Mike McHargueApr 30, 2023

I'm skeptical of #Bluesky because it's built on the same tech VC mindset that has been so harmful in prior generations of social media.

I'm skeptical of the #fediverse and #Mastodon because Black and brown people get shouted over by tech leftists when they have the audacity to name their experiences here.

That crap shows up in my timeline every single time I log on.

Before you say, "my feed isn't like that," let me ask, "How many Black and brown people do you follow?"

Show threaddragonfrogMay 10, 2023

@mike One of the things I did not realize until very recently - you can reply to someone's public post and set the privacy of your reply to be a DM - so even if I read through the full reply thread on a black or brown person's post, everything I see may not be everything *they* see.

There could be horrible harassing racist replies that the OP is reading, while I can read all the way to the bottom of the thread and see nothing but respectful conversation.

Show threaddragonfrog
@mike And it could be kind of non-obvious to the OP - they're reading the discussion of their post and there's this stinking pile of insults right in there, and nobody is pushing back on that person - there's probably some little bit of UI to indicate it's a private reply so the others aren't pushing back because they can't see it - but that can be easy to miss. And the psychic toll of the whole thing must be heavy, so even easier to miss UI subtle bits of UI information.
May 10, 2023 at 8:46pmWeb
Show threaddragonfrogMay 10, 2023

@mike

So, in principle on one hand it's kind of the same as any social network - you can block DMs from anyone you don't follow - but if you don't, the fact that they can thread their "DMs" in with an otherwise public conversation is really problematic.

If I see something in a separate DM inbox, my mental space is different when I start to read it. The private replies to public threads "feature" undermines that.