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4 things white people can do to start making the fediverse less toxic for Black people (DRAFT!)

cross-posted from: lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/15011909

Feedback welcome! Here’s the TL;DR list

  1. Listen more to more Black people
  2. Post less – and think before you post
  3. Call in, call out, and/or report anti-Blackness when you see it
  4. Support Black people and Black-led instances and projects

Other suggestions?

DerisionConsulting ,

Since this is just a draft, you should change #2 to just “think before you post”.

It can make sense in certain circumstances, like in BLM rallies telling white people that it wasn’t our stage to speak makes sense, but telling people of a certain skin colour to “post less” in general is racist as fuck.

iopq ,

Posting less is how you kill the whole idea of the fediverse

CaptainSpaceman ,

Im also wondering how the fediverse is toxic for black people.

thenexusofprivacy OP , (edited )

From the article

Dr. Johnathan Flowers’ The Whiteness of Mastodon, Ra’il I’Nasah Kiam and Marcia X’s Blackness in the Fediverse, and the links in Dogpiling, weaponized content warning discourse, and a fig leaf for mundane white supremacy have some of the history.

halm ,
@halm@leminal.space avatar

Or — or — you could post less but better.

PP_BOY_ , (edited )
@PP_BOY_@lemmy.world avatar

Guys! I created a system of guidelines where black people and white people follow two different sets of rules! I’m helping!

Edit: Remember folx before you post: when was the last time you 🫵 listened to To Pimp a Butterfly?

MxRemy ,

Makes sense to me, nothing to add! I hope the fediverse gets better for marginalized people…

Unfortunately Lemmy being a reddit-like platform, there’s likely gonna be a bunch of reddit-like people in these comments saying reddit-like things that go against one or all of these guidelines.

thenexusofprivacy OP ,

Thanks, glad you like it! And yeah, there have indeed been some reddit-like things said in this thread. Oh well, comes with the territory. The lemmy.blahaj.zone thread is somewhat better so far (famous last words).

My guess is that the fediverse will split into regions that decide to address anti-Blackness (and everything else) and others that … don’t. Similarly, some platforms will focus on improving safety and others … won’t. Lemmy’s likely to be in the “won’t” category but time will tell!

PugJesus ,

1, 3, and 4 are all solid suggestions. But ‘post less’? The Fediverse is sparse enough as it is.

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

Just posting to trigger OP 🫨

KrapKake ,

🙄

Deceptichum ,
@Deceptichum@quokk.au avatar

Eugh Americans, think the whole world should cater to them.

PP_BOY_ , (edited )
@PP_BOY_@lemmy.world avatar

The Tripolar World is real. If your country isn’t America, Russia, or China, it exists as a proxy state of one of the aforementioned

threelonmusketeers ,

India?

FarraigePlaisteach ,

It makes sense that the bias in English speaking societies would be reflected on English speaking platforms. The posts here reflect the white western perspective. I would love to see more diversity as it does seem culturally “flat” here.

sabreW4K3 ,
@sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al avatar

The Fediverse does have a massive white slant and the default experience isn’t very embracing of different cultures.

There’s a bunch of people who would like to see things improved and as of yet, there’s not much consensus. The only real idea I’ve seen floated thus far is blocklist subscriptions.

A massive part of the problem as I see it is, and don’t get me wrong, this is a symptom, not a root cause, people are inclined to use the wrong tools. Mastodon is a microblog and yet people are determined to use it for groups and nuanced conversation where their instance only supports 400 characters.

Also WriteFreely is the only active blog service in the Fediverse and needs some love.

We need to encourage people to move to tools that better fit their needs and desires and honestly part of the problem with that is that people feel they’ll lose their interactions/audience and that is about Mastodon being shit, because while they can focus on making things more seamless with Lemmy and soon to be Discourse, NodeBB, etc. They’re seemingly not willing to.

In regards to Lemmy specifically. Lemmy has a problem. You can see that by the fact this has been voted down to oblivion. When people treat ALL like a personal subscription feed and vote down things they’re not interested in or dislike, it creates a monoculture. And no, I’m not saying don’t downvote things, but there’s a difference between voting down something because it’s not great in a community and because you’re trying to curate ALL. Maybe a solution is to add local/subscribed only voting options for communities. Lemmy needs to learn to embrace things that aren’t for you and sometimes, in fact most times, that’s as simple as saying, “that’s not for me, I’ll ignore it.”

sabreW4K3 ,
@sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al avatar

Also, while we’re here. Let’s call out instances that don’t update their Lemmy version because they want to make a point, even though doing so would bring quality of life improvements to black community members. Looking at you Beehaw and even Lemmy World.

Also Lemmy.ml for turning into fuck ups. Being the second largest instance, especially one that was less mainstream in their beliefs, they just had to keep doing them. They were never going to be popular, but different and well run was enough. Then they started making questionable decisions and not explaining them. Which, being that they’re so well read, know never ends well. They had more time on their hands and started being overly involved in the instance and that hurts their community members in ways in which they’re too up their arse to take stock of. Step away from the admin panel, let your moderators moderate.

halm ,
@halm@leminal.space avatar

there’s a difference between voting down something because it’s not great in a community and because you’re trying to curate ALL

This right here 👆 ALL has its purposes, and none of those are “serving your individual perfect home feed”. It becomes a tyranny of the norm. It is/was the biggest problem with Reddit, I’m surprised despite my own instincts to see that it has migrated here.

symthetics ,

I don’t really understand why this is getting so massively downvoted.

Seems perfectly reasonable to me as a white person. Yes, point two could be more nuanced, but otherwise aren’t all these downvotes kind of illustrating the point the OP is making here?

atro_city ,

Stop asking Black people for evidence of the anti-Blackness. Believe them: it's real. If you want to see specific examples, do the work yourself to find them rather than asking Black people to do it for you.

IMO examples are exactly what should be provided on this page. The page would be much better if it were just 3-4 headings that looked like

Heading

Example quote 1

Improvement suggestion

Example quote 2

Improvement suggestion

Description and context

Also, why limit it to "blackness". What in the world is "blackness"? Sounds like black royalty "Your Blackness, how may I be of help today?".

Anyway, I'm not sure what prompted this, which is exactly why I ask for examples. I quit reddit (never was on twitter) during the exodus and honestly, the biggest change I'd like is for USAmericans to get their own instance where they can talk about their problems. Black US Americans deal with very different things than Africans and Europeans with African descent.

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