๐
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...
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 safetyโฅ๏ธ
Of course they tried to court martial him for refusing the order to discard and abandon the soldiers he was responsible for.๐คก
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.
@mekkaokereke New users are having trouble navigating the signup process as it is. Now they need to worry about which servers have racist moderators. Itโs really terrible.
@richburroughs @mekkaokereke 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)?
@richburroughs @mekkaokereke #hachyderm seems like a good candidate... I believe @nova and team have a really forward-thinking, inclusive set of governance in place.
@potto @richburroughs @mekkaokereke @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".
@nabrahams @potto @mekkaokereke @nova I think itโs going to be really rough if the folks running those big servers that are very visible in the signup process arenโt doing the work to fix this.
@nabrahams @potto @mekkaokereke @nova Mekka mentioned needing a Green Book and I think itโs a solid analogy. The problem is, what if someone hasnโt heard the Green Book exists? A lot of folks seem to be confused by even having to pick a server, let alone finding one thatโs not racist.
@richburroughs @nabrahams @potto @mekkaokereke @nova Or instead of just assuming the server is racist...
@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"
@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.
@nafnlaus there's a russian imperialist who thinks he's anti-war because he wrote a regex that bans people who discuss war on mastodon.ml (making informing people of the atrocities committed by russian terrorists impossible there).
At the same time he uses slurs to address Ukrainians. The guy and his instance can go fuck themselves as far as I'm concerned.
Same idea here.
@nafnlaus if you don't see it, let me help you out. Add word "by" to the end of your quoted text and complete the sentence. "Trying to protect by...". Not a koan, really.