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@mastodonmigration

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.

@ryanrandall @mastodonmigration which means it won’t happen.

@ErickaSimone @ryanrandall

But then why can this happen on other networks like Bluesky and not here?

@mastodonmigration @ErickaSimone @ryanrandall there's an important fact in what Mekka said: it DID happen here, those devs were ignored or told to get lost, and they now are developing at bsky, or off doing their own projects on activity pub ignoring Masto entirely.

This isn't a question of "how do we get Black devs", it's a question of "how do we get Black devs *back*". And that's going to be super hard, because many of those bridges are already burned.

@dave @ErickaSimone @ryanrandall

This does seem to be the crux of the problem. It comes up all the time. Mastodon has a reputation for being hostile to black people, and this is something that is very hard to reverse. Of course, it will be impossible to reverse if we don't try.

@mastodonmigration @dave @ErickaSimone @ryanrandall Can we define what we mean by "hostile to black people"?

Are we talking about micro-aggressions, or are we talking about outright exclusion/racism?

*edit: For an example of toxic discourse, I encourage you to read the rest of these threads below and my interaction with others here.

If you do not want to help me understand, then I don't want to talk to you either. Block me all you want. But I will never learn anything if that's what you do.

*edit2:

@starfall Yeah, I pretty much failed every single one of these guidelines tonight, and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I’m just bad at online discussion, apparently.

https://lifehacker.com/how-to-argue-on-the-internet-without-becoming-a-troll-5943083

@GuyDudeman (Taking other people off the list so their mentions don't get flooded.)

When I say "hostile", I mean all of the above! Mastodon's decentralization has counter-intuitive effects, after one is used to what happens on more centralized platforms.

For instance, there are a bunch of small, overtly racist / misogynist / etc instances that have amplified harassment campaigns against prominent Black people on here. If you're on a server with more proactive blocking, you'll never know about it, even though the targets certainly will if they're on a less actively-moderated instance.

For a lot more history, you might start by reading about Dr. Flowers' experience, one of many stories linked in https://privacy.thenexus.today/start-making-the-fediverse-less-toxic/ by @thenexusofprivacy

Thanks for the tag! And yes, it's both. Flowers and Mekka both talk about "HOA racism", the more casual stuff including micro-aggressions ... there are bunch of examples in my post.

In a lot of ways the hard-core harassment from bad instances is easier to deal with -- instance-level blocking has its downsides but is great for this use case. But there are other instances that have a pattern of racist behavior that aren't widely blocked.

@ryanrandall @GuyDudeman

@thenexusofprivacy @ryanrandall

"there are a bunch of small, overtly racist / misogynist / etc instances that have amplified harassment campaigns against prominent Black people on here."

Maybe that's it. I've only ever been on Mastodon.social and beige.party really, and haven't seen the kinds of attacks that you're talking about, probably because of good moderation.

So really it's more of a moderation problem than anything, I would suppose.

Because even in real life, there are racists, but they typically moderate themselves at the grocery stores, whereas online they can let their true feelings and opinions fly, without regard to seeing the other person as a person.

I appreciate the link. I'll give it a read.

@thenexusofprivacy @ryanrandall

I also want to say that we should absolutely be blocking whole instances if they're allowing even one problematic account on them. Make it a bigger punishment and I think there will be less tolerance and more moderation? Maybe?

In general, yes, instance blocking can help encourage better moderation. But it's complex: instance blocking cuts communication between everybody on both instances, so especially for larger instances a lot of people who aren't behaving badly pay the price. mastodon.social is an extreme example of this -- not particularly well moderated (which isn't the moderators' fault, it's Eugen who's made the decision not to put enough resources into moderation and still keep it as open sigup, but still) so the source of a fair number of problems, but still a big loss to connectivity if you defederate.

(Also I think it's critical not to view instance blocking as punishment, it's really about safety and asserting boundaries. But that's a digression.)

@GuyDudeman @ryanrandall

@thenexusofprivacy @ryanrandall

"especially for larger instances a lot of people who aren't behaving badly pay the price"

That would be the point. It would make those like me, who are unaware of these issues - aware of the issue straight away, and force the problem instances members and moderators to do something about it to fix the issue - prove that it's fixed or mitigated as best they can, and only then get re-federated.

@GuyDudeman I just reported a post on beige.party for racism. It's far from the worst example of racism I've seen but I'd say it was pretty blatant -- other people had already pointed it out but the person involved ignored it. Then again it's the kind of thing that many white people don't see as racist.

It sounds like you think that if mods don't act on it, the right next step is to call for a fediblock on beige.party. In practice, though, people on beige.party are likely to defend the person -- claiming that it wasn't intentional or whatever. Meanwhile others who have friends on beige.party who aren't saying racist things aren't going to know why their connections have been cut off, and if they find out why will generally think it's an overreaction. If mods haven't originally acted, the pressure on an issule like this is very unlikely to get them to change.

It would be great if that wasn't the case, but then again it would have been great if the person making the original problematic post had just listened to the original pushback and said "oh I get it", apologized, edited the post. But that didn't happen. Watch whiteness work.

@ryanrandall

@thenexusofprivacy @ryanrandall

Really? Which post was it? I'm curious.

Did anyone explain to the person why what they did was considered racist, and what steps they should take to mitigate it? Did they have a conversation about it?

Obviously a conversation should be the first step in this process.

@GuyDudeman so I've been watching this conversation for a while, and I have to say it is really difficult to not call what you're doing sealioning:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

You might not be doing this consciously, but that does not make it any better.

If you are being honest about wanting improve, the first step is to accept this is how it comes across. If you do want to improve, here's something I found immensely helpful as a white guy:
https://sceneonradio.org/seeing-white/

@thenexusofprivacy @ryanrandall

@rysiek @thenexusofprivacy @ryanrandall

Yeah, I've seen the sealioning thing before.

I think it's really disturbing how many people jump to the "he's just sealioning" conclusion.

It tells me that sealioning must be more prevalent than however often I encounter it.

>If you do want to improve, here's something I found immensely helpful as a white guy:
https://sceneonradio.org/seeing-white/

I'll check out that podcast, but I honestly do not need a history lesson, because I have actually dedicated my life to this cause for the past 30 years.

I am firmly on the anti-racist side of things. I'm not sure why everyone keeps assuming that I'm not.

@GuyDudeman okay, so let me get this straight:

1. you are "firmly on the anti-racist side of things"

2. you ask, repeatedly, what the problem is with the way you are engaging with people in this thread.

3. when you are provided with answers, you balk at them, either dismissing them outright, or saying you "don't need a history lesson"

> I'm not sure why everyone keeps assuming that I'm not.

Truly a mystery.

@thenexusofprivacy @ryanrandall

@rysiek @thenexusofprivacy @ryanrandall

>You keep asking how you can improve, and people keep telling you: stop sealioning.

So your answer is "shut up and don't ask questions"?

Honestly, people need to figure out how to be polite and have public discussions otherwise nobody will ever understand anyone else.

When people are ostracized for wanting to engage in public discussion, in public discussion forums, then what's the point of the public discussion forum?

@GuyDudeman no, my answer is: when multiple people politely tell you that your pattern of behavior is racist, the right thing to do is apologize and do some own research.

Anti-racism is not about making white dudes like us feel comfortable, but about making people who do not look like us not having to deal with racism. Conscious and unconscious.

Your behavior is indistinguishable from conscious racist sealioning. What you do with this information is up to you.

@thenexusofprivacy @ryanrandall