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

Jon

I agree with @[email protected]'s perspecties in https://hachyderm.io/@jenniferplusplus/113550897068984768: Letterbook, Bonfire, and GoToSocial are three good examples. Today, GoToSocial is the best option for most small instances (although it's still in beta, and doesn't have all of Mastodon's functionality -- no post editing, you can't subscribe to relays, and minimal moderation tools). K&T hosting has a $3.75/month package, or people with basic Linux skills can use a small VPS -- I've got it on a digital ocean droplet, and the installation instructions were straightforward. It seems to work okay with Enafore (although I've only tried the basics -- home feed and notifications)

Letterbook is at an earlier stage. Bonfire is very flexible and it could well make sense for more complex proejcts, but I don't know anybody who's self-hosting on it yet.

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

Dave Alvarado

@GuyDudeman @mastodonmigration @ErickaSimone @ryanrandall I appreciate that you're trying to separate two classes of racism to make one ok, but I can't really help you with that. Racism is like cancer. Yes, there are more and less pernicious forms, but you still have cancer if you have any kind of cancer.

Microaggressions don't happen without the underlying intentional or unintentional bigotry. People just don't treat each other that way unless they have internalized some sort of superiority

Zack Cerza

@mekkaokereke BlueSky is a really fun place to be, and to me it's clear BlackSky is a large part of the reason. Part of why BlackSky is able to work so well is that the community is actually able to defend itself thanks to the agency granted by the platform's composable moderation features.

Not only does Mastodon not have similar features, it seems like ActivityPub itself is an obstacle to adding them. And the community here can be so damn condescending to people who have any feedback.

Lord Hurkle-Durkle :bc:

@dave @mastodonmigration @ErickaSimone @ryanrandall

You know what's funny? My first instinct and reaction to your reply literally was "Fuck you!"

I said it out loud, to the screen.

Then I thought about it. Why was that my initial reaction?

I think that was my reaction because it felt like you were accusing me of something that I don't see in myself, and which I find abhorrent.

It felt like you were saying that I am the very thing I'm trying to eradicate from the world, through discussion and learning.

My literal goal here is to educate not only myself but other white people about this issue, but I feel like I'm being attacked for that effort.

It makes it not worth the effort, because I'm just going to get called something that I'm not.

Jon

@mttaggart excellent post!

[email protected]

@[email protected]

Sharkey (and possibly other Misskey variants?) has starter packs: we call them "user lists." You can make a list of users, and you can choose to publish them on your profile.

It would be a nice convenience if you could view someone's list and click a button to automatically follow everyone on the list.

Miloš Jovanović

@engarneering @nullagent @mastodonmigration @ErickaSimone @ryanrandall social.coop seems to work fine and has funds to spare. a direct instance subscription doesn't have to be a lot.

i think where people get tripped up is attempting to replicate capitalist economics. that just won't work.

The Nexus of Privacy

@GuyDudeman I just reported a post on beige.party for racism. It's far from the worst example of racism I've seen but I'd say it was pretty blatant -- other people had already pointed it out but the person involved ignored it. Then again it's the kind of thing that many white people don't see as racist.

It sounds like you think that if mods don't act on it, the right next step is to call for a fediblock on beige.party. In practice, though, people on beige.party are likely to defend the person -- claiming that it wasn't intentional or whatever. Meanwhile others who have friends on beige.party who aren't saying racist things aren't going to know why their connections have been cut off, and if they find out why will generally think it's an overreaction. If mods haven't originally acted, the pressure on an issule like this is very unlikely to get them to change.

It would be great if that wasn't the case, but then again it would have been great if the person making the original problematic post had just listened to the original pushback and said "oh I get it", apologized, edited the post. But that didn't happen. Watch whiteness work.

@ryanrandall

Nelfaneor

@ryanrandall
Following the course of this conversation, that is exactly the question coming persistently to my mind, what about the other #Fediverse softwares ? Those already usable like #friendica (I've read it's really easier to manage on a domestic software than #mastodon) and all the other softwares still to be developed ?
@nullagent, why couldn't some black developers create a real black culture based software on the #activitypub ? @mastodonmigration @ErickaSimone

nullagent

@Nelfan @ryanrandall @mastodonmigration @ErickaSimone

I think you're missing part of the problem. Black devs are NOT the center of Black community and social trends and thus adoption of Black nerds is a helpful signal but woefully insignificant compared to adoption by average Black non techies.

There's a lot more here but in short the alternatives are too niche and suffer largely even worse marketing than Mastodon. We have yet to get the perfect mix of UX, marketing etc to get black normies.

Mastodon Migration

@nullagent @Nelfan @ryanrandall @ErickaSimone

Or really any normies. So long as the key discriminator is ease of use and low friction onboarding, distributed Fedi solutions are at a big disadvantage to well funded corporate applications. Feel like the real question is, what is a sufficient level of user friendliness for normies to choose open systems? Because if their is no preference given to future defense against what happened at Twitter, then it's kind of hopeless.

Lord Hurkle-Durkle :bc:

@thenexusofprivacy @ryanrandall

Really? Which post was it? I'm curious.

Did anyone explain to the person why what they did was considered racist, and what steps they should take to mitigate it? Did they have a conversation about it?

Obviously a conversation should be the first step in this process.

The Nexus of Privacy

Yep. Rudy Fraser of Blacksky made an interesting point in https://blog.rudyfraser.com/blacksky-part-one/ (the first post in an excellent three-part series):

"I could never imagine a world where my mom, fiancé, or older brother (all of whom have used social media for 10+ years now) would ever do the necessary research to find a server to sign up with and then find 3rd-party clients with names that aren't "Mastodon" in the app store to login"

Of course, there are lots of ways Mastodon and the fediverse could have improved the signup process so that this choice isn't so daunting and everybody's mom, fiancé, and brother could find it much easier to find a well-moderated anti-racist instance (and apps and web UIs better than the very mediocre official ones) and find people and content they're likely to see as interesting (including potentially some kind of fediverse version of or alternative to starter packs). That would have made it easy for Black early adopters here to bring in their friends, acquaintances, and families. But, that's not what happened.

@nullagent @Nelfan @ryanrandall @mastodonmigration @ErickaSimone

W6KME

@thenexusofprivacy @nullagent @Nelfan @ryanrandall @mastodonmigration @ErickaSimone

Pity so many people keep perpetuating the myth of difficulty rather than helping people get past it.

Mastodon Migration

@W6KME @thenexusofprivacy @nullagent @Nelfan @ryanrandall @ErickaSimone

Totally get your frustration. It really isn't that hard, but the perception of difficulty and the absence of a well designed onboarding experience provides, as they say in the business 'friction'. And friction when trying to 'convert' new users is death.

Mastodon Migration

@W6KME @thenexusofprivacy @nullagent @Nelfan @ryanrandall @ErickaSimone

Just saw your edit, and yes it is really not that hard, and yet the perception remains. Would suggest that even the two buttons at the bottom of the join page introduces the 'paralysis of decision' phenomenon.

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

@GuyDudeman so I've been watching this conversation for a while, and I have to say it is really difficult to not call what you're doing sealioning:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

You might not be doing this consciously, but that does not make it any better.

If you are being honest about wanting improve, the first step is to accept this is how it comes across. If you do want to improve, here's something I found immensely helpful as a white guy:
https://sceneonradio.org/seeing-white/

@thenexusofprivacy @ryanrandall

The Nexus of Privacy

Pity that so many people keep denying the reality of how difficult it really is. I specifically said well-moderated anti-racist instance, and mastodon.social is neither.

And as for helping people get past it, here's a draft post from me on choosing the right instance. On the one hand, once it's cleaned up, it'll be useful -- in fact I've already gotten positive feedback on it. On the other hand, it's 3500 words, and links to a dozen resources all with different fragements of information. "The myth of difficulty" really isn't a myth.

https://nexusofprivacy.net/resources-for-choosing-instances/

@W6KME @nullagent @Nelfan @ryanrandall @mastodonmigration @ErickaSimone

Mastodon Migration

@thenexusofprivacy @nullagent @Nelfan @ryanrandall @ErickaSimone

Good article. He clearly put a lot of work into building the black community of Bluesky, and it has paid off. The question for us is why is this not possible here?

Is it purely technical? We don't have feeds or quoteposts, and those are necessary? We do have lists, and it is possible to import lists of follows (admittedly not super user friendly), but you could build a BlackMastodon list feed and share it.

Mastodon Migration

@thenexusofprivacy @W6KME @nullagent @Nelfan @ryanrandall @ErickaSimone

Agree. It is hard for technical people to understand what is hard for regular users. Regular users are familiar with using software that guides them through all these processes. It is an entirely different level of design required than for technical users. Mastodon simply does not meet this level of sufficiency for normal users, particularly with getting up to speed. We don't need to argue about it, the evidence is plain.