Fleeing Elon Musk’s X, the quest to re-create ‘Black Twitter’

The influential online community that gave rise to social movements like #BlackLivesMatter is now a "digital diaspora” in search of a new home. #tech

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/08/06/musk-black-twitter-spill/

Fleeing Elon Musk’s X, the quest to re-create ‘Black Twitter’

The influential online community that gave rise to social movements like #BlackLivesMatter is now a "digital diaspora” in search of a new home.

The Washington Post

This is the best summary I could come up with:

In 2015, that community turned Reign’s dashed-off hashtag — #OscarsSoWhite — into a viral campaign that sparked real-world change, pushing the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to triple the number of Oscar-voting members of color.

Meanwhile, some competing services — notably Bluesky, the invitation-only platform created by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey — have strained relationships with Black users by failing to police racist attacks.

Touré, a host at TheGrio, a media network geared toward Black Americans, has more than 220,000 followers on Twitter, but said his interactions there leave him so “triggered and tired” these days that he rarely posts.

Black Twitter popularized any number of cultural memes, as well as slang phrases like “on fleek” (perfectly done or exactly right) and “Bye, Felicia,” a line from “Friday,” the 1995 Ice Cube film, “often used online as a dismissive farewell,” according to the website KnowYourMeme.com.

Dorsey once appeared with Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson — now an adviser to Spill — wearing a company-made T-shirt bearing the slogan #StayWoke.

Instagram and TikTok emphasize images and video — not text — and feed users content from strangers and celebrities, diminishing the ability to build and elevate a personal network.

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As I understand it, one of the major issues with moving to e.g. Mastodon is that the Fediverse doesn't implement blocking in a way that you'd expect, at all. It's effectively impossible to block someone the way we're used to blocking in places like Twitter, Instagram.

I have also heard a lot of stories from Black folks about anti-Black sentiment on Mastodon.

Can you explain? Why blocking is not possible?

Blocking seems to work fine on Mastodon (kbin is a whole other story; it is a trash fire), but the big thing was the Mastodon HOA (the Mastodon users who will rock up to tell you you’re doing Mastodon wrong and yell at you for wishing for something like quote tweets) and some servers insisting Black folks put posts talking about racism they experienced behind content warnings. Plus some just blatant racism. Being told to just make your own server or move to a new one hit like needing a dang Green Book just to be on the platform.

A lot of Black folks who went to try Mastodon during the first round of migrations off Twitter after Elon bought it got chased off of Mastodon, and they warned folks away.