There are multiple things going on here. Really are. So I'm gonna start with a big one:
Setting up an instance is way easier than running an instance properly.
And during the previous (failed) migration, Mastodon's client and instance list made no attempt to differentiate between instance quality. None.
As a result, you ended up with a number of Black people having absolutely horrific initial experiences. I've investigated a lot of these, and it was very real... because... the instances they were on didn't have meaningful defederation lists.
Defederation is how you fence off the Nazi bars, the fascist instances. It's the cornerstone of safety in the Federation.
And those instances didn't do it. Often, not at all.
So NaziFed came at Black people on those instances, because they weren't set up right, and so they could.
And since people on other instances don't see those replies, because their better-run instances are defederated from NaziFed, they by default have no idea what the people complaining are talking about. So they didn't take it seriously.
This isn't always what was up, not by any means. But it caused a whole lot of serious and lasting damage. Really did.
People have been taking steps on this, a big one being defaulting to mastodon.social, which is decently run. Other steps have and are being taken too. Are they enough? No, but it's made a big difference.
A second example - one Black people have been saying for a while that they consider really important - is the dev team not prioritising Quote Boost, what would've been called Quote Tweet on Twitter. It was seen as really important to have this, apparently, for Black Twitter.
Mastodon made a real specific decision not to have it, because of how it was used as a primary harassment vector for queer (particularly trans) people on Twitter - the same people who left early to start the ActivityPub effort, long before Mastodon ever showed up. Mastodon, too, is shaped by that.
This has been a massive source of friction over the last two years, and both sides have real and actual histories that make it important for them. The Black people I follow have seen the fight to get it on the dev pathway at all as disrespectful to the needs of Black online organising; white LGBT people (particularly trans people) who have been on a while see it as "we literally started an entire new method of social networking to get away from this nonstop source of hellish abuse, why are you demanding we bring it back?"
(See also, more complex moderation tools.)
As to being too self-congratulatory: wow that is not the vibe right now. Holy shit. Me writing this is, in no small part, me being aspirational about what could be, and I say that outright. I'm partly reacting against an overly critical mood that's on and about right now.
(Yes, I also say some of the promise is being delivered now - and it is. If and only if you're on a competently run instance.)
Finally, one thing to keep in mind is - I like Mekka, he's a pretty good guy, and he's a major voice on the site, but he has some real hobbyhorses like believing that Mastodon development should be directed by a co-op board of users and not the nonprofit and dev team that are actually doing the actual work.
And I get what he's talking about, but I'm sorry, that's ... just not going to go over well? Ever? You can't walk in and say "You're doing this wrong and need to hand over governance to other people like me or you're bad."
I mean, you can talk about it and try to make at least something like it happen but it's not easy and he has not demonstrated the finesse. So he's got a real beef with Eugen over this and you've gotta keep that in mind. Which isn't to dismiss the idea, but... this shit's real work. All of it. And his approach has been a trainwreck.
Finally...
None of this, as I freely admit, is in any way actually done. Honestly, I've been thinking about it more since writing that, and it may even be good that right now BlueSky is the destination, because while it the Federation a lot better, and Mastodon really has come a long way in two years, it's still... kind of adventurer territory. It's still very DIY.
And like Mekka - who said in replies that he actually does enjoy being on Mastodon - some of us like that.
no subject
Setting up an instance is way easier than running an instance properly.
And during the previous (failed) migration, Mastodon's client and instance list made no attempt to differentiate between instance quality. None.
As a result, you ended up with a number of Black people having absolutely horrific initial experiences. I've investigated a lot of these, and it was very real... because... the instances they were on didn't have meaningful defederation lists.
Defederation is how you fence off the Nazi bars, the fascist instances. It's the cornerstone of safety in the Federation.
And those instances didn't do it. Often, not at all.
So NaziFed came at Black people on those instances, because they weren't set up right, and so they could.
And since people on other instances don't see those replies, because their better-run instances are defederated from NaziFed, they by default have no idea what the people complaining are talking about. So they didn't take it seriously.
This isn't always what was up, not by any means. But it caused a whole lot of serious and lasting damage. Really did.
People have been taking steps on this, a big one being defaulting to mastodon.social, which is decently run. Other steps have and are being taken too. Are they enough? No, but it's made a big difference.
A second example - one Black people have been saying for a while that they consider really important - is the dev team not prioritising Quote Boost, what would've been called Quote Tweet on Twitter. It was seen as really important to have this, apparently, for Black Twitter.
Mastodon made a real specific decision not to have it, because of how it was used as a primary harassment vector for queer (particularly trans) people on Twitter - the same people who left early to start the ActivityPub effort, long before Mastodon ever showed up. Mastodon, too, is shaped by that.
This has been a massive source of friction over the last two years, and both sides have real and actual histories that make it important for them. The Black people I follow have seen the fight to get it on the dev pathway at all as disrespectful to the needs of Black online organising; white LGBT people (particularly trans people) who have been on a while see it as "we literally started an entire new method of social networking to get away from this nonstop source of hellish abuse, why are you demanding we bring it back?"
(See also, more complex moderation tools.)
As to being too self-congratulatory: wow that is not the vibe right now. Holy shit. Me writing this is, in no small part, me being aspirational about what could be, and I say that outright. I'm partly reacting against an overly critical mood that's on and about right now.
(Yes, I also say some of the promise is being delivered now - and it is. If and only if you're on a competently run instance.)
Finally, one thing to keep in mind is - I like Mekka, he's a pretty good guy, and he's a major voice on the site, but he has some real hobbyhorses like believing that Mastodon development should be directed by a co-op board of users and not the nonprofit and dev team that are actually doing the actual work.
And I get what he's talking about, but I'm sorry, that's ... just not going to go over well? Ever? You can't walk in and say "You're doing this wrong and need to hand over governance to other people like me or you're bad."
I mean, you can talk about it and try to make at least something like it happen but it's not easy and he has not demonstrated the finesse. So he's got a real beef with Eugen over this and you've gotta keep that in mind. Which isn't to dismiss the idea, but... this shit's real work. All of it. And his approach has been a trainwreck.
Finally...
None of this, as I freely admit, is in any way actually done. Honestly, I've been thinking about it more since writing that, and it may even be good that right now BlueSky is the destination, because while it the Federation a lot better, and Mastodon really has come a long way in two years, it's still... kind of adventurer territory. It's still very DIY.
And like Mekka - who said in replies that he actually does enjoy being on Mastodon - some of us like that.