Gave a talk on the future of work, thinking: the issue here is that work is broken but higher ed can't find the words for this so instead we say "everything is awesome".
The gig economy, work on demand, uberisation, everything is awesome.
And the thing is, it's really not, not if you get sick or you want to raise kids or you have a tiny hope of owning a home or you want to pay off college debt.
None of these ways of working are awesome, except for the people who profit from your work.
So now I'm cranky, because if people withdraw from the economy like employers have withdrawn from the obligations they used to have towards workers, then the entire economy is not-awesomed.
Except for those 8 men who are worth more than 50% of the rest of us. They seem to be doing OK.
Thinking: it's actually pretty remarkable to think of a platform like this as a place to come and pull up a chair and be grumpy among friends.
This is stuff I'm not saying on Twitter.
So I do have an instinctual trust of something here. I wonder what that is?
I agree that this is the pattern, but that only happens because the forum tech is somehow treated as "oh it can't pick a side, what happens happens" (I.e. FB news team debacle)
As in, the engineers of these systems- Twitter, forums, Reddit, facebook- decided a-priori it "wasn't their job" to culture community, and build according to their needs.
They build gardens but refuse to put up fences & weed regularly, then wonder where all the pretty flowers went.
@twryst @kcsaff This question of how to culture community is really critical.
I keep thinking that mastodon's asset is in staying fairly small and low profile (@Tdorey has really educated me about small acts).
But you're also exactly right that it's about seeing how people are treated here. It sets a standard of care, across wildly different demographics.
@katebowles @Tdorey @kcsaff I agree- building community is beautifully complex and difficult. While I agree the low-profileness is critical now, I wonder-
considering that this medium follows rules that the devs decide, there exists potential to make the space itself block certain styles of toxicity. Imagine recognizing harassment by ML- currently, very feasible, tho bullying evolves- and silently putting the post behind a "this is likely harassment; view or report/block sender?" alert.
From what I understand, @Gargron has been active in blocking and deleting accounts/ instances involved in harassment.
I think a big part of the "humaness" of this site is the active involvement of humans in tending to it - including actively weeding and building walls.
I might be old fashioned, but I'm not yet ready to leave the 'garden-tending' to bots. ;)
@Tdorey @katebowles @kcsaff
Aye, I agree- he does, often quickly, do so. There have been lots of discussions in the patreon-only discord re: being intentional about what merits banning.
I also see hope here in the federated structure of mastodon/gnuSocial: due to communal differences in tolerance for toxicity, diff instances can have diff ban policies, and block other instances/users on other instances according to degree of (in) compatibility, yet still communicate w/ most.
Last week on Twitter I watched two protagonists go at each other. I follow both closely. Both are people of integrity. They got stuck into each other on the politics of race and Australia Day, all pretty messy here at the moment.
One was sure the other was insulting her at a deep level. Defensiveness became a thing. Stuff got said.
Virtuous beliefs deployed in combat can be really damaging. Hard to know when and what to ban when someone is hurting.
Oof, you just summarized most conversations I've seen on birdsite that actually were in good faith.
I also suspect the simple difference of having 500chars rather than 140 just affords so, !so! Much more nuance.
In fact, on the... 20th? I saw two ppl here end up in a disagreement about the appropriateness of criticizing property damage from protests & "riots". Both had relevant personal experience, yet still by the end a mind had been changed & positions updated.
Kate
Kacey 🌌
MOVED; formerly Twryst
Tanya **moved**