Kim Crayton ~ Her/SheNov 27, 2022
Ok, one of the main Twitter features that I’m definitely missing is the quote retweet because it’s been an important and impactful teaching strategy…it enables me to highlight an issue/concern by adding often missing perspectives/voices/narratives/historical framing/etc
Show threadmekka okereke Nov 28, 2022

@KimCrayton1

Yup. Most of Black Twitter used QRTs differently.

A lot of non-Black Twitter only saw it where accounts with millions of followers would pick on a small account to get their followers to dogpile.

Most of Black Twitter used it exactly as you described... The online equivalent of Black folk talking *to each other* about some nonsense that someone in a position of power said.

The problem here is that the non-Black folks don't believe the other use cases.

Show threadOuteastNov 28, 2022
@mekkaokereke @KimCrayton1 I don't think it's disbelief that there *are* positive uses - that's self-evident - but a conviction that the *net* impact is negative. It's not just the dogpiling, but that QRTing for criticism amplifies the OP (in the Fediverse, critical QRTs of toxic accounts would make those accounts proliferate across Federated feeds, thus motivating trolling). I'm just not clear if the conviction is based on analysis or just a personal instinct.
Show threadmekka okereke Nov 28, 2022

@outeast @KimCrayton1

No, it's also disbelief that there are positive uses, as I said.

Here's one example (from my now abandoned mastodon.cloud account, RIP!).

Geoff starts out saying I'm disingenuous, then that this can't be how Black people use the feature because he's never seen it used that way, despite the fact that he doesn't interact with many (any?) Black users on Twitter.

https://mastodon.cloud/@mekkaokereke/109359366766816080

Please, don't use this to bother him. Let him be!

Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 (@[email protected])

@[email protected] @[email protected] Short version: On Twitter, Black folk often talk to each other *about* what powerful but clueless white folk in power say. QTs make that easy to do. Unfortunately, QTs are also used to enable unpleasant conversation. Throughout US history, white folk have prioritized pleasant conversation over enabling social change. This is the point of MLK's least famous words 🙂: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gfFWzacEgAI Mastodon is no different.

mastodon.cloud
Show threadmekka okereke 

I don't keep these examples so the people in them can be bothered.

I keep them because I know that lots of white folk don't believe Black folk, so if I say

"people don't believe how Black folk used quote tweets"

or "Someone blocked me because they said that by warning other Black users that I moved servers because of too many nazi death threats, I was 'bashing' the server"

or "people think it's not a big deal if many new Black users are 1st exposed to Nazi threats"

people don't believe me.

Nov 28, 2022 at 5:58amWeb
Show threadOuteastNov 28, 2022
@mekkaokereke Thank you. That's... a frustrating attitude to the discussion. Geoff's experience certainly doesn't align with mine, though. In my Twitter, QRTs are mostly used constructively. But they're also the main way that toxic stuff gets there - transphobic stuff, US right-wingers and Elon Musk, most recently. So I'm open to the argument that it tends to amplify toxicity, and that *might* outweigh the positives. But it doesn't seem as obvious to me as it does to Geoff.