Eubie Drew (QOTO 🦣) @EubieDrew@qoto.org

Hi ppl (especially white ppl), sorry to call your attention again, but there's currently a lot of infighting here about a very particular topic:

Black people posting their (obviously bad) experiences with racism and not CW'ing them. Well, we SHOULD allow them to do that and here's why:

You first learned that the rule was to CW racism. Here's some news: That was the simple version. The full version is a little more complicated.

The thing about CWs is that they were created with vulnerable / marginalized communities in mind.

CWs help (some) autistic / neurodivergent folks avoid eye contact
CWs help Black ppl avoid racist content
CWs help people with eating disorders avoid food content
CWs help people who experienced school shootings avoid talk about school shootings

In other words, CWs were designed to protect marginalized communities from oppressive content.

That's the whole point.

The problem is when white people (even those belonging to one marginalized community) start policing Black people (a VERY marginalized community) about using content warnings.

Yes, rules were written for a reason, but unfortunately people put the rules in a pedestal and forget about the reason. (Don't confuse the Letter of the Law with the Spirit of the Law)

So what happens with racism is that it has practically become part of the daily life of Black people. Then they come here to vent about their problems, and suddenly they're harassed by racists (not necessarily Nazis, but your average white folks who are too full of themselves to notice when they're being racist - and unfortunately there's too many in here).

So they complain that there's racism in here.

Now imagine the ridiculousness of this.

The post: "Guys I was just harassed by white folks on here what's going on with all the racist bullshit?"

The replies (in droves):

"Please CW your shit don't you know the rules in here?"
"Hey, don't you read the rules? All racism content must be CW'd!"
"If you don't like our culture, find another server."
"CWs were created for a reason, you are warned."

... and so on, and on, and on, and on.

(and then you wonder why #BlackMastodon instances defederate from everyone)

And unfortunately because the language is too similar to what we've been doing for several days to white folks, we don't notice how racist this is when done to Black folks.

This is the place supposed to be welcoming for all, and our CW absolutism is turning it into a nightmare for Black people.

Add to that:

"Not all white people" (remember "not all men"?)
"I don't see racism in here"
"Have you tried using the block button?"
"You're exaggerating / overreacting"
"Oh we're so sorry that's awful in the name of everyone here" (this one is well intentioned but does absolutely nothing to solve the problem and gets tiring after the 10,000th time)

To summarize:

1) No, the Fediverse is NOT free from racism and we all need to work on that. And yes, casual racsm is a thing.

2) Racism can take many forms, and using CWs as an excuse to harass Black people is one of them and it happens A LOT.

3) Never, EVER tell a Black person that you don't see racism in your timeline or your server (have you ever taken sensitivity courses in your college?)

4) Black and Indigenous People of color, as well as other marginalized communities, ARE INDEED allowed to talk about racism and/or their personal experiences with oppression without Content Warnings, and ONLY members of the same marginalized community have the right to call them out on not using CWs. Are you part of that community? No? Suck it up.

If you're white (or otherwise non-Black but your personal experiences with racism are not as bad as the "offending" post), then no, you personally do NOT have the right to police Black people's posts.

See, when a BIPOC is talking in a convention about racism, you don't have permission to grab their microphone and say "Excuse me, but...". Do your part and don't add fuel to the fire.

5) If a particular disturbing experience of oppression told by a marginalized folk upsets you, feel free to temporarily mute. Don't like the reality you're living in as a privileged person who has never experienced racial oppression in their own flesh? Then DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT instead of just burying your head in the sand. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

(And if you're offended by "Critical race theory" and think "the wokes" are out there to brainwash your kids making them feel guilty for being white or something, then YOU ARE THE PROBLEM and are in serious need of a dose of reality.)

6) Black folks are constantly harassed by racists in here, take that in mind when taking to them. Don't judge oppressed people for not being polite enough so you could "help them". Just listen to yourself.

7) Just because you belong to a marginalized community does NOT give you an excuse to oppress a different marginalized community. Autists can be racist, white trans folk can be racist, you get the point. DO NOT use your pride flag as a license to be an ass. Don't believe me? Look up "intersectionality". It'll blow your mind.

8) If a Black person tells you that something someone (especially a friend of yours) did is racism, IT IS RACISM. Period. Don't excuse the other person, don't tell them they're misinterpreting things, just... just don't. No questions. Just SHUT. UP. AND. LISTEN. When in doubt, apologize.

9) For the love of everything holy, if a BIPOC posts something and says "only BIPOC people can reply", if you're white, DO NOT REPLY! (double facepalm)

Racism, anti-Blackness in particular, is something that this place is not exempt of. As I said, casual racism is too common in here, and unfortunately it's not very visible to white folks because they're not the targets.

Everybody needs to cooperate.

Thank you.

(EDIT: Removed a couple of statements that were offending to non-black people who were also racially oppressed; that was not the intent of my post and I apologize)

#psa #antiBlackness #racism #onHere

One habit of white supremacy is the ingrained belief that our opinions are always welcome, and that we should speak up anytime we have an urge to. We tend to assume this is a universal law of humanity, but in fact it's a white privilege. Oftentimes, the best thing to do is to resist the urge to speak up and instead listen to People of Color and boost their voices. Make a conscious effort to make this a new habit to replace the old (white supremacist) habit. We can learn so much this way!

New thing I learned about #Mastodon today: you can't change your #username after you've joined a server. (at least, not directly).

Those of us migrating from #Twitter (like me) should read this article. I've been here a few days, and have already come to the realization that #Mastodon is an entirely different ecosystem. The worst we can do is treat it as Twitter 2.0.

This is a special community worth preserving. Some of the features that might strike the Twitter user as archaic were designed purposely to protect people over here. Let's try to respect the existing culture, not change it. 👇

https://www.hughrundle.net/home-invasion/

@WalterShaub @Teri_Kanefield wrote a solid primer on Mastodon. It’s a great read.
https://terikanefield.com/can-the-mastodon-model-cure-the-worst-evils-of-social-media/

@WalterShaub I quit Twitter earlier this year. I was tired of the tribalism, outrage, disinformation-spreading promoted accounts long before the Musk saga began.

I want a fair public town square free from corporate algorithms and propaganda accounts that purchase followers.

We should not empower tech oligopolies that dominate and destroy the internet to make profit.

Never thought Elon Musk would do so much for the adoption of a decentralised infrastructure…

Please Elon, can you buy Elsevier ?

Some Mastodon thoughts, for bird-site expats (which include myself). I'm aggregating these from posts I've boosted before, so little of this is my own brain.

- There's no algorithm here. That means favoriting/liking doesn't do anything except communicate approval to the OP and others (which is still nice!).

- No algorithm means boosting ("retweeting") is the true method to increase a post's visibility. Do that more than you did on birdsite.

- There's no post-quoting here, and that's by design. Look at quote-tweets on the birdsite; it's a feature primarily used for toxicity.

- There's no direct word-search here either; that means you want to use hashtags to make posts more searchable. This is also intended, since word-searching posts was often used to harass/stalk on the birdsite and elsewhere, so that was left by the wayside here. This also means hashtags are much more a thing here than any of the algorithm-powered sites.

- It's encouraged to put in text descriptions when you post images; a lot of Mastodon users use screen-readers due to various disabilities, and getting an image description read out loud helps them immensely.

- Speaking of screen-readers: using capitalization in your hashtags allows the screen-readers to read them more easily, especially if you're smashing multiple words together. #rockmusic = unreadable. #RockMusic = readable.

- The best way to make threads is to make set your first post as public, but "unlist" all of your replies. This prevents your whole thread from clogging up feeds.

- Content Warnings should be used more liberally here. If you haven't gotten the impression yet, much of Mastodon was built and populated by marginalized groups who were harassed/bullied off of other platforms. This is the culture they built, to respect each other's mental health. It's not a rule, but it's well-appreciated.

- Consider chipping a few bucks towards whomever runs the server you're on; the strain is real, and most server admins were likely paying out of pocket before so don't have an existing donation base. The growth here has been extremely fast, and that means money's needed.

- DMs are just posts with privacy settings. So if you @ someone in a DM, you pull them into the thread. That could be embarrassing.

- Also, no, DMs aren't end-to-end encrypted, but they aren't on Twitter either. Don't use either if you want true privacy.

- Including your Mastodon handle in your birdsite profile will help people find you here; there's a tool (pruvisto.org/debirdify/ is one of them that's used) people can use to pull Mastodon handles from Twitter profile.

- Use the blocking and reporting features liberally, if needed. This should go without saying, but they work, and work well!

- If there's an entire Mastodon server you don't want to hear from, you can block the whole thing too.

- Preferences -> Appearance -> "Slow Mode": this can make larger "Local" feeds and any "Federated" feed much more readable.

I'll reply with some more as I see them, or reply here too. I've only been here 4 days but I'm loving it so far.

Took me a minute to adjust to the Mastodon custom of broadly using Content Warning but the software is designed to let everyone customize their experience.

The "CW" option is embedded in the publishing interface, super easy to use.

And if you don't want to keep clicking to expand stuff to read it (I surely don't), you don't have to. Preferences -> Appearance -> Sensitive Content, "Always expand posts marked with content warnings."

Just saw this. “CW is more accurately described as "content wrapper" than "content warning"
I like that better.

A #Twitter engineer says it will break in the coming weeks.

Scince #Musk has fired essential engineers, one insider says the company’s current staffing isn’t able to sustain the platform.

Bugs are appearing, like weird follower numbers replies not loading and issues with the retweet feature.

#Tech

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/08/1062886/heres-how-a-twitter-engineer-says-it-will-break-in-the-coming-weeks/

I’ve been using Mastodon since Saturday, but I am going out on a limb with a prediction: Mastodon (or the Mastodon model) is the future of social media.

It has the potential of curing the worst evils of social media and creating a genuine and workable public sphere.

I will develop this idea into an essay as soon as I can grab the time, hopefully today.