it’s honestly mostly deserved.
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@damon @so_treu I think you’re right about all of this, but I also think that racist assholes are empowered on Mastodon, way out of proportion to their numbers, by careless or misguided design and tooling. I believe that better software can enable these jerks’ targets to thrive here in community with everyone else.
What I’m looking for:
- design input from marginalized communities
- design input from people with experience building inclusive social networks
- better control over posts’ visibility
- better ability to moderate replies, boosts, and quote-boosts
- DMs that aren’t a privacy and usability nightmarePeople say there are no technical solutions to social problems. There’s something to that, but technical affordances also shape the culture, and influence who’s heard and who’s edged out. It’s ridiculous to treat them as a “given” that can’t be changed in service of social goals. (I don’t mean you’re doing that. It’s a move I see from people who don’t want to address the problems you’re writing about.)
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@damon you sound quite angry. Have you thought about going for a walk? Here's a nice calming picture.
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@gothodile I can appreciate your perspective but as someone that was an early adopter of bsky I can say that’s not true. The lies most certainly started and remain here on fedi mostly mastodon. People lied about who the CEO was, about the tech stack, about their not being any LGBTQ people. There’s a lot of animus by ActivityPub stakeholders when the bsky team has been nothing but kind and offer praise regarding ActivityPub. This also mirrors the fedi community and how they speak of Nostr just less frequently. Go on Mastodon and search the #bluesky #ATProto hashtags and then do the same on Bluesky and the amount of junk isn’t even the same. Also, many of the people complaining about CW were Black people sharing their experiences about Mastodon users telling them to CW their racist experiences
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@damon I mean literally every lie I'm speaking to has come from someone that's mainly a Bluesky poster and was clearly just repeating something they heard from their social group. everything I know about how ATProto works comes from people that poke at software for a living (and I can see for myself on Bluesky's FAQ about ATProto that they're playing loose with the truth about Mastodon's lack of account portability). literally every bit of tech news that comes out about yet another misstep from the Bluesky team has receipts. the impression I get is very much one of the tastemakers having decided Bluesky is the thing people need to use, and it's deeply frustrating to me how the VC funded corporate entity gets a pass while the fediverse's least consequential issues get put under a microscope.
please don't misunderstand any of this as me dismissing your experiences, or how racist this place gets, because I'm trying to emphasize what you're talking about IS a major cultural issue with this place that should be discussed. I simply don't see it talked about from most of the people I know that prefer Bluesky as their favorite posthole. seven hells, the same group of Bluesky users I'm talking about even lies about The Bad Space and what Ro is doing with it.
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@fivetonsflax @so_treu You mentioned someone that knows all to well the harassment of mastodon users. I do think the tooling is necessary even though it can’t solve everything. I doubt the tooling is coming anytime soon. Plenty of users that came to Mastodon were banned from Big Social. Some of those same users helped to make sure quote posts never happened. It was labeled as a tool for harassment even though studies show otherwise. The people that were “harassed” were typically those called out for their bigotry and crap behaviour and posts. They ensure that it would happen to them on Mastodon. The tool that is actually an abuse vector is PM yet you never see people up in arms calling for it to be removed. That’s because the main people harmed by it and complaining are Black and Brown folks. Most other fedi projects have long had quote posts. Mastodon has plenty of nasty abuse without quote posts so explain that. Abusers have been able to harass in silence and that’s the way people there want it to be.
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Kuba Suder • @mackuba.eu on 🦋replied to Sabella last edited by
@gothodile @damon Well this goes both ways - if I had a dollar every time I read here that Bluesky sucks because it's owned by a billionaire / oligarch / crypto freaks etc…
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@gothodile Mastodon doesn’t have account portability though. It has an account redirect and you lose your content. Users are tethered to the domain of the instance they join, if you join a new instance it’s a new identity and new content. So, I’m confused as to what you mean? Everyday people don’t care if something is VC funded, how has the Fediverse namely Lemmy and Mastodon not being VC funded have a positive impact on the culture? To everyday users the funding is irrelevant until it becomes relevant by impacting their everyday experiences online. One of the most viral posts about ATProto came about from a mastodon believer that happens to be a dev and he was dead wrong about most of what he said. Being a dev or not has nothing to do with how competent nor honest a person is. You don’t have to like Bluesky that’s fine.
While Bluesky has had significant public plunder especially when it comes to moderation in the early part of its opening it’s still been significantly more welcoming for Black & Brown folks than the Fediverse. I know to you and others that may not matter much but to me I’m Black and it matters a great deal. I want social spaces where people that aren’t white can feel comfortable being whatever versions of themselves and having their needs met. There’s content creators mainly sworkers on Bluesky and they are absolutely welcomed and supported. Where on mastodon they are sex positive but always griping about content creators and influencers, it’s not a positive nor friendly space less you capitulate.
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@damon @fivetonsflax I don't know if it's helpful to talk about promises for the future in this context, but just in case anyone in this thread isn't following Mastodon's development closely: moderatable and privacy-friendly quote posts are the flagship feature for v4.4 so we should have those relatively soon. Let's just hope the 4.3 release goes smoothly and 4.4 doesn't take another year.
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@damon not disagreeing with you, but I look like most people and people are still quite unfriendly to me.
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@schizanon I’m sorry that’s been your experience. Your welcome in my band of misfits
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Way to prove his point. I can't figure out if the comment was to illustrate it.
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@Sahkshi @CloudyMrs what was the comment?
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@damon I find it to be a poorly masked clusterfuck of IRC servers.
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@[email protected] Some FediBro saying something like "touch grass" as you sound angry. I love how over defensive they get.. 🫠
@[email protected] @[email protected] -
I cannot speak for other people's Mastodon experience.
I kind of live in my bubble, which consists of at least 98-99% lovely people.
This makes me curious about where your grievances come from and what we might do to prevent them in the future.
I have no idea, what an "HOA nickname" is, nor which instance got closed down and why.
A little context might be nice for those of us, who are not aware of such things.
Now, the most serious thing to me seems
1/2
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@loran_hayden what was that experience like?
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I hear you and I hope, it comes soon.
I still wonder why it takes years to implement an extremely useful feature that is common on the other Fediverse platforms and has been left deliberately out of Mastodon for no real reason (Yes, I have read lots and lots of advocacy for the decision not to include quote posts, and the only one that made sense was the personal dislike for it by key members of the development team).
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Apparently I need to provide proof and I’m just some angry Black man. But whatever here’s some sources of negative experiences on #fediverse #mastodon https://social.coop/@nico/105565087137887943 https://drewdevault.com/2022/07/09/Fediverse-toxicity.html https://logicmag.io/policy/blackness-in-the-fediverse-a-conversation-with-marcia-x/ https://fossacademic.tech/2022/12/24/Playvicous-Christmas.html https://roiskinda.cool/2023/12/recuerda-pv-chapter-7-the-dark-and-ugly.html
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@mina To my knowledge, no other fediverse platform (unless you count Bluesky) has moderatable and privacy-friendly quote posts.
The prevalent model is to render a link as a post embed, which gives the quoted person no way to remove themselves from the quote post (except deleting their original post) or to disallow future quotes. Often they don't even get notified that they've been quoted.
As I understand it, adding safety features is where most of the complexity is going.