GeekmomK

@Deglassco@mastodon.social @notafurry@hulvr.com And I think that it’s that first paragraph for me. I’m not at a point where *I* can make a judgment call for myself or in general. And the fact that the influx of people broke the workarounds also adds to how new people are experiencing the issues that those who’ve been around a while tried to fix is probably just making the situation worse across the board. I’ve seen people fall into a few general categories. “I love it! Everyone is so much better here”: nothing is perfect and this is a bit reductive since the same trolls are also migrating. “I hate it! It’s not Twitter!”: Again reductive. It is, as you pointed out, specifically designed NOT to be Twitter. “It has problems but…”: and this is where I fall in, I guess (?) - observations about the platform and hopes to make it more inclusive/safer. “It’s not really different from anywhere else because people are trash anyhow but now we don’t have a consistent way to create protections”: This is the one that’s concerning. I’ve been seeing a lot of the abusive behavior by individuals against friends, and it becomes the burden of the individual on some level - primarily because exponential growth and adoption. For *me*, I feel I want to sit with things, pay attention to the conversations from different groups of users, and take my time to make an informed decision. I’d say I fall into the third category. Any group of people is going to have problems and harassment - some people are definitely trash. On the other hand, I’d like to see/hope that there could become an overarching acceptable behavior/CoC - the idea of a social contract if you will - that shakes out in the end. My main concern is that with the rapid adoption, what’s going to happen is that the internalized biases we have will be overlooked by too many people across the diversified space. With no centralized location, I worry that society is going to lose that focused spotlight that we’ve gained. For example, I don’t think that the decentralized nature of Mastodon would have created the same urgency and attention around Black Lives Matter that Twitter was able to generate. That’s totally intended based on the model’s goals of not giving so much power to one entity or set of beliefs, and I understand/accept it. However, the massive influx of new people who relied on that structure to affect change are losing something very powerful that’s enabled them to have their voices heard. Now that’s gone. I think there’s a sense of loss that comes with that. I think people are processing that. I think it feels like a step backward because they have to rebuild that community. Even if you look at the hashtags, people within historically excluded communities don’t have a consensus yet around *how* to connect here, and that’s a huge loss - emotionally, socially, and politically.

@rozz2022@mastodon.lol @Deglassco@mastodon.social Yes. The difference is that without an algorithm to boost things which is extremely purposeful and, tbh has a lot of value in other ways, you won’t see the same “trending” as you saw on Twitter. Again, valuable, yes. But not as useful for trying to raise awareness and action.

@Deglassco@mastodon.social @rozz2022@mastodon.lol Try thinking about it this way. I get the difference now. On Twitter, you can get people to use a hashtag so that you can publicly broadcast a message by playing the algorithm. That’s the purpose of that platform. You say something and it goes out everywhere. This brings in viewers of that message. You see “trending” on there, and the algorithm gives power to it. This is good and bad. You may get new people who agree with you. You also get trolls. It’s totally public. The thing is- Mastodon is a fundamentally different model. So let’s think about it this way. On Twitter, you might have BlackTwitter, ComicsTwitter, and DisabilityTwitter. But what you don’t have is BlackComicsDisabilityTwtitter. These large aggregated groups on the public, centralized platform often lack intersectionality. Now, on Mastodon you can have super detailed smaller groups that take these into account. You could have a JamaicanMarvelBlind instance and a HarlemSupermanFibromyalgia instance. The Local feed would be the smaller group. The Federated feed would be the aggregate of all these different groups/identities/interests talking to each other. Using hashtags, you can find other people for your personal feed and share conversations. Now- instead of federating with these huge instances that can’t easily regulate their people, you defederate from them. Why? Because it’s not about broadcasting to a huge audience. It’s the opposite. It’s about protecting your community and growing it as a grassroots community to build trust. It’s this last paragraph that I think us new people need to consider more. Since “reach” and “broadcasting” aren’t the purpose of Mastodon, staying on these larger instances where racists, homophobes, ableists, anti-Semites, etc can hide easily is the problem. We should be focusing on finding the server for our Local feed that gives us the community we feel represents us. And that includes looking for one that protects us from the larger servers *as well as* the known “bad” servers. And THIS is the fundamental difference between how Mastodon works - and is *intended* to work - when compared to what we’re *used* to using in centralized platforms. It’s less about “large servers excluding marginalized groups” and more about historically excluded groups banding together to exclude these large servers.

@Deglassco@mastodon.social @notafurry@hulvr.com I didn’t say that Mastodon should change - and didn’t intend for you to think that I felt it should change. I can, however, understand the frustration from people who have been here and built this *for* it’s specific purpose - like you- who are upset that people want something else. It may end up that this isn’t the platform some people need, which is it’s intended goal. And it isn’t fair that people who built something to get away from that corporate controlled structure are again being undermined by that centralized corporate structure now that it’s falling apart. There’s a sense of loss from both groups precisely because they’re needs are different and those needs are in conflict.

@Deglassco@mastodon.social @notafurry@hulvr.com My takeaway at this point has been that yes, it’s a different model which means you use and interact with it differently. Yes, there’s a learning curve. I think that it will be up to individuals and groups to determine for themselves whether the pros outweigh the cons. —- Pros: You *can* block known servers that are racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, transphobic. Con: the same users can make accounts elsewhere and become problems, even for a small community, like sock accounts but it’s harder to block the same person when they hide across multiple servers every time they’re blocked. — Pro: You can have a small safe community. Con: That means you can end up becoming insulated and reinforcing harmful behaviors like micro aggressions because you don’t necessarily have a larger platform calling out the behavior. — Pro: You can organize within your community more effectively using hashtags or creating focused instances. Con: you don’t get the breadth of viability that a centralized platform and algorithm lead to that makes organizing online effective — Pro: you can focus on socializing with people who share a common interest with you-no matter what that is Con: Individuals have to be more purposeful diversifying their experience and seeking out people who bring a different lives experience. — I don’t have a better/worse for myself yet. I want to keep observing more and making my experience one that works for me. However I am also someone who *does* look for people who aren’t like me anyway so it’s not a new experience for me to *do* that. For some, it would be. I like Mastodon. I like the decentralized nature. I’m neither averse to it nor completely committed to it. I just think it comes with a different set of pros/cons and the value judgment will be different for each person.

@Deglassco@mastodon.social @notafurry@hulvr.com And this is the core of what I was trying to say last night about social contract - there is a way for one to happen, as you’re pointing out. It just takes time. And you are right that all of us newcomers aren’t taking that time. I’m neither criticizing decentralization nor trying to suggest changes to it. And yes, we do know each other and we’ve had some of these convos privately. Thinking about what you’ve said, you’re also correct that many of the current instances are too huge. When I said “things will shake out”- I think the idea of making these instances that federate together, like you’re mentioning, is an answer. And I think it will take time, and in a world where we’re used to fast answers, that’s frustrating for everyone. The people who’ve been here and seeing their hard built communities overrun as well as the people who are new looking to figure out how to rebuild their communities.

@notafurry@hulvr.com I think what I forgot is exactly what you’re trying to tell us: it can work both ways. You can block the large instances as protection just as much as they can block the marginalized.

@notafurry@hulvr.com @Deglassco@mastodon.social This. It’s an entirely different model - as intended. And it has a lot of powerful benefits once all of the new people work to figure out how they want to use it. I could foresee a long term - as I mentioned “social contract” - where smaller instances build out federated relationships that block not only known racist, etc instances but also instances over a certain size. That would make a lot of sense. You filter out the harassment that comes with hard-to-govern large instances. Focus on instances where people *know* they’re users and build a community that way. That *sounds* like the mutual aid group model that was mentioned. And maybe it’s time for people like me to really sit back and find the people who’ve been using this platform in that manner to better understand how they’ve used it successfully.