😑
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
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
anubis2814 likes this.
reshared this
Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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.
Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Be like John Ashdown.
John Lusk reshared this.
Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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!
Mark von Wahlde
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •John Lusk
in reply to Mark von Wahlde • • •😒
Mark von Wahlde
in reply to John Lusk • • •Rich Burroughs :kubernetes:
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Paul Otto
in reply to Rich Burroughs :kubernetes: • • •Paul Otto
in reply to Paul Otto • • •Noah Abrahams
in reply to Paul Otto • • •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".
Rich Burroughs :kubernetes:
in reply to Noah Abrahams • • •Rich Burroughs :kubernetes:
in reply to Rich Burroughs :kubernetes: • • •Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦
in reply to Rich Burroughs :kubernetes: • • •Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉
in reply to Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦 • • •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"
Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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.
Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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!
Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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! 👋🏿
Brian Anderson (He/Him)
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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.
Karsten™️
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Geoff with an irish last name
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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
Black Twitter
Mastodon hosted on blacktwitter.ioDavid Gerhart
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Alexander Hay
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/YAke6pEMeev8AfP8vKA76H/Dunkirk-and-the-delusions-of-empire.html
Dunkirk and the delusions of empire | Mint
Salil Tripathi (mint)Jason Parsons
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Tess :knuckles:
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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?
Dr Uchenna Ngwe
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •anubis2814
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • •Sandy
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Eric J. Korpela
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •harmonicarichard
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Goofrider
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Oren Mazor
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Rican🇵🇷Vinny
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Linearchaos :loading:
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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.
Alistair Davidson
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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.
Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉
in reply to Alistair Davidson • • •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
hank_hill's_reckless_daughter
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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? :(
Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉
in reply to hank_hill's_reckless_daughter • • •I recommended a few smaller instances that seemed life safe places (e.g. Hachyderm.io) and those seem to be up still.
hank_hill's_reckless_daughter
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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. 👍
John (he/him) :vbike:
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 reshared this.
Dani — MLT(ASCP)
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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.
Pauline von Hellermann
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉
in reply to Pauline von Hellermann • • •a.Albi
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Some won't be so lucky. Seconding the "Green Book" of instances for that reason and to avoid cesspools.
Saint Baal-MAŠ
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •thatdosbox
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Mark Rogaski
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •@wickdchiq
Regardless, it wouldn't justify an immediate suspension without explanation and this is a pretty awful way to operate.
Shubheksha
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉
in reply to Shubheksha • • •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.
Shubheksha
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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.
Keith (karmajunkie)
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Thomas
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Jeff Byrnes
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Not good.
Maia
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Agent NDN. Negm/They/He
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Tom
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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/
Is Mastodon The Social Media Platform Black Twitter Needs?
Kumba Kpakima (POCIT. Telling the stories and thoughts of people of color in tech.)Navarr Barnier :magento:
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Indiealexh
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Not sure where its best to offer that or how to organize people around it, especially being white.
Bryan Liles
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 reshared this.
Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉
in reply to Bryan Liles • • •I'd rather know early than live with neighbors that I don't know if they want me around.
Lien Rag
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •John Mark :blobcatverified: ☑️
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Jason Brooks :fedora:
in reply to John Mark :blobcatverified: ☑️ • • •John Mark :blobcatverified: ☑️
in reply to Jason Brooks :fedora: • • •Jason Brooks :fedora:
in reply to John Mark :blobcatverified: ☑️ • • •Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉
in reply to Jason Brooks :fedora: • • •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.
Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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.
Jason Brooks :fedora:
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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.
Canoehead🛶
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Graham Wheeler
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Morten Toudahl
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉
in reply to Morten Toudahl • • •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?
Morten Toudahl
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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.
Leon Green
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Matt Okeson-Harlow
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •التنينوكس
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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
بَسّام
ماستدون مُستضاف على bassam.socialOuteast
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Outeast
in reply to Outeast • • •Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉
in reply to 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.
Tatiana
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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.
Gentlethem Pirate
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Viveka
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •sabret00the
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •nebuchi_25 :ecoanarchism:
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉
in reply to nebuchi_25 :ecoanarchism: • • •"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.
Judmarc
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Would like to know thoughts on what people who want to help can do.
nebuchi_25 :ecoanarchism:
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •nebuchi_25 :ecoanarchism:
in reply to nebuchi_25 :ecoanarchism: • • •Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉
in reply to nebuchi_25 :ecoanarchism: • • •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
nebuchi_25 :ecoanarchism:
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Alice Schwarze
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •@nebuchi
Sampath Pāṇini ®
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Paul Allen
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Hans Gerwitz
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Joy Denebeim :tv: :tb: :pa:
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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.
Jai Half-Elven 🏹🍜🐉
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Eugen Rochko (@Gargron@mastodon.social)
Mastodonauntie_beans / howlinmama
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •David Gerhart
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •John Mullinax
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Trek
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •John Lusk
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •https://twitter.com/joinmastodon/status/1594798429590507520?s=20&t=klyEMEZVJn_Yxqv1YW0eDA
Un-suspended. They made a mistake and admitted it (which is more than I ever got out of Twitter).
Solarbird :flag_cascadia:
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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.
Jeremy "Candyman" Thompson
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Les Lore
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Liam
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Lucas Gonze (OSS topics)
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Ian Littman
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •"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...
annodomini
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/109383947978442853
Eugen Rochko (@Gargron@mastodon.social)
MastodonAaron Hunyady
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Eugen Rochko (@Gargron@mastodon.social)
MastodonJons Mostovojs
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 reshared this.
Chuck Durfee
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Christopher Biggs
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Gigi 🍄🟫
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •So many problematic white people.
Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉
Unknown parent • • •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.
Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉
Unknown parent • • •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.
Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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?
annfinster
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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.
a pup of coffee :v_agender: :bowie: ☕
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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
LGBTQIA+ Tech Mastodon
Mastodon hosted on tech.lgbtReido
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Piper Carter
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •IngNdolo
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •(Not implying anyone's wrongness, nor waging any war.)
Raven
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •So apparently it had nothing to do with racism after all but false alerts. Which I saw happen to white people too, even celebrities.
Orla Seraph (18+)
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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
annfinster
in reply to Mekka :verified: 💉💉💉🎉 • • •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.