Conversation

@lrhodes@merveilles.town No question that there was active hostility in quite a few cases (some of which were high-profile enough that they have a big impact on the toxicity of the brand) but only a few of the Black people I know who checked it out and decided not to stay describe that as their primary reason. Black people in the US are used to being met with hostility and it's everywhere -- which isn't to excuse it by any means, it just creates a dynamic where that by itself is only one the factors.

Some of the other aspects of it not being welcoming that I've heard from multiple people include: the lack of a support network (which @damon suggests may be the bigger factor), the lack of Black faces (which I just saw cited again), requests to CW posts about every day experiences (a good example of people communicating norms -- although these norms were have been applied in racist ways since 2017), the relatively-narrow focus of discussion, the repeated suggestions that the answer to racism here was to have Black-led instances, the lack of QTs and paucity of GIFs ... and Mastodon's apparent disinterest in changing any of this.

More positively there is a cohort who checked it out and decided to stay -- I think @mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io described them as the "Somewhat Stubborn" folks who have seen this rodeo before -- which is a good thing. Less positively though it's still not clear whether enough of Mastodon is interested in changing these dynamics for things to change. Time will tell.

EDIT: fixed a typo, which naturally I didn't notice until after it had been boosted. Oops.