I see a lot of the drama that is happening between people of color on the platform and the mastodon dev team.

Timnit Gebru (she/her)

@polotek This is also where I am. We're having a moderation meeting this week to figure out what additional resources we want to put in.

Some Black people I want to support on here who've been doing the thankless and unpaid work of trying to make this pace better are people like @CaribenxMarciaX and @are0h.

yes, it's me, liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦

i would like to see a social media cooperative. how do you feel about that?

@polotek

yes, it's me, liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦

how y'all feel about a cooperative model for joining forces? cuz that seems to be the ideal biz & development structure for this.

@timnitGebru @polotek @CaribenxMarciaX @are0h

Tim Bray

@blogdiva @polotek There are two that I know of. https://CoSocial.ca (see https://blog.cosocial.ca) and https://social.coop/about

Daniel Farina

@polotek Is crux of the conflict that they don't want to make it easier to use stuff like akismet (which was always a fly in the ointment, as far as a mostly-but-not-entirely distributed and workable blog ecosystem worked circa 2010) with Mastodon upstream?

Put another way, some kind of distributed perfection above getting in a timely fix for those that have many abusers?

I have no prior knowledge, guessing from context of the posts here.

yes, it's me, liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦

oh, DUH! you're at cosocial. i'd love to hear everything about y'all. how it came to be, it's biz structure, it's server/hosting structure.

i feel like it's a good time to have some sort of video/tele unconference on this?

@timbray @polotek

Marco Rogers

@fdr I would encourage you to get up to speed on the context before making assumptions. Unfortunately that's tough to do today. It takes a lot of effort to dig in enough to be informed. This is some key context for the current debate though.
https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/112860037633719411

Emelia 👸🏻

@blogdiva @polotek fwiw, Eugen is no longer calling all the shots, @renchap is now making more of the engineering decisions, and having a small team is absolutely not by choice, but instead constrained by funding as noted in the 2022 annual report figures: https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/10/annual-report-2022/

Basically you can't hire full-time engineers without money. Each full-time engineer based in Europe costs you about €80k/year on average; folks based in America have much higher salary requirements too.

Julian Fietkau

@blogdiva @polotek As a relative late-comer, my impression is that the Mastodon team has recently put a fair amount of their capacity into making the project more approachable. @andypiper and @renchap have both specifically focused on barriers to entry and new collaborator onboarding this year.

I don't want to tell others where to invest their effort, but I'm at least not the only one who thinks the vibe around the project has been improving: https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/112860534061070294

Tim Bray

@blogdiva @polotek Our tech stack is 100% boring/vanilla. Our co-op structure is off-the-shelf boring, taking mostly just the defaults for our legal jurisdiction. The only thing that’s innovative is the combo: co-op owned instance. Observation: Requiring membership approval and a $50 payment is *amazingly* effective at discouraging griefers.

Marco Rogers

@timbray @blogdiva funny how it's often people who aren't paying any money who are the loudest.

Rui Seabra

@polotek

@timbray

How about starting with code and participating in standards bodies meetings?

It's #FreeSoftware and #OpenStandards!

Even if the mastodon "gods" don't like something, absolutely everything is in your power to get organized and do something about it.

Don't tell me anyone needs an external power to force the whiteys (like me) to do something.

Because you don't!

That's the proprietary mindset.

Please come and join the free world, you're welcome!

yes, it's me, liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦

@polotek @timbray i know you're being facetious, but there is a tech nut to crack in turning digital production, including social media activity, into a form of payment. it shouldn't be taken lightly by the fediverse if we're going to deal with sustainability beyond how much currency (fiat and otherwise) a project gets to accumulate on a monthly basis.

Marco Rogers

I cannot stress enough that the problems we are discussing are not technical problems. They are people problems. I know many people are going to disagree with me on this. I'm not interested in debating it today.

I do not believe in focusing on technical solutions to people problems. I would appreciate it if people would understand and respect that when they seek to engage with me personally.
https://mastodon.social/@RuiSeabra/112877191090748791

esmevane, sorry

@RuiSeabra @polotek @timbray

This isn't helpful. Marco knows all of this. He's very experienced with software, open source, Mastodon, the social web, all of it.

He knows what he's talking about and I think if you reread this thread you might notice you've only repeated his own words back at him.

Marco Rogers

@ironchamber @RuiSeabra @timbray this person's bio does a very good job of explaining exactly what to expect from them. They are on brand, and I can respect that.

Jon

1000%. Great thread. Here's my take on it, from Steps Towards a Safer Fediverse

I want to know how I can find and support people that are aligned with my values.

This is something I've heard from a lot of people. I've been working with @[email protected] on setting up a federated forum site (with opt-in federation), would it be useful to host some discussions there?

[I'm thinking of a forum for a couple of reasons: it supports private forums, for stuff that's more useful to discuss with limited visibility; and, longer-form discussions are going to be useful for something like this.]

@[email protected]

Mike Macgirvin 🖥️

There are a number of fediverse platforms that are more closely aligned with your values when it comes to online safety and control of your inbox. Be aware that not all of them are like Twitter. The Twitter interaction style itself promotes and encourages harassment and abuse by design; and this interaction style is baked into ActivityPub - the underlying protocol of the fediverse. It takes a lot of effort and thinking outside the box to provide relatively safe online spaces within the confines of said protocol. But people are doing it.

I work on a very small project known colloquially as "the streams repository" and I'm personally driven by online safety. I'm not saying my software is what you're looking for. It's way out in the fringes. However - if you take a good look at what's available and look at the trajectories and visions of some of the alternatives, you might just find a new home -- with a front door lock that actually works.

Cheers.

Pete🎸🎶🐍📽🎞☮🌍🙂😭

@polotek

I'm European with low melanin levels.

I am working hard to understand why some people believe in the myth of race, and how that affects their prejudices, and how it is used in society to simplify discussions to the point of not being reality.

Ruling me out just because of my skin pigmentation and place of birth seems... I dunno... wrong?

Two wrongs don't make a right.

Marco Rogers

@pete just based on this post, it doesn't actually sound like you're "working hard to understand". Can you maybe try again to tell me what work you've put into trying to understand?