This is not to appeal to a "poverty model" or an "incapacity model" where marginalized communities are concerned, but to point out the very real resource dependencies necessary for a marginalized group to run an instance.

Beyond technical resources and monetary resources, two things which have been covered in the previous litigations of this suggestion by marginalized mastodonians, there are also personnel resources as well, by which I mean moderators.

Any marginalized community or instance will require a greater number of personnel to maintain itself than an instance not focused on their needs. This is for the simple fact that marginalized communities, be it digital or physical, exist in a world that is actively hostile to their flourishing.

I am not being hyperbolic in this statement: I am being truthful and factual.

In a digital space, the threat is magnified in some pretty ugly ways. This magnification consequently requires people to "stand at the gates" of a given instance to defend it from trolls of a variety of stripes.

Put simply, you need a metaphorical "warrior caste" to enable the safety and security of the community, to deal with the assholes in ways that enable the community to persist in the space. You need moderators.

Moderation, as an endless number of academic studies have indicated, is not an easy task.

It is made harder when one is a marginalized subject and is tasked with engaging with the kinds of vitriol directed at your community as part of your responsibility. To this end, any sufficiently large instance on the fediverse will need people to commit themselves to the task of moderation. This is a massive sacrifice made by volunteers.

Still further, there is the implication that the solution to harassment within a community, to being unable to be "at home" with others is to go elsewhere.

This ignores what makes Black Twitter what it is and what makes communities on social media what they are. We're not necessarily looking for separate but equal (as if that's even fucking possible): we're looking to be ourselves in all our fullness in public.

@shengokai I agree with you that this is the essential point. The notion of “public” on here is essentially an anarchist one, with all that implies.

But your use of public in this post is doing a lot of heavy lifting. To what degree is Twitter a “public” for anyone? To my mind it is essentially an opaquely algorithmically run capitalist platform that is now run by one (insane) person that deliberately fosters outrage, anxiety, and out-of-context attacks.