Twitter:
*I make a post at 9am and go about my day
*A racist replies with racial slurs at 9:15am
*Everyone sees the racist replies
*Everyone reports the racist replies
*Twitter mods take it down by 10am
*I check Twitter again at 11am, and never even see the racism!
Masto:
*I post at 9am
*Racists reply in such a way that only them and their followers see the racism
*So no one reports it
*Everyone gaslights me with "I don't see racism here!"
https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke /111012743709881062
@mekkaokereke @AstroHyde @ddritter
This post is confusing: they WANT everyone to see random racist posts? Couldn't they just join Truth.social? The whole point with ActivityPub, by my understanding, is precisely that: no one sees those racist replies except the author, their followers (if included) and the target, but then, why didn't mekka just block and report it?
Nonetheless, it is true: if you really want to see the scum of humanity thrust in your face for breakfast, best to stay on X.
🤦🏿♂️"This post is confusing: women WANT everyone to know which coworker is a serial predator? Couldn't they just go online to see worse harassment? The whole point with office decorum, by my understanding, is precisely that: no one knows who the serial harasser might be! Except their victims! Why don't the women just report it after they've each been attacked, one by one?" 🤡
Congratulations on writing the most garbage take I've seen all week, and I've seen a lot.
I'm seeing y'all struggle with the idea that Black folk shouldn't have to report all their own harassment. Y'all don't understand how it would even work.
A surprisingly large number of y'all just don't understand the meaning of community. The very concept is foreign to you.
@mekkaokereke @teledyn @AstroHyde @ddritter A mechanical problem I'm having:
* Someone describes
harassment
* It's not visible on my instance because the harasser's instance is defederated, because _we_ moderate
* I look at OP's instance; it's totally there!
* But I have no mechanism to report it because it's not viewable on my instance
I mean, do I start DMing instance admins telling them they're bad moderators? Do I post _public_ commentary about instance admins who are bad moderators?
In one recent case it was harassment from cum dot salon and nostr and I'm like "do you even moderate bro?" at their admin because they clearly fuckin' don't.
I'm not asking you to solve this, to be clear. I'm chewing on it. Not there yet, but chewing.
@moira
I'm trying not to come to the conclusion from the past week that, for social and mechanical reasons, Mastodon cannot be fixed.
And that is awful.
I'm here and still trying but, if Mekka says it's time to go, I'll go.
@ohmu Mastodon per se is less important than the greater idea of Federated social media, and there are many options besides Mastodon.
But the advantage of Federated social media over centralised social media contains its _own_ set of issues, and this is one of them.
If any of the old social media sites had started in an era of this much fash activism and coordinated evil, I don't think any of them would've got off the ground.
It's a hard problem, but they all have hard problems.
Here, go look at this, see what you think:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/a-new-way-to-social-media
It's a planned hard fork of the Mastodon codebase that wants to start with better moderation and safety. Might be good, I've boosted it before.
@moira
Yes. When I mention Mekka (or somebody else I trust) saying it's time to go, Ro's project is the destination I figure is most likely - if they'll have me.
@ohmu @moira apologies if this is perceived out of place.
I think what is missing, but needed here, is a reflection of which of the problems are Mastodon-related, and which are ActivityPub-related. In case the first, the problem is probably technical and rather solvable. In the latter, it's much more complicated, as for example reply-gating illustrates (see https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/8565#issuecomment-1444583776).
Mekka is a very important voice here, because he has both the expertise and the resources to not only better identify problems, but also to shape solutions.
