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

mekka okereke :verified:

Something else interesting:

ClearSky, the tool for inspecting blocks, list membership, etc, is built by a Black developer.

BlackSky, the tool and moderation community for Black ATProto users and apps, is built by a Black developer.

Black developers are building on Blue Sky.

Shout out to everyone who will read this, and instead of saying "How do we get them to build for Mastodon/Activity Pub?" Will froth at the mouth about fake federation and the inevitable corpo takeover.

mekka okereke :verified:

Black developers have been trying to build for the fediverse. For years. And they meet extreme resistance.

Do you know who they are? Do you know their names? Do you know which projects they tried to ship / have shipped?

This isn't about BlueSky, or corporate social media, or decentralization, or influencer culture, or big accounts, or wanting to replicate Twitter, or venture capital funding.

Ariadne Conill 🐰:therian:

@mekkaokereke the real problem is that there is a very loud minority of fediverse admins, devs and power users who have a very narrow and specific vision (or so they believe) for the fediverse, and anyone who wants to go outside of that vision gets harassed to no end

this, combined with a very weak security posture allows for lots of unchecked harassment

bluesky has a similar problem right now: there are bots watching for posts and accounts referencing queer or transgender identity and they will interact with posts under display names like “kiwi farms is watching you”

the real test for bluesky will be whether or not they build in infrastructure to deny untrusted users from junking up notifications and other ways of spamming… maybe they can learn where fediverse folks have not

Kim Scheinberg

@mekkaokereke
"Shout out to everyone who will read this, and instead of saying "How do we get them to build for Mastodon/Activity Pub?" Will froth at the mouth about fake federation..."

Forgive me but, wouldn't anyone aware of the history be entitled AF if they asked, "Hey, I wonder if we can get them to build these tools for us?"

I don't feel entitled to ask anything of people who walked out of my life when I chased them away. I own my mistake and live with the consequences. It sucks, but...

Taggart :donor:

@kims @mekkaokereke I don't at all want to speak for Mekka, but since I just wrote about this too, it's worth taking a moment to consider the mindset on Fedi that believes Bluesky is bad, but refuses to acknowledge any of Fedi's flaws. The idea that anyone who leaves is flawed and we're better off without them.

That's a fatal mistake, and it's being made constantly.

Emelia 👸🏻

@mekkaokereke I'd love to get some of those people involved in the ActivityPub Trust & Safety Taskforce, but as I don't have strong relationships with these people I'm not sure how best to invite them, and am also cognisant that standards work is an entire thing, and can be very laborious, so I don't wish to expect that of anyone from a marginalised background.

I'm currently making sure to cite articles by black & brown authors when I know of a relevant article to a specific work item.

Mastodon Migration

@mekkaokereke

So... "How do we get them to build for Mastodon/Activity Pub?"

Seriously, how do we?

Jenniferplusplus

@kims @mekkaokereke
This is extremely valid and correct. I would encourage anyone reading this to frame the question for themselves as "how do we make building for mastodon/activitypub inviting to Black developers?"

Brian Hawthorne

@mastodonmigration @mekkaokereke Well, we could start by getting everyone to stop chasing them away.

Ryan Randall

@mastodonmigration

It'll happen when this place becomes attractive enough for Black folks that there's a legit, thriving Black community here.

Which, in part, means making the people who greet Black folks with overt and/or barely-disguised hostility on here extremely unwelcome.

It means repeatedly telling lots of racists "we don't do that here" and blocking them. It means telling their instance moderators that they need to do better, and/or blocking those entire instances until they get their acts together.

We need to make this network feel less like a sundown town, where Black people are barely tolerated—and when they are, only to the extent they make the economy function, on "our" terms.

In other words, the people who are willing to overlook anti-Blackness on the Fedi need to finally start putting in the everyday work of improving the culture.

Luna Rood

@mekkaokereke I see this "white and trans" pattern a lot.

There also seems to be a tendency for white trans people (particularly women) to frame themselves as the ultimate victims of oppression. I think it relates, in part, to the shift of suddenly being seen as a minority, after coming from a place of — as far as society goes — ultimate privilege.

There's little regard for intersectionality. It's very telling that the whole Bad Space "controversy" was framed by white people as trans vs Black.

Ericka Simone

@ryanrandall @mastodonmigration which means it won’t happen.

Mastodon Migration

@ryanrandall

Completely in favor of promoting a no tolerance for racism on Mastodon and the Fediverse attitude. We are pretty good at calling out Nazis. The same community awareness can and should be fostered for racism.

Understand that one of the problems is that the racists hide their abuse behind 'followers only' reply posts. What is a good way to bring more community attention to these abusers and their practices?

Mastodon Migration

@ErickaSimone @ryanrandall

But then why can this happen on other networks like Bluesky and not here?

nullagent

@mastodonmigration @ErickaSimone @ryanrandall

Imo, mastodon has a few key problems:

1. Visible racist early adopters means it has baggage when researching that's off putting to non techies.

2. Gargron is extremely resistant to good ideas that make mastodon in particular easier to run and mod. Imo many are minor issues and debates, most should have been solved before the X exodus.

3. Marketing and visible beloved early adopters. BS has actual marketing budget you don't beat that easily.

nullagent

@mastodonmigration @ErickaSimone @ryanrandall

This should be a blog post but I don't agree fully with the conception that "fedi is a sun downtown". Online racism is common place for Black users, that alone is not the adoption challenge. It's more of a chicken egg problem, most Black people will not use apps their actual local friends are not on. So no shit ppl don't use an app they don't immediately find their friends on.

This is a marketing and outreach problem.

nullagent

@mastodonmigration @ErickaSimone @ryanrandall

Finally, mastodon IS expensive to run. It costs real money and knowledge one way or another. I've heard a TON of interests from my cousins and friends in mastodon, they LOVE the idea of truly owning their socials. BUT many are already making money from socials as content creators and artist. They are scared of new costs and they need to see immediate value from a platform bc they literally are paid on other platforms. They will follow the money.

Dave Alvarado

@mastodonmigration @ErickaSimone @ryanrandall there's an important fact in what Mekka said: it DID happen here, those devs were ignored or told to get lost, and they now are developing at bsky, or off doing their own projects on activity pub ignoring Masto entirely.

This isn't a question of "how do we get Black devs", it's a question of "how do we get Black devs *back*". And that's going to be super hard, because many of those bridges are already burned.

Stefan Bohacek

@mastodonmigration @ryanrandall I think we're pretty stuck until either Mastodon gets proper reply controls, which is apparently on the roadmap right after quote posts, which are being worked on now.

Or, possibly, someone sets up a GoToSocial server with a nice front-end, like Phanpy, and markets itself as a community without too much focus on being anti-corporate and federated and all the great things most people don't care about.

Stefan Bohacek

@mastodonmigration @ryanrandall

If I was a startup type person, and/or had the money, this is what I'd be doing. It's definitely not too late for another social media network to come in and attract people away from Bluesky.

But the window for the fediverse as it is right now is pretty much closed, for now.