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I'm hearing some conflicting things about on-platform #Racism and I'm hoping to get a more comprehensive picture.
Black Users Only: Why do you still use Mastodon? Would you recommend it to a Black friend and if so, are there resources to help them safely navigate? If you're on your way out, would you feel comfortable sharing where, so I can share? Mostly folks exiting Bsky
Hesitant to ask for free labor and will not be offended if you choose to respond just with hashtags to follow.
Thank you.
The biggest problem is simply because there aren't enough Black people here. A related problem is that there is a kind of elitism that makes this unlikely to change. eg. "it's a good thing only nerds know how to use this place, wouldn't it be awful if the rabble showed up" type sentiments.
1/
The lack of a critical mass on Black people on the fediverse is related to other problems: there aren't a lot of people who work in trades, people who are poor, people who aren't university educated etc. What we have is a college town. And like many college towns it very tolerant and nice ... but there are also huge blind spots, and gaps.
And this isn't something that can be fixed by being "nice" or "mindful" or whatever. 2/
If we want open social media to be a meeting place for people of all class backgrounds, races, religions, and from all over the world that means it'd need to be "popular" ... it'd need to be something that could work for people without a desktop computer who mostly use the internet on their phone.
It'd need to be free for most users and easy to get started. Consider how threads and blueSky have outpaced the fedi mostly due to their focus on these use cases. 3/
Of course those corporate walled gardens also have help that we simply can't afford. They have the backing of media. Media has a lot of power in moving people to platforms.
The closest thing the fedi has to a corporate promotional face is "Mastodon" the app, and software development group. I don't feel that this group really cares about serving "the rabble" the vision of a 20-something posting about nail art from her home in the Bronx isn't part of their vision.
4/
A lot of people like that the fedi is a leafy suburb, a sleepy college town. They don't want to have the latest "tea" about rappers falling out on here. They can hardly tolerate people talking about sports.
And to me, this is just so short-sighted and sad. Twitter had many flaws but one of its strengths was that all kinds of people participated and this made it special. Twitter was better than the fedi at diversity. 5/
In the end I don't know what to do about it.
I hope that with time people will keep ending up here as walled gardens fail. A few more people showed up with the migration from X. Eventually, threads and BlueSky will fall apart because that's market model for such places. And people will move here.
Can we at least pretend like we want them to join us? That's all I ask.
6/6
@futurebird @VaylLarkinPoet IMO a lot of the problem is self-correcting, but takes time. A large portion of the new arrivals here are not HOA-minded, don't balk at people talking about sports or celebs or whatever they like. But active pushback against the Old Guard is slower.
Fortunately, every time capitalist social media fucks up, more folks migrate, and lots of them stick. Eventually the bad attitudes will be a cringe minority. But it'd be nice if we make that happen sooner vs later.
@futurebird @VaylLarkinPoet I know at times I've seen new fedizens poking fun at ourselves celebrating "OMG I saw sportsball on my timeline! that means we've made it!" with the sentiment being that this is a good thing.