mekka okereke :verified:
Something else interesting:
ClearSky, the tool for inspecting blocks, list membership, etc, is built by a Black developer. 👍🏿
BlackSky, the tool and moderation community for Black ATProto users and apps, is built by a Black developer. 👍🏿
Black developers are building on Blue Sky.
Shout out to everyone who will read this, and instead of saying "How do we get them to build for Mastodon/Activity Pub?" Will froth at the mouth about fake federation and the inevitable corpo takeover.🤡
mekka okereke :verified:
Black developers have been trying to build for the fediverse. For years. And meet extreme resistance.
Do you know who they are? Do you know their names? Do you know which projects they tried to ship / have shipped?
This isn't about BlueSky, or corporate social media, or decentralization, or influencer culture, or big accounts, or wanting to replicate Twitter, or venture capital funding.
Kim Scheinberg
@mekkaokereke
"Shout out to everyone who will read this, and instead of saying "How do we get them to build for Mastodon/Activity Pub?" Will froth at the mouth about fake federation..."
Forgive me but, wouldn't anyone aware of the history be entitled AF if they asked, "Hey, I wonder if we can get them to build these tools for us?"
I don't feel entitled to ask anything of people who walked out of my life when I chased them away. I own my mistake and live with the consequences. It sucks, but...
Emelia 👸🏻
@mekkaokereke I'd love to get some of those people involved in the ActivityPub Trust & Safety Taskforce, but as I don't have strong relationships with these people I'm not sure how best to invite them, and am also cognisant that standards work is an entire thing, and can be very laborious, so I don't wish to expect that of anyone from a marginalised background.
I'm currently making sure to cite articles by black & brown authors when I know of a relevant article to a specific work item.
Taggart :donor:
@kims @mekkaokereke I don't at all want to speak for Mekka, but since I just wrote about this too, it's worth taking a moment to consider the mindset on Fedi that believes Bluesky is bad, but refuses to acknowledge any of Fedi's flaws. The idea that anyone who leaves is flawed and we're better off without them.
That's a fatal mistake, and it's being made constantly.
Mastodon Migration
So... "How do we get them to build for Mastodon/Activity Pub?"
Seriously, how do we?
Brian Hawthorne
@mastodonmigration @mekkaokereke Well, we could start by getting everyone to stop chasing them away.
Taggart :donor:
@ApostateEnglishman @kims @mekkaokereke
I usually don't do this, but the FUD around this company on Masto is ridiculous.
Shady,
I can't think of a single company that's been more forthcoming about their structure, funding sources, or intentions.
Billionaire-owned
Nope. Bluesky PBC is owned by Graber (estimated net worth $5M) and the Bluesky team.
VC-funded
Yes it is. If your position that all VC-funded companies are bad, well, that's a position you can take. It indemnifies a lot more than just Bsky.
data-hoovering
The ATProto data is public, as is their client, so you can see what, if anything, they're tracking.
corporate behemoth
It's 20 people.
Look you don't have to like Bluesky, but don't just make stuff up.
The Sleight Doctor 🃏
@mttaggart @kims @mekkaokereke In terms of its UX the fedi does have a way to go.
But Bsky is "bad" 'cos it's a shady, billionaire-owned, VC-funded, data-hoovering corporate behemoth just waiting for its userbase to grow enough - and be entrenched and captive enough - for the next phase of the enshitification cycle.
Even if by every objective measure Bsky was the best social media platform ever, some would still rather throw all their tech in a compactor and go live in a ditch, than feed it. 🤷♂️
Ryan for a permanent ceasefire
It'll happen when this place becomes attractive enough for Black folks that there's a legit, thriving Black community here.
Which, in part, means making the people who greet Black folks with overt and/or barely-disguised hostility on here extremely unwelcome.
It means repeatedly telling lots of racists "we don't do that here" and blocking them. It means telling their instance moderators that they need to do better, and/or blocking those entire instances until they get their acts together.
We need to make this network feel less like a sundown town, where Black people are barely tolerated—and when they are, only to the extent they make the economy function, on "our" terms.
In other words, the people who are willing to overlook anti-Blackness on the Fedi need to finally start putting in the everyday work of improving the culture.
Ericka Simone
@ryanrandall @mastodonmigration which means it won’t happen.
Taggart :donor:
@vrruiz @kims @mekkaokereke @ecosdelfuturo Perhaps a fork run by an organization that has a paid Trust and Safety team for moderation, with clear terms and conditions. Maybe even a legal entity that can be sued for breach of contract to address harms.
I'm being cheeky, but if you want to fix Fedi, professionalize it.
Víctor R. Ruiz
@mttaggart @kims @mekkaokereke @ecosdelfuturo It’s pretty obvious to me that the Fediverse needs a more welcoming alternative. Maybe a Mastodon fork with a different set of developers that are more open to contributions (OpenOffice vs LibreOffice comes to my mind). But, of course, who has the time and resources to do that is the major issue.
Zack Cerza
@mekkaokereke BlueSky is a really fun place to be, and to me it's clear BlackSky is a large part of the reason. Part of why BlackSky is able to work so well is that the community is actually able to defend itself thanks to the agency granted by the platform's composable moderation features.
Not only does Mastodon not have similar features, it seems like ActivityPub itself is an obstacle to adding them. And the community here can be so damn condescending to people who have any feedback.
Robert Thau
@mttaggart @ApostateEnglishman @kims @mekkaokereke It's not owned *entirely* by Graber and the team -- the VCs (more than one firm) did buy a chunk of it, and it's not publicly disclosed how much. The VCs also got some input into corporate governance -- the public part is their board seat. And at this point, Bluesky has no revenue stream, and will have to give up more control if they don't get one soon.
So it's probably not VC controlled right now, but some concern for the future is reasonable.
mekka okereke :verified:
@rst @mttaggart @ApostateEnglishman @kims
👨🏿Get out of the river! There's a crocodile behind you!
👨🏼I know! But outside of the river is the Bengal forest! That's where tigers live! Tigers are killers!
👨🏿True, but there are no tigers on the banks of the river, but there's a crocodile biting your leg right now!
👨🏼Yes! And it's gator rolling! *gurgle!* *splutter!* But, I don't trust Tiger forests! *gurgle!*
👨🏿OK, stay in the river! But at least climb into a boat?
👨🏼You just want forest on water!
mekka okereke :verified:
@rst @mttaggart @ApostateEnglishman @kims
The worst thing that could happen to BlueSky if nazis buy it in the future (nazi trolls run you off), is the present day reality on Mastodon for many Black users.🤷🏿♂️
Decentralization is not an end goal in and of itself. It's a means to an end: ownership over one's own data and experience, supposedly leading to a better overall social media experience, and the option to move if things change.
Mina
It makes me terribly sad that we as a community failed so badly in making the Fedi an all inclusive space.
However, I wouldn't put too much blame on technology, when it comes to find the reasons why so many Black people didn't find this platform welcoming, or even outright hostile.
I reckon, people make the difference.
This is truly sad, as I believe that a self organised network is intrinsically a better choice than corporate ones, even if the latter seem friendly.
Timo
@zack @mekkaokereke I'm an outsider to this argument, as mastodon is my fifth social media stop since the usenet days, as they all disappeared from management malfeasance. What I'm seeing is the naggy elitism of the BlueSky people makes me never want to go there.
mekka okereke :verified:
🤔 "Naggy elitism?"
There's a weird thing where the poorest, least privileged, least access to higher education people are Black. But the Blackest places, and the places least hostile to Black people, are framed as elitist?
In what way is BlueSky elite? For what definition of elitism?
Elite is exclusive. More inclusive places are by definition, less exclusive, and less elite.
I 100% respect your decision to not go to BlueSky.👍🏿 But I don't think "elitism" is the word.
mekka okereke :verified:
Can you share one of these elitism posts?
I'm trying to figure out if it's me saying things like "We should have starter packs on Mastodon! And composable moderation too!" or something else.
Is that the definition of elitism? Or is it something else?
Timo
@mekkaokereke @zack Elitism is a group or place that claims to be better than everyone else. The only thing I know about BlueSky is the various people coming over to Mastodon saying 'look what we have, you need to do better if you want to be like us', in the same way rich conservatives talk to the rest of us. It's become worse since the 'influencers' moved to BS from Twitter.
Arena Cops 🇺🇦✌
@timo21 @mekkaokereke @zack Bluesky is Musk with Jack's beard. It's not a social medium, but only a replacement drug for twitter intoxication, co-founded by the guy, who sold twitter to the major sponsor of Trump, Eloon Musk.
mekka okereke :verified:
Jack didn't found BlueSky. It was founded by Jay Graber. Jack was an investor and advisor, and has since disengaged.
Robert Thau
@mekkaokereke @mttaggart @ApostateEnglishman @kims Hey, I'm more on Bluesky right now than I am here, and hopeful for the future. But Bluesky corporate has some obstacles ahead of them. I hope they'll be manageable (and the team there is doing an amazing job thus far), but I still get nervous seeing claims that they don't.
mekka okereke :verified:
@rst @mttaggart @ApostateEnglishman @kims
Who claimed that they don't? Not me.
I'm specifically saying that Mastodon is bad today.
Taggart :donor:
@mousey @vrruiz @kims @mekkaokereke @ecosdelfuturo I personally could not care less about the frontend app. I don't really care about the underlying protocol either, except insofar as it is accessible to developers, which uhhhh ActivityPub needs some work.
In this particular case, the point I was making, albeit cheekily, was about how no matter how beautiful and polychromous your rainbow of apps, if they are all moderated by volunteers, you're not escaping a core problem of the ecosystem. Yes there are some non-profit initiatives to try to address this, but so far very little progress has been made.
Internet Rando
@mttaggart @vrruiz @kims @mekkaokereke @ecosdelfuturo
It doesn't have to be a Mastodon fork either, right?
Pleroma
Misskey
Friendica
pixelfed
loops
PeerTube
hell, even nextcloud
There's a ton of ways to implement ActivityPub, trying to reinvent Twitter is kinda tunnel vision, no?
Consider, instances themselves are less important than being able to *connect* with people. Everyone doesn't *need* to be on the same instance. Too much emphasis on One True Platform™ is how we got in this mess.
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