The biggest problem is simply because there aren't enough Black people here. A related problem is that there is a kind of elitism that makes this unlikely to change. eg. "it's a good thing only nerds know how to use this place, wouldn't it be awful if the rabble showed up" type sentiments.

1/

Hmmm. Trying to figure out how to tag this to get some responses. "BlackMastodon" has always struck me as more of an intracommunity tag and I don't want to abuse it, but my ignorance is showing and I don't know what to use instead.

For a little more background: I'm asking about this partially because I want to know how places I spend my time treat Black and Brown users, as I myself might not see. My friends who are not white also need better expertise: I won't recc a site I haven't vetted.

Ok, I'm definitely unable to mod this thread effectively with today's spoons. If it's cool I'll leave it up for now, but if I need to I can close the thread. Someone Please DM me if you know a reason I should, since I'm unable to follow everything as closely as I"d like.

Thank you to all of the Black users who responded, and I'll be going through your responses closely as I can sort them out. I really appreciate the effort and I apologize that I was unprepared for this level of engagement!

Just a friendly reminder that I'm asking for opinions of Black Users Only. If a wp has questions, start your own thread and expand the reach.

We as white people have to stop using each other as expert witnesses. We're highly vulnerable to suggestion and we tend to ignore evidence of bias.

(If any wp is tempted to argue about the value of our views in conversations about Black people's experiences, would you mind just hitting the block on your way out so I don't have to?)

I'm not African-American, but in the early days, there were a LOT of African-Americans (including techie African-Americans) complaining about the moderation here on Mastodon.

Instead of addressing their concerns, many moderators dismissed their concerns as unreasonable. Many left for Blue Sky, where they find the moderation more reasonable.

I'm only here because of the business model compared to the business model for Blue Sky.

This reply is my simple thank you to all of the people who answered the above question.

I have read, and am reading, and am grateful.

I have nothing to add.

That's all.

I'm far from having a representative view of it all, I can offes a small perspective:

- I come from the intersection of Libre software and political far-left, so the fediverse is one of the only few platforms worth my time. However I can't fail to see how Bluesky has built the only large-scale moderation system that makes sense and Mastodon-the-software really lacks here. In fact take pretty much any other software and you'll see the discrimination-fighting experience that built them

- I'm mostly tooting in the french-speaking world, from my own instance where I'm alone. I haven't experienced hate but I absolutely can't say it's the same for others in that world

I'm not leaving because I'm not easy to run off from a place. I'm what they call "the wrong one."

Some Black people are constitutionally built to pay "the pioneer tax" of being the first, or the only Black person in a hostile white place, until that place becomes comfortable enough for other Black folks. We exist as lightning rods to draw heat away from Black folk who have better things to do with their time. I'm comfortable confronting racism, especially the liberal kind

1/N

In the end I don't know what to do about it.

I hope that with time people will keep ending up here as walled gardens fail. A few more people showed up with the migration from X. Eventually, threads and BlueSky will fall apart because that's market model for such places. And people will move here.

Can we at least pretend like we want them to join us? That's all I ask.

6/6

A lot of people like that the fedi is a leafy suburb, a sleepy college town. They don't want to have the latest "tea" about rappers falling out on here. They can hardly tolerate people talking about sports.

And to me, this is just so short-sighted and sad. Twitter had many flaws but one of its strengths was that all kinds of people participated and this made it special. Twitter was better than the fedi at diversity. 5/

I feel that things are changing.. My perspective is that there is room for everyone if everyone remembers the tools they have at their disposal. It's really not that hard to curate a feed here it's just that people expect an algorithm to kick in and do the work of finding like minds when that's an active thing you do here.

Everyday I meet different people here from all over the world..

I believe that the internet is like a bowl.. Bluesky and threads are at the opposite rims.. but everything gravitates down.. towards protocols.. we still use the same httprotocol that was created in 1989. We are still using email.. sites will disappear but protocols stand the test of time..
(Grew up poor and was banned from twitter before Elon bought it for calling out n*zis and transphobes)

@futurebird It was actually pretty white and snooty at the beginning too, thought. It just feels like this time, we're running out of time.

And I hate sports, but I filter it out, just like I did on Twitter. hehe.