The #Bluesky community is on strike, in protest of “free speech” moderation policies and refusal to prevent or remove #racism.
The inciting incident this time: users signing up with the n-word in their usernames. Using the word “cracker”, however, was a bannable offense.
Bluesky has not responded for over 36 hours as of writing. Devs are blocking protestors. Timelines are filled with variations of:
“No more normal posting until my Black friends and family are safe.”
It is beautiful to watch folks organize spontaneously around this. There are some really novel techniques being used that I have not seen before.
Shitposters and sex workers blurring their posts and withholding lewds, if only there was a safe platform to post them. Quote chains of people asking the devs to block them too in solidarity. Users building custom, public mute lists to block out fascists and protect marginalized communities.
The devs are liking nazi callout posts & posting on Twitter
But I would also like to take a second, before you enjoy too much schadenfreude, to point out that by and large PoC communities also are not safe on Mastodon.
A huge amount of the feedback being levied on Bluesky’s lasseiz faire moderation policies also apply to us here.
I have very little faith Bluesky will improve, but we still could.
@Haste @pollute_my_lungs hopefully I can help! I'm slowly bringing @nodebb to the Fediverse 🙂 forums never left, they just took a sideline for a bit.
It's high time for a resurgence.
@Haste there is one critical difference between the two platforms.
Here ignorant racist assholes are simply ignorant racist assholes.
There ignorant racist assholes drive “value-added platform engagement”.
When they make money from your pain it’s not a bug…it’s a feature. Just like Facebook.
@dame @Haste Yeah, its a safe bet to be true.
If I was one of those people I could probably the same ass both here and on Threads. So a wash.
Assuming you can block/report as effectively there as here. (A guess).
However, what is not likely here is my bullshit randomly showing up in your feed in front of the people you follow because a whole bunch of other idiots and an algorithm like it. Inevitably that same bullshit will be parked right next to an Adidas ad soon enough.
Toke me a while to realize the claim by PoC that any kind of harassment is not seen out here like on tw because you don't see the whole conversation string.
The layout is different and our call to setup own instances is not well understood/taken as people are not used to decentralization and the feature it implies. fediverse and mastodon are understood as one monolitic thing but they aren't. It takes time to build this up and "divide" the scenes.
@liztai I’m really sorry to hear that (but also completely unsurprised). You shouldn’t have to deal with it.
I don’t run any communities or have much influence, but if there’s anything I can ever do to help toss a fascist directly into the sun and make the mastodon more safe and pleasant for you and your network, let me know.
@JohnMFlores I admit I do not know. I think the right path would be to listen to those communities about what they need, and allocate development resources directly to that.
Because I don’t think I’m qualified to declare a solution, as a white person. I don’t want to take up all the air in the room.
Instead, I’d be happy to work on and implement the tools those communities identified.
@Haste The lesson here is very simple (and often repeated): never expect ANY commercial social media to be fair, equatable, just, honest or decent.
Its about making money. And thats all.
@fu Thanks for the feedback, friend. :)
I do not doubt that the main mastodon.social instance is especially troubled in this way. My personal observation has been that even choosing a smaller instance doesn't necessarily help, since all it will take is one .social user boosting a post to attract the same audience.
This is a problem inherent to the culture more than the technology, in my opinion.
Side note, I didn't understand your observation about my keywords.
@Haste I quit a 7dtd server because they let a guy with "sambo" in his name and en evern worse picture in his steam profile play while also disciplining me for saying "cracker."
They listed "no racism" in their server rules but they were clearly applying it selectively. People tell on themselves all the time.
@Haste @LinuxAndYarn its 2023 and we have a brand new social media network that doesnt have a "no racism / no nazis" policy.
we may as well be banging rocks together.
also orgs that intentionally choose to not to have those policies are really saying "we're okay if we become the nazi bar. their money is just as green as anybody elses"
@Viss @LinuxAndYarn yeah I choose to read “we prioritize free speech on this platform” as “well let’s not be hasty, the nazis might have a point”. :/
I plan on shutting my account down but I’d like to keep involved with the protest for a bit, it’s improving my hope for humanity
@Viss @LinuxAndYarn interesting. It is literally 100% of my feed.
I did see an interactive graphic of Blueskys social graph recently (turns out its public). Maybe we’re in different circles?
Iirc I was somewhere between hellthread shitposters, and trans bsky
Here’s the context thread I was pointed to if you’re interested
https://bsky.app/profile/aliafonzy.bsky.social/post/3k2bzl67zqh23
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