Just because queer people and other folks built the fediverse or its protocol to avoid some kinds of harassment and violence doesn’t mean that the fediverse cannot be home to other kinds of violence or marginalization.
Put simply, a queer history does not preclude a present that enables structures of oppression. I want to be specific about this because much of the violence I’ve experienced in queer spaces is at the hands of white queers.
Now, this isn’t generally the case on mastodon/the fediverse, but the queer history of the fediverse hasn’t stopped racists or norms of whiteness from taking up shop and organizing the space. A queer history didn’t keep racist slurs out of my mentions.
To be clear, I’m not denying the queer history of the fediverse: I’m rejecting its use as a counter-argument against structures of oppression on the fediverse. I’m also rejecting the immediate assumption that queerness = anti-racist.
This latter is important because we have to understand that a queer history or queerness itself does not ensure freedom from all other forms of oppression.
Let me put it another way: queer people might’ve built the fediverse, but they threw open the doors to everyone. And, insofar as online spaces are continuous with offline spaces, assholes found their way in.
But this isn’t the fault of the queer devs who built this place, and I’m not ascribing blame. What I’m saying is that a queer history is no defense against an oppressive present especially given the nature of the fediverse and its instances.
Now, if we wanted that history to matter for the present, we’d need to make it matter in concrete’s ways. We’d need to do more than say “queer people built this place,” and leave it at that.
Mastodon: a partial history (DRAFT)
https://privacy.thenexus.today/mastodon-a-partial-history/
As @shengokai says ⬆️, if we want Mastodon's history to matter for the present, we need to look in detail about how and why it was built. Here's my (draft) attempt to do that -- highlighting the amazing contributions of the early community (much of which has never been properly credited) without whitewashing the past.
Feedback and discussion welcome!
DISCLAIMER:
I worked for the Disabled People's Comission for the Hammersmith and Fulham Council for a few months. One of the things I did there was to rewrite leaflets and speeches to make them easier, simpler for people with cognitive impairments who needed easy-read copies. As such I'm kind of a professional at finding parts that are hard to read for able people too.
1/x (please don't reply until you see x/END)
FEEDBACK:
It seems a bit disorganised, especially at the beginning. This paragraph is hard to read.
"Which is unfortunate, because the standard narrative in articles like Will Knight's The Man Behind Mastodon Built It for This Moment ("Mastodon grew slowly after the first code was released in 2017, appealing mostly to free software enthusiasts") leaves out some crucial aspects. For example:"
I'm reading your article, I have to go elsewhere to find you mean Eugen.
2/x
then
"....Mastodon has a history of being inhospitable to marginalized users.
Yeah Really".
Not sure what you mean with "Yeah Really" there. You're introducing US to Mastodon's history, there's nothing you can write that could surprise us, since we don't know it. That "yeah really" is meaningless to the article's intended public.
3/x
"Another good reason is that Mastodon's early history is an amazing case study of queer community-led innovation."
This is when you get me completely lost. You just said it has a history of marginalizing people but then its early design was queer-led. That's confusing.
Did you mean marginalising specifically BLACK people but not LGBTQ+, as in Mastodon being racist?
If the article follow cronologically without mixing temporal contexts, it'll be easier to read.
4/x
@jdp23 my pleasure. Feel free to ask again or even use my handle if you need more feedback.
I would definitely break it down in a few articles though. Maybe in stages.
But I would also divide each section in years. As in
2016
text
2017
text
2018
text
etc etc
Be mindful too of clarifying whether you're sticking to the facts or making an opinion article. It didn't look clear to me from the outset if it was one or the other.
@jdp23 break it down in quarters maybe, for that year I mean.
Please don't be hard on yourself. YOU ARE already looking for a solution by having it in draft mode and asking for feedback.
@maikel just wanted to check in on this ... I'm still revising but did take your suggestion and put in more chronological ordering - 2016, 2017, 2018-2021 (which is a lot sparser), and 2022. Each year is roughly chronlogical but there's some overlap. For example the community-led development was happening at time that overlapped the racist dogipiling and white supremacy stuff, it's clearer to talk about each of them in its own section.
Dr. Johnathan Flowers
Jon
Maikel 
🇪🇺