This piece on Wired about Black Twitter is worth your time. It's something I've been thinking about a lot, about how uneven a migration to a new space ends up being.
It also is one thing I'm eyeing about Mastodon. There's a danger that servers become silos if we aren't intentional. If you listen to some of the Black scholars in my field, they are saying as much. Twitter makes their work visible across groups.
So how do we federate for inclusion? It will be a challenge.
@JeremyLittau Admins deciding what is "safe" for their users (which is very unsafe, by the way) is what creates silos. If a site's admins habitually defederate sites they don't like, then a silo is the result, by definition.
weirder.earth is an example of a Mastodon site that turned into a silo. They block so many peers, some of their users now can't connect to most of their friends.
This is why I believe blocking should be done at the user level only, with the help of opt-in blocklists.
@mcdutchie @JeremyLittau
Yes, I have been reflecting about this thing too... I have concluded so far that the Masto way is the better of the two as it allows people who would otherwise not be able to be it. You also have the ability to migrate if you feel for that.
I am concerned about the ongoing polarization though... Masto or any of the silos can't really fix that.
Jeremy J. Littau
Martijn Dekker🇪🇺 (OLD ACCT.)
shellkr 🇪🇺