Discussion
There was a big discourse on Bluesky about these communal blocklists being more harmful than helpful. I don't disagree with some of their points, but I think overall I fall on the side that they are a useful tool.
IMO, most of the arguments against are solved by (like many other things in life) being mindful of what blocklists you participate in.
Mekka you have to be my favorite poster on the fediverse
Every post you write makes me think
I take it is as a dear conviction the fediverse must grow. And so at your first sentence I'm feeling antipathy. But by the end of your comment, I'm agreeing with you. You're challenging me in the best of ways
We need growth, but at what cost? And you make me consider the costs. They cannot be hand waved away, as some would do. These costs must be addressed and erased before any growth
Mekka, you say it so well.
A question for the "The #Fediverse doesn't need to grow" crowd:
Do you _want_ commercial platforms to dominate social media around the world - and allow them to manipulate the algorithm in order to promote unchecked #Capitalism, #fascism, and everything else that is currently wrecking the planet? Not to mention handing over sensitive personal information to authoritarian regimes.
I don't see social media going away. But the Fediverse currently represents our best hope of getting away from _commercial_ social media, and thus we need it to grow.
Thus, if you don't want the Fediverse to grow, you want #Meta and #X to win. Unless you have a _better_ noncommercial social media alternative than the Fediverse, in which case I'd love to hear about it!
I'm unhappy that about 3/4s of the people I used to follow on BirdChan did not come to the Fediverse. I am perturbed at many of those that remain on BirdChan—their presence there providing revenue and undeserved legitimacy to Musk's dumpster fire platform.
I am, however, happy that the MAGA influencers and their apologists have remained on BirdChan and have not come to the Fediverse.
I can not accept your binary options there. It is perfectly reasonable to not want a behemoth fediverse and not want Meta or X 'to win'. Not least because they've kind of 'won' already, but also because alternative routes, accepting that being marginalised and outside of the mainstream becomes massively preferable for some, rather than being part of a 'win' here, given what that might look like.
I definitely want neither some massive fediverse nor Meta or X.
@juergen_hubert @mekkaokereke
Thanks for explaining what I'm fighting for better than I ever would <3
Fyi that's why I built mastox.eu to mirror X accounts of public person and institutions that are not (yet 
) on the fediverse: this allows others to come here without losing those informations.
@benjamin ok, so this interests me. And I think it is a great way to get people over to the fediverse.
But it does bring up a problem I have, and I'm techy enough to figure it out. But I run into this problem "If your account is hosted on a different server, you will not be able to log in here." and I scratch my head. How is the fediverse easy to use if you end up creating accounts on different servers?
We need a SNS. My answer is a DNS for social names. Social Name Server. #SNS. Agree?
@craiglambie42 that's not a problem if you start your journey on a big mastodon instance like mastodon.social or piaille.fr for France
Since those mastox mirrored accounts would already be known to those big instances and therefore searchable in their engine.
@benjamin plus I started on a smaller server, so finding mastox is not possible? Or I just can't figure it out... So how a laggard would...
@craiglambie42 yes, very small mastodon instance will have a hard time finding other people.relays exist for that.
@benjamin ok, but doesn't having accounts in multiple places kind of make this verse a bit naff. Surely it would be smoother if auth and name was separated from the messaging and posts?
@craiglambie42 I don't understand why you say you need accounts in multiple places. Mastodon works in a way that makes you see the others instances transparently. This exchange is the proof 😅
Old Twitter was _so_ much more diverse than the present Fediverse. Especially if you made a conscious effort to connect with people outside your bubble. Which I did, and I learned _so_ much.
In contrast, the Fediverse is its own bubble. People who hung out in their own bubbles on Old Twitter won't notice much of a difference, even if they believe themselves to be progressive and open-minded. But if you actively tried to cultivate diversity in your own timeline, the difference is brutal.
I used to have no difficulty finding lots of people from Africa, South Asia, and many other regions in the world. And I miss that.
@mekkaokereke
I agree with all of this & SO MUCH this part: "we as a community of people of all backgrounds, have agency to improve Mastodon". It could be better here, if we push it and make it better
IDK if you saw this paper I wrote about harassment here, from the perspective of an individual (not server- or blocklist-level). TLDR: this place has loopholes the size of semi trucks that harassers can exploit, which ofc Black folks have warned about. In case of interest:
https://openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/JoCI/article/view/6644
@mekkaokereke I quit that bird -no regrets.
@mekkaokereke What can I do to make Mastodon safer for black people?
@MiriShuli @mekkaokereke
SOrry if you already got this answer (my instance is super glitchy and laggy and I can't see anything from the last several hours), but here's a post from @thenexusofprivacy that speaks to this:
https://privacy.thenexus.today/start-making-the-fediverse-less-toxic/
@mekkaokereke I’m a white cismale and the thought of millions of genuine non-subversive twitterfacebook people here makes me puke in my mouth
@mekkaokereke Most excellent concept and post. My spouse is in frequent skirmishes on Facebook with RW don’t-know -their-ass-from-their-elbow minions shouting about Humpty’s rapture. “Why do you bother?” I ask, “come join me in the peace of the reverse” I smile. 😊
I've spent time at r/Mastodon and r/Fediverse on reddit.
My general observation is that the Fediverse, like Linux, demands that you learn how to use it.
That little extra effort is a bridge too far for most people.
So I think the Fediverse is self-filtering... now.
It's an odd paradox that, if it gets more user-friendly, the enshittification levels will increase because more knee biters will show up.
@Theresacityinmymind Problem is there can be pile-ons from NAZI-instances that only the victims see, because those instances are poorly federated. Nazis only @ their targets, so there are no witnesses. @mekkaokereke
Kinda?
The Fediverse, like Linux, doesn't have good UX. Because most open source projects over-value the technical skill of coding, and undervalue the technical skill of User Experience Research (UXR), User Experience Design (UXD), Information Architecture (IA), and Visual Design (VD).
And no, it doesn't require billions of dollars or VC money to not suck at UX, or to have an onboarding flow for users, admins, and moderators that isn't terrible. It just requires focus.
I've pointed out how Inkscape is a positive example of an open source project that treats UX as seriously as a highly funded VC startup does. Any project can do this. It just requires the will.
Mastodon is improving drastically in this regard. Some really strong UX folk have conducted interviews, designed features, gotten feedback, worked with Mastodon Engineering to build it, and shipped. ♥️👍🏿
Mastodon is not more complicated than a car. And yet, any model of car is easier for a driver familiar with other cars to step into and operate, than Mastodon is for people that have spent 20+ years on other social media platforms? That's because more UX work is needed on Mastodon.
@mekkaokereke @Theresacityinmymind in a way, Mastodon has concentrated on building better engines, stronger chassis, and interoperable rails for its trains. But it leaves the seats and the car interiors as a basic, I guess? Not to mention stations where you can get aboard.
Hm. Metaphors are hard.
Tusky is a better app than the default Mastodon app for UX.
Half the people are paralyzed by choice anxiety over which instance to join.
The other half are angry there's not an algorithm telling them which content to look at.
"Paralyzed by choice anxiety" is a very derogatory way to say that for a Black person joining the Fediverse, if you join a good instance you have a good experience, but if you join a bad one, you get sent animated gifs of Black women being murdered in snuff films with racist threats, and it's up to you to try to figure out which are good instances and which are bad ones.
"Angry at no algorithm," is a very derogatory way to say that Mastodon has not yet put enough thought into the onboarding experience, so the few Black users that do join have a harder time even finding and following their own friends than they do on other platforms, even those with strict reverse chronological show me everything feeds.
I'm not referring to black people.
I'm going to depart this conversation now because what I've said is being taken and reapplied to contexts I have not described.
I hope the change you want to see becomes real.
All good!
That's fair but... this thread is very specifically about Black people. If we fix this so that it works for Black users, we fix it for everyone.
@Theresacityinmymind @mekkaokereke
Enshittification happens when a platform owner stops buying customers with VC money because they've hit a monopoly state and they can start charging higher and higher rents with lower and lower services because customers are locked in.
The Fediverse has no owner. That's the whole point.
Everyone deserves access to this platform. No gatekeepers.
@mekkaokereke I have been here a long time, long before the mass exodus from Twitter and the big boom of new users on the fediverse. There has been an echoing refrain from the beginning which is that the fediverse doesn’t work for black people.
It triggers so much…I don’t know…everything. Guilt, shame, anger, whatever. It’s a rainbow of emotions every time someone posts something about it.
But then that’s it.
Bit of shame and anger and on to the next thing.
“Boost Black voices, I did my part.”
I see so few people who seem to genuinely want to do the work to understand what that *means* when someone says that the fediverse doesn’t work for them and it’s maddening. It feels like a very real reflection of reality most of the time though. Not at all in a good way.
@mekkaokereke We need a superblock. i.e. Block this account on my personal deny list, and also nominate it for inclusion on these shared deny list subscriptions:
[X] Racist (@haters@fubu.party)
[ ] Sexist (@misogyny@gurl.club)
[ ] Horny on Main (@nsfw@super.gay)
[X] Fascist (@thefash@antifa.io)
[ ] Yucks Others' Yums (@downers@funhouse.lol)
[ ] Fedi HOA (@squidwards@nerdwords.net)
[ ] AI Scraperbot (@ai@opsec.tech)
[X] Replyguy--Creepy (@stalkers@furry.win)
[ ] Plagiarist (@stealers@dadjoke.org)
There are Mastodon instances that operate on an allowlist-only basis. While that can stave off a lot of harassment, it's got obvious downsides too, unless maybe you can expand the network of allowed instances to sufficient size. But could we use filtering to screen out harmful posts (or even just content a given instance chooses to disallow) in a more fine-grained way? It always feels like there's an enormous void in the tools we have available for this sort of moderation, just begging for someone to develop a better way.
Until then, I guess we all get to work at changing things culturally here.
@mekkaokereke It's more than fine if changing Mastodon (or anything else) to increase Black safety disrupts the experiences of people who don't care about Black people
@mekkaokereke 💯 I am surprised at the pushback but I guess I shouldn't be. If you stand for the ideals of the fediverse I don't see how you'd be against more users.
@being @mekkaokereke The part that a lot of open source advocates don’t want to admit it that they dont care about fediverse ideals and just want their own consequence free fiefdoms that they couldn’t have on centralized platforms.
@are0h @mekkaokereke well, they can still be consequence free on their little instances lol! Saying this as a self-hoster myself, if you got 6 bucks a month you can always be in complete charge of your exp on fedi 🤷🏽♀️
@mekkaokereke That’s a super clear, well laid reasoning.
@mekkaokereke From the technical point of view - what features could enhance safety? What can be added or is there and need to be made more user-friendly so people can feel safer?
Is the problem the federation? The lack of control or knowledge to block users / servers / hashtags? That anyone can be online on multiple servers? That mods do not do their moderating tasks?
I read several toots saying "Mastodon isn't safe for us", but I haven't heard yet of what features need to improve. And I'd really like to know!
@mekkaokereke
There seem to be at least two opposing views on what ‚safety‘ should mean in the fediverse that I’ve seen.
1) being able to control who can see and comment on one’s posts
2) being able see and point out posts that attack one
These two seem to collide.
How do you see this?
This is an honest question - no trolling.
@mekkaokereke My take is: If a thing works to connect the hyper-marginalised in a good way, then it'll also work for me, the privilieged white male hetero GenX German. Except that my experience is going to be a lot more interesting and insightful by having folks NOT like me around.
So why would I ever be against that?
Give us everything that will help black, trans, neurodivergent and everyone else to feel welcome and safe!
@mekkaokereke
I'm with you. Would love to see it. I wonder if maybe Mastodon isn't the software platform to get what's needed done. I keep looking at Bonfire and wondering if something modular like that isn't a better place to experiment with moderation, trust, and safety features.
@mekkaokereke plus there’s the inherit problem of being an open protocol allowing anyone to harass. Every now and then a Nazi will pick up one of my posts, boost it, and then I’m just inundated with Nazis that I have to clean up from a variety of instances they prop up to do these sorts of things after their old ones get more widely blocked.
The fact that there can be no subscribed to, dynamic blocklist is a safety issue in of itself, and an impediment towards wider adaption.
If I understand it correctly (and I may not), Oliphant‘s page below offers (among other links) also a permanent link to an automatically updated blocklist.
https://writer.oliphant.social/oliphant/the-oliphant-social-blocklist
I think it's ridiculous to play whack a mole from a computer security perspective.
There was a big discourse on Bluesky about these communal blocklists being more harmful than helpful. I don't disagree with some of their points, but I think overall I fall on the side that they are a useful tool.
IMO, most of the arguments against are solved by (like many other things in life) being mindful of what blocklists you participate in.
@rapscalorie @me @mekkaokereke
Communal Blocklists — like sources, lists, and individuals — can gain reputations for fairness, prompt action, and focus on specific issues.
All of this is consistent with Fediverse-style support for Server level block policy — generally used with caution — and personal choice.
If you strongly disagree with a Server’s choice of Blocklists, you can move elsewhere. You should also be able to add Blocklists that you strongly want to use.
@rapscalorie @me @mekkaokereke I just feel they're too easily weaponized. The ever present question of who decides what's on the block list and the criteria for being added gets complicated quickly with no good answers. I'll keep my own council on whom I block and I won't impose that on anyone else.
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