Ongoing problem with this platform is that it's so polite that, with rare exceptions, you can't vent about a big account's bad takes without standing out as an antisocial jerkwad. So you just have to seethe internally, denied the reassurance that other people are seeing this shit. *yes I've complained about this before, and yes it's also (and probably primarily) a good thing
lol at replies - if it gets bad I'll say something. Nothing too bad lately, just someone I find myself rolling my eyes at a lot. (None of you, this person doesn't follow me.) Not worth starting something over, but in the thunder dome that was Twitter, even conflict averse me might have been tempted to do a sardonic quote tweet or something.
@misc At some point you need to try for a day not to care about how your post is gone be perceived. Post it. Mute it. Move on. Leave it behind. Like Angela Basset the flaming car
**also, yes, I realize there is a faction of people who are incredibly openly nasty, I'm not talking about those. (The passive aggressive reply guy shit, otoh, does seem like a flip side to the same problem)
@misc Ahem, it's very much a boy's club here in many ways, and very much a tech guy assumed to be master-of-the-universe type thing. This very much replicates the worst kinds of sexism in the business world (not to mention the ridiculous, pseudo-scientific Social Darwinism type philosophy that business-think is rooted in that makes everything hierarchical and transactional). This is business male alpha/beta type behaviour (though the alpha/beta thing has no grounding in science either, as always business philosophy/economics/capitalist thinking continues to be astrology for men who think they're hyper-rational). That kind of passive aggression has a very business world middle management vibe to it (women can embody it too, obviously, since it's about being socialized to function in corporate and social hierarchies in ways that avoid punishment for being direct or challenging the hierarchy).
Yes there are women and queer people who participate, speak up (or among ourselves) and who are (often quietly) building and talking about things. And there are some privileged men here who are actively listening, learning and supporting other voices (in inclusive non-condescending ways) but it's really hard to avoid just how old White and male this space can be and how that plays out socially and in power dynamics (we saw that recently with how people from minority communities voicing concerns about Threads were treated as if they were hysterical by privileged men who have decided they're the power brokers and deciders for the fediverse, an absurd proposition in and of itself and they make it very clear how uncomfortable they are in non-hierarchical contexts....it can be difficult to step back from power and unelected "leadership" when one simply assumes they should be in that position and "earned" it somehow!). We really do need to talk about power dynamics when we talk about racism, sexism/femmephobia, ableism and bigotry because bigotry is ALL about power and you can't talk about decentralizing power without, well, talking about power, how it's shared, who has it and who doesn't, how it can be distributed more equally, systemic ways power works, the cultural aspects, how capitalism needs and creates hierarchical systems built on oppressing certain people via class, gender, ethnicity/skin colour, etc. Just like you can't get rid of racism or sexism with tokenism, tokenism is just the hierarchy protecting itself buy making a cosmetic change but no systemic change.
@LALegault I've just very actively worked to make my experience here less White cishet male like I do with all social media (so it better reflects my real world social circles, which do include quite a few people who work in tech). But I'm old enough to have always been fighting against gender stereotypes and the patriarchy and I used to play in punk rock bands so I'm very used to being aggressively female and vocal in often very male spaces 😂 As well as navigating power in more covert ways too, obviously. But, yeah, I'm a pushy broad and I have sharp elbows I strategically deploy if I need to make room for myself or someone else who isn't being heard. I'm also pretty dedicated to the idea of the fediverse's potential and see it as something we need to build and shape through participation, which is one reason I have loud opinions about it (also because I see the fediverse as a potential social lab for real democracy and egalitarianism).
@LALegault Maybe. I'm on a feminist anarchist server (I don't consider this niche but I guess normies, particularly of the Lean In type might, though I doubt many intersectional feminists would find it niche!) I don't necessarily think large servers are better for the fediverse or people on them simply because it's harder to moderate a large server well (my instance went to "invite only" to avoid growing too big too fast). @misc
@LALegault Yes, they're good. There was some moderation drama (conflict) when they first put together a moderation team to deal with the growth but they handled it with transparency and I appreciated that. They're pretty proactive about blocking or silencing problematic servers (so mastodon.social is silenced lol because, as a big server, it can be the source of a lot of reply guys and trolls, newsie.social is also silenced for a variety of good reasons*).
*I can still follow people on these instances and see their posts but they're silenced from the instance timeline and I need to have alerts on if I want to make sure I see someone's posts. @misc
@fifilamoura@misc That concerns me. I am new here, I joined Newsie because of comms pros and journalists and now Cdn journalist orgs (CTV) are joining newsie, but I don’t want to be on a problematic server, what were the reasons it was silenced?
@LALegault Jeff who runs it is from Florida and seems pretty libertarian in that Florida way, plus he seems to only set up instances to farm business back to his server farm/cloud computing business and it's all kind of dodgy and slightly unethical (he also tried to set up a "celebrity" one and seems to have a whole bunch of other "commercial capture" type ones he keeps trying to push). A lot of people in the fediverse are VERY keen on ethical, non-exploitative journalism and very unkeen on the type of exploitative stuff that went on on Twitter (for instances, linking to normal people's Twitter posts without getting permission to do so, it's a bad practice because links rot so it should be a screen grab in the first place and secondly it's unethical to not get permission when you quote a normal person who doesn't have the resources to deal with a Twitter/social media mob like attention seeking professionals like entertainers and politicians do). @misc
@LALegault Your experience may vary but I'd also suggest looking at other instances. The independent journalists and media I see doing well here, who are creating community and an audience for their work, seem to be on a variety of instances not dedicated to journalists. You can't really navigate or use the fediverse very effectively if you're simply using it to broadcast, you generally have to actively community build here and participate. @misc
@LALegault No problem, it's important that you know that a variety of other instances have silenced the instance you're on! Particularly if you're a journalist looking to engage with a wide variety of people and not only other journalists on your server. There are a variety of Canadian servers too, cosocial.ca is one that's run by a coop (that I also have an account on, I can vouch for the people running it, which includes one of the original authors of the activitypub software that the fediverse is built on top of, you contribute an annual fee to keep it sustainable rather than making donations to your server admin to keep things up and running, and you get a vote in how the instance is run, a lot of thought went into moderation policies, etc). But there are also a few other Canadian (primarily anglo) and Quebecois (primarily franco) instances.
Where an instance is located also matters because it's governed/constrained by local national regulations and laws (my instance is located in France, Mastodon is located in Germany and their strict "no nazis" policy is aligned with German laws about displaying or promoting Nazi symbols or ideology). @misc
@misc yes, but this dynamic does seem to be changing over time. My hope is that it becomes more acceptable, but not to the extent that it was on Twitter.
Add comment