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@milkman76 @majorlinux Had a bunch of my friends try Mastodon. Many of them found it confusing, and just left. I tried my best to explain it and even wrote tutorials. Only a handful stayed.

Then others were run off because of anti-black racism. (A lot of Instances are just terrible. In my quest to find a home, I saw so many places using slurs. Hard R too.)

I've accepted that I'll be here and on Bluesky. That's okay, I don't believe in using a single social media platform.

@silver_huskey @majorlinux yeah, this. Im nb, a writer, tech worker, hard leftist, and I keep hearing (but not really seeing) this. Ive heard this identical thing for 8 years now, on and off, since the first large migration of users began, which threatened the large corporate networks who want ALL the data to train their "AI" with. That's right around the time when the "its too hard" and "its filled with racism" people showed up.

@silver_huskey @majorlinux Im not entirely sure about this. Im antifascist as fuck and I look for a fight with racists and people from that ideology every day that Im online (which is every day), but I dont see anywhere near as much of that here as on any of the other corporate, non-decentralized networks.

Also mastodon dot social is connected to threads, which is facebook, and can re-expose people to the standard racism and bigotry that exist there.

@milkman76 @silver_huskey Funny thing is, my experience with Threads and Mastodon are inverse to yours.

I have found way more leftists and LGBTQIA+ folks there than I have here and have interacted with their content.

Here, I've seen more liberals than I can shake a stick at and was literally hate bombed on July 4, 2023. That's two days before Threads was even a thing.

So, I don't know what to tell you.

@majorlinux @silver_huskey you got "hate bombed"????

Ive been trying to get hate bombed here for literally 8 years, as Ive been doing online for the better part of 25 years. I go uninvited into large mainstream threads and write hard left politics, speak on the Israeli genocide of palestine, LGBTQ rights,m etc etc, but I get back 1/1000th the hate here as on any other network Ive used.

Not you though?

@milkman76 @silver_huskey I was sitting on a train minding my own business.

Nothing provoked it.

It just happened.

While I do have the reports I filed on my own server to stem the bleeding, the original posts have been purged to reign in storage.

@majorlinux @silver_huskey weird. Why would they attack you, randomly like that? I mean I am very promiscuous, I run a blog, and Ive been a pretty aggressive antifascist and leftist voice online forever. Where are my attackers? lol why arent I getting hate DMs? This is my original account.

https://mastodon.social/@Milkman76

@milkman76 @silver_huskey

BECAUSE I AM A BLACK MAN ON THE INTERNET!

Why do racists do anything?

However, this interaction is by far worse than anything a racist would ever do to me.

@majorlinux @silver_huskey this is worse for you than any racist interaction? Wow... ok... I think I see what Im dealing with here.

@milkman76 @majorlinux Again, it just gets tiring having to explain it over again.

Personally, just keep in mind that Mastodon and the Fediverse can be worse than corpo social media in some ways, for some people. Maybe, just believe them a bit more.

@silver_huskey @majorlinux speaking of believing people -- you are saying I must believe you even though there isnt any evidence of anything (its all private, hidden, deleted), and so therefore I should agree that mastodon is shit and racist without actually verifying that myself even though this SPECIFICALLY helps facebook and fascist twitter companies claw back users? Huh.

@milkman76 @majorlinux Yes. And people are tired because this is the response almost every time.

Here's the service I used to find smaller instances. Log out of Mastodon or open a private window and browse the dreck to your heart's content. https://instances.social/

@silver_huskey @majorlinux 30+ year tech worker, and I know mastodon very well. Its tiring explaining this to people, but this is my life lol.

I know how to access almost any masto instance, yes, which is why was interested in the instances seeing waves of bullshit. I literally want to try to engage and fight fascists, as Ive been doing offline and online for decades of my life. I want to protect masto.

@milkman76 @silver_huskey @majorlinux "protect masto" by telling a black man he's making up the same abuse every other black person complains of? Great job.

From 5 things white people can do to start making the fediverse less toxic for Black people:

"It's also worth looking it over to make sure you haven't unintentionally said something anti-Black (or more generally racist). For example, stop saying there isn't racism on the fediverse or asking Black people for evidence of anti-Blackness. Dozens of Black people have shared the evidence repeatedly. If you want to see specific examples, do the work yourself to find them rather than expecting Black people to do free, individualized education for you."

@milkman76 @neckspike @silver_huskey @majorlinux