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.
@tarheel @mekkaokereke Probably so. When in doubt, expect them to do it in the most cowardly/stealth way available. :) DMs seem like regular replies unless you notice that the symbol at the top right has turned into an @ instead of a globe or padlock.
That should probably be changed to something much more prominent, so that people are more aware when a reply has activated DM mode. I've tripped over this already.
What happens when you reply to a DM but make your reply public? Does that also expose the original DM?
@tarheel @mekkaokereke I don't know, though I think I can see where you're going with that.
I have read that adding people to the mentions within a DM thread loops them into the whole thread of DMs, though.
@mekkaokereke I’m sorry that posts like that continue to exist, that humans who write them (or the humans who create the bots that wrote them) exist and that it’s so hard to find respite from it. 😞
I am not looking at the local timeline on my server. Seems like if I just stick to those I’m following and who they are boasting I can recreate a semblance of what I had in twitter. While discovering new voices to follow …/1
@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.
@mekkaokereke I think we can too, but it seems to currently depend on changing the approaches of a very few people with outsized control over both these mega-instances & the general joinmastodon landing page, and a long history of not listening.
Maybe there would be a way to extend/fork joinmastodon with a minimum instance blocked list requirement to be listed, like they have a minimum stated (but not enforced) rules requirement. 🤷🏻♂️
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
@mekkaokereke sorry for the abuse you went through! That sounds awful.
I’m also considering moving to another instance and hachyderm has been high on my list. Glad (and not surprised) to know it does moderation well. Let me know if you find the local timeline useful!
1) On the server I joined, you can click the "about" link to see the list of moderated servers. Scroll down to see the list.
2) It's a double edged sword. On the one hand, the folks doing the abuse love to see their abuse amplified. On the other hand, if everyone can see the abuse, then everyone can report it. Sometimes the impacted person doesn't even need to report, because allies handle it.♥️
@mekkaokereke Yikes.
poa.st is definitely on the bad server list I imported when I started this instance, and it's definitely one of those "If you need me to explain why this instance is a problem then actually you need to not be moderating anything right now" instances. But you're right, the average user probably isn't in a position to navigate that.
You've been doing a lot of good work trying to steer folks to safe places. LMK if I can help.
@amv ♥️Thank you! And will do!
And thank you for moderating!
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