The Whiteness of Mastodon (worth the read)
This is a fascinating read…and worth the time to explore. It covers a lot I had not considered or even knew being a latecomer. #TwitterMigration #Mastodon #Whiteness #BlackTwitter #harassment
The Whiteness of Mastodon https://techpolicy.press/the-whiteness-of-mastodon/
“Being queer does not insulate one cell from the inheritance of whiteness, although one can use one’s queerness as a shield from critique, as many Mastodonians have used by presenting the history of Mastodon as grounded in queer folks attempts to avoid the harassment on Twitter….
…Mastodon..will never be able to support a robust community of color like Black Twitter.
It might do so by virtue of creating, say, a Black instance. But that …risks ghettoizing the Black community in a federated space. All of the Black people go here and instances have the option of engaging with them or deeding from them…
You need to think about the very real dangers of a federated structure in a society organized around white supremacy. You could easily have an entire instance of right-wing white supremacists pop up that would engage in targeted harassment of users of color.”
The Whiteness of Mastodon (worth the read)
The Whiteness of Mastodon (worth the read)
@mguhlin I've already seen a few posts about needing a "green book" of instances, and that makes me incredibly sad and angry.
The Whiteness of Mastodon (worth the read)
@cgrymala That sadness and anger is because, perhaps I don’t know, you thought something was resolved that was not. That is, that baked in racism and discrimination, ways of being human systematically embedded in the structures we have to live in, was isolated, unique, rare. To me, as I awaken to it, it is the fundament of America, Europe, and society. As a person who enjoys white privilege, I hadn’t a clue it was there. Now, people who experience it and have known it are saying, it is here. And why should we expect it to not be here, when Mastodon wasn’t created (right?) by oppressed people seeking to put a system of checks and balances in place to safeguard people against white supremacy? That’s not to say it’s all bad, only to recognize it is human creation, a situation normal all fracked up (apologies to the original version of SNAFU).
The Whiteness of Mastodon (worth the read)
@lucifargundam It wasn’t a DM, so why not have an opinion? 🙂While it was dense, worded tentatively, it still raised some points worthy of discussion. If no discussion, that’s a red flag, no? If no safe space, that is an acknowledgment too. But this IS possible…to have distributed conversations about the nature of the virtual spaces we choose to inhabit.
The Whiteness of Mastodon (worth the read)
@mguhlin
I had a response to the article provided. But over time it made me more exhausted to constantly correct/explain everything.
I’ll just add this unless you have something specific you’d like to ask:::
“So the first thing that I want to make clear is that Mastodon has a history of being inhospitable to marginalized users. This history is born out, as I’ve learned, through the marginalization and eventual shuttering of instances of color, of instances that were dedicated to hosting and supporting sex workers, of harassment of disabled users and so on. “
« Switter had nothing to do with other admins or any kind of fediverse harassment; it had to do with local legislation. More details here::
https://switter.at/about
The Whiteness of Mastodon (worth the read)
@mguhlin I’ll read this later. Not sure if I will agree with it overall, but I’ll read it.
The Whiteness of Mastodon (worth the read)
@mathlover Reasonable doubt is all that’s needed. One question i have is, “How diverse are admins and moderators?” Another is, “Is there a record of success and failure for incidents of inclusion and exclusion?” I don’t know if those are even the right questions.
The Whiteness of Mastodon (worth the read)
One question i have is, “How diverse are admins and moderators?”
« Don’t know. Never met any in person. There’s not any kind of record of ‘who’s a fediverse admin, what’s your demographics?’ list
Another is, “Is there a record of success and failure for incidents of inclusion and exclusion?”
«For instances or users? For instances, i don’t think anyone keeps records. For users, you’d have to ask each server’s admins(good luck with that) and see if they happenstance recorded anything like thaat.
I don’t know if those are even the right questions.
«Easier for me to respond to than the wall of text :)
🇳🇱
The Whiteness of Mastodon (worth the read)
@mguhlin As a non-white person myself i find this an important read. Ill comment on it once i have a chance to give it the attention it deserves. Im not at home right now.
The Whiteness of Mastodon (worth the read)
@mguhlin I was hoping that fediverse would not suffer from the US centric politics of twitter.
Sure, these topics are very serious, but only few countries had apartheid in the 20th century. In other places issues are different, maybe as serious, but different. I'd be more interested in seeing these than US issues.
The Whiteness of Mastodon (worth the read)
@jfpuget Yeah, I get that hope. But it is in vain. We live in the world, and people will talk. Any chance you can locate hashtags or make up your own that capture topics you are interested in?
The Whiteness of Mastodon (worth the read)
This raises the question in my head if Mastodon could ever be the place i hoped for as an educator. But the truth is, there’s isn’t anywhere. It’s been better here, but systemic racism is baked into everything. Which means, doing away with CWs except for things that don’t matter (e.g. spoilers).