In 4 things white people can do to start making the fediverse less toxic for Black people (DRAFT!) and its cross-posts, quite a few people said things like “maybe racism is a problem on Mastodon, but I don’t see it on Lemmy.” Then again, plenty of comments in the various threads were in fact examples of racism on Lemmy, so one takeaway is that at lot of people don’t see racism even when they’re looking at it. And helpful commenters pointed out some of the other patterns of racism on Lemmy. … but that wasn’t really the thrust of that discussion.
So I wanted to ask more generally, what are some of the examples you’ve seen of racism on Lemmy? Quotes and links are great, but also feel free just to describe examples or call out more general patterns!
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I have seen extremely little racism on Lemmy, but my instance is defederated from those places (.ml, Hexbear etc.) they blocked us themselves so we didn’t even have to do anything. So I definitely dont have the whole picture.
Good point, thanks. It’s great that mods are blocking sources of racism, although also means that people who don’t see can wind up thinking that there isn’t any racism.
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It’s great that mods are blocking sources of racism
Or sources of racism are blocking lefties, hah
Whatever works! lol
I don’t typically see it on here and when I do I report that shit
Facebook, Reddit, and YouTube? Every day, Facebook loves to tell me how it doesn’t violate their rules though.
Reasons why racism on Lemmy is less of an issue:
- There are only a few Lemmy instances - those that harbor racism are easily defederated from.
- Downvotes make bad content easy to detect, even if not reported.
- Content is posted into communities, which have moderators. Hashtags on Mastodon are un-moderated.
- Unlike mastodon, replies are sent to all instances so visibility is higher. No hiding in obscurity.
- Federated networks tend to have a central hub - Lemmy.world is well moderated, unlike mastodon.social.
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These are all good points (and not having anything like Mastodon’s followers-only posts removes another way to hide in obscurity). Moderators certainly got involved in some of the cross-posts of the earlier thread, at least a dozen comments were removed on beehaw and a couple people got banned from the awful.systems thread.
On the other hand, downvoting can also be used as a weapon to try to bury discussions of racism (this thread btw is at -17, the previous one is at -70).
Also somebody here mentions that “There’s currently only 1 user that I’ve noticed that keeps bringing race up.” (hiii!!!). A culture where people don’t talk about race means that whiteness is normalized and unexamined. And quite a few of the comments in this thread (saying I’m the racist, analogizing me to a “Karen”, calling me a fool) and the previous ones (“is this a joke?”, “haha”, “Lol, how is race relevant? Obv rage bait shitpost”, the one analogizing me to Hitler) are all consistent with an environment where reactions to somebody bringing up race are hostile. Almost nobody is challenging these comments, in fact they’ve got plenty of upvotes.
You’ve been asked for evidence multiple times and refuse to supply it.
At this point you’re most likely a right wing troll trying to stir up shit.
Look you’ve been shot down so many times by so many people, but ‘they’re all wrong and I’m right’ is your take away?
I’m beginning to think troll rather than misguided.
I’ll say it loud so those at the back can hear too:
YOU CAN’T FIGHT RACISM WITH MORE RACISM!
It really is quite simple.
Blocking you seems like the best idea in this thread so far.
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I think the topic of racism and discrimination needs to happen on the Fediverse if its an issue. However, I’m worrying that your approach is more counterprodctive. I think its fine to ask for proof for the supposed racist culture on Lemmy, because I think every argument needs to have some argumentative ground. I’m against discrimination (which certainly happens on the Fediverse), but I dont think identity politics have come up with productive tools to tackle the issues they point out.
The revised version of 4 things white people can do to start making the fediverse less toxic for Black people (DRAFT!) will have (or maybe link off to) a list of examples on Lemmy – that’s why I started this thread. But, you don’t have to wait! There are multiple examples in this thread and the thread I linked to in the OP.
And yes, there are tools. I’ll have more links in the revised version, but one good place to start is Ijeoma Oluo’s Welcome To The Anti-Racism Movement — Here’s What You’ve Missed
It was an interesting read. I’m willing to do certain parts of that like listening more to marginalized voices. What bugs me though is that basically the text says that we need to disrupt the system, because its racist; but on the other hand, it basically assumes that the system was and always has been racist. And this is again identity politics: based on Focaults post structuralism; societal, liberal progress is a myth, etc. etc. There is no actual believe in societal progress (which I do believe in primarily through technological progress).
Moderators certainly got involved in some of the cross-posts of the earlier thread, at least a dozen comments were removed on beehaw and a couple people got banned from the awful.systems thread.
It seems as if the only way you’d ever say there is NO racism on Lemmy is if there was no need to moderate racist posts - if there were no racist people present. That’s a much higher bar than “have you SEEN racism”, which requires racist posts to be left unmoderated for a substantial amount of time so that many people can see them and then provide the “quotes and links” you are soliciting. It feels like you’ve shifted the goalposts a bit, now.
I was agreeing with you that moderation can make a big difference in how many people see the racist posts (and defederating from instances that are known sources of racism). Still, even when moderators remove posts, people still see them – people in this thread talked about posts using “playing the race card”, inflammatory memes, and other stuff that moderators removed. So I don’t see it as moving the bar from the question of whether people have seen racism. But I certainly agree that racism that moderators don’t address is a bigger problem!
If you want to see racism just check the modlog. My favourite feature on Lemmy.
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Their own cross post says white people should post less. Remember, only racism can defeat racism!
Mostly what I see with any level of frequency is troll posters spamming intentionally inflammatory memes in apparently random communities. I’ve reported and blocked every post like this that I’ve come across.
Thanks! Yeah, one of the dynamics is that when people quickly report and mods take the posts down quickly, most people don’t see them … which is good, but also means that it’s easy to believe that there isn’t any racism.
Funny that not one example of racism existed in that post and you were asked multiple times to point it out, yet never did despite claiming it was in there.
How about you share an example of this “anti-Blackness in this thread”?
My sister is the type that most would call “A Karen”. She finds problems when no problems exist. She’s not racist. The problems she finds are just mundane things that she uses to become angry over.
She ordered the fish at a resteraunt, and then when the waitress brought what she wanted, she complained that it was frozen fish. The waitress asked to clairify how she knew it wasn’t cooked if she hadn’t taken a bite yet, and my sister clairified that she was upset that this was a previously frozen fish, rather than a caught fresh fish from the lake.
She made no attempt to ask about this when ordering. She just threw a $100 bill on the table, and stormed off leaving the rest of the family behind.
When we were kids, she cried at my mom that her oreo had a crack in it. So she refused to eat it. So I ate it. Now she was crying that I ate her oreo.
My point is, there are people in life who LOOK for problems. And it’s like I tell my sister, if you look for problems, you’ll find pronlems. If you look for solutions you just might find help.
And it seems to me that OP here is looking for problems when they are so miniscule, that the rest of us are having difficulty finding proof of their existence.
They said you’re not supposed to ask for it. You have to “do the work” and go find it on your own, like Sherlock Holmes. Pssh, it’s like you didn’t even read it.
How about you look at this an other threads for the examples that others are describing?
You made the accusation, the burden of proof is on you. Here’s what’s going to happen when you ask complete strangers who aren’t vested in what I imagine you think is activism to pour through millions of posts to find behavior you claim exists:
I’m not saying to pour through millions of posts, this one and the one I linked to have plenty of examples.
I’m still waiting for an answer on you other post on anti-blackness.
I answered. And there are also some good examples of anti-Blackness in the comments here.
No you just wrote that I should think about, what a black person would think about the comments in that thread, where I couldn’t find any.
You wrote: “imagine a Black person reading this”
How dare you assume my ethnicity…
Yes, I answered your question, you just didn’t like my answer.
If you can’t find them, then (like many people) that’s a sign you’re used to an environment where anti-Blackness is normalized. So, imagine a Black person reading this thread who’s been targeted by racism on the fediverse. What comments would they think are dismissive of Black people?
It doesn’t make any assumptions about your ethnicity. If you are in fact a Black person who’s been targeted by racism on the fediverse but isn’t seeing it in that thread, it’s still a useful suggestion to step outside yourself and try to reading it as somebody else would,
There’s currently only 1 user that I’ve noticed that keeps bringing race up.
Is it the person who posted this?
How did you guess?
Again? I’m blocking this fool.
I’ve not seen any, but I’m also not subscribed to the kind of communities that would be prone to it. I did still manage to get some transphobia directed at me, which is wild because I’m cis.
That’s the thing with the fediverse, every instance has a slightly different view of the thing as a whole. That’s why picking an instance that aligns with your values matters. You’re not going to see much of that on blahaj or beehaw because those users get banned quickly, and problematic instances are defederated as a whole. The matching opposite instances exist too, some are made to be safe heavens for the extreme right, with all the *ism and *phobias going on there.
I recommend people of color to pick instances that supports them, which in turn means they have admins watching their back and shutting down racism quick.
The fediverse will have every problem that plagues other social medias, and it will be worse because unlike Reddit/Twitter, there isn’t a centralized authority to say no, that’s enough. The only way to deal with it is most big instances saying no and defederating those, but it’ll never go away fully, just hidden away.
This is a pretty left-leaning platform, so you don’t generally see ‘outright’ racism.
I haven’t noticed that much racism on lemmy. (I’m not including .ml and grad and hexbear as they are different). Obviously like anywhere, it does exist and your linked post is an example of it.
I have noticed more ableism and sometimes a little (soft) misogyny. But both at a level much lower than reddit.
You are the living embodiment of cringe wokeness and the fact that you’re being downvoted even on a left-wing platform where basically everyone is already against racism should make you question some of your life choices.
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I find it fascinating that this is down voted.
This is the 8th time some of us have seen this posted.
Also not everyone agrees that this makes sense. Asking people to post, link and comment any all racism even if it’s just a description.
This person seems to think the solution to racism is segregation and making different rules for the races. Also this person only seems to be fixated on black vs white. It’s all very odd.
I wasn’t aware that this has been posted before. I spend way way to much time on Lemmy and I’ve never seen it before, or any post relating to racism on Lemmy. Of course something being posted to many times can be annoying.
I thought the post was interesting because of how much talk there’s been on Mastodon about how exceptionally bad black people’s experiences are on there, and Mastodon is a part of the Fediverse. There are tons of complaints about how white people don’t even see the racism in front of their eyes on Mastodon, claiming there is none (which I, maybe incorrectly, correlated with these here downvotes). Personally I’ve never seen any racism on Mastodon, nor on Lemmy, so if someone is asking for racism to be linked I would find that interesting because I would like to see what I am missing. I could learn from it. All racism isn’t blatant and using slurs that are obvious to people not being targeted.
As you say, all racism isn’t obvious. A quick look at their post history shows 7 or 8 race related posts recently.
Repeatedly stating white people should do or not do specific things.
This seems to me like the definition of racism at it’s roots.
You’re saying OP is a racist?
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No, but the things they are saying, maybe inadvertently, are starting to seem that way.
Swap ‘black’ and ‘white’ in their do not do list. Does it sound racist now?
They are addressing racism against black people from white people. Based on what I’ve seen black people say on Mastodon about how they’re treated on that part of fedi, the points in that list seem reasonable (except “don’t post as much”, which seems weird). What they’re trying to do, as far as I understand, is to open the eyes of many white people who don’t realize what’s going on. I guess you could say they’re pointing out and trying to fight a kind of systemic racism, or a bias that can take the form of inadvertent racism.
In order to do that, the people affected by that (white) bias would benefit from countering said bias by taking part in other and more diverse sources, groups etc. In this specific case, black people. Basically: “hey guys, your group is treating us badly, would you mind listening to us instead of just saying that you’re not treating us badly?”
Basically: “hey guys, your group is treating us badly, would you mind listening to us instead of just saying that you’re not treating us badly?”
Well, say that then. Saying “don’t post here so much if you’re white” is just more racism.
I appreciate it probably comes from good intentions, but generalizing how entire groups of people should change to suit another group of people is a slippery slope.
It’s not racism if it’s against white people. That has been the established rule for a while now. The claim is that black people don’t have the power to enact systemic oppression, so anything they do isn’t racism, it’s a response to racism.
The previous post that I linked to is now down to -70! Discussions about racism often make people very uncomfortable. Thanks for all your responses in the thread that came from this, one of the commenters blocked me so I can’t respond directly to them, but I greatly appreciate it!
Yeah it’s sad to see. It’s not the reaction I would have expected from Lemmy. But then again, given how black people feel treated on Mastodon maybe I should have.
Yeah. It’s endemic in society, so there’s no reason that specific social networks are magically exempt from it.
