@supernovae @damonoutlaw @atomicpoet
The book "Don't make me think!" comes to mind.
Tech people, especially OSS folk, expect non-tech folk to do way more work than is realistic. Our decision to underinvest and under-prioritize both marketing and user experience design, is directly responsible for people choosing different options.
But rather than internalize this as "How can we onboard better / explain value better / increase safety?" We tend to externalize it as "Why don't they get it?"
@supernovae @damonoutlaw @atomicpoet
A gross over simplification:
* Onboarding onto Mastodon sucks for Black women. It's a terrible experience. Awful, unsafe, unfun, unpredictable.
* Being on Mastodon sucks for Black women. HOA racism.
* Onboarding onto BlueSky, and being on BlueSky, is better for Black women.
* Black women are culturally relevant. They're 6 to 12 months in front of everyone. Celebrities and politicians follow Black women.
* Journalists follow celebrities and politicians.
@supernovae @damonoutlaw @atomicpoet
People like to pretend that this dynamic doesn't exist, so they try to skip right over the Black women part, and recruit the celebrities, journalists, and politicians directly. But it don't work like that.
I've said many times, that the social media network where young Black and brown women feel comfortable and safe to create, is the one that grows. No exceptions.
Tik-Tok (Black women dances)
Vine (Black comedy shorts)
Twitter (Black Twitter)
@mekkaokereke @supernovae@universeodon.com @damonoutlaw Once again, you have excellent insights. There’s a few things I wonder about, though:
1. What will happen if Bluesky is impermanent, as Jack Dorsey hopes it will be?
2. What will happen once federation occurs with Bluesky, and we start seeing the same HOA problems that are occurring on the rest of the Fediverse?
At that moment, Bluesky can’t control things—and they don’t even want to.
@mekkaokereke @supernovae@universeodon.com @damonoutlaw For what it’s worth, it seems that folks on Bluesky are becoming more and more excited about decentralization. Which makes me happy. This is absolutely the way social media should go.
But there will be an unavoidable price. And that is communities will need to arise to do the moderating. And these moderators will probably be volunteers.
@mekkaokereke @supernovae@universeodon.com @damonoutlaw One thing positive about Bluesky is that the Black community has already developed a rich culture there.
But things can change on a dime.
At one time, marginalized communities defined the culture on Mastodon.
There was a time that autistic people were a big chunk of the Fediverse (I’m one of them). There were lots of LGBT, disabled, neurodivergent.
Now things have changed.
@atomicpoet@mastodon.social @mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io @supernovae@universeodon.com @damonoutlaw@moth.social most of them have switched softwares, many LGBT and autistic are on calckey and akkoma
@atomicpoet@mastodon.social @mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io @supernovae@universeodon.com @damonoutlaw@moth.social mew another thing to add: most of us/the minorities (depending if you want to see it as one movement) fled away from big instances onto smaller, strictly moderated instances like these, thats also why you might not see us on these bigger instances, because we just did our lart in moderation and stopped to federate with instances containing bad actors, and theres many of them, hey even mastodon.social is so unmoderated that I or my moderators on this not as strict instance might defed from it very easily and very soon, cause its a ton of work to suspend single users from these instances, minorities go to their comfortable moderated spaces, you could say their corner of fedi. Black fedi exists. Lgbt fedi exists. They are jhst in their own corner, not visible from a big instance, because they will get defederated on sight.
@atomicpoet@mastodon.social @mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io @supernovae@universeodon.com @damonoutlaw@moth.social PS: I agree with most of your insights, they are excelent, just wanted to enhance the POV
@atomicpoet @mekkaokereke @supernovae @damonoutlaw If the folks on Bluesky are excited about decentralization, they're going to get a sudden wake up call when they realize it will never be decentralized, at least not in any meaningful sense.
Think email, but instead of Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo having to fight to get to the number 1 places, they build the place where only they can be number 1.
All the pipe dreams being promised will one by one be forgotten, in order to better deliver ads to people.
@atomicpoet @mekkaokereke @supernovae those are valid questions. But to 1) he’s only 1/3 members with his eyes on Nostr 2) There is where I believe those of us that believe in the #fediverse can offer assistance and education. The devs are easily accessible. I do believe their custom algorithms on the user & instance level will be of huge benefit in terms of moderation
@atomicpoet@mastodon.social @mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io we (fediverse) should be ready and more inclusive for the next waves, whatever the origin.