Disturbed by reports of Black Mastodon users—Black women in particular—having negative experiences on this app, including being randomly banned for discussions of racism. Some of these users will not come back. All will share their experiences. The answer is not to condescendingly lecture them on “how the fediverse works,” as if their experiences are inevitable, nor to swear to do better next time. (There may not be one.) It’s to do better now lest the reputation of this app be cemented.
@mergerson We can't prevent racists from making instances and we can't prevent them from being racist on their own instances. Maybe we can enable people to avoid racist instances but how? Many people who say "I'm not racist" are pretty racist.
@elsantonegro @mergerson Most instances are in the US and Europe, so is not surprising if popular ones are racist, because those cultures are fairly racist.
@radehi @mergerson Its tough. Due to the federation model, you really need to trust that your admins are on top of things (blocking racist instances, having good moderation, etc.)
The disheartening thing about the recent incidents is that they occurred on the biggest (most popular) instances. You would hope that they'd be ready for the influx of diverse users from Twitter. Obviously, they were not.