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Another Black person played Mastodon "instance roulette" and lost.

We need a Mastodon instance Green Book pronto or this ain't gonna work.

This is starting to feel like the WW2 Dunkirk evacuation where the Black and Indian Commonwealth soldiers were abandoned on the beach...

https://twitter.com/wickdchiq/status/1594711597359980547
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

Shout-out to Colonel John Ashdown, who was a Captain on that day at Dunkirk. He commanded a regiment of Indian soldiers and mules. He was ordered to abandon the Indians and the mules and save himself.

He refused. He abandoned the mules but marched his Indian soldiers to safety♥️

Of course they tried to court martial him for refusing the order to discard and abandon the soldiers he was responsible for.🤡

John Lusk reshared this.

in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

It's not OK to flee from the Titanic that is Twitter hitting the Musk Iceberg, and not care if the life boats let Black folk on.

Be like John Ashdown.

John Lusk reshared this.

in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

And before anyone gets mad about him abandoning the mules in the French countryside...

a) Mules are a highly evolved creatures, and as such are recognized as pacifists by choice. They do not acknowledge the borders and armies and petty squabbles of man, and swear allegiance to no flag. Only to oats and hay!

b) Some lucky French farmers came up on some free mules! Score! Give oats and hay!
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

German Army was extremely dependent on horses and mules throughout the war. A good officer would have killed the mules to make them unavailable to the foe.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

New users are having trouble navigating the signup process as it is. Now they need to worry about which servers have racist moderators. It’s really terrible.
in reply to Rich Burroughs :kubernetes:

@richburroughs I wonder if some of the more open-minded Mastodon admins out in the #Fediverse can step up and support #POC by elevating POC volunteers into moderator positions or instance moderation "oversight committees" (if something like that exists)?
in reply to Paul Otto

@richburroughs #hachyderm seems like a good candidate... I believe @nova and team have a really forward-thinking, inclusive set of governance in place.
in reply to Paul Otto

@potto @richburroughs @nova We can see that as white dudes (and therefore always safe) on the inside, but how is anyone to know from the outside? The server rules say "No racism", etc, but is that guaranteed unless (or even if) someone who deals with said bullshit vouches for the people on the inside? WE know Nova's awesome, but...

These aren't questions for white folks to answer, but they do need to be answered. All we can do is our best to be, as he said, "like John Ashdown".
in reply to Noah Abrahams

@nabrahams @potto @nova I think it’s going to be really rough if the folks running those big servers that are very visible in the signup process aren’t doing the work to fix this.
in reply to Rich Burroughs :kubernetes:

@nabrahams @potto @nova Mekka mentioned needing a Green Book and I think it’s a solid analogy. The problem is, what if someone hasn’t heard the Green Book exists? A lot of folks seem to be confused by even having to pick a server, let alone finding one that’s not racist.
in reply to Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦

@nafnlaus @richburroughs @nabrahams @potto @nova

Speaking of assumptions: I think you might be assuming that racism requires or implies malintent. It doesn't. If a high percentage of Black women that join a server report experiences like this, then the server is racist.

"Institutional racism, also known as systemic racism, is a form of racism that is embedded in the laws and regulations of a society or an organization"
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

@nafnlaus @richburroughs @nabrahams @potto @nova

A rule such as "Don't talk about your racist experiences without a CW or you will be banned!" can be racist.

Or having ineffective moderation policies that don't take into account the fact that Black women are so frequently false reported, so that Black women are much more likely to be caught in false positives, can be racist.

Clutching pearls at the definition is unhelpful.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

@nafnlaus @richburroughs @nabrahams @potto @nova

I'm writing these replies for others, not necessarily to convince or persuade you.

In my experience, when lots of Black folk report a bad experience, folks tend to split into two camps.

Helpful: That seems bad. How can we make things better?

Unhelpful: But was it racist tho? I mean was it? It was just a series of coincidences! That happen a lot to you folks! Don't accuse me!
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

@nafnlaus @richburroughs @nabrahams @potto @nova

I'll let you have the last word in this little exchange, and focus on the people actually making the experience better and making sure this happens less frequently.

Bye! 👋🏿
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

@nafnlaus @potto @nova @nabrahams @richburroughs At this stage in mastodons development I think it’s critically important to look at the values that are being institutionalized within each instance. Admins and moderators have to be transparent in their processes and the results of their efforts. Not just as after-action reports, but as a constant proactive review of policies aimed toward improvement.

Like it or not, mastodon is gaining a reputation for a lack of diversity. Are admins and moderators incorporating those increasingly vocal concerns into policy decisions? Be transparent. Even well intentioned policies can undermine inclusion efforts if there’s no effort to address legitimate concerns about representation. Is there a ‘jury of our peers’ amongst the mods? Be thoughtful of how those perceptions impact the most vulnerable among us.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

When I showed up here, one of my first thoughts was "the instances concept seems like the perfect way to make a literal #blacktwitter on mastodon or on any of the other flavors in the fediverse while still being able to interact with the rest of the fediverse"

Of course it wouldn't fix racist users & admins elsewhere, but twitter (and other platforms) are pretty miserable about that as well.

Lo & behold...
https://blacktwitter.io/about/more
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

Mine is Yankee blue, baby. Come on down. Exactly why I started this instance. Compulsively Inclusive.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

This article has more details on Ashdown, as well as framing Dunkirk within a wider discussion of Empireballs, as I like to call it.
https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/YAke6pEMeev8AfP8vKA76H/Dunkirk-and-the-delusions-of-empire.html
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

this sucks.

Do you think maybe we can/should stand up a matching thread for folks willing and able to join moderation teams (either as an active mod or respected advisory if not enough bandwidth to fully mod) to focus on prioritizing inclusion and equity for Black and Indigenous folks, to pre-existing instances with partially complete management/mod teams that have room to grow there and are willing and committed to take this very seriously?
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

@Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 Seriously. If they don't have roughly 1 moderator for every 1k persons, they aren't going to be good places for anyone other than straight white men. Why mastodon.social is just gab lite now.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

feels like a lot of the more popular servers need to pick moderators a lot more carefully than they currently do... maybe even pay to hire moderators with the right life experience.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

This goes against what I understand of the Mastodon community so far. Is this common? Is it a specific server or is it widespread?
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

this is so frustrating. These over-zealous servers are really hurting adoption.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

agreed. and it needs to be a community of people who are completely separated from mastodon admin/moderation/dev entirely. we tech people are absolutely NOT qualified
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

It's important that these servers and accounts that prote racism and bigotry are reported. Mastodon WILL ban anyone with content such as this.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

That's one of the ones run by the non-profit themselves. They should be better than that.

We could really stand to have a community for Black voices and advocates, of course there's always the risk that it will make it easier to silence.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

this is very bad and needs fixed. I'm not sure what I can possibly do about it, but if you have any ideas I'll take them up.

I don't like the "therefore we need a corporate platform" logic going on in that thread, twitter is a bad bad place and many of us have been targeted for harassment by accounts that have never faced sanction.

But there is clearly a race problem on some mastodon instances. Something must be done.
in reply to Alistair Davidson

@moh_kohn
I think a lot of this comes down to helping users pick the right instance up front, and helping instances scale moderation to meet this wave of new Mastodon users.

There's a huge difference in experience for Black folks that landed on smaller instances with good moderation, and those that didn't.

It's much easier to scale the technical infra than the moderation infra. Effectively moderating 100,000 users is more than 100 times harder than moderating a thousand users
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

@moh_kohn

Does Twitter allow you to have threads warning others about the larger instances and their moderation issues? Or do those threads get removed as fast as they go up? :(
in reply to hank_hill's_reckless_daughter

@xenophora @moh_kohn So far, I think they are letting them stay up?

I recommended a few smaller instances that seemed life safe places (e.g. Hachyderm.io) and those seem to be up still.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

@moh_kohn

Not a techie so I don't have any brilliant ideas to make this process better, but at least I can wish you best of luck. 👍
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

@moh_kohn I remember the stress of first joining; the rules were often extremely vague and broad enough to apply to any experience the hosts didn’t want to entertain (re: white flight mentioned elsewhere). This is inspiring me to rewrite our server rules and code of conduct to clarify that this won’t happen with us. Thank you for this post, and I hope Erica is able to find a better server… but I totally understand if trust was irreparably broken.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

@moh_kohn
I feel like I'm sticking my nose in where it doesn't belong a lot of the time because I'm a 47 year old queer white non-binary white femme — but I've been TRYING to explain this to white folks who are being awful about this.

Many (most?) don't understand these issues and there's just not many Black folks here. I don't want to herd all the white folks to Black spaces to learn. That's a lot of bullshit for a few people.

I don't want to speak for people but I also don't want to watch white folks sit in an echo chamber being dicks.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

@moh_kohn I see your point but still, it’s not ok that this should ever happen, on any server. There has been so much evidence of BIPOC people being censored and blocked here in ways that are completely unacceptable and racist. We all now need to work on changing Mastodon to make it place where #Blackmastodon can thrive - so much real learning here that still needs to be done but i hope it’s possible. I learned so much from #blacktwitter
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

I moved from mastodon.social due to performance issues. So I dodged the de-federated risk by pure chance.

Some won't be so lucky. Seconding the "Green Book" of instances for that reason and to avoid cesspools.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

@moh_kohn a Disboard for tooters. Yes. Yesssss. It's all coming together. Count me in btw if someone can do this and just needs a partner.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

yeah, figuring out the culture of any given server before you join is nigh on impossible right now. Most server rules seem to be the same generic items, with no additional text to show that the admin has given any thought to how they will be applied.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

I'm wondering if her last post (a boost of ta post with the cover of Nirvana's "Nevermind") was seen as a violation of the server's CW policy.

@wickdchiq

Regardless, it wouldn't justify an immediate suspension without explanation and this is a pretty awful way to operate.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

from what I’m seeing, it sounds like the popular servers are completely overwhelmed with v poor moderation (if any) in place :( I think there’s an instance operated by Black folk for Black folk
in reply to Shubheksha

@ScribblingOn

Yeah on both accounts. Scaling up moderation is hard. Both from a policy standpoint, and a "training moderators to apply the policy" standpoint. And also from a "don't fall for cynical users who over-report Black women" standpoint.

BlackTwitter.io is a Black moderated instance, but there are also other instances that are good places for Black users to start as well. I think we should make it much easier to discover those places during sign-up.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

definitely. I think the issue is that there’s a reluctance to add more moderators on the bigger ones? Idk how it’s possible for a small group of peeps to moderate a six figure audience.

The instance I’m on seems fairly well run too. I’ve not seen any kind of nonsense (so far). It’s sucha hit and miss. Totally understand how a terrible first experience can be so off putting, you go back to the birdsite altogether.

I hate that we live in a world where this is necessary.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

This really sucks. I completely understand why Black people are reluctant to trust the model behind the #fediverse.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

getting banned or asked to leave a server is a horrible experience. Noone should have to be treated like that without any personal communication.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

how can folks vet a server before joining? You don't really get much info upfront. I hear it's easy enough to switch if you need to, but maybe not if you're already banned??
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

In that thread (and I found it before I saw it in the thread, all baader-meinhoff-y), there's mentions of blacktwitter.io. What's interesting about that is I'm sure there's some trademark issue that will come up, but no idea if Tusk will try to enforce it.

I can't find Kumba Kpakima's mastodon username, sadly, or I'd tag for this: https://peopleofcolorintech.com/articles/is-mastodon-the-new-twitter-heres-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-social-networking-site/
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

I mean, the solution to this is to have a social justice instance. But that's not easy, cheap, and needs trustworthy moderators which are all hard problems.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

I would be happy to sponsor an instance by setting one up and running the server until it exceeds my monthly server budget.

Not sure where its best to offer that or how to organize people around it, especially being white.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

this is why I’m a bit shook about talking about racism on here. Over represented folks don’t take into account the mathematics required to determine if a space is safe. Labels don’t make safety.
in reply to Bryan Liles

@bryanl I got a few posts about racism out there without CWs early, to see how my local admins and neighbors would respond. They were great about it, and supportive. ♥️👍🏿

I'd rather know early than live with neighbors that I don't know if they want me around.
in reply to John Mark :blobcatverified: ☑️

@johnmark It's a shame because this is being widely boosted, and her thread over on Twitter is like, see, this is how you know that mastodon, as a whole, is openly racist, etc.
in reply to Jason Brooks :fedora:

@jasonbrooks @johnmark

I think there's a big disconnect with the phrase "openly racist." Racism does not require malintent. She is not saying, "Some mod who sits around saying the N word, did this on purpose to harass me."

She is saying, "The number of Black women and their allies that face issues on Mastodon is way higher than on other platforms. This makes me not want to be here."

Moderation false positives impact Black women more than other groups.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

@jasonbrooks @johnmark

As a general rule, Black people are not very worried about "openly racist." Who wears Black face, who says the N-word, who has a Klan hood. White folk are almost overly concerned with openly racist.

Black folk are much more concerned with systemically racist. Who smiles, but doesn't hire any Black people. Who laughs, but calls the cops on Black neighbors. Who says a system is "working as intended" even if it harms a large % of Black folk.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

@johnmark I agree, that wasn't the right way for me to put it, because she wasn't suggesting that it was open at all, more like it was unspoken, albeit obvious, racism behind the suspension.

What I had in mind was something like fundamentally racist, like as if the way mastodon and the fediverse are constructed make this a fundamentally more racist place than twitter.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

the beautiful thing about Mastodon is that it's open source, and being federated means no one person is in control. Instead of seeing it as a lifeboat, you should see it as being able to build your own ship. Companies like Amazon and Oracle offer free tiers so anyone can get started with no other expense than your time, and from there you can grow your community. You could host it on your own server as well; some even run from as little as a Raspberry Pi SBC.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

it’s disturbing that this stuff is happening and doesn’t bode well for the long term viability of Mastodon.
in reply to Morten Toudahl

@mortentoudahl No one is saying this was done "based on colour." I don't believe a moderator sat around and consciously said, "I don't like Black women! Therefore I'm going to mess with this account!" That's not what happened.

Let's say false positive moderation events impact 0.1% of all new users, but 10% of Black women users, is that something that you think we should look into fixing?
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

You are not saying it our right. But you are making it about colour by mentioning she is black, while drawing parallels to past transgressions. This heavily implies it was done on the basis of her skin.

On a side note, the owner of the instance has apologised, and explained they thought it was someone impersonating her, and she is no longer suspended.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

if you don’t own it you can’t control it, Black folk need to create, fund and run their own instances to avoid bullshit like this.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

Too littke context and the poster is making a huge deal of it by reposting multiple comments where each adds a little bit of imagination to the story.

Statments like "mastodon has issues with moderation" means you the poster did not even take 2 min to learn what the platform is about.

They should look at instances like this one: very friendly.

https://bassam.social/public/local
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

I saw @triketora's banned post got reinstated with an apology. When this was communicated to her on Twitter, there were dozens of vile replies screaming about anti-white leftist racism, etc etc. I looked at a lot of those accounts: all rightwing racist trash, several with a lot of pro-Musk content. None with Mastodon links. It makes me wonder if *part* of the picture is Twitter racists joining Mastodon to flood the mods with reports, exploiting systemic weaknesses.
in reply to Outeast

I'm not denying existing issues, to be clear, and it's only a hypothesis.
in reply to Outeast

@outeast

Exactly. Any social network with sufficient moderation realizes that this is part of the problem space: malicious users target Black women with a flood of false and fake terms of service violation reports.

This happens on FB, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, etc.

Inability to control for these false positives and cynical reports, creates a network that doesn't work as well for Black women or other targeted groups.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

I wrote this on Twitter:

One of the biggest problems when moderating social networks is that the rules get weaponised against social justice advocates.

Or let me be blunt, they get weaoponised against Black people, women, LGBTQ+, and any marginalised groups.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

I feel like anyone still on Twitter really needs to get the word out to anyone moving here that if you are in basically any marginalized community stay the fuck away from any of the big instances.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

Gah, this is horrible. Erica was banned from mastodon.online, the biggest instance. Moderation there is a disaster, intermittently racist and dismissive of actual abuse. I’ve seen long-time admins saying if this was any other instance they’d have defederated by now, and trying to figure out what to do. Eugen’s been told, but won’t admit that it’s systemic.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

thanks for boosting this @aredridel . I mentioned this earlier because it's both saddening and maddening. I've only begun using mastodon seriously recently and the thing I'm noticing is that the flagship instances are hostile to people who post about social justice and their experiences as people of colour. But also most people are hostile to those instances.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

the gargron servers suffer from the exact same problems as twitter does (they're crowded and unmoderated due the the large ego of one man), therefore they are just as aweful.
in reply to nebuchi_25 :ecoanarchism:

@nebuchi For Black folk, in many ways, the experience is explicitly worse than Twitter.

"If you even speak about your experiences in a way we don't like, you may have your account suspended" is not something that happened to them on Twitter in this way.

These are 3 cases we hear about because they're high profile women with specific expertise in confronting racism. Unseen are the hundreds that just say, "Nope! Hard pass." And leave.

Moderation is hard.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

@nebuchi So near and yet so far is so damn aggravating. The fediverse has a chance to be great and I feel like the various instances are already well into the process of blowing it.
Would like to know thoughts on what people who want to help can do.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

it seems very bad. unfortunately, i think the time is absolutely ripe for defederating the gargoverse and creating a fedi-continent. but can i just ask you why are you on such a huge instance? i got on immediately on a small, tiny even, instance, where i know the mods and know they will not kick me out for being me. does your instance provide you with a similar sense of security? do you know for sure they do not hold neo-nazi views?
in reply to nebuchi_25 :ecoanarchism:

i see these things you are speaking about. racism towards black usaians in these large imstances. honestly i consider it a major issue. but i am powerless about it. i can only ask my mods to defederate. that is the only practical solution on my part imho.
in reply to nebuchi_25 :ecoanarchism:

@nebuchi I'm a hopeless optimist! 😀

I believe that Gagron doesn't want it to be true that Mastodon doesn't work as well for Black users.

I believe that his ears are more open to feedback now than they may have been in the past.

I believe routing users to smaller instances with better moderation in the short term, and scaling effective moderation on the main instances in the medium term, is preferable to defederation.

Ultimately I want most large instances to be safe for Black users
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

i guess you are. i believe the large instances will always be a dumpster fire - there will always be horrible moderation in them and lots of racists as a consequence. i think smaller instances are the short, middle and long term solution. i would caution all people from putting their virtual future and trust in one individual. again, gorgron can be musk (and will be imho) if we don't make sure he doesn't.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

In the short time that I have been using mastodon actively, I have seen what you describe happen many times. It is frustrating how unwilling a lot of people on this platform are to acknowledge these problems. I try to raise awareness. If you see other ways in which white people can help, please share. Mastodon cannot be the future if only white people feel safe using it.
@nebuchi
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

I would expect a digital Green Book to be an attack surface for cyber operators to exercise their “freeze peach” for malicious and toxic purposes.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

this is the biggest threat to Mastodon’s long-term thriving. The choose-a-village experience needs to mature ASAP.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

A green book is a good idea. Although probably something that would work here is choosing by domain. I'll betcha *.lgbt would be good.

There's lots of instances run by sjw types. Me, for instance. It would be completely possible to set up instances that just whitelist known good instances. You wouldn't even see what else was out there.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

apology post. he fixed it and apologized in this thread . it was a mistake. https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/109383947978442853
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

I might be missing something, but it looks as if she got banned by twitter, not Mastodon. Is she here now?
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

Yeah, there are a few lists we need. Like which instances to block... I'ma wait and see. Happy where this is going, man.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

One of the great things about Mastodon is the opportunity to find your community... but it might not happen on the first try. Green book is a good idea. 👍👍
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

@tim you hear about this? You seem like a good administrator from our limited interactions and I thought this would interest you
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

Yes, that's very bad, but the admin did say her account was suspended _in error_, restored it, and apologised. So there's that.

mastodon - all the instances, even mine - are facing an absolute flood of new accounts and higher traffic - some sites literally 20 times as much activity - and ramp-up on this scale is hard. Like, we've already swapped 100% of our hardware because we had to.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

I have been minimizing how much "meta" I post about fedi, but if someone builds such a reference point, I will boost the hell out of it. I am soo tired of seeing BIPOC being knocked out of this space. I want y'all here, I want to hear your stories.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

Wouldn't be surprised if the same mod was responsible for this as for the dot-social one, since they're both run by the Mastodon GmBH.

"Don't use the biggest instances, run by the creator of the software, because their moderation is bad" shouldn't be a thing but here we are...
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

was this one of the incidents referenced by @Gargron ? It's so hard to keep track because he doesn't specify the exact incident.

https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/109383947978442853
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

Sorry if this was already pointed out (didn't see it in the long thread). Gargron said her account was reported as impersonation and the mod suspended for that, and not for any content. Her account has since been un-suspended. Thread here. https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/109383947978442853
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

I know that it's of 0 consolation, but on our instance, black people are super-duper welcome. Our CoC is listed in the "about" section and we aggressively defederate conspiracy theorists, white suprenacists, anti-vaxers and genocide apologists.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

@zens I’m shocked to learn both those things. I mean I didn’t expect much of the English but WTAF? I did expect better of the Fediverse.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

Well, if nothing else, this thread has certainly let me add to my block list pretty efficiently.

So many problematic white people.
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@LostNetizen

No, it was a moderation mistake, based on a report of an impersonator account.

There's a bot instance that relays popular Twitter accounts on Mastodon. She tweeted that there was an impostor account on Mastodon, that wasn't really her. Someone reported her real Mastodon account with a link to her tweet. Mod erroneously deactivated her real Mastodon account, thinking it was the imposter. Mods reinstated and apologized.

Moderation is hard to ramp up quickly.
Unknown parent

@webframp @kstewart

One of the weirdest paradoxes about a bad customer service experience, is that you can *increase* people's perception of your service.

Gargron's transparency about a few things has been great:
* Admitting they made a mistake
* Explaining how the mistake happened in each case
* Being transparent that they are struggling to scale moderation
* Correcting the mistakes

It's easier and faster to scale tech infra than to scale moderation.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

@webframp @kstewart

A question people have had for other social networks over the years, is: should the limit at which you grow be how fast you can expand technical infra? Or should you also consider your ability to safely moderate communities that you serve?

Other questions:
Is the false positive / false negative moderation rate higher for marginalized women? If so, what can we do to mitigate that?
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

I checked her Twitter...

It appears that she used an automated cross-posting app to post to Mastodon.

I am so sorry this happened to her.

Many instances require CW (Content Warnings) on anything that may be offensive. Clicking on CW content is the users problem if they do not like it.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

While I don't like the characterization of instances as HOAs (and all of the racist baggage that entails), as well as the idea that some people have that all instances moderate the same, and that we don't want "challenging content", I can totally understand why people react this way, and I feel for them.

We do not moderate based on identity, and try to be fair on moderation. Invite to share if anyone wants https://tech.lgbt/invite/PSApsa82
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

It concerns me that we are amplifying these few instances of moderation errors, all of which have been rectified and apologized for. These mods are volunteers and scrambling to understand their roles on a rapidly expanding platform. Of course we need to call out racism where we see it (and there does seem to be some systemic bias in who is perceived as a potential threat) but I hope we can cut these folks some slack while they are on this steep learning curve. Yes, our expectations should rise as Mastodon matures, but a bit of patience and understanding right now might be called for.
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

this is the second I'm seeing being discussed around in the few past days. The first one was addressed, but here I'm wondering if there are any details known by now?

(Not implying anyone's wrongness, nor waging any war.)
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

Idk what happened here, but I do know that in the TOS it says to mark all sensitive content.

Tbf that's fairly vague so anything even slightly horror related I mark as such

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of political content could get ppl into trouble if it's not marked as sensitive
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉

Maybe a miscommunication?

Twitter does not have a site "Manual". Mastodon does, but she was not online to receive the link that likely told her no 3rd party automated cross-posting is allowed.

Just a guess. I got caught that way. But I was online to read the admin message.

Watching how this goes.
She is back online now.
So, she is the final word on how that happened.

Just a bystander here.