Folks from BlackFedi have taught me a lot about community safety—and have popped some myths that I’ve long believed.
For one thing, it’s not enough to offer an alternative to an oppressive place on social media because, as oppressive as I may believe a space may be (e.g., Twitter), if there’s not an easy-to-understand way for the community to collectively navigate for safety, you’re not really offering an alternative.
This is something I’ve heard @mekkaokereke talk about more than once, and it really resonates with me. Here’s a specific example that @damon brought up to me: quotes.
#BlackTwitter has long used quotes as a means to call out threats, and build solidarity against them. They offer both context and commentary.
I get that quotes can do harm. I’m not minimizing that. But they can also prevent harm. @atomicpoet I appreciate you being willing to listen, challenge yourself and call out & on the Fediverse. Like all tools anything can be manipulated & used incorrectly but we don’t stop making and using tools. In response, we attempt to make them safe. We do this by educating, building better tools and understanding the use cases and the misuse cases. @damon @atomicpoet
I am somewhat conflicted about quotes. I don't feel QT-ing prejudice against #neurodiverse into our groups/circles as some sort of dunking opportunity would improve our day for many of us, just amplify concerns about societal attitudes. Also...
Personally, having (valid) questions, criticisms & professional experiences relating to Brexit debate QT'ed in to the Brexiter circles and therefore getting dogpiled, harassed & threatened was an extremely unpleasant experience on birdsite.
However, that said I've been using QT on Calckey and enjoying the convenience and encountered no problems so far.
The issues may well be a question of community standards and moderation more than it is really a question of toolsets.
I do wonder if people wanting QT should be told, "make a Calckey account" (for example) and not "You are wrong to want QT". I have probably been more worried about QT existing than I should have been, as it seems to be used differently (so far) here in the Fediverse.
#Fediverse #Social #SocialMedia #QT #Calckey #Mastodon #Fediverse #Social #SocialMedia #QT #Calckey #Mastodon #Fediverse #Mastodon #Calckey #SpreadFediverse #Social #Migration #AccountPortability @atomicpoet
I've come to see quotes as an interesting case study in correlation. People who fled Twitter as it became increasingly abusive pointed quotes as a significant contributing factor in that toxicity. Many of them experienced dog piles after the preview-card style quotes went live, and saw that they had been quoted as the dog pile took place.
And there's no doubt that having a button that automates linking decreases the amount of friction that's involved in highlighting something or someone you want to publicly target.
But Twitter had such a button for years prior to the modern QT. It just didn't generate a preview card, and the content of whatever you were quoting counted against your character count. People were doing in-line retweets from the time I started using Twitter in 2008 until I stopped in 2012, and using them to dogpile others all along the way.
There was absolutely a seismic shift on Twitter around the time modern QTs launched, though. See, 'Retweet with Quote' went public in 2015, within a few months of Trump's presidential campaign kicking off. His unabated Twitter addiction drew in legions of deplorables to the platform, and Twitter's all but total refusal to moderate bad actors just let them run roughshod all over the place.
Twitter became more toxic along side the launch of QTs, but there's very little evidence that it's the QTs that made it more toxic, and there's a very big, very obvious toxifying influence that rose to prominence on the platform that folks choose to ignore whenever the topic comes up.
@damon 
Chris Trottier
Damon Outlaw
ArtBear
Christopher