Yet another insightful question about my engagement with mastodon here.
If I'm going to be honest, my perspective hasn't much changed about Mastodon except insofar as I've learned more disturbing things about the history of users of color and other marginalized groups on the platform. I've also learned some pretty not great implications for the existing affordances of the fediverse, many of which I've outlined in other places.
The primary thing that I've learned about mastodon is that more than twitter, much of our cultural inheritances structure how we use the site and how the norms of using the site are enforced and maintain. This, predictably, has a great deal to do with who is using the site and in what way.
As I have said before, Mastodon is a very white platform. It is also, in many respects, a very male platform and a platform that abides by the epistemic norms of the tech industry.
@shengokai Mast has a lot of work ahead of it to be better, no doubt, but I'm a little confused where you say "more that twitter."
Twitter was very white tech bro when it started and grew as more members joined. Should we not expect the same here, only faster?
@wackomedia @shengokai For me, this sounds way too much like techno-utopianism. It's an easy trap to fall into but it _is_ a trap. Please forgive the following flippancy, it is not directed at you just exaggerating for effect. There was a strain early on of "Twitter created the Arab Spring. This is the end of history, democracy wins, checkmate!"
There is some potential to do it differently this time. Some fundamental parts of the system are different than before. An end state of pre-Musk Twitter isn't good enough and it is totally plausible based on current trajectory that this ends up far worse than Twitter. It will take the effort of many to ensure that doesn't happen.
