Even though millions of people left Twitter in 2023 – and millions more are ready to move as soon as there’s a viable alternative – the fediverse isn’t growing.1 One reason why: today’s fediverse is unsafe by design and unsafe by default – especially for Black and Indigenous people, women of color, LGBTAIQ2S+ people2, Muslims, disabled people and other marginalized communities.
Say you don’t understand the fediverse without saying you don’t understand the fediverse.
By these standards:
- The web is unsafe by default
- Email is unsafe by default
In all three cases, your safety is determined by the home you choose, and who/what you choose to interact with.
I really don’t know where this notion of the Internet is safe and you get privacy came from. I was taught 25 years ago that neither of those were true.
Total bullshit article.
If anything, I’ve seen more LGBT people here and on Mastadon than anywhere else on the entire internet.
I think the community doesn’t particularly care if you are LGBT or whatever else you are. Does not matter.
Total bullshit response. Yes, there are a lot of LGBT people on the fediverse. There’s also a lot of homophobia and transphobia on the fediverse. And the instances run by nazis and terfs very much care if you’re trans and will harass you just as much on the fediverse as anywhere else.
Yes the fediverse is like society in general since it’s people here. That doesn’t mean it’s unsafe any more then real life is unsafe if you do stupid things, like go into unsafe areas of the city at night.
You need to find an instance that is friendly, which is not hard to do.
Thanks, enlightening text. I think, the biggest problems w/ blocklists are “guilt by association” (you lose all your connections because someone on your server was being problematic - I feel oftentimes account-based blocking should be the first choice) and these lists being created and maintained by a small group of people who are all more or less friends. On the other hand - as you pointed out - for now, they seem the most feasible option to provide at least some kind of protection. Not sure, if there will ever be a solution that fits all. Probably not.
Thanks, glad you liked it. Agreed that blocklists (while currently necessary) have big problems, it would really be great if we had other good tools and they were much more of a last resort … I’ll talk more about that in a later installment.
I mean, I guess the point they are making: “Keeping the fediverse an enjoyable experience is hard work by design” is kind of true.
But I would be very interested in how you can exclude hate speech “by design”
I’ll get to that in a followon post, but one straightforward way to make progress is to change some of the defaults
I was hoping for an article about the various massive technical and legal issues it has, but oh well.
If you’re looking for more of a technical deep dive, check out Threat modeling Meta, the fediverse, and privacy
Firstly, WTF is LGBTAIQ2S+?. Secondly, I haven’t experienced any more bigotry here than I would on any other social media platform.
From the article:
I’m using LGBTQIA2S+ as a shorthand for lesbian, gay, gender non-conforming, genderqueer, bi, trans, queer, intersex, asexual, agender, two-sprit, and others (including non-binary people) who are not straight, cis, and heteronormative. Julia Serrano’s trans, gender, sexuality, and activism glossary has definitions for most of terms, and discusses the tensions between ever-growing and always incomplete acronyms and more abstract terms like “gender and sexual minorities”. OACAS Library Guides’ Two-spirit identities page goes into more detail on this often-overlooked intersectional aspect of non-cis identity.
Crap, we’re actually supposed to read the article?
This is the first time I’ve seen this one. Best result I saw from 30 seconds of googling:
In 2020, the National Runaway Safeline (NRS) began using LGBTQIA2S+ to recognize those who identify as “Two-Spirit.” This phrase refers to people who identify as having both a masculine and feminine spirit, and is used by some Indigenous and Native communities.
“Two-Spirit” describes the cultural-specific understanding for the diverse gender traditions of Indigenous and Native people. Historically, Two-Spirit people were among the most respected in their communities, often serving as community healers, ceremonial leaders or caregivers to the elderly or orphaned children. This is consistent across many cultures who experienced extreme oppression and intergenerational trauma through periods of colonization. Today, young people who identify as Two-Spirit may suffer from inequalities perpetuated by a legacy of discriminatory laws and policies.
Source: National Runaway SafelineA terrible idea by the LGBT community to expand the definition, when they thought they already “won” the battle and wanted to expand their scope, completely ignoring how marginalized the trans community was at that point, and how much was still left to fight for LGB rights. People quickly objected and most threw away the dumb acronym.
I kinda thought the ever-expanding acronym problem was being informally solved by a gradual transition to just saying “Queer.”
I am not a member of any of the groups that would fall under that categorization though, so I may be wrong.
It’s tricky … many people do use “queer” as an umbrella term, but a lot of trans people don’t like being lumped under that, and some lesbian, gay, bi, and agender people don’t consider themselves queer. There aren’t great answers.
The exact opposite is true. I am part of a very small minority and I made my own fediverse instances. Everyone who tries to go ableist/racist/misogynist or whathaveyou gets the boot. Very easy solution indeed.
The issue right now is how hard it is to set up an instance. In my opinion, every router on the world should have instances running (and tunneled to not dox themselves) so people are not dependent on big instances.
I would downvote this since it’s misleading af but it also sparks debate so I‘ll refrain.
As I say in the article:
Despite these problems, many people on well-moderated instances have very positive experiences in today’s fediverse. Especially for small-to-medium-size instances, for experienced moderators even Mastodon’s tools can be good enough.
However, many instances aren’t well-moderated. So many people have very negative experiences in today’s fediverse.
In my opinion, every router on the world should have instances running (and tunneled to not dox themselves) so people are not dependent on big instances.
That would be a security and moderation nightmare. Moderating an instance is a tough job, and not everybody wants to take on that job.
i think this will happen. the fediverse software field is literally in its infancy. i cant believe people are complaining rigfht now when so many products havent even reached 1.0, but are getting close.
and seeing these products from the inside, these are not products that are impossible to one-click install for non-tech folks… its going to happen.
you will absolutely see 3rd parties spin up services to auto-deploy a functioning fediverse server much the way a wordpress site is created. but its not now… maybe soon.
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