Fifi Lamoura on Nostr: I think this focus on thinking some new bit of technology will solve social problems ...

I think this focus on thinking some new bit of technology will solve social problems is in and of itself part of the actual problem (yes, design can influence behaviour and experience but it's still people using the technology and this is a social problem not a technological one). Wanting other people or a magical solution to doing some hard social (emotional and psychological) labour IS in some ways also a driver of the problem or at least a maintainer of it.

The social problems are multiple. The two big ones right now seem to be that there are troll farms that specifically target high profile professional Black women who speak publicly about racism (Black men too) for a deluge on non-stop racism to try to hound them out of spaces and limit who gets to hear them (see also female doctors online and rape threats, etc). Now, on the big centralized servers some of this gets caught by automation....that's then backed up by humans in poorer nations being paid poorly to do moderation and look at all the terrible things that have been reported, it's still offloading the emotional labour to already oppressed people.

The second is that apparently a lot of White people on Mastodon have no Black friends they've talked to about racism and how exhausting it all is (a bit like how many men claim not to be aware of rape or to know any rapists even though most women know their rapist and have whisper networks to warn other women). A lot of the culture here is well meaning but basically blinded by privilege upper/middle class White people who believe it's only the other guy who is racist (we've all internalized racist ideas, even Black people living in nations with continuing legacies of White supremacy do this and often have to liberate themselves from colourism or internalized negative stereotypes, etc).

Now, this doesn't mean there aren't technical issues or features that make things worse here but we need to learn how to talk about and manage the social problems as well and that's good practice for doing it offline too if you aren't doing that already (we should all be doing that already btw). Stéphanie Pageau (npub1jay…80k8)