can I say that it's *really distressing* to hear POC say that they might as well leave mastodon.
Not distressing as in "I'm made anxious by hearing their complaint", (though it does make me anxious), "and wish I didn't have to hear their complaints"
It's distressing that we haven't made a space that listens to their voices and that things are bad enough that "I might as well go back to TWITTER" makes sense, like twitter is a more welcoming place for them.
THAT'S A PROBLEM
@tcql honestly?
I'm not entirely sure why the idea that Twitter could be a more welcoming space for _anybody_ has to be this extremely shocking idea.
Like sure it's terrible for some people, but great for others! Just like any social media network! Hell I've had much better experiences on REDDIT than Mastodon. yknow.
The whole "we're better than Y site" mentality drives me nuts coz it often comes from sites where I've faced a fair bit of trouble.
@creatrixtiara @tcql It's shocking because being safer is one of the core goals of the project. And also because we confuse software, and who is currently using the software. For example, Mastodon would allow a group of activists to create an instance dedicated to the BLM movement, and you wouldn't depend on some white CEO's approval and tolerance, it'd be entirely within your hands and control. Given this potential I do consider it shocking that folks would want to go back to Twitter... but!
@Gargron @creatrixtiara I feel like the gamut of things a platform allows is different from what it -supports-. We know PoC, particularly black people, are likely to be under-represented, under-resourced, less trusted & worse treated (including by people who wholeheartedly want to be allies) in software & social media arenas.
A BLM instance CAN exist, so that it DOESN'T maybe indicates failures of the mastodon community to go beyond a negative peace+put $£€+time where we say our principles are.
@paralithode @creatrixtiara I have reached out to Deray about this, he didn't respond beyond DM'ing me "hi" back. I was ready to do the whole technical side of it.
And I'm pretty sure it's not my place to setup a BLM instance on my own.
@Gargron @paralithode That is...Wow. "Tokenistic" doesn't even begin to cover it. This sounds like "well I just did the bare minimum and it didn't work so you can't tell me I didn't try!!"
Deray isn't the founder of BLM, and even then he's not the most prominent part of it. You can't just plug any old tech tool to communities you haven't built relationships with. You haven't given them reason to trust you or Mastodon yet.
@creatrixtiara @paralithode I don't know anyone else.
@Gargron @creatrixtiara if mastodon.social I appreciate that you're a software building guy–and if were a different kind of more corporate or more co-op-y concern it would be easier to say 'hello, outreach dept/community, please look into this, I'm not a social butterfly.' I think as time goes on it will become more & more important for us to actively nurture more adept social & activist types of people & engage them on these kind of, often v.challenging, "soft skills outreach missions."
@paralithode @creatrixtiara One small follow-up question - if you believe a dedicated instance won't help, do you think the groups [1] feature might help instead?
[1]: A group is an entity hosted on one instance (just like an account) which can be joined by accounts from other instances; a mention of the group is forwarded to all members of the group; it's like a way to sign up and get notified about topics or interests
@Gargron @paralithode I ask you honestly: why is it important to you that Black Lives Matter (or some other activist minority group) uses Mastodon?
@Gargron @paralithode Wouldn't the activists be the people to decide whether any given tool is actually useful for their work?
@creatrixtiara @paralithode I think Mastodon is a good tool for activism because you control it rather than rely on tolerance from the top - and I like to see my creative work being used by people, especially if they work for a good cause.