Agreed that Bluesky's run by a single corporation so it's different than today's ActivityPub Fediverse, but the Fediverse's historical approach to "open federation" isn't the only approach. Even in the ActivityPub world we're seeing more and more experimentation with allow-list federation.
Blueksy's approach to decentralization is very different from ActivityPub but it's definitely decentralized. (Also that article's over a year old, and some things have changed since then.). But, like I say in the article, not everybody is so welcoming!
There definitely are some great people there. Finding the right instance makes a big difference... unfortunately, almost eerybody starts off on mastodon.social, which for most people isn't a great choice, and don't realize they can move -- and when they do try to move, they lose their posting history which is annoying.
Yeah, Mastodon's interface has a lot of complexities. It drives me crazy when people say "just like email" ... here's the most recent diagram of what posts are visible in your federated timeline.
Also SmokeSignal events https://smokesignal.events/
I saw a talk by the peole working on FrontPage last week, they use the Bluesky Relay, filter it down to only see the posts they're interested it, and have their own AppView. It doesn't yet have the same kind of intereoperability with Bluesky that Lemmy does with (say) Mastodon; FrontPage posts are only visible to FrontPage. But, there are discussions on how to get beyond that.
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.
Great example, thanks!
Thanks for the feedback! The revised draft will talk about Lemmy as well. I've talked about the software aspects in a lot of other posts (Mastodon and today's fediverse are unsafe by design and unsafe by default, for example, and there's a section on it Don't tell people "it's easy", and seven more things Kbin, Lemmy, and the fediverse can learn from Mastodon so don't want to go into it here, but maybe I'll add a link!
Weak moderation on many instances -- including large ones like mastodon.social -- is a big problem, but I wouldn't say it's the biggest. Black people even on well-moderated instances get plenty of racist abuse -- the moderation tools are horrible, and basic tools that peopl on Twitter have to protect themselves don't even exist. Agreed though that many fedi instances do have stricter rules and make a real effort to enforce them ... that's a good thing!
Yeah I saw the name and ... no thanks.
Thanks, glad you like it! And yeah, there have indeed been some reddit-like things said in this thread. Oh well, comes with the territory. The lemmy.blahaj.zone thread is somewhat better so far (famous last words).
My guess is that the fediverse will split into regions that decide to address anti-Blackness (and everything else) and others that ... don't. Similarly, some platforms will focus on improving safety and others ... won't. Lemmy's likely to be in the "won't" category but time will tell!
Yes there several english-speaking instances running Misskey or a fork. Here's the list for Sharkey - https://fedidb.org/software/sharkey