Discussion
"I’m on Mastodon, begrudgingly.... My harassers are also on Mastodon; some have multiple accounts. The blocking feature is like horror house anxiety game- I block when I see their new account, hoping I’ve now blocked all of them but knowing I probably never will. Because it’s a federated system, and you can have accounts on multiple servers, it means there’s multiple accounts I have to block to create some digital safety and distance."
-Caroline Sinders (🔗 next post)
@inquiline
It's like a buzzer goes off somewhere and another one of these guys is assigned to jump into your replies and help illustrate the point you're making
@ophiocephalic @jdp23
id almost have believed today’s was performance art
It really is Masto in a nutshell.
It's interesting thinking of this as a complement (derogatory) to the harassment Caroline Sinders and @inquiline are talking about. Even when it's not a harasser exploiting the architecture to avoid blocking -- or even a violation of community guidelines -- it's still a hostile-to-women environment (with dynmamics that show up in different situations as hostile-to-PO, etc).
It's a cultural issue but it's interesting to think about how a combination of norms, process and tech could make progress on it. For example
a norm that this isn't how we want to be, and in situations like this people from the clueless person's instance get involved to apologize and do the education (instead of putting the responsibility on the OP or a random passerby like me)
a process for an instance having a list people trained to intervene after getting summoned. The intervention doesn't need to be instant, so it's not requiring anybody to wear buzzers or be on call 24/7; and they don't necessarily have to be mods, becuase no elevated privilege is needed.
tech to do the summoning (and maybe also to confirm to the summoner and OP know that yep, got the message, and will get involved)
I'm posting Sinders' quote today because I'm continuing to reflect on architecture here, not least due to experiences I continue to have with targeted harassment
This is annoying, obviously
Far worse, though, *I cannot in good faith recommend Mastodon to anyone who's likely to be targeted*--and folks who use this place comfortably may want to think about this, as well
Here's what I wrote last year (🔗 in next post)
(sorry, didn't link earlier, was actually away from screens, gasp)
Plenty of people don't have a problem with harassment on Mastodon but this does not mean that harassment on Mastodon isn't a massive, massive issue. I've been thinking about this more and more, the longer I'm here (Oct 22)
Sincere thanks as always to everyone who helps keep others safe here and also everyone who thinks on the hard problems 💚
https://openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/JoCI/article/view/6644
(pretty sure I'd posted this fairly recently but my posts delete, sorry for reciting myself lol)
@inquiline well, thank you as always for drawing out the super normal not telling on themselves at all responders to preemptively block
today has convinced me we need an award for the worst of mastodon
@inquiline @rose_alibi Yeah, I'm dropping blocks off of all of this.
@inquiline the trophy can just be one of those prank musical cards that you can't turn off with a fart sound machine chip in it
@inquiline @jdp23 "Mastodon is a semi-fun place, where I have a private account, to occasionally check in on people, but it’s lack of built-in safety tools makes it an impossible place for me to be full time. "
Context: this is a person who faces persistent harassers -- wow this is really helping me appreciate how easy I have it being the default privileged user on the internet, and how safety features really do matter to people.
Yeah. One of the distinctive features of harassment on Mastodon is that because of the way federation works, it's very easy not to see it unless (a) you're following the specific people being targeted and (b) they make themselves even more of a target by calling out the harassment loudly.
So there's this strange dynamic where many cis white people see it as a social network filled with nice people (because that really is their experience) -- even though the reality is that their experience isn't shared by everybody.
Although of course it's also true that many white people in other contexts are also very good at not seeing harassment of people of color, many cis people n other contexts are also very good at not seeing harassment of trans and non-binary people, and many guys in other contexts are also very good at not seeing harassment of women. So it's not just, or even primarily, a technology issue!
That said, there's general consensus that the tech here does accentuate the problem.
Wait, just this? No other context? This is from 2022. No "how it started / how it's going"? Who is @carolinesinders? Or @sinders? I'm supposed to just know? I guess I'm not clued in enough to be a follower. 🫤
Ok, having milked what I could from the article before being prompted to log in, yes, whiteness is an issue. Yes, the luxury... wait...
Whiteness is a problem *everywhere*. Are we singling out Mastodon?
Oh, I get it. For not being the exception. (Not being sarcastic.)
Yeah, we always think we're the white knights. (Um... <embarrassed eye shifting gif at unintended pun (who needs 1,000 words?)>)
Maybe I should just go back to Twitter?
Huh. It sure seems to me like @inquiline's replies has the context, for example:
"I''m posting Sinders' quote today because I'm continuing to reflect on architecture here, not least due to experiences I continue to have with targeted harassment."
And for how it's going:
"I cannot in good faith recommend Mastodon to anyone who's likely to be targeted--and folks who use this place comfortably may want to think about this, as well"
And while harassment is certainly a major issue I also hear a lot of complaints from women about other cultural issues here. So it's worth thinking about your response and how it contributes to the climate here. Do you want Mastodon to have a reputation for being the kind of place where a woman posting about harassment gets a hostile reply from a guy who hasn't even bothered to read the thread?
If so, well done! But if that's not how you want people to see Mastodon ... consider a different approach.
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