I'd be a millionaire if I got a coin every time I heard one more "there is no alternative social media, where should we go?" comment. Now especially after the unsurprising LinkedIn/Microsoft spying news.
The funniest thing is that when we suggest Fediverse alternatives, people lose interest as soon as they've asked.
@rolle I spend a lot of time on BlueSky & I see 2 typical reactions:
POC often say "Nope too much crypto-racism". I was here in 2022 & saw how a lot of them were aggressively driven away after migrating from Twitter, so I get that.
White middle class intellectual people OTOH respond with derision. Basically, fedi is uncool. If there are reasons they're varied, but the one constant is that it's uncool, for very white middle class American jr high school values of 'uncool.'
@toothpaste_sandwich @rolle
I'm gonna punt on the first question because they usually just say 'racism.' 'Crypto-racism' was my term.
Examples of how:
Fedi c.2022 was VEHEMENTLY opposed to quote-posting. Fedi culture viewed quote-posting as inherently bad, because it could be used to call in brigades. Black folks on Twitter did a LOT of quote-posting as a form of positive callout - 'here's this thing & here's why you should care about / celebrate it.' ...
@toothpaste_sandwich @rolle
... As a result, there was a lot of aggressive blocking & defederating that was disproportionately directed at black people. Whole servers where black folks had tried to establish community got defederated.
Then there were communications styles. American & African black people are often much more direct in communication style, & that was often received badly. People got brigaded in the more subtle ways that fedi culture favored over quote-posting.
Roni Rolle Laukkarinen
FeralRobots
toothpaste_sandwich