By observing the popularity curve of Twitter or more precisely the monthly attendance of users falling below the attendance of sites themselves in decline is only maintained under artificial respirator like Dailymotion (first under the supervision of Orange through the government of the era and Arnaud Montbourg) and bought by the Bolloré Group (managed by a far-right Catholic ideologue) we can conclude that indeed the good or common space" has shifted to other platforms.
However, this in no way assumes that Twitter must and will remain a “common good” if alternative solutions are at hand like Mastodon or Bluesky.
Knowing that setting up a Bluesky “instance” requires more financial/material resources to create a decentralized relationship, and that Mastodon only needs a server as well as a sufficiently large user data storage area to shelter the estimated number, we can easily highlight which of the 2 solutions is easier to implement by a so-called minority to avoid othersowners’ houses drift under the influence of censorship or the invisibility of these as certain Mastodon instances can do when there is control of a few people over others.
This is the very principle of Mastodon and the “ActivityPub network” (linked to the protocol of the same name) The Fediverse is based on trust when this trust no longer meets the criteria which constitute it then the users can choose to easily create your own “home” to communicate with others or look for another truly/fairly trustworthy instance.
And if there are levers, it is up to everyone to participate in improving it.
Nevertheless, visibility outside of the choice of federation or not with other instances does not hinder theoretical visibility. For the rest, there are safe places that are comparatively visible either by their evocative domain name or by their terms of use.
However, we should not assume that an entire community should have a single instance dedicated to it, because, as many Mastodons users point out, as you do in this article, such a large instance (such as Mastodon.social, for example) can easily disconnect a large number of users at the same time if it is defederated/blocked.
However, it must be acknowledged that moderation is not always optimal because it is based on three principles. The first is trust and self-regulation, particularly through the founding principle of the Fediverse and the spirit of goodwill that was intended from the outset. The second is decentralized moderation—not a lack of rigor, but based on the same principle as decentralization—with smaller instances in principle, meaning fewer people to monitor for each moderation group, but also financial precariousness and limited human time, which can lead to stricter moderation.
This is the third point, which is a double-edged sword. It can confer greater censorship power when the majority of users do not have the skills or time to create their own “home” or find a new home for their public conversation.
While Mastodon is not perfect, like representative democracy, with clear, effective, and fair rules, it is the least worst solution. And like direct democracy, the platform can always be improved. This is already technically possible with the Fediverse (and the ActivityPub protocol). Even if a minimum of technical skill is required, a simple familiarity with computers may be sufficient for a relatively knowledgeable amateur. Like any good tool, it is a double-edged sword depending on who is in control.
Without questioning the proven existence of possible violence or discrimination and marginalization of certain people/minorities even on Mastodon and the Fediverse as a whole, the scope for harassment is not exactly the same, and better still, it seeks to curb it by limiting virality through the opaque recommendation algorithms of social networks such as Twitter. By favoring organic recommendations via hashtags. Even quotes can be disabled so as not to give the wrong people ammunition.
Nevertheless, it is true that both users and administrators can only moderate manually, and this can indeed be time-consuming. This is also why filters exist and why some people seek to set up shared community blocklists to avoid encountering people who have already caused bad experiences such as harassment, abusive language, or—perhaps most problematic—racism.
And while there is a financial aspect to setting up your own instance, it can be less than what is required for its Bluesky or Twitter equivalent, since a domain name can be found quite easily at a more than reasonable cost. And if it is not accessible to a person from a minority group, it is most often proportionally equal in percentage to that of a cisgender white person. However, the resources required to set up a server that can connect to the Fediverse are subject to the same technical constraints, whether for domain name registration, IP address, etc., as any other website.
And while creating your own platform is not the only solution, it is by moving communities to safer areas that old chat rooms will either change or reduce their reach because they are blacklisted, closed due to a lack of users, etc., in favor of new hubs. Of course, an effort must be made to increase the effectiveness of moderation without falling into bad censorship, in particular by adjusting human resources but also by increasing community funding.
As for non-inclusive habits towards people from minority groups, there is no direct intention to harm them, even for people identified as “white,” but rather it is linked to a society that is patriarchal by default and accepted as white. And it is up to these minorities to continue to make us aware of the unconscious mechanisms that we repeat. To deconstruct the prejudices we have. Mastodon is doing its best in this area and is better than nothing. This is more than commendable, despite the eternal problem of a minority being underrepresented and therefore misunderstood due to the low default exposure of the experiences that these individuals may have.
It goes without saying that as a service gains popularity, it inevitably ends up attracting unsavory characters. I can’t speak about racism as such, nor for people from minority backgrounds, but a good example that is not subject to heated debate (or at least to a much lesser extent) is the wave of spam that many Mastodon servers have had to endure.
It is therefore a phenomenon that is worth mentioning, thank you for this article, but as you say, the tools are almost all already present on the Fediverse, whether in the founding principles or the material resources. What is undoubtedly missing is more refined, more effective moderation that is (more) attentive to minorities, but above all a change in mentality within our society. And of course, Mastodon can and must be one of the vehicles for this change.
By observing the popularity curve of Twitter or more precisely the monthly attendance of users falling below the attendance of sites themselves in decline is only maintained under artificial respirator like Dailymotion (first under the supervision of Orange through the government of the era and Arnaud Montbourg) and bought by the Bolloré Group (managed by a far-right Catholic ideologue) we can conclude that indeed the good or common space" has shifted to other platforms.
However, this in no way assumes that Twitter must and will remain a “common good” if alternative solutions are at hand like Mastodon or Bluesky.
Knowing that setting up a Bluesky “instance” requires more financial/material resources to create a decentralized relationship, and that Mastodon only needs a server as well as a sufficiently large user data storage area to shelter the estimated number, we can easily highlight which of the 2 solutions is easier to implement by a so-called minority to avoid othersowners’ houses drift under the influence of censorship or the invisibility of these as certain Mastodon instances can do when there is control of a few people over others.
This is the very principle of Mastodon and the “ActivityPub network” (linked to the protocol of the same name) The Fediverse is based on trust when this trust no longer meets the criteria which constitute it then the users can choose to easily create your own “home” to communicate with others or look for another truly/fairly trustworthy instance.
And if there are levers, it is up to everyone to participate in improving it.
Nevertheless, visibility outside of the choice of federation or not with other instances does not hinder theoretical visibility. For the rest, there are safe places that are comparatively visible either by their evocative domain name or by their terms of use.
However, we should not assume that an entire community should have a single instance dedicated to it, because, as many Mastodons users point out, as you do in this article, such a large instance (such as Mastodon.social, for example) can easily disconnect a large number of users at the same time if it is defederated/blocked.
However, it must be acknowledged that moderation is not always optimal because it is based on three principles. The first is trust and self-regulation, particularly through the founding principle of the Fediverse and the spirit of goodwill that was intended from the outset. The second is decentralized moderation—not a lack of rigor, but based on the same principle as decentralization—with smaller instances in principle, meaning fewer people to monitor for each moderation group, but also financial precariousness and limited human time, which can lead to stricter moderation.
This is the third point, which is a double-edged sword. It can confer greater censorship power when the majority of users do not have the skills or time to create their own “home” or find a new home for their public conversation.
While Mastodon is not perfect, like representative democracy, with clear, effective, and fair rules, it is the least worst solution. And like direct democracy, the platform can always be improved. This is already technically possible with the Fediverse (and the ActivityPub protocol). Even if a minimum of technical skill is required, a simple familiarity with computers may be sufficient for a relatively knowledgeable amateur. Like any good tool, it is a double-edged sword depending on who is in control.
Without questioning the proven existence of possible violence or discrimination and marginalization of certain people/minorities even on Mastodon and the Fediverse as a whole, the scope for harassment is not exactly the same, and better still, it seeks to curb it by limiting virality through the opaque recommendation algorithms of social networks such as Twitter. By favoring organic recommendations via hashtags. Even quotes can be disabled so as not to give the wrong people ammunition.
Nevertheless, it is true that both users and administrators can only moderate manually, and this can indeed be time-consuming. This is also why filters exist and why some people seek to set up shared community blocklists to avoid encountering people who have already caused bad experiences such as harassment, abusive language, or—perhaps most problematic—racism.
And while there is a financial aspect to setting up your own instance, it can be less than what is required for its Bluesky or Twitter equivalent, since a domain name can be found quite easily at a more than reasonable cost. And if it is not accessible to a person from a minority group, it is most often proportionally equal in percentage to that of a cisgender white person. However, the resources required to set up a server that can connect to the Fediverse are subject to the same technical constraints, whether for domain name registration, IP address, etc., as any other website.
And while creating your own platform is not the only solution, it is by moving communities to safer areas that old chat rooms will either change or reduce their reach because they are blacklisted, closed due to a lack of users, etc., in favor of new hubs. Of course, an effort must be made to increase the effectiveness of moderation without falling into bad censorship, in particular by adjusting human resources but also by increasing community funding.
As for non-inclusive habits towards people from minority groups, there is no direct intention to harm them, even for people identified as “white,” but rather it is linked to a society that is patriarchal by default and accepted as white. And it is up to these minorities to continue to make us aware of the unconscious mechanisms that we repeat. To deconstruct the prejudices we have. Mastodon is doing its best in this area and is better than nothing. This is more than commendable, despite the eternal problem of a minority being underrepresented and therefore misunderstood due to the low default exposure of the experiences that these individuals may have.
It goes without saying that as a service gains popularity, it inevitably ends up attracting unsavory characters. I can’t speak about racism as such, nor for people from minority backgrounds, but a good example that is not subject to heated debate (or at least to a much lesser extent) is the wave of spam that many Mastodon servers have had to endure.
It is therefore a phenomenon that is worth mentioning, thank you for this article, but as you say, the tools are almost all already present on the Fediverse, whether in the founding principles or the material resources. What is undoubtedly missing is more refined, more effective moderation that is (more) attentive to minorities, but above all a change in mentality within our society. And of course, Mastodon can and must be one of the vehicles for this change.