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Mastodon could make the public sphere less toxic, but not for all - AlgorithmWatch
(algorithmwatch.org)
this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2022
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That is a steep claim backed up by literally nothing in the article, not even a single link. It might be true, but I find that a bit hard to believe as the Mastodon community specifically has a reputation for being especially protective of minorities.
The later argument that people from poorer countries can not afford to run their own servers is also IMHO misleading. First of all it isn't that expensive, and secondly efforts by large corps such as Facebook to bribe local ISPs to allow free access to Facebook (and Facebook only) did not improve the situation for these poorer communities, in fact it prevented them from participating on equal footing on the internet as it kept prices for real internet access artificially high in many places.
There was quite a bit of meta-drama on fedi around BIPOC people being told to CW racism. But that's a far, far cry from "levels of racist abuse unseen on commercial platforms".
This seems very on-topic and in-depth: https://techpolicy.press/the-whiteness-of-mastodon/
Hmm, that was a long and convoluted read.
He kinda makes some vague valid criticism, but no real suggestion on how to improve things. And the few things that he does suggest (all black instance) he realized himself are not really a good idea and overall are quite unimaginative of what we could build in the Fediverse together.
And ultimately he seems to fall back to an apologetic stance on Twitter ("not that bad", "black people can endure that", "in spite of all the problems") and a "grass isn't greener" type of argument based on the fear of losing the network-effect that Twitter offers.
Dunno... I admit that as a white person I cannot fully grasp the "inherent whiteness" of the Fediverse in its full extend, but the argument brought forward in this interview leaves me less than convinced that this is really the main problem. It seems more like he is grasping for arguments for why the "Black Twitter" he got used to and is apologetic about needs to somehow survive the Musk takeover.
That, to me, is the crux of it, so I will trust the BIPOC folk when they tell me we need to improve.
Yes, but improve how? The interview tells us more about where the interviewee is on the spectrum of the 7 stages of grief in regards to Twitter than it does about possible ways to make the Fediverse more welcoming for BIPOCs. That it is too "white" can only be fixed by more BIPOCs joining, so that circular logic brings us nowhere.
I don't know. But I'll try to listen to BIPOC folk when they talk about it.