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.
@mcdutchie @JeremyLittau This is really not at all the problem that I see. Server-level defederation is *the* tool to make this place ultimately able to have productive conversations. Why shouldn't weirder.earth decide to be more insular? It can even help.
The problem for POC (etc.) is that as soon as they move elsewhere, they *will* encounter new harassment. It's the only reason I hang out on Twitter, to keep in touch with (mostly) my AK indigenous fam, who are still figuring out where to go.
From my perspective, being able to follow hashtags is a big thing. In additon, it would be great to follow the public feeds of other instances, even if just inside an app. That would make people less depending on federation.
Apparently African American Society finds itself on the cusp of yet the latest of its "Digital" Great Migrations
viz. https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/migrations
Further,
Hurricane Katrina's causal effects of creating Black Louisiana Diaspora
are akin to
November 2022
Where Black Twitter
is both pre- and post- Digital Diaspora
viz. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/katrina-diaspora/
This subject guide highlights records of federal agencies and collections that relate to people of the African Diaspora who migrated to and throughout various stages in United States history. With every mass movement, Black people would profoundly change the nation’s demographic makeup, influence culture, and effect changes on local and national laws, economy, and labor force. After the end of the American Civil War and African Americans were freed from slavery, the Freedmen’s Bureau was one of the most important government agencies in the lives of Black people.
@JeremyLittau yep, it's a huge problem. Mastodon has a long history of racial issues.
https://indieweb.social/@jdp23/109369109991327009
And the way so many high-profile white tweeters are showing up here -- and so many people are using valuable tools like fedifinder.glitch.me and bulk-importing their twitter contacts, which magnifies the inequities. Plus if you look at the "recommended follows' on most instances ... well let's just say there aren't a lot of Black people there.
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] it was and is situational. PoC have always been here and played important roles -- that shouldn't be erased. But here's early 2017 incidents involving racialized weaponization of CW's (very similar to what's happening right now) drove a lot of PoC away. https://www.u2764.com/NFIC/2018-09-09/fringe-beginnings/ @[email protected] getting dogpiled (also in 2017) also drove a lot of people away. https://twitter.com/creatrixtiara/status/1030380785226801152 And there was another big blowup in 2021 https://weirder.earth/@WeirderAdmin/105640550505630184
@JeremyLittau
I don't really understand how social media works,
but I know that a lot of people will not choose mastodon because of this 🥺.
I hope here will be hashtags like "black birder week" and other weeks/months.
I found so many great nerds through those hashtags.
Still hoping twitter stays but if not - I hope I find those nerdy people here.
@JeremyLittau Uh huh. That's a good point and a hard problem. The algorithmic nature of Twitter (give me eyeballs!) made it possible to make minority issues visible if played well.
The fediverse cannot do this (manpower), and doesn't want to (by design), I suspect.
What a surprising/terrible loss.
@JeremyLittau I'm starting to wonder if "servers" really are units of community on #Mastodon. We can interact with anyone anywhere no matter which server we're on, and the Local timeline isn't emphasized by default.
Does it really matter which entry point we use to get to the #fediverse? Of course, admins could refuse to federate and construct a silo, but users would have to want that.
@JeremyLittau I think it's incredibly telling that when first signing up about 2 weeks ago I kept hearing about how amazing and open and inclusive the Mastodon culture is.
And then about a week to a week and a half later I see a huge push for new instances to specifically serve people in the Black and Jewish Twitter exodus.
Clearly there's a bit of a disconnect between what existing users thought they were offering and what new users were finding available to them.
They are not isolated. Some created their own server and some want to belong to that domain.
They federate and interact with everybody.
I think this attitudinal shift is necessary. We (all of us) need to *build* the Fediverse, not just inhabit it. That may require initiating conversations and forging alliances between users and technicians that proprietary systems (in the name of convenience but in the service of control) put up barriers to prevent.
#TwitterMigration You are no longer consumers of a social media platform's services. You are members of a networked, nested community and, as such, have shouldered the obligations of citizens of that community and the communities with which it communicates. Those obligations are more or less formalized, more or less fluid, depending on your particular situation but you must work to learn them, help shape them, abide by and enforce them...or start a new community. #SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
I hope we can be respectful and discuss (not demand, not impose) constructive alternatives...
because if we can't we have surrendered certain fundamental aspects of democracy.
I understand, I do:
https://mastodon.social/@baslow/109367307045004010
but, there's also this:
https://mastodon.social/@baslow/108147342916246779
I've been devoting a lot of thought to these issues for awhile. Deference is great, applied selectively where appropriate, but it is harmful when wielded in an across-the-board sort of way.
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò has a lot of good, interesting things to say about "deference politics":
https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1867-elite-capture
@JeremyLittau There's definitely a danger on Mastodon not just of servers becoming silos, but of broader multi-server cultural schisms (to avoid stronger words) ...
I'm also pondering the ephemeral nature of Mastodon as a game changer. Most people aren't even aware of that yet (and are more focused on the lack of full-text search), but it dramatically changes how people/accounts evolve.
@JeremyLittau If your Twitter timeline was reverse-chronological (as mine was), then your Mastodon will look exactly the same: I saw on Twitter and see on Mastodon, friends' posts, replies and reposts. I can click on a reply or repost to see the rest of the conversation. I follow people from those conversations if they seem interesting / insightful.
Mastodon has the local and federated timelines though, which Twitter doesn't - so *more* exposure to strangers' conversations.
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