🤯 This year in social media is wild. The latest chapter is no exception. Fascinating data and anecdotes.
Data:
* Over 430K Fediverse accounts created in the past week. And it's accelerating.
https://mastodon.social/@mastodonusercount/110576430285028932
Anecdotes:
Major communities may be moving soon.
https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/59559/Removed-as-moderator-of-r-Celebrities-after-14-years
Here's the Fediverse version of "celebrities" with exactly 1 subscriber so far... the person who claimed to be the former moderator of the celebrities sub-reddit.
https://kbin.social/m/celebrities
I'm still sticking with my call that *long-term*, decentralized social media will be the winner. Too many of the world's greatest Android and iOS mobile development teams are now building for the fediverse. Too many of the world's best *human* moderation, privacy, and safety, experts are on the fediverse. The user benefits are too aligned, despite companies not having the usual metrics and analytics to optimize the experience.
Fighting the fediverse is like fighting a flood by punching it.
Yes, Mastodon still has huge problems with "HOA racism" and user safety. But there is a "path to green" for all of these problems. And people (including me! 🙋🏿♂️) are working on them.
Yes, the current version of ActivityPub is not ready for what's coming. But again, too many of the world's best SREs and API designers are now poking ActivityPub with a stick again, now that the scale constraints have changed.
@mekkaokereke Out of curiosity what’s “HOA Racism”? oO
@JonathanGerlach Thanks! How does that manifest on Mastodon then?
@kwantumkraut @JonathanGerlach
Racism:
A nazi sends an image of Emmett Till's dead body to a Black Fediverse user, and says "All n-words should die! So we're going to do to you what we did to Emmett Till!"
Response:
The Black user moves to a different server with better moderation, or leaves the Fediverse completely. The Black user warns other Black folk that the 1st server they joined is not well moderated.
HOA racism:
White users tell the Black user not to bash (criticize) the 1st server.🤡
@mekkaokereke Did Black Fediverse user report the nazi? What was the result? @kwantumkraut @JonathanGerlach @springdiesel
@mekkaokereke That’s why I recently blocked two servers. I’ve become intolerant of intolerance. @kwantumkraut @JonathanGerlach @springdiesel
@AlliFlowers @kwantumkraut @JonathanGerlach @springdiesel
The abuser was on a server that only exists to harass people.
All well moderated servers already had the entire instance blocked. All the poorly moderated ones federate with it. Instances can be intentionally poorly moderated, or poorly moderated by accident. It's difficult for new Mastodon admins and new users to know which servers are just there to threaten and harass users.🤷🏿♂️
So I decided to work with some friends to fix that.
♥️👍🏿