The curated feed, now run by a team of six moderators, is the meeting ground for hundreds of thousands of Black users on Bluesky. Is it ready to meet the moment?
Comparing the “racism” present on a federated service to that on a centralized one doesn’t make sense. You can say certain instances of the service fail to adequately moderate racism, but there are so many niche pockets of mastodon that most people are exposed to, and moderated by, completely different groups.
To make a slightly more nerdy analogy, it’s like someone saying “the windows desktop experience is better than Linux”. Well Linux doesn’t come with a desktop interface, so that statement doesn’t make sense. Which of the dozens of windowers/distros are you talking about? I’m sure the criticism is fair, but it doesn’t contain enough information to make any real claim.
So it’s not unreasonable for one person to say “I see racism on Mastodon” and many others to say “I never see it”, and not just because of the races of the people involved. “Mastodon” refers to a protocol, not the various ecosystems that use it.
The problem in many cases isn’t that they don’t literally see it but that they aren’t aware of what constitutes racism a lot of the time. That’s the primary issue here. That and they don’t listen to those that have to endure the harrasment, or don’t believe them.
The problem in many cases isn’t that they don’t literally see it but that they aren’t aware of what constitutes racism a lot of the time.
I agree with this part, “in many cases” sure,
That’s the primary issue here.
…but I think this a strong claim to make unless you have data to back it up.
I believe you and I are likely speaking from our own anecdotal experience on the platform, and for all we know, most people are in instance bubbles and are also speaking from their own perspectives.
If the “primary issue” is “why do some people not report seeing racism?” and the two possible explanations are either “they see it but are not aware” and “they actually never see it”, then unless we have accurate data from all those bubbles, we can’t make any claims about which is the real explanation.
But if you have data on this, that would change everything.
How can Mastodon fix this? How is this a Mastodon issue vs. any kind of social media?
Mastodon is open source, as well, right? It feels like someone should be able to fork it if they’re really ignoring useful features that would help people.
Yeah it’s not a mastodon issue any more than racist speech is an issue with our ability to vocalize as humans.
Similarly, the solution to people saying racist things isn’t for all speech to be policed by a central authority, it’s for societies themselves to learn to identify and reject racism.
Comparing the “racism” present on a federated service to that on a centralized one doesn’t make sense. You can say certain instances of the service fail to adequately moderate racism, but there are so many niche pockets of mastodon that most people are exposed to, and moderated by, completely different groups.
To make a slightly more nerdy analogy, it’s like someone saying “the windows desktop experience is better than Linux”. Well Linux doesn’t come with a desktop interface, so that statement doesn’t make sense. Which of the dozens of windowers/distros are you talking about? I’m sure the criticism is fair, but it doesn’t contain enough information to make any real claim.
So it’s not unreasonable for one person to say “I see racism on Mastodon” and many others to say “I never see it”, and not just because of the races of the people involved. “Mastodon” refers to a protocol, not the various ecosystems that use it.
The problem in many cases isn’t that they don’t literally see it but that they aren’t aware of what constitutes racism a lot of the time. That’s the primary issue here. That and they don’t listen to those that have to endure the harrasment, or don’t believe them.
I agree with this part, “in many cases” sure,
…but I think this a strong claim to make unless you have data to back it up.
I believe you and I are likely speaking from our own anecdotal experience on the platform, and for all we know, most people are in instance bubbles and are also speaking from their own perspectives.
If the “primary issue” is “why do some people not report seeing racism?” and the two possible explanations are either “they see it but are not aware” and “they actually never see it”, then unless we have accurate data from all those bubbles, we can’t make any claims about which is the real explanation.
But if you have data on this, that would change everything.
How can Mastodon fix this? How is this a Mastodon issue vs. any kind of social media?
Mastodon is open source, as well, right? It feels like someone should be able to fork it if they’re really ignoring useful features that would help people.
Yeah it’s not a mastodon issue any more than racist speech is an issue with our ability to vocalize as humans.
Similarly, the solution to people saying racist things isn’t for all speech to be policed by a central authority, it’s for societies themselves to learn to identify and reject racism.