I'm on Fosstodon. English is not my birth language. And yet I don't think Fosstodon's English-only rule is racist.
Please, before you reply in anger or scroll past, hear me out. I'm one of the "diverse" people whose interests you are defending - so surely you would not dismiss my views?
@lulu_powerful apparently you can use your own language in replies, no problem. If you're an mod, you can even use Google Translate to reply to some random Welshman in his own language, for shits and giggles. The rule only applies to people they want it to apply to.
I'm a minority in many ways: via culture, skin colour and language where I live; via sex in the industry I've chosen; and via neurodivergence in the world at large. I'm all too familiar with what it means to belong to a minority - and to suffer some consequences for it.
So now that I've listed my qualifications (haha...), I'll proceed to my argument.
My birth language has over 100 million native speakers. Despite this apparent clout, Google Translate was today unable to correctly translate into English even one of the common words I entered. Unless the tools available to social media platforms perform much, much, better than this, I have no confidence that a Mastodon instance that allows all languages would be able to effectively moderate posts in my birth language.
The argument that Fosstodon can solve the moderation issue by simply using translation tools isn't correct. Sometimes they don't work, even for popular languages like mine.
Instances that allow all languages, but can't moderate posts in all languages equally well, have a weakened basis upon which to claim they are free of abuse. Admins on all-language instances can't truthfully claim to be 'safe' if they are unable to confirm what people are saying.
The Fosstodon admins have merely stated a truth that others deny - that it is not possible for a large instance to simultaneously allow all languages and remain free of abuse. This is a fact, and I can prove it by simply typing something offensive in my birth language and claiming an innocent meaning.
@lulu_powerful Everything you say is sensible. But I do wonder if an approach where the issue is only addressed if there is a complaint, with supporting evidence, that a violation of the other instance rules has taken place might work.
@keefeglise@lulu_powerful Reading between the lines, the only reason the Fosstodon mods decided to enforce this oh-so-important server rule is because someone has made it his mission to report every single non-English post on the local feed, and they’ve taken what they assumed would be the path of least resistance. It’s their server, they can do what they want, and those of us who think this is bullshit are free to say so.
@nic that’s not the case. Making assumptions and “reading between the lines” is exactly why we’re here.
This rule has existed for over 5 years, before the person you mention was even a member. They reported those posts because of this rule. We enforce this rule daily, and have done since its inception.
@fosstodon Fel dwedais i, eich gweinydd chi yw e, chi sy'n wneud y penderfyniadau. Ac os ydych chi wedi mynd i'r trafferth i gyfieithu hwn o ymateb, pa mor anodd fyddai fe i adael i bawb bostio yn eu hiaith eu hunain?
Gyda 60,000 o aelodau i ddelio â nhw, byddai’n faich enfawr. Roedd yn ddigon drwg pan oeddem yn 1,000 o aelodau a gweithredu hyn. Ond rydym yn trafod cael gwared ar y rheol gyda'n Noddwyr.
@nic Nope, the rule has only ever applied to OPs, and not replies or boosts. Further, only posts where the privacy level was set to Public. This was a reply to an Unlisted post. Everything would be in the green.
@fosstodon I mean, this just doesn't make any sense at all. If the issue is that you can't moderate in languages other than English, why do you not care what people say in replies?
@keefeglise How much would the cost rise? I don't mean this answer to be snarky, but that's an easy question to ask and not an easy one to answer. Monetarily speaking, it wouldn't. None of our moderation staff are paid for their time, and that includes @kev and myself, so it wouldn't cost us anything extra. Of course, there are other non-monetary considerations, and those are much harder to quantify, especially since everything is hypothetical at this juncture.
@keefeglise I don't know how far into this answer you'd like me to go, but some things to consider are the extra time investment for our team. I already spend almost as much time working on Fosstodon related activities as I do for my day job. Is our current team even capable of handling the potential extra load? We may need to bring more moderators in, which means time spent vetting potential candidates, training (yes we do that), and initial burn-in.
@keefeglise There's also a software angle. We provide a translation tool integrated into Fosstodon, but that's not an actual part of the Mastodon software. It's a 3rd party tool integrated in. The way Mastodon handles translation is actually pretty terrible. Our existing setup may not be able to handle the extra load from local timeline translations. Honestly it barely covers it now, and most people don't seem to know it exists. That WILL mean more money.
@keefeglise How much more I'm not sure. That will depend entirely on how much it's used. Right now we self host, and if it becomes yet another thing to track and update and monitor, it might be more worth investing in a service. We've been considering it even prior to recent events. I have every expectation that cost would at least double even sticking to our current configuration. I don't foresee our current configuration being workable long-term though.
@keefeglise I don't know for certain obviously, but my expectation is we're going to need to spend more time on moderation and we're going to spend more money on tools. We're going to need more people, and we're going to spend more time finding and training people willing to work for free. Judging by the trend on our current poll on Patreon, we're probably going to find out. Hopefully I'm wrong.
I always appreciate your posts, Andy. I've taken a long time to respond because, in this atmosphere, people are not engaging in good faith. But the solution isn't to cede the lectern to them, so here I am. :)
I'm going to reply in a fresh thread, with no user handles, because I don't want you or others to be targeted in the way I suspect I might soon be.
@lulu_powerful
Fair enough. I realize I am now equally guilty of speaking out of anger, so I look forward to continuing the discussion in a different context.
@kev
Sorry. It was a bad moment and I really don't think you're a bad guy. One of the reasons I'm upset is that I don't need the domain that comes after my username to make me look bad. As you can see, I do that well enough on my own...
When well-intentioned Westerners shout at Fosstodon on behalf of people like me, it feels a bit like... well, it feels like colonisation again. That's how it really feels when people presume to know my needs better than I do.
The admins are right. Allowing all languages means potentially allowing abuse they can't control. Is an English-only policy the right call? I don't know. Have the admins made mistakes in handling this? Yes, I think so. But does that make the policy racist? No.
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