So I've moved!
I live at hachyderm.io now. Unfortunately, I can't recommend mastodon.cloud anymore. The typical user might not be able to navigate what I did. I'll explain in the next post behind a Content Warning, because it's not nice.
But new neighbours, what's good! 🙋🏿♂️
My account started getting a lot of targeted racist abuse and death threats. Typical 4ch*n stuff: N-word, kill, hang, H*tler, etc. I'm a Black dude on the internet, so I've seen it all before. It's just annoying.
So I reported about 20 of them. No response. This is the flip side of what I thought was good about Mastodon.cloud: That the mods don't moderate Black folk for talking about racism. The downside of very hands off moderation is inaction.
I'd been thinking of moving to Hachyderm anyway, as many of my friends (and people I only know slightly, but respect greatly) are already here. I'm curious to see if the local timeline will become usable for me.
But I don't think a casual social user should be expected to navigate what I did.
Also weird, because of how Mastodon works, no one else sees the racist abuse directed at a user. It doesn't show up in the local timeline, or in search.
@mekkaokereke All the yikes and sorry. 🙁 Glad you've found a better home base. As you say, nobody should face this or be required to move to get away from it.
On your last part - I have to wonder if you see that as overall good that it's not amplifying the harm more widely or overall bad because it invisibilizes the harm? And more importantly, wth we can do about it, especially on these massive instances with far from ideal administration. 😬
@fenneladon It's tricky.
Less amplification I think is better, in part because they do enjoy wider reach. Hopefully this ends up with more instances blocking them, to decrease the reach.
But I want to make sure that Black folk heading from Twitter don't go to instances where this instance and ones like it are not blocked.
I think we can accomplish that without exposing everyone to the nonsense.
Part of a solution might be a list of endorsed instances (endorsed by the standards of those who suffer most from this garbage). I'm tired of everybody running to mastodon.social and I'd love to point people to instances that take their duties more serious.
@katzenberger @mekkaokereke I see that as more a temporary bandaid. I don't think artisanal recommended server lists are scalable to the hundreds of thousands stranded on the too big instances the bad UX took them to by default, and the hundreds of thousands more that could still be coming across later.
I would expect some minimum standard of instance blocking to be a required automatic default for listing on a safer joinmastodon page. 🤷🏻♂️
Personally, I don't count on joinmastodon for anything, with respect to pointing to instances. Whether Gargron is or isn't what you say should not matter either.
I believe we should not have "a" joinmastodon, at all. I'd rather work on that than on re-shaping the existing one, via protests. For the time being that means that I keep publishing options how to find server instances, according to various criteria.
@katzenberger @adrienne @mekkaokereke Sure, multiple joinmastodons could definitely help.
Still, I'm skeptical network effects / Zipf's law won't again mean there is effectively 1 the vast majority of people will be funnelled via.
I'm very skeptical a technical solution to "famous thing gets more famous, and most people will only know the famous thing until they maybe one day are interested enough to become semi-experts" exists. 🤷🏻♂️
That's likely - as long as #list #management stays as poor as it is, and #groups are possible via workarounds only.
To me, #Mastodon is conceptually flawed with respect to #communities: there's no reason why they should manifest mainly via every member joining the very same instance.
I want better lists, and I want better groups than what the a.gup.pe hack can offer.
I missed that "zero onboarding" story. That would be awful. Where did you see that?
@katzenberger @adrienne @fenneladon @mekkaokereke Both of the recent high-profile moderation errors were blamed on newly-started mods. So this remark might be an inference from that: clearly there is no *good*, effective onboarding.
(I'm referring to Tracy Chou's post taken down on false report of a dogwhistle, and another person's account suspended on report it was an impostor.)
Ok, thank you. I'd expect a bit of evidence for a claim like "zero onboarding", though.
I understand what you mean, yet it isn't achievable. Social media house rules beyond banning what is illegal have been contested in court in my country (Germany), many times. Twitter & Facebook keep losing ("free speech - it isn't illegal, and they have no other place to go"), and have to un-ban trolls.
1/2
Re "isolated invite-only compounds": that's cliché and not what e.g. the circles of my friends, colleagues or and acquaintances are. They are home bases, and safe spaces. If one can't behave, one is kept at bay, that's it, and there is nothing a troll can do about it.
@katzenberger @mekkaokereke I'm sure many people who've been dealing this for years have proposed/developed things that have been rejected. I would start there.
In the extreme unlikely case nothing better already exists, my first attempt would be take fediblock list from a small number of trusted instances with simple governance on add/remove by those admins.
Hide any instance not blocking everything on the list (with jittered refresh checks). 🤷🏻♂️
@katzenberger Coming soon: the Green Book of Mastodon! I agree with @fenneladon that it's a bandaid, but harm reduction is valuable.
Sorry to hear this happened to you, @mekkaokereke ... I'm thinking of your comment on Twitter about how white people say it doesn't matter what East Texas town you move to
mekka okereke 
Fenneladon Privacyasaurus
katzenberger
just adrienne
Greg Price
Nick Istre
Jon (now at neuromatch.social)