• JCPhoenix@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    edit-2
    10 hours ago

    Same. And I am a racial minority (though not black, so that may color things…excuse the unintentional pun). That said, on Mastodon, I mainly interact with the people on my instance. And it’s small. There’s probably only a core group of like 50 active individuals, and I’m one of them. So there I’m not surprised I don’t see racism.

    Interestingly, I have the same experience on even the proprietary social media sites. I was on Twitter from 2009 to 2023. I can’t say I was ever served up far-right content by the algorithms. I’m still on YouTube; same experience. Same on Instagram. Same on Bluesky.

    I’m not trying to discount other people’s experiences, and I’ve seen the horrible tweets referenced in news articles and reddit comments and such. So I know it exists, but why am I not being served this content, while so many others apparently are? I mean, I’m OK with not getting far right wing content, lol. Leave me out of it! Makes my online life easier and more enjoyable. But it’s just odd.

    • BuelldozerA
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      8 hours ago

      YouTube…that reminds of a conversation I had here on Lemmy a while back. The subject of right wing political content on YouTube came up and I had the same “I don’t encounter that” comment that I just made in regards to Mastadon.

      After a bit of back and forth I realized that I don’t engage with political content of any type on YT so the algorithm doesn’t push it at me. It seems that YT doesn’t do a good job of classifying political content as to its lean. So once you start engaging with political content the algorithm starts suggesting all kinds of it.

      It’s the same with social justice and racial issues. I don’t engage with that kind of content on YT or Mastadon, don’t see it my feeds, and it’s not being pushed at me by the algorithm.

      I don’t know if that explains it completely but there has to be some reason(s) why some of us don’t see this stuff while other people see it all the time.