Mastodawn

I gotta admit, I am loving how little of the conversation is just "BlueSky bad! Mastodon good! 🤡" and how much of it is "BlueSky is not ideal for Black users, but let's be for real, neither is Mastodon. We don't have control over BlueSky, but we do have some agency with Mastodon. How can we make Mastodon better? Where are we with improving the issues that make this place unwelcoming for Black users? Clearly, more Black users chose BlueSky than Mastodon. Have we addressed the reasons why?" ♥️🥹

Seriously, I count ~5 conversations in the improvement framing direction. I love to see it! Shame on me for having lower expectations.

I'm unapologetically backing improvements across ActivityPub and ATProto. I back Hachyderm/Mastodon and BlackSky. You can just back both teams! Nothing in the rules says you can't do that!

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Ivey Janette McClelland Oct 7

@mekkaokereke I choose Mastodon.

I was already here before Bluesky and Spoutible came along. I came here from the dead bird site after Elmo took over.

I feel safer here. I can wield the block button a lot quicker here.

Plus I can use language that I don't feel comfortable using on those other sites.

Oh,and Mastodon is international. Including the Diaspora.

I'm on those other sites,but I feel more at home on Mastodon.

@IveyJanette @mekkaokereke "Oh,and Mastodon is international." This is one of the main reasons why I'm here and not on BS. Pre-Musk Twitter was already overwhelmingly American, and it just made non-US discourse a lot harder because Americans would reply-guy with assumptions that it was all about them. Fedi is a lot more culturally diverse when it comes to nationality. That said, I am happy to hear that the racism issue is being acknowledged more, it definitely was a very ugly blind spot here.

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Jürgen Hubert Oct 7

@ainmosni @IveyJanette @mekkaokereke

I would not say that. I made contact with some awesome people from outside Europe and North America on Old Twitter by deliberately seeking them out, such as an electrical engineer from Kenya or a folklore researcher from Pakistan. They were actually out there, though the algorithm favored people from your own cultural environment.

Mastodon, on the other hand, has a user base that is _heavily_ centered on Europe and North America. I have been wondering how to change that for quite some time.

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Rob Ricci

@juergen_hubert @ainmosni @IveyJanette @mekkaokereke

Here are some threads by @feralthoughts on the current issues with bringing in folks from the global south that I found very thoughtful and informative:

https://union.place/@feralthoughts/114030586394502623
https://union.place/@feralthoughts/114037639193329163

Feral Thoughts (@[email protected])

🧵 on how #Mastodon, and the rest of the #Fediverse, invisiblize the #GlobalSouth. I have argued a few times that for all practical purposes, the global south does not exist for Mastodon, and for the rest of the Fediverse. But many people I interact with do not quite understand how this works in practice. This series of posts is an effort to illustrate that mechanism. (continues)

The Union Place

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Ivey Janette McClelland Oct 7

@ricci @juergen_hubert @ainmosni @mekkaokereke @feralthoughts That's why I make sure to use hashtags like #blackmastodon #latinomastodon #lgbtqia etc.

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Feral Thoughts Oct 9

@ricci @juergen_hubert @ainmosni @IveyJanette

This one is not on the "global south invisibility" problem, but I wrote a short thread suggesting that an option to prevent hidden abusive racist pile-on in the replies would be to allow only new posts to select a "privacy level". Every single reply in a thread or sub-thread should mandatorily inherit the "privacy level" of the parent post.

In case you are interested:

https://union.place/@feralthoughts/115345717793512758