I read a useful post by Erin Kissane, where they asked people on Bluesky about what their negative experiences of Mastodon had been. I recommend you read it.
The main issues reported by people were that:
- they got scolded, usually for failing to use content warnings
- that they couldn't discover or easily search for people to follow
- it's confusing to have multiple instances
- it's too serious
- people are being denied features like reposts in the name of safety, rather than being treated by adults.
Separate to Erin's work, I asked a similar question on Bluesky last week and received a much smaller, but consistent set of responses.
We should take these issues seriously. Mastodon should continue to aspire to be a safe place, in particular people who are marginalised on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, disability and poverty. Many of the complaints identified by Erin are, at least in part, reflective of deep concerns about the safety of users that have guided the development of the platform.
However we have to acknowledge that people have been driven off. Many of those who've gone would make Mastodon a richer, more diverse and more interesting place. I changed instances last week and in the process I unfollowed several hundred accounts that I used to interact with, but who haven't posted for at least six months. I miss a lot of these people and we shouldn't callously dismiss their departure.
Perhaps we need to chart a middle path between safety and approachability.
The way we make and keep Mastodon, and the fediverse more generally, safe is by not tolerating bad faith nonsense. Agonising over this is a weakness that villains exploit, and which has systematically ruined corporate social media (though their owners have done a good job of ruining that all on their own).
I confess that I get frustrated with complaints about content warnings (CWs). Nobody has a right to my eyeballs or my thoughts. Screaming into the void is one thing, but you don't have the right to pour your negative emotional state into my brain.
The caveat to this, and it's a critical one, is that many people of colour and trans people have said that they've been lectured to use content warnings when complaining about the people, structures and processes that oppress them (Often referred to as a home owners association – or HOA – mindset. HOAs are themselves a U.S. term, so its usefulness as shorthand is pretty limited).
We have to believe these people. Their experiences are real and their perspectives are legitimate. The need to listen to these people precisely the we can't allow this variation of bad-faith sealioning to proliferate, and for CW scolding to be weaponised.
Again this speaks to the need for a middle path between safety and approachability.
Similarly, maybe people on the fediverse should throttle back on “you need to” posts if someone doesn't use a CW or include alt-text on an image. I like those norms, they actually help inclusivity, but they're possibly at the expense of being welcoming and allowing people to make good-faith mistakes.
None of these issues are resolved by technical affordances. A repost button that allows to dunk on other people would be neither more welcoming nor safer.
The middle path between safety and approachability will be charted by how we act.
Ben Harris-Roxas Website | Publications | Mastodon
