@mav :happy_blob: Allow me to answer with another question for clarification:

What kinds of counter-measures would be acceptable?

If you asked me, which no-one has yet and probably no-one ever will, I'd say, "Forget Mastodon and look at other places in the Fediverse. The Fediverse is more than Mastodon."

I tend to get a whole lot of backlash for this alone. If people don't want to ditch the Fediverse altogether, they tend to cling to Mastodon for their dear lives. No matter how racist Mastodon itself turns out to be, no matter how much racist harassment comes from within Mastodon, the typical assumption is that everything else out there in the Fediverse is even worse.

It's next to impossible to argue against the existence of Nazi instances on Pleroma. Even though Pleroma isn't even that big in the Fediverse. And even though not everyone on Pleroma is a Nazi.

Also, whatever I'd suggest doesn't do what I guess many see as the minimum feasible solution: purge any and all racism from the Fediverse for all time. I'm being realistic here: That won't happen. Not until racism is purged from this entire ball of rock once and for all.

So anything I could possibly suggest is something that helps shield members of marginalised groups from hate-speech against them. Or rather helps them shield themselves. That doesn't coddle them, but that empowers them. And that does so a lot better than Mastodon.

Still, this is difficult because what I'd suggest is very obscure. And again, what marginalised people don't know, they don't trust.

It's hard enough already to put trust in help offered by a middle-aged white cis-het male, especially when you're under attack so much that you've come to the conclusion that the concept of allies doesn't exist.

In fact, I expect this post to drive a few more Mastodon users to block me or even the entire instance that I'm on.

CC: @Jon @Timnit Gebru (she/her) @Johannes Ernst @Jack Yan (甄爵恩) @Kim Crayton ~ Her/She @Ericka Simone @Stefan Bohacek @Ra'il IK

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #FediverseSafety