Atlanta Antifascists :antifa: (@[email protected])

Just finished this fascinating interview on Black Twitter and the whiteness of Mastodon, by @[email protected]: https://techpolicy.press/the-whiteness-of-mastodon/ We will be moving more and more short form content over here from Twitter, and while we're happy with Kolektiva, we think the larger Fediverse should consider these issues and take them to heart. We haven't personally seen cases on Kolektiva, but many BIPOC users have had issues with racism on the Fediverse, often in the area of tone policing. Here's a good quote from the piece: "Now, having said all of that, right, Mastodon is a very white space. It draws upon some of the values and some of the interests of indie web producers, of the DIY tech community, wherein there’s this sense of rugged individualism. The open source nature means that you can make your own stuff, and this motivates some of the kinds of responses that Mastodonians will make to users who say that there are certain features that aren’t available, that there are certain content guidelines and moderation policies that tend to act as social norms on Mastodon itself." One thing we would like to respond to is this section near the end: "You could easily have an entire instance of right-wing white supremacists pop up that would engage in targeted harassment of users of color." This has actually already happened in 2019. The "instance" in question is Gab. While we weren't actively posting on Mastodon at the time, we follow and still follow people on Gab very closely, because many of them are hardcore neo-Nazis who use Gab to carry out IRL harassment campaigns and attacks. When Gab moved from Twitter-like architecture to using a fork of the Mastodon software, it was quickly walled off from the larger Fediverse. (https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2019/07/statement-on-gabs-fork-of-mastodon/) Therefore, regular Fediverse users remain fairly protected: they/we are not in any more danger from the Gab basement Nazis than a regular person who isn't on the Fediverse at all. However, the larger point about targeted harassment still stands. As more and more people move into the Fediverse, it's crucial to keep talking about open issues like the whiteness of Mastodon, answer questions by new users patiently, and not dismiss problems/concerns along the lines of "this is the way it's always been/just make your own instance/get used to it or go back to Twitter." :antifa: #BlackMastodon