NirdigantaNov 25, 2022

Been following this critique with a lot of interest & have a hot take.

Mastodon is unbearably white only if you're unbearably American. It's refreshingly not yet Americanized for many from the Global South with American Discourse™️ all over our TL.
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https://techpolicy.press/the-whiteness-of-mastodon/

The Whiteness of Mastodon

A conversation with Dr. Johnathan Flowers about Elon Musk's changes at Twitter and the dynamics on Mastodon, the decentralized alternative.

Tech Policy Press
Show threadNirdigantaNov 25, 2022
This is not to say that "make your own instance" isn't racist or that Black users haven't been subjected to racist frames of CWs/TWs or had their posts censored. But Black Twitter also thrived under a centralized tech regime & is a little lost with decentralized UX/UI designed specifically antithetical to Twitter.
Show threadNirdigantaNov 25, 2022

If Black Twitter emerged as offline Black discursive practices leveraging Twitter's technological affordances (cf. Brock, 'Distributed Blackness') then migrating this collective to Mastodon, i.e. anti-Twitter will be fraught.

I am also struck by Flowers' framing of Black Twitter as a "gathering place" & "commons." This is an American luxury. Indian Twitter is a morass of censorship, RW trolls, misogyny, hate speech. Mastodon has been a respite for many who don't experience Twitter as a commons.

Show threadNirdigantaNov 25, 2022
Like I haven't yet come across Sanghi Mastodon, which is incredible to me. I think the decentralized logic, the various instances, the RW's inability to manipulate trends & go viral all work in our favor. Mastodon is a potential haven-in-the-making for Indian progressives.
Show threadPirate Praveen 普拉文
@SevenDeviled there used to be a right wing mastodon instance but seems it went down
Nov 26, 2022 at 9:06amWeb