Discussion
Calling on fediverse moderators: if you see a post that kind of, sort of borders on racism, but you're not really too sure: yep, you're definitely dealing with a racist.
Learn about dog whistles. And microaggressions. Get a Black person on your moderation team.
None of the redesigns and user experience tweaks will matter if we can't make this place welcoming to everyone.
#fediverse #FediMeta #FediAdmins #MastoAdmins #racism #BlackFedi #BlackMastodon
Nice to see that so many people agree!
Still, not seeing any moderators publicly coming out and committing to doing better.
So what's the solution then? More servers where the admins will take their responsibilities more seriously?
I don't know. Maybe.
more servers sounds more fediverse anyway ;)
@stefan Another possible angle from which to address the problem: there's a mismatch and not much overlap between the skills needed to run a server vs the skills needed to be a good, anti-racist moderator of said server. Maybe a pool of mods or consultants able to help admins? An admin collective offering services to would-be admins or mods? Recurring anti-racism trainings? Such things are happening all the time, among people who've never heard of mastodon. Online and off.
@SallyStrange I really like the idea of crowdfunding anti-racism workshops!
These can be provided for free to moderators and admins, and experts in the field will get compensated for their time.
Going to brainstorm about this a bit more.
maybe word it a little differently. “get a black person on your moderation team” smells a lot like, “as long as you have a token black person you qualify to say the n word.” @stefan
@stefan@stefanbohacek.online
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Get a Black person on your moderation team.
on the one hand, yes, on the other hand I don't want to demand anything from a community that's ALREADY having a bad time on fedi, is that really okay??
@stefan@stefanbohacek.online
oh I missed those, ty!!
do you think racists should not be federated with, or is this just for mods policing their own servers?
a welcoming fedi allows for all people (even racists), just like the web does. it just protects people from being harassed by them (tagged by them in ways they clearly don't want to be). from being forced to see racist content. like we do with blocking spammers and their domains.
we all have family members whose views honestly expressed here, would be called hateful etc.
@wjmaggos "a welcoming fedi allows for all people (even racists)"
Paradox of tolerance? Come on.
@stefan @wjmaggos@liberal.city It’s even worse than the paradox of tolerance, because that would involve equal moderation; that is, no moderation.
He’s arguing that you -should- moderate trolls but -not- racists because racists can be nice.
the Nazi bar analogy only applies when the presence of the Nazis drives out other voices. this doesn't happen on the web, where there are plenty of hateful sites. the same is true of the fedi thanks to decentralization and no algos (as long as we moderate for unwanted replies etc).
I want a universal fedi and we all know lots of normies and journos who'd not be welcome here because they don't adhere to a left orthodoxy. so to post moderate takes, they use X and get fascist propaganda.
@wjmaggos I really don't have more to add here.
You asked:
"do you think racists should not be federated with"
My answer is: Yes, I do.
@stefan I blocked a popular OSS dev after he posted enough things that made me think "wait, does he know this is an antisemitic dogwhistle?" that the question was answered to my satisfaction. The last straw was when he reposted a political cartoon showing Alex Karp manipulating Trump on puppet strings.
And I know how the conversation would go if I called him on it. "Oh, so you're defending Palantir?" "So you're defending Israel?" etc.
I reported him too but I doubt anything came of it.
They'd rather go after people who say we should destroy data centers than racists on social media.
@stefan Fellow White People, the racists among us are liars and play us as well as their victims.
To them, they're always the 'Victim', and I don't know about you but if there's one thing that winds this white guy up it's 'White Victimhood', whiny-ass clown fucks making this place toxic to Black People, who needs them?!
@stefan I will add: moderators' responsibility is to their *own* users. If users on other instances are bothering your users, but you're not sure ... just block 'em
@ricci Yes, very good addition, thank you!
@stefan I think this is one of the things that people misunderstand about moderating something like the Fediverse and moderating a centralized platform: as a moderator on my instance, I do *not* have to give any remote user (or instance) the "benefit of the doubt". Our house, or rules, if our folks don't want you here, you don't get to come here. This is not kicking you off the Fediverse, the bar can be as low as we want.
My own users, is where it gets more tricky. But, on a server that's not gigantic, the mods can *know* their users, give reports a lot more individual attention, talk to users to see if their behavior is unintentional and/or can be corrected, and just generally use a much more human-centered process
Racism is a system, not just an individual choice by people racialized as white.
https://techpolicy.press/the-whiteness-of-mastodon
And before I get called out: sure, people can word things awkwardly, lack nuance, etc, etc.
But we're beyond the point of giving people the benefit of the doubt. Especially if there is a pattern of "just asking questions".
Being a fediverse moderator is typically an unpaid and often a thankless job.
But if you can't deal with difficult situations, maybe better to just step aside.
@stefan I'll give you a reverse call out (a shout out?) on this particular issue: if someone is speaking awkwardly or misses the subtext of something and truly meant nothing racist by it, pointing it out isn't going to hurt them.
Racism will drive someone out; being made aware of how one's language might further racism when one didn't mean to will not.
Quite a bit of racist harassment happens in posts that moderators literally cannot see (for instance, DMs), and that is often done intentionally. What you're saying is good, but it isn't enough. There could be some technical solutions that would make this kind of invisible abuse harder to do.
I don't know about "get a Black person on your moderation team." That's a great if someone wants to be a moderator (and it can be rewarding!), but you also can't dump the duty of fighting racism in their laps.
@EverydayMoggie Oh no, absolutely not suggesting Black people should be held responsible to clean up this place. And definitely not for free. I'd say, offer this as a paid position to anyone who might be interested.
But I 100% agree, this is something white people need to fix. This is our problem.
Is it just me? There is sometimes such a big disconnect between how we feel about the fediverse and how it actually is.
Every poll I've seen about alt text suggests we all use it.
But then you look at results posted by @AltTextHealthCheck.
So many seem to agree that racism and mansplaining and gatekeeping are bad.
Can anyone say any of this has actually improved over the past few years?
Or have we collectively just driven enough marginalized people away that we don't see the complaints as often?
@stefan Perhaps the issue is that we call agree that racism and mansplaining and gatekeeping are bad... but we can't agree on what each of those things are and what qualifies as one of them.
If we agree that racism is bad, but we can't agree that something is racist or not, then a poll and the reality will be different.
@AdmiralMemo Yeah, that's kind of the problem. Seems like some (many? most?) moderators give too much pass to what they see as "not that big of a deal", or "not serious enough".
And it's honestly this that drives people away.
Yeah, racism exists elsewhere, but if the people around you, including those whose responsibility is to keep you safe, don't have your back, why stick around.
@stefan @AltTextHealthCheck Dont forget that corporate sites like bluesky and threads are federated.
@stefan @AltTextHealthCheck
> improved over the past few years?
As a fellow white guy who also wants this place to be welcoming to everyone (well, welcoming to everyone except bigots), I’ve begun following the #BlackMastodon hashtag and it *feels* like more presence than when I joined a few years ago. I see more content from outside my bubble, but also I figure that gives me some chance to notice any bigotry-in-progress and jump in and scan for de-federatable offenses.
@stefan I haven't been under the impression that we've gotten any better in this regard in the last four years. My Exhibit A:
https://beige.party/@maxleibman/115328248513805756
@stefan @AltTextHealthCheck I think I agree with what you're saying here, but for reference a poll about something like alt text (an issue where the two "sides" are people who actively care about it vs people who don't really care) is going to be disproportionately responded to by people who care.
I'm writing this because I think it's useful to realize this when interpreting poll results on here.
@renardboy @stefan @AltTextHealthCheck The alt text thing isn't a poll. Maybe check the profile of the tagged bot.
@JonnyT Yeah, not to speak for @renardboy, but I was contrasting the results posted by the bot with actual polls people have posted on this topic, eg.:
https://mastodon.social/@alttexthalloffame/114858492637529408
Yeah, this one has a smaller sample size, but I've seen more popular polls that all suggest that almost everyone fills out image description.
But yeah, those are probably just biased, obviously.
So I think it could be similar when it comes to people saying that the fediverse is more welcoming now.
@stefan @AltTextHealthCheck everyone is driven away until it becomes an echo chamber.
@stefan@stefanbohacek.online @AltTextHealthCheck@mastodon.social I think it is the second one - they left.
@unsafelyhotboots This is my big fear. I personally don't feel confident saying: Yep, fediverse is now more welcoming. Come try it again!
Not saying it isn't! But I just don't think I'd know.
And seeing that reply controls, which, yeah, I know, hard to implement in the fediverse, we all know. But "months or years away" is just not good enough.
This is the one thing that's the bare minimum to make this place just a tiny bit more safe until we get the culture here under control.
And *that* is months or years away.
No further comment.
it reminds me of a real life situation in my country. According to statistics collected and processed at local, national govt and UN level, UK has third safest roads in all of Europe and a high position globally.
I have a special interest in transport so study things like this closely - over the years I've been a pedestrian, cyclist and driver on these roads.
I believe the figures - but reality I see on the ground is a lot of vulnerable road users (cyclists, lone women or those transporting kids) have simply been intimidated off streets (especially later at night), and spaces are still dominated by groups of males and by cars, and its only a whole load of CCTV surveillance that puts a lid on at least some more reckless behaviour...
@stefan well first we don't let anything like the twitter come near us, and second I am down for openly inviting lots more black folks to join. Like overtly say "there's a few black folks here who are lonely, come help them build a community". The fact it would spite the assholes is frosting on the cake.
@SomeVeganCheeseIsOk I get what you mean here, but I'm not too sure about the framing.
"come help them build a community"
Why would anyone accept the invitation and sign up to do the work, especially coming from non-Black people, when all their Black friends who did try it here ran away with awful experience?
I think we (specifically white people) need to clean this place up first and foremost, so that people who are already here feel confident to tell their friends to give it another try.
@stefan @SomeVeganCheeseIsOk Not that I want to stray too far from my lane, but the current posts from Black people here are that they report racism and get told that it's not to worry, nevermind, we know better. Why would they even stay, nevermind do any more work.
@adriano Sorry, not sure if this reply is addressed to me, but it sounds like we're on the same page?
@stefan we are indeed, I was mentioning the specific context I've seen, but I agree with your point. @SomeVeganCheeseIsOk
@stefan Not to dispute your actual point, but just for the record, Mekka is a transphobe.
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