Just briefly logged into mastodon and my mentions are mostly people debating my experiences here and whether I was entitled to tweet about them, and I just want to say, I was called slurs for days by people on *other instances* and received a death threat saying that they would do to me what was done to Emmett Till.
Anyone discussing any of this like *I* did something wrong, including by talking about it, is a fucking dipshit.
Have a fabulous fucking day.
I’m disgusted that protecting the reputation of the platform is more important to some people — including some Black people, what the actual fuck — than making sure people are safe, physically and emotionally.
That’s some nasty shit.
And to the “it’s just growing pains/join the right instance” crowd: Black people shouldn’t need a fucking Green Book to navigate the physical or virtual world.
Logging in to see that several replies to this thread are white people being white, complete with “you just have to live with it” and “it depends on your instance” and “are you using the reporting functions”
No I have a PhD in physics and have been using online interfaces since around 1989, so I don’t understand how software or whiteness works 🤡
Exhibit A. You’re lucky I can’t properly quote toot you.
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] I'm curious in what way we're shrugging our shoulders? We can't help everyone, we can do what we can. What more do you want from random people?
People who are genuinely concerned with building good communities in the Fediverse are people who are concerned with how to solve the problems being raised.
The rest of you are fine with virtual redlining, which is to say, you’re racists.
Everyone is looking for a single admin to blame. The account of mine that was attacked wasn’t even the blacktwitter one.
This is a structural problem. Anyone choosing to act like it’s an individual problem is contributing to the problem.
@[email protected] @[email protected] yeah idk if blacktwitter is a new instance or what but if the user making such vile statements isn't immediately banned, then blacktwitter needs to block that whole instance. Fediverse is a protocol like Email, not a website like FB or Twitter. There's no central place to lodge a grievance, each admin and user curates blocklists to keep evil assholes out of our inboxes.
@[email protected] Dr. Prescod-Weinstein, I'm not tech savvy, but as I understand it, bc anyone can start an instance any time, building good communities here will be ongoing effort bc the current functions support server admins blocking servers & indiv mute/block. I don't have multiple marginalized IDs you boldly embody, but sorry you have to always be bold. Nurses nurture, so sending + vibes your way, & hope your experiences improve (virt & IRL). Im hopeful with young gen experiencing diversity earlier.
@[email protected] that was an unexpected, hurtful, and vague reply. i know it's not Black folks' job to educate us well-intentioned, erring whites, but it leaves me unable to apologize for what was terrible that I felt & said or to learn from it. Lashing out at attempts to be supportive is its own form of division. I'm not bold by nature, I could withdraw. My learning anti-racism is an intentional & continual process. Im committed to stand with the marginalized, as much as they'll have me.
@[email protected] That looks like an autistic nurse making social mistakes with language?
I want people to look at the responses and how much time it takes to manage repeating the same thing over and over and dealing with all the micro aggressions and ask yourself: is this what Black people should do with our time?
I’m not doing this shit with you guys every day. More power to the folks who have been for years now. We all choose our battlegrounds I guess. Hopefully you see why I am choosing not to volunteer for this before I have to.
And if you don’t? Welp.
Some quick notes on how we might build some of the essential infrastructure and governance processes that will be needed if #Mastodon is really going to be sustainable and viable as a mass-adoption social network (1/n):
There are lots of POC who have been in the Fediverse for years raising problems, so all this white innocence about how “we didn’t know this was a problem” is bullshit.
Also we are the species that worked out the mass of the Higgs Boson but you guys want me to believe that the problems people have been raised can only be solved by instance hopping and blocking? Lol ok sure, Karen Jan Chad
Anyway, let me especially shout out the white scientists who are hanging out on your fediverse accounts talking about how great and peaceful it is here.
Y’all have your heads shoved way to your asses, congrats 🎉
So that list of people on Twitter to harass is going around but the Fediverse is the only place I got called a bitch and the N word today.
Anyway, for the folks who are like “I’m a person of color, and the Fediverse has been great for me,” thanks for letting me know that you are not someone folks can depend on for solidarity. The Fediverse’s reputation matters more to you than how another POC is doing. Cool✊🏽
Well this is an amusing variation of “we don’t have racism in Europe”
https://mast.hpc.social/@freemin7/109407222340929400
Toen ik een kind was, woonde ik in Engeland. Ik heb Nederlandse familie — ik spreek Nederlands! En je hebt boter op jou hooft, jackass 🤡
Content warning: Probably insensitive even if don't mean to be
Yet here you are in my mentions, Jake
@[email protected] You're mourning that you spent years building up a massive following on social media and blocking white people like me who annoy you by "whitesplaining" using the wrong words. You're good at reliably generating and retweeting the content that gets your followers reliably outraged. I'm not interested in following you here (or there) since I get all the same stories from other sources. You're mourning the banter you had over there that you'll have to recreate here. That's unfortunate.
I don’t know how people can be online this much and still not understand the services and protocols they’re claiming to explain to other people. But folks should know Twitter didn’t build my block list for me, and my real identity verification provides absolutely zero extra services on that front. It just means people can’t easily impersonate me. And I can let them filter my mentions.
Your blue check mythology is so weird Jake
@[email protected] Those other folks don't have 100k followers on Twitter. The Fediverse can't handle realtime filtering of abuse from white supremacists because nobody's getting paid to do it, and there's next to no protection against abuse like you get from ad-supported social media. You're not safe here because you're being attacked by an army of right-wing trolls. Nobody in your set of circumstances is going to be free from seeing abuse here until we can stop all racists from ever making new accounts.
@chanda @jhamby oh Jake, oh no... this isn't it. You're literally putting words in someone's mouth and completely invalidating their experience. This is wrong, and I would hope you know better. I've done it before, too, and I recognized my error and learned from it.
@[email protected] You're mourning that you spent years building up a massive following on social media and blocking white people like me who annoy you by "whitesplaining" using the wrong words. You're good at reliably generating and retweeting the content that gets your followers reliably outraged. I'm not interested in following you here (or there) since I get all the same stories from other sources. You're mourning the banter you had over there that you'll have to recreate here. That's unfortunate.
@led260 I won’t tell people what place feels best for them, but I will say that anyone telling you they’ve found a haven without racism has a bridge to sell you lol
The Fediverse is more unsafe and problematic than its proselytizers admit, and because they won’t acknowledge its problems, they aren’t getting fixed. So my goal isn’t to tell people where to go, but to be honest with people about the cesspool they are selling as 5 star hotel.
That wow-cool sentiment is so fn grating 😬
@chanda If this happened to your coworker, friend, child or parent, wouldn't you be livid?
Well, it did. Get angry.
There is no way to build good communities out of bad people.
Thinking about it gets you nowhere.
We need to change people, which is a language work at best, a violence work if all other fail. It is not a software work.
#BlackTwitter has been great at this language work particularly.
@chanda im so sorry you have to deal with all this. fediverse has had an HOA problem for years, and white liberals are terminally incapable of doing anything but hashtagging about how many instances full of marginalized people they're blocking for not meeting HOA guidelines and pretending it's activism
i wish i had an answer, i don't, but thank you for speaking up
@chanda Do you have any suggestions for how moderation on mastadon could be addressed?
Because Mastadon is a protocol and not a single website, and doesnt have any centralized gigantic pile of cash, it cant be moderated like pre-elon twitter was.
Short of moderating individual instances and maintaining a list of instances that are moderated to broadcast to, what can possibly be done to adress the issue?
@chanda
Could a shared charter for federation help? Some basic technical and legal/ social agreements?
Here’s an example draft one:
https://mastodon.social/@blaine/109378711322415343
I have many questions, especially about enforcing something like this. Would like to know any perspective you’d care to share.
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
Justin Maxwell
Kevin Gamin
John Mark 
☑️
Ro
Subidax
Ben Rosengart
Annelies Z. Kamran, Ph.D.
Joshua Stein
DrJanice
mempko
LakeRNistired
led260
Jackie Gardina
jhamby
Alex is always organizing
Mihailik 🌼🌼🌼🏃🏿♀️🌼🌼🌼
GunChleoc
Orcmid
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mharr
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