this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2024
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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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[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Don't silence racists: You're a "nazi platform" promoting racism!

Silence racists: People think there isn't any racism because they can't see it!

What would you propose?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's great that mods are blocking sources of racism

Or sources of racism are blocking lefties, hah

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Whatever works! lol

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago (10 children)

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.
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Lemmy.world is well moderated, unlike mastodon.social.

I mean, to be fair, .social has ~224k MAU and .world has ~18k

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago

If you want to see racism just check the modlog. My favourite feature on Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (1 children)

There was some super racist shit on here recently about how white people should stop posting. Really disgusting.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Their own cross post says white people should post less. Remember, only racism can defeat racism!

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago (12 children)

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"?

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Again? I’m blocking this fool.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)

There's currently only 1 user that I've noticed that keeps bringing race up.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Is it the person who posted this?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

How did you guess?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

This is a pretty left-leaning platform, so you don't generally see 'outright' racism.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

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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