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
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.
@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
@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
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
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