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All of the posts on Mastodon about how the Blue Sky team was silly for releasing a social media network in 2023 without blocking and moderation, even in private beta, and that the Blue Sky team should have known what would happen...
...are being written on Mastodon: a social media platform that in 2023, still doesn't take into account that Black users face a disproportionate amount of very specific types of abuse, and is missing key features that would make the Black population safer. 
It really is the social media equivalent of white folks telling Black folks that Boston is less racist than the South, and completely ignoring any Black folk that live in Boston or anywhere else in the US trying to talk about what their real, lived, experiences have been.
Many Mastodon users are just completely convinced of the superiority of their moderation philosophy, and they are as happy to ignore the few Black Fedi users in 2023 as they were in 2017.
I'm not interested in having Fedi 'splained to me. I'm just saying why more Black folk are on BlueSky:
1. It should be almost impossible for a new, non-technical user to onboard onto the Fediverse and accidentally join a server where they will receive racist death threats.
2. It should not be possible for racists to reply to a Black user's post with hateful gore images, without other users on the server knowing it.
3. It should be easy for a new admin to default into a safe, general denylist.
This isn't an exhaustive list, but these 3 are fairly straightforward ones. And they're not new. You can seriously find Black users asking for these going back to 2017.
Even trying to discuss these often results in:
* You just don't know how the Fediverse works!
* Shared deny lists can be abused, so let's never have them!
* You just love Twitter! You want quote tweets! You want Elon to hurt you again!
So Black Fediverse users tend to self-select into one of a few buckets:
1) Kinda Stubborn (AKA, this isn't my 1st racism): Willing to stay until things improve. People like me, @BlackAzizAnansi etc.
2) Super Stubborn (AKA, I will change you!): Willing to stay and fight the tide of the whole Fediverse for as long as it takes to fix things. @Are0h etc.
3) Normal People (AKA, life is too short): They just leave the Fediverse. This is most Black folk.
The "3s" are going from Twitter to BlueSky.
If you take one thing from my little thread here it's this: Black people don't leave the fediverse because of openly racist people.
Just like Black people don't leave Boston or San Francisco because of the openly racist people. There are openly racist people everywhere.
Black people leave the fediverse, Boston, and San Francisco, because of the behavior of the supposed "non-racist" people. The combination of extreme racism, and denial of its existence, is too much.
@mekkaokereke @BlackAzizAnansi @Are0h But is Blue Sky any better? I mean, a lot of folks are sticking with Twitter, which sure as hell isn't better moderation-wise than Mastodon.
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io@msbellows @BlackAzizAnansi @Are0h
There's better in theory, and there's better in lived reality.
1 in 5 Black US citizens was a daily active Twitter user. Most of them used Twitter for years, and never received a reply containing images of burned Black bodies with comments like "I wish we could lynch N-words again!" Some of the Black folk heading from Twitter did see those replies, tried to report them, were ignored, and left Mastodon. Those users tried BlueSky and they haven't been abused.
@mekkaokereke @msbellows @BlackAzizAnansi @Are0h@ubiqueros.com JFC!
@mekkaokereke @msbellows @BlackAzizAnansi @Are0h
I was one of those who have had to face these KKK cruds.
Thankfully, I'm the admin and owner of my instance, hosted through my own private domain, and a kind follower was able to guide me to using blocklists of domains where many of the racists were tooting from. Implemented the list; the racists disappeared. Any new ones get blocked/blacklisted on sight.
It's all about the admin of the instance & his/her commitment to erasing racist content.
@mekkaokereke @msbellows @BlackAzizAnansi @Are0h
I'd say that the main issue with Mastodon right now is that admins and mods of instances are so busy puffing up the Fediverse as the Great Mecca against the MusKKKyBird that they tend to overlook or wave off the fact that not everyone is as tech savvy as they; and that any instance is only as good as its admin and mods are in doing due diligence to combat racist/homophobic/transphobic/antisemitic/aggressively harassing speech.
@mekkaokereke @msbellows @BlackAzizAnansi @Are0h
Given all that, it's perfectly understandable that Black Twitter users who came here to escape MusKKKrat, yet ended up getting spammed with as bad if not worse racist harassment, and mods/admin unwilling to effectively confront and eliminate it because "WHY DO YOU HATE FREE SPEECH??"...
...are packing up and bailing for the comfort zone of Bluesky, which at least has the old features of pre-MusKKK Twitter but without the bigotry.
@AnthonyJK @mekkaokereke @msbellows @BlackAzizAnansi @Are0h yah but you have to have an invite to join. But true mastodon is not user friendly
@AnthonyJK @msbellows @BlackAzizAnansi @Are0h
Wouldn't your life have been better if you could have just selected a moderation provider at setup time?
Imagine if one of the default providers was called "FediBlock," and it's type was "Server level denyList" and you could see which other instances opted-in to using this (most of them), and it had a short description, and an option to keep it updated.
We could have this. Yes there are trade-offs with everything.
@mekkaokereke @msbellows @BlackAzizAnansi @Are0h
But, of course.
My first outreach through Masto was through Mastodon.social, like most others (although I also had an account through Switter until it got shut down because the domain owner wouldn't defend sex workers' right to defend themselves). It was alright, but I ultimately went to self-hosting through my own domain and Masto.host because I wanted the freedom of full ownership and control. Best $19/month investment I ever did.
@mekkaokereke @msbellows @BlackAzizAnansi @Are0h
The blessing of the Fediverse is its open source decentralization; it doesn't allow one billionaire or one corporation to move in, buy everything out, and impose his own personal right-wing or pro-corporate biases and myopia on everyone else.
@mekkaokereke @msbellows @BlackAzizAnansi @Are0h
The biggest curse of the Fediverse, OTOH, is its....decentralization, because it puts the onus of controlling content on individual instances and moderators, and it's all too easy for bigots and racists to slip through the cracks and do their terrorism if instance admins don't do proper diligence or simply don't care.
@mekkaokereke @msbellows @BlackAzizAnansi @Are0h
The beauty of centralized systems is that there are fewer bosses and hurdles to go through, and one leader/admin/mod from above can press the switches, or command someone below them to do so, to mitigate or eliminate potential issues.
Fighting one instance allowing for racist harassment is one thing; having to play Whack-A-Nazi because they can work through multiple instances if admins allow for it, is something else altogether.
@Are0h @mekkaokereke @msbellows
Ummmm....this is about Mastodon instances and Black tooters having to deal with racist harassment here, not about the obvious influx of bigotry over at Twitter since MusKKKrat took over. I am well aware of Twitter bigotry and MusKKKrat's exploitation of it f as a long-time user of Twitter myself; it was one of the main reasons I gravitated to Masto to begin with.
@AnthonyJK@mastodon.redgarterclub.com @mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io @msbellows@c.im In the context of the merits of centralization over decentralization.
The article provided clarifies that the issue plaguing decentralized services is virtually the same as centralized services, especially when Musk took over.
The problem has never been one technology over another.
@Are0h @mekkaokereke @msbellows
Are you saying that Twitter was a decentralized service? Even before Musk took over, it was very much centralized, with a professional staff of moderators, arbitrators, and auditors to regulate the flow of content.
And that was before MusKKKrat took over and fired everyone and imposed his own autocratic AltRight regime for private profit.
@AnthonyJK@mastodon.redgarterclub.com @mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io @msbellows@c.im It's very clear I am not saying Twitter is a decentralized service.
What I am saying is the discussion of why centralized services are better than decentralized is moot because the core issue is not about the technology.
And it never was.
@Are0h @AnthonyJK @mekkaokereke @msbellows To me it seems like the centralization meant that specifically one organization could grow to a size that it would attract legislative attention. I doubt that Twitter would ever have worked on moderation if there was no legal incentive to do so. Morality makes little money. Mastodon by design is, or has to be, motivated by a purely moral incentive of its admins and ultimately all of its users…
@Are0h @mekkaokereke @msbellows
Also, my example wasn't intended to pitch any advantage of centralized systems over decentralized.
Personally, I believe that the real issue is that social media is so privatized and unregulated that right-wing (or even neoliberal) billionaires can far too easily take over mass systems and gut them to fit their ideological mindset for personal profits.
Social media really should be a public utility, regulated through democratic and egalitarian principles.
@AnthonyJK@mastodon.redgarterclub.com @mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io @msbellows@c.im I can accept that is the intent of what you are saying, but that point gets lost when it's presented as the 'beauty' of centralized systems versus the 'curse' of decentralized systems.
I'm not sure I would agree with the nationalization of social media in the American context, but I can understand one would feel that way after seeing what's been happening over the last decade or so.
But admittedly, I'm pretty distrustful of the US government anyway.
@AnthonyJK@mastodon.redgarterclub.com @mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io @msbellows@c.im @BlackAzizAnansi@mas.to And if we're going to talk about the merits of decentralization versus not, we cannot ignore the single issue that plagues both, and that is cultural competency around moderation.
The lack of attention to this particular issue makes the convo about which format is better irrelevant.
@Are0h @mekkaokereke @msbellows
I do not disagree on that at all.
A bigoted moderator or admin of any social media site or app, or simply a mod/admin who simply blows off those who are victims/targets of cultural harassment and retaliation, can very easily destroy the cohesiveness of any such venue.
And yeah, the overall system of White Supremacy, capitalism and Puritanism that underlies the attitudes and institutions that feed into these assaults must be addressed, confronted and overcome.
@AnthonyJK @mekkaokereke @msbellows @BlackAzizAnansi @Are0h Hmmm... _are_ there curated and frequently updated block lists that get rid of the more blatantly racist instances, and which admins can easily import or even subscribe to?
@juergen_hubert @mekkaokereke @msbellows @BlackAzizAnansi @Are0h
Here's the one that I use (h/t @oliphant):
https://codeberg.org/oliphant/blocklists/src/branch/main/blocklists/tier0.csv
It was easy to download and then merge into my own blocklist via my admin interface.
@oliphant also has a page of listings of other progressive blocklists:
https://writer.oliphant.social/oliphant/the-oliphant-social-blocklist
And there's also his FediBlockHole project, which allows for creation and merging of multiple blocklists:
@mekkaokereke they haven't been abused, or they haven't been abused *yet*?
It's fairly easy to maintain a low baseline level of abuse on a brand new service that's invite-only. But that's obviously not the intended steady state for Bluesky. Is there any evidence that in the steady state they would actually have an improved abuse situation over Fedi?
And by "steady state" I mean "when 8chan and kiwifarms users get Bluesky access", for example.
This reply is an example of what I mean when I say that Mastodon users talk at, but don't listen to, Black users. I've answered all of these questions multiple times today.
Just clicking through this thread and reading would give my answers to these questions (again). Or going to "posts and replies" and reading.
But most folks won't do that. They are convinced that Mastodon moderation is better. They won't seriously consider adopting any of the specific features Black folk ask for.
@mekkaokereke @msbellows @BlackAzizAnansi @Are0h
Black people come here and see:
1) There aren’t a lot of Black people.
2) There are a lot of white people going on and on about how “nice” it is.
I can’t blame you for wondering if what we think is so nice is the fact that you’re not here.
Then when it’s not nice and you experience open racist hostility, people jump in to deny, deflect, minimize.
It’s frustrating to watch this conversation keep going in circles…
@mekkaokereke @msbellows @BlackAzizAnansi @Are0h
And part of what’s frustrating about it is that my own experience here really has been overwhelmingly positive. I never see the terrible stuff directly. And I want more people—and more different kinds of people—to be able to enjoy it like I do.
But because of the dynamic I mentioned above, for me to even say I like it here can be construed as unwelcoming, tone-policing etc. I wish I knew the solution!
@mcmullin @mekkaokereke @msbellows @BlackAzizAnansi @Are0h
Some people are more concerned with protecting the feelings of fascists than the lives of their victims.
This is a very basic character issue.
@mekkaokereke @msbellows @BlackAzizAnansi @Are0h Huh.
I regularly saw openly white supremacist replies on Twitter. Not @ me directly, but sometimes targeting my ethnicity. I haven't had this experience on Mastodon.
Thank you for pointing out that Black people are having the opposite experience — I'd never know unless someone told me. I don't know what to make of the discrepancy between my experience and theirs, but it's interesting.
The explanation is literally toot #3 in the thread that you are replying to. If for some reason you can't see it, go to @mekkaokereke pinned threads and read up.
@fivetonsflax Also, I should not have written "literally," as that's unnecessarily dickish, so I apologize.
@tacertain Yeah, choice of instance is probably a lot of this. Thanks.
(I’d probably have ended up on a huge “default” instance if they hadn’t been so backed up the day I joined.)