Jordi (Flopsome Opossum)
I see people on here still defending their use of Twitter.
Stop frequenting the Nazi bar, especially when the majority of patrons want you to die.
How long do you think it's gonna be before they doxx you?
I don't want to shame anyone but can we please be serious about the Nazi problem?
mekka okereke :verified:
As I've said before:
* At peak, 20% of Twitter daily active users were Black.
* The Nazi experience is *worse* on the Fediverse than Twitter. Much worse. It's not even close.
Many Fediverse users want people to "stop using Twitter," more than they want to make Fediverse "welcoming to all people."
People are still on Twitter not because of Elon, or their own personal failings. They're still there (for now) because of our failure to create a better Fedi.
Yes, so far I've failed too. 🤷🏿♂️
mekka okereke :verified:
Bigger? Not necessarily.
Better organized? Yes.
But yes, routing users away from unsafe instances is key.
IMHO the best experience on Fedi from a safety and inclusion perspective, is to be on a small to medium sized instance, with an up to date denylist, and an active and engaged moderation team that is trained to handle transphobia and anti-Blackness. Those aren't the only issues, but knowledge of those 2 seems to correlate well with knowledge of the others.🤷🏿♂️
Tim Bray
@mekkaokereke @staidwinnow @Jorsh
Hey, when you say the Nazi experience is bad here on the Fedi, are the bigger & better-organized servers managing to avoid that? I.e. is the problem at least partly one of routing people away from lousy instances?
mekka okereke :verified:
@staidwinnow @Jorsh
Yep. There was controversy over Eugen's (correct!) decision a few months ago to route all new joinmastodon.org users, to mastodon.social. Because the experience of new users varies wildly based on which instance they join. If they join a poorly moderated instance the experience is much worse than on Twitter
95% of moderation:
1) Block "the worst of the worst." 80%
2) Have an active and engaged moderation team. 10%
3) Have at least a basic understanding of anti-Blackness. 5%
Staid Winnow
"The Nazi experience is *worse* on the Fediverse than Twitter. Much worse. It's not even close."
Either the mods on my instance have done a bang-up job, or my experience here is far too limited to have even gotten a whiff of this. I *might* have encountered one possible Nazi in the last several months.
Circa 2017, was almost a daily experience on Twitter for me.
mekka okereke :verified:
@zachnfine @JamesWidman @Sablebadger @staidwinnow @Jorsh
From your screenshot above, and the scenario I listed below, imagine if:
1) the racist user is on "Nazis dot social." They have 5000 followers.
2) the Black user is on "Good people dot social"
3) the nazi replies "Followers only."
The scenario:
https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/111010421955145872
None of the good people would see the gore images, or the subsequent pile-on.
Zach Fine
@JamesWidman @Sablebadger @mekkaokereke @staidwinnow @Jorsh I definitely believe there’s plenty happening in the site that is out of sight, I’m just trying to figure out the mechanism that’s hiding it and what I can do about it.
Zach Fine
@JamesWidman @Sablebadger @mekkaokereke @staidwinnow @Jorsh I’m trying to wrap my head around the reply visibility issue — I see replies to Mr. Okereke’s original post, but am I only seeing a subset of them. Is it that there are always a bunch of racist replies but they come from instances blocked by the instance that hosts my account? Or the visibility setting that people are using for racist replies hides them from everyone but the original poster?
James Widman
@Sablebadger @mekkaokereke @staidwinnow @Jorsh
@Sablebadger Yes, the racism is definitely there and has always been there, but white-people-who-say-they-don't-see-racism have also always been there (for hundreds of years).
the point in earlier posts is: because fediverse *software* makes many reply-posts literally invisible, there are now many instances of racism that we are truly unable to see.
Sablebadger
@JamesWidman @mekkaokereke @staidwinnow @Jorsh any white folks (of which I am one) who says that they don't see racism is definitely looking in another direction. Because it's definitely there.
James Widman
@mekkaokereke @staidwinnow @Jorsh oh my god...
so, that thing where white people say, "i don't see racism"...
that's *literally true* on fedi*, even though it's actually there, and in the mentions of black fedi users.
[*] to what extent i don't know yet
mekka okereke :verified:
Also, reply visibility means that you won't even see most of the anti-Black racism on the Fediverse. 🤷🏿♂️
mekka okereke :verified:
"Your #Fediverse experience can be whatever you want it to be." Unfortunately, no it can't yet. I want it to be free of racist threats.🙂
"No algorithm, no ads, no promotion." Chronological is an algorithm. "Please donate to my server!" is an ad and a promotion. It's just not a targeted ad, and it's for a cause that I like.
"You are in full control of your feed." No, we're not.
"Heck, you can even start your own community with a new instance." Separate but equal Fedi?
Luís de Sousa
@mekkaokereke @Jorsh Sad and puzzled to read this. Your #Fediverse experience can be whatever you want it to be. No algorithm, no ads, no promotion. You are in full control of your feed. Heck, you can even start your own community with a new instance.
Besides, any #Fediverse instance is as liable for breaking the law as any commercial #SocialMedia.
I myself keep accounts in commercial sites for professional reasons. But the experience here is so much more focused and meaningful.
mekka okereke :verified:
I don't just want a bunch of Black instances where Black people are safe. Black instances are great and I love them, but that's only half of the solution. That's like telling Ruby Bridges that she'll be safe as long as she stays in the Black school on the Black side of town.
Instead, I want any new admin that creates a small community like "Bike Atlanta," or "Geologists dot social," to be able to welcome users of all backgrounds without being inundated by racist trolls.
Mark Kraft
@mekkaokereke @luis_de_sousa @Jorsh I used to oversee the abuse dept of LiveJournal, back in their early, open source days. None of this surprises me. At all. We had problems with abuse being targeted, piled on, then deleted before admins could tackle it. Thankfully, there were screenshots. We had to change how things worked under the hood repeatedly to be able to professionally do our jobs.
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