I get very close, very often, to simply leaving Mastodon. There are lots of wonderfully brilliant people here who know how to interact respectfully online... but there's also huge Reply Guy energy. And a lot of simple disrespect. Hate follows, people who treat others like they're inherently suspect until proven otherwise (and it's impossible to prove otherwise). TONS of friendly fire and purity posturing.
I keep trying to decode how to weed that element out, to no success.
@susankayequinn@wandering.shop
I am beyond sorry to hear that you're having a bad experience here.
For me, Mastodon is the most supportive community ever. I have very few reply guys in my communication, and instead, have found an awesome community of wonderful writers - some of which have become close friends.
Definitely use that mute button. You can even mute/block entire servers if you notice there is one full of those nasties.
Also, let your admin know. Admins here are awesome allies.
@susankayequinn@wandering.shop
It’s a consequence of diversity, no?
It is misleading to think of any online forum as a “place”—especially if it has no real world correlate, and no barriers to entry.
Is it possible to know the dominant culture of an online forum? One should expect multiple cultures, all existing simultaneously, side-by-side, like multiple realities with different resonance frequencies. Though a few might dominate, that can and will change, as time passes—especially if the forum grows, and membership regresses to the mean.
But you might be right. People gravitate to this platform because they reject others (both people and platforms), for strong reasons. That implies a certain personality type or character, at least for them. Probably opinionated, self-confident, possibly delusional and arrogant. Or at least self-righteous.
There's MUCH less of this on bluesky and it's really bothered me. Is it that bluesky has more comprehensive block list capability? Or is it simply the population on each is different (which they clearly are)? I don't think it's uniquely the types of things I post because it's the same on both and the responses are consistently different.
Posting mostly out of frustration, but if anyone has insights, I'm interested to hear them.
@8r3n7@mstdn.ca I think what Mastodon has is the opposite of diversity. There's a very sharp winnowing of who is willing to jump through the hoops to be here and who is motivated to be here in the first place.
Of course there are sub-communities but you can only make a sub-community out of the whole and the whole is different here.
I'm far from the only person to have issues. I just keep hoping it will get bettter and I'm getting pretty close to the end of my tolerance.
@susankayequinn@wandering.shop
I won't disagree or contradict. But we should be hesitant to draw conclusions from our anecdotal experiences. How much of "Mastodon", the epi-phenomenon, do we individually know?
@susankayequinn@wandering.shop @8r3n7@mstdn.ca
The fediverse is very non-diverse.
Our moderation tools are poop.
I want open source social media to work, but the folks that manage here still believe in meritocracy and giving everybody an ear.
Should everybody have a voice? Sure. But the fundamental freedom is the freedom to take the consequences, and the fedi offers very few consequences.
I protect my ears. I block early, block often, and I'm a straight white dude. Most active Black users bail on the fedi early, for very good reasons... and the engineers don't care. Or they're puzzled. If the instance you run is blocked by a bunch of queer-friendly, anti-sexist, anti-racist instances, do you sneer or complain? Or do you take a good hard look in the mirror?
This system could be SO GOOD.
But it won't be.
@mwl@io.mwl.io And YOU are one of the folks I love interacting with here because you so clearly get it.
But yes 100% Black users were out from very early and that's always a red flag. I've heard it from women too, from the jump.
I stayed & hoped I could be part of the bulwark that helped get it through the growing pains and... yeah, nope.
Like you say... it's not changing.
It's just so disappointing.
And now my energy seems better placed elsewhere...SIGH
@8r3n7@mstdn.ca
@susankayequinn@wandering.shop
I won't disagree or contradict. But we should be hesitant to draw conclusions from our anecdotal experiences. How much of "Mastodon", the epi-phenomenon, do we individually know?
@susankayequinn@wandering.shop @8r3n7@mstdn.ca
The fediverse is very non-diverse.
Our moderation tools are poop.
I want open source social media to work, but the folks that manage here still believe in meritocracy and giving everybody an ear.
Should everybody have a voice? Sure. But the fundamental freedom is the freedom to take the consequences, and the fedi offers very few consequences.
I protect my ears. I block early, block often, and I'm a straight white dude. Most active Black users bail on the fedi early, for very good reasons... and the engineers don't care. Or they're puzzled. If the instance you run is blocked by a bunch of queer-friendly, anti-sexist, anti-racist instances, do you sneer or complain? Or do you take a good hard look in the mirror?
This system could be SO GOOD.
But it won't be.
@mwl@io.mwl.io And YOU are one of the folks I love interacting with here because you so clearly get it.
But yes 100% Black users were out from very early and that's always a red flag. I've heard it from women too, from the jump.
I stayed & hoped I could be part of the bulwark that helped get it through the growing pains and... yeah, nope.
Like you say... it's not changing.
It's just so disappointing.
And now my energy seems better placed elsewhere...SIGH
@8r3n7@mstdn.ca
@8r3n7@mstdn.ca it doesn't matter that I don't have perfect knowledge of every instance on Mastodon. What matters is my personal experience and what levers of control I have over it. That is true for everyone.
@susankayequinn@wandering.shop
It is a shame that the platform failed to work as intended. The whole idea of federation is that groups of like-minded people could build their own smaller communities, and interact with other communities only to the degree they wanted to.
Doesn't have to be based on skin colour or gender identity, either. By now there would be, you might hope, communities devoted to inclusion and rejection of superficial prejudice. Even better, actively supportive of diversity.
The tools are not good enough, probably. Even if it was easy for anyone to start a server or a community, there are other obstacles. And simply starting a community is itself a difficult task. If it's even a think one can deliberately do.
The dream is that communities of like-minded people find one another. But it seems to rely mostly on luck and serendipity, and having some tech person to take care of the infrastructure.
@mwl@io.mwl.io
@mwl@io.mwl.io And YOU are one of the folks I love interacting with here because you so clearly get it.
But yes 100% Black users were out from very early and that's always a red flag. I've heard it from women too, from the jump.
I stayed & hoped I could be part of the bulwark that helped get it through the growing pains and... yeah, nope.
Like you say... it's not changing.
It's just so disappointing.
And now my energy seems better placed elsewhere...SIGH
@8r3n7@mstdn.ca
@susankayequinn@wandering.shop
Do you believe that, if you started over from scratch, following only people who made interesting posts in the trending timeline, that your experience would be more-or-less the same as currently? That, to me, is a more reliable test of the universality of your experience.
Not to dismiss your personal experience. I just think it would take some careful research and data collection to extrapolate it to everyone.
@susankayequinn@wandering.shop
It is a shame that the platform failed to work as intended. The whole idea of federation is that groups of like-minded people could build their own smaller communities, and interact with other communities only to the degree they wanted to.
Doesn't have to be based on skin colour or gender identity, either. By now there would be, you might hope, communities devoted to inclusion and rejection of superficial prejudice. Even better, actively supportive of diversity.
The tools are not good enough, probably. Even if it was easy for anyone to start a server or a community, there are other obstacles. And simply starting a community is itself a difficult task. If it's even a think one can deliberately do.
The dream is that communities of like-minded people find one another. But it seems to rely mostly on luck and serendipity, and having some tech person to take care of the infrastructure.
@mwl@io.mwl.io
@susankayequinn@wandering.shop
It is a shame that the platform failed to work as intended. The whole idea of federation is that groups of like-minded people could build their own smaller communities, and interact with other communities only to the degree they wanted to.
Doesn't have to be based on skin colour or gender identity, either. By now there would be, you might hope, communities devoted to inclusion and rejection of superficial prejudice. Even better, actively supportive of diversity.
The tools are not good enough, probably. Even if it was easy for anyone to start a server or a community, there are other obstacles. And simply starting a community is itself a difficult task. If it's even a think one can deliberately do.
The dream is that communities of like-minded people find one another. But it seems to rely mostly on luck and serendipity, and having some tech person to take care of the infrastructure.
@mwl@io.mwl.io
Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞
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