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.” Of course, 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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The whole point of the fediverse is that it’s distributed. There’s gonna be bigots. But they can be blocked, their instances can ban them, and then they can make their own instances which other instances can then defederate. That’s working as designed. In a perfect world, the bigoted instances will be a disconnected graph from the network of other instances.
You don’t think having a disconnected graph consisting of only bigots would lead to amplification and advancement of the bigotry?
Why would it? It seems like it would just be similar to the circlejerk forums they’ve have for decades, alienated from the mainstream and unable to normalize their ideas and recruit so easily.
As a POC I’d say Lemmy is way better than most similar sites but there’s still the prevalent sexism that always seems like the "acceptable casual bigotry" and I’m not a fan of that. The kind of "jokes" that guys mostly laugh at while women mostly roll their eyes at because the punchline is usually heavily reliant on sexism.
There’s a collection here,
Most people cannot see lemmygrad
Why is that?
It’s defederated from .world, the largest Lemmy instance.
Thanks. I’m still learning how Lemmy works 😅
Because with all the suffering in the world, it is difficult to envision utopia.
.world censors left-wing instances
Lemmygrad is infamous for hosting hate speech.
Being too left wing is not why Grad was deplatformed by everyone outside of the Marxist-Leninist circles.
So infamous that you can’t link a single example
Sorry I haven’t visited a hate site recently, you can wade through it if you’re really curious.
🤡
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You got something against empty sets there buddy?
Lemmy.world nor any other instance on the fedi can remove content on another instance without the consent of federation, even then those actions can be undone by the site admin.
.world defederating from you doesn’t mean censorship. People disagreeing with your opinion and opting not to see it is not censorship.
It’s the literal definition of censorship.
Actually censorship is a centralized process of editing information channels to ensure certain topics aren’t published through those channels.
Censorship is a step in a publication pipeline. At least traditionally.
Simply shutting down sources would be “suppression” and choosing not to look at certain things is “willful ignorance”.
Sorry if that seems too pedantic, but you invoked the concept of literalness.
False
Yeah, kind of. Moderation is tricky and moderating moderators is even worse. I got banned from [email protected] for being a “white moderate”. Was it censorship of non-leftists? No. I am a communist, not a moderate.
There is one rogue mod there banning people right, left and centre and that is a problem, but not one of plain censorship. I would rather say it is frankly the problem of having a bad mod who does not understand their role. I imagine the same happens on .world and other places, albeit under different guises.
Thats on them
Thanks for the pointer.
There used to be Wolfballs, a right-wing Lemmy instance. I didn’t browse much but there was definitely ample racism there.
If I remember correctly, the admin (a US Lolbertarian) finally closed it down, among other reasons, when they realized the resident nazis there were not just joking to troll da libs and actually believed the things they were saying about ‘jewish shapeshifters’. They wanted a free speech haven, and so they got the people we collectively told to shut up.
Good point, thanks. I seem to recall another one as well – although both were widely defederated so I suspect most people on those instances didn’t wind up seeing them.
I did not see any racist comments for quite some time. But xenophobic comments were common on threads about Ukraine’s invasion.
The anti-French sentiment is also present here like in the whole English speaking web.
The French aren’t known for their hygiene so I am not surprised their river is filthy
From a post about an olympic triathlete who got sick: https://lemmy.ml/post/18887659
In Belgium: Tartare or Mayo. Andalouse for the gal, thanks In the UK: Salt and Vinegar In both cases: I will have to change seat if you plop yourself in front of me with your poor fries inundated by ketchup. Only the French do that, and it is a Casus Belli in my book.
From a post about dipping fries: https://lemmy.ml/post/18963222
But xenophobic comments were common on threads about Ukraine’s invasion.
As in “fuck the Russians”? Because I feel that hating Russia is somewhat less based on prejudice than your other examples, and somewhat more on recent real world examples.
There were xenophobic comments towards Russians, Ukrainians and Americans in these posts.
Also, I don’t think people should insult the people of a country when they criticize its government.
True, but at one point as has gone so far you are complicit if you do nothing.
Has it gone so far yet? I don’t know, but it’s worth discussing imo.
Try checking out the comment section on pretty much any post mentoning Islam.
Thanks, a good suggestion!
Are you able and willing to link to a specific comment that you consider to be racist?
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I am sure there are instances I have forgotten, there is definitely a certain amount of bigotry, it’s not hard to find classism, sexism, and ableism as usual for the internet and I am sure I have come across racism too but I don’t remember any specifics.
Thanks!
I got tired of being unable to list examples when I said “I’ve seen X so much!” and then others said “Really? Where?”
So I started saving examples of the thing I wanted to later prove existed.
Maybe it’s just the handful of instances I follow, but I can’t recall anything. But I’ve become quite callused and thick skinned having Benn on the Internet sense the early 90’s and the wastelands of forums/chat rooms lol. Send help.
I don’t have links because they get banned pretty quickly, but over the last week I’ve seen maybe 4 or 5 examples of lemmy users referencing “the race card” (derogatory) in response to others talking about systemic racist violence.
Thanks, it’s a great example, and good to hear they got banned quickly! It’s a great point that when moderators are proactive most people don’t see the posts so think there’s less racism than there actually is.
I follow your blog from time to time and I appreciate it. Just with your recent posts I realized you have an active Lemmy account.
I was going to continue this comment with “But I don’t get…”, then I stopped and read your blog post again and remembered rule #2.
I think I get what you are trying to say, it’s good that there are some mod tools to help with modding, but they’re not enough, and even if racism isn’t as visible on Lemmy, people targeted by racism still exist and get hurt. So I guess your point is be more proactive than reactive. People don’t get that, and even if they are well intentioned, they think of all the defederating and banning examples as “good enough”.
Early adopters are also overprotective with Lemmy and its small community, especially when a newcomer directly questions “how is racism in this community?”. They found their peaceful corner of the internet (relative to major social media platforms), they know it has its flaws, but since the beginning they had to defend to questions like “who owns the data?”, “what happens with deleted posts / comments”, “is defederatation effective”, “what about that Lemmygrad which is hosted by Lemmy developers”, can mods and admins become too powerful", “how long till this gets the same fate as Reddit”, etc.
I’m not defending the behaviour, just thinking of an explanation. Because frankly, I’m also surprised by the downvotes and backlash you received.
So I guess what I was trying to say is, “Hi Jon! Keep up the good work!”
Thanks, glad you appreciate it!
I’m not black so I am sure I am not sensitive enough to it, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen any racism on here. On a slightly related note have experienced transphobia only two or three times in over a year, and they were quickly banned. I imagine it works the same way.
I have an account in beehaw too, and it’s usually the one that interacts with the world. It’s considerably different from a different instance.
“I’m not black but”. More than black folks experience racism, but at least it wasn’t “As a color blind white man”
It would be more helpful if you gave an example of the proper way of addressing the issue.
Thanks for the adrenaline spike.
“person of color” or POC is the broad category of people who aren’t white.
🤔 Sounds wrong to me
Possibly because “colored” is and has been used as a slur? That was the connection my brain made when I first heard it and put me off, but many POCs use the term POC comfortably, so…?
Well, I am not from the US so I don’t have that connotation. It’s more that it puts it relative to white people. And white people also get discriminated, so it isn’t an inclusive term.
They do for sure. I didn’t say POC is shorthand for “people who are discriminated against”, just “people who aren’t white”.
I am priveleged not to experience racism as others do. As a consequence/therefore/ etc.
Yeah it sucks big time. I dated a foreign student once and people would shout crap out of their car and drive off. And when we ate at a restaurant I could have sworn that they made their food too salty to eat on purpose.
Personally I have sort of experienced a weaker version of it first hand when visiting Poland each time. People wouldn’t serve me at all, or charge ridiculous prices.
.world users every time they see a palestinian
Assuming you are from the USA what are your options really?
One option is to follow the lead of pro-Palestinian orgs working to end the genocide. You have more power than any other global citizen believe it or not.
honestly why do they leave reddit
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What’s wrong with a perfectly fine example of a joke? Black man told me this one FFS
Are you white?
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