The influential online community that gave rise to social movements like #BlackLivesMatter is now a "digital diaspora” in search of a new home.

  • palordrolap@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    That makes me sad to hear.

    I don’t remember seeing any specifically anti-black sentiment, BUT as one of the “50% old white tech nerd gr[e]ybeards” mentioned by someone else, with a very limited set of account and hashtags follows, chances are I haven’t been in the right (wrong?) place to see it / call it out. Or I’ve been too naïve to notice.

    Political and pro/anti-woke propaganda and things like that definitely exist on the Federated “tab” which almost certainly come with a side order of racism, but those people are everywhere online.

    Maybe the self-enforced walled garden of only following trusted people and certain hashtags could work.

    After all, the LGBT+ community seems to be doing fairly well on there (ditto furries), and if there’s one kind of prejudice, I’d be surprised if they’re not getting abuse too.

    • plantstho@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, it’s very sad.

      The core of the issue is that it’s too easy for us privileged folks to suggest things like - and I’m not trying to pick on you at all here - that vulnerable people stay in any sort of “self-enforced walled garden” rather than robust moderation tools and the human resources to use them to their full potential.

      • palordrolap@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Voluntary separation is better than enforced separation, but yes, I get where you’re coming from.

        The thing is, the entire reason - I assume - that there is a search for a new place to tweet / microblog is that there has been some intrusion or destabilisation of previous - perhaps unwitting - voluntary separation(s).

        Whether this pseudo-volunteering was black communities keeping to certain, um, “places”(?; there has to be a better word; subjects? hashtags? keywords?) for community content, like-minded safe spaces and chat or whether it was merely other people respectfully (or otherwise) staying out of those places, I’m not entirely sure. Maybe a little of both?

        Something was definitely going on for Black Twitter to have been the phenomenon it was after all.