So, I've been thinking about this for a few days now, ever since the really big influx of Twitter migrants started, but the reification of Cohost as a guaranteed safe space is one that makes me a little uneasy? It's good that we're calling out toxic behaviours and attempting to refrain from them, but Cohost isn't inherently safer than any other social media site. Preserving the existing relaxed culture is a good thing that I've pushed for, but we need to keep in mind that it's not because it was here first, (if the culture on Cohost were aggressive and petty before the Twitter users came, I'd be welcoming attempts to change the culture of the site,) it's because it's healthier and more compassionate, thanks to a directed effort to make it so. This kind of safety and kindness is something that requires constant effort; acting in good faith is difficult, while acting in bad faith is easy.
It's certainly easier to act in good faith on Cohost than on Twitter, thanks to design differences and a lack of an algorithm, but I'm still a little concerned with the idea of lionizing the website as inherently good-faith. We should remain critical (as in critical thinking, not as in criticism) of every space we enter, both on- and offline. Good faith action and safety aren't just always giving the benefit of the doubt, it also involves being willing to ask pointed questions when called for. I trust @staff, because they've done a pretty good job so far, and so I'm willing, when needed, to go to bat for them against bad-faith action. But that trust is predicated on their actions; it's earned, not owed.
This turned into a bit of a ramble, but I hope I've gotten my point across? Safe spaces are not inherently so, and we need to work to keep them so.
i think this is important
the two things i would push for in a "culture" here if there is one, given what i've seen, are:
- intentional actions to improve the space
- avoiding toxic positivity - don't just be happy and positive at all costs
i think i've reposted at least one post along the lines of the latter, and this touches on the former nicely
"Safe for who?"
On the hell-slash-bird site, Alex AK and others have been pointing out that the exodus to sites like cohost and mastodon has been almost exclusively white, that the ways in which white people on cohost are talking about how friendly and safe and like "the old days" these sites feel like (ie, before thriving minority communities developed on Twitter) is concerning.
Definitionally, safe spaces are safe for a particular subset of people because no space is safe for all people. Parler is a safe space for virulent racists in a way that cohost is not and would never want to be.
I think, were I @staff, I would be asking myself why it seems like certain kinds of people are signing up on cohost; whether there are people and communities I would like to see on cohost who are not signing up; and I would do targeted outreach to key people in those communities to discuss their needs in the attempt to fill them.
Creating culture is about so much more than policing what isn't allowed— it's also about seeding and actively cultivating what is desired. And the earlier that work happens, the larger the eventual dividends.
Thirty thousand people are currently waiting in the wings to join cohost. Interest in joining is only going to increase. The window to deliberately seed culture is rapidly closing; eventually policing is the only tool that will be left.
On the hell-slash-bird site, Alex AK and others have been pointing out that the exodus to sites like cohost and mastodon has been almost exclusively white, that the ways in which white people on cohost are talking about how friendly and safe and like "the old days" these sites feel like (ie, before thriving minority communities developed on Twitter) is concerning.
Definitionally, safe spaces are safe for a particular subset of people because no space is safe for all people. Parler is a safe space for virulent racists in a way that cohost is not and would never want to be.
This is super important. The biggest reason that I've had a super hard time with Mastodon is that the dominant culture there is painfully white1, and that whiteness informs a lot of low-key and not-so-low-key toxic stuff around how people are expected to behave, and policed for misbehaving.
Some white people I know from twitter also act a lot more painfully white on Mastodon, because they've found their community where they can really let their caucasian flag fly, I guess.
This is an area where the lack of discoverability in spaces like Mastodon and Cohost -- which I know is a feature -- can also create problems by preventing members of minority communities from easily finding one another due to the need to either already know the people you're going to follow or else find/by found through deliberate exposure using hashtags. This can reinforce the dominant culture/identities and increase the comfort of the majority at the expense of the minority.
Similarly, the ease with which one can filter out the content one doesn't want to see without drama is a feature but that combined with the lack of global search can make it easy for people with difficult things to say to be functionally shadowbanned by the nice white people who just don't want their vibes harshed.
This makes it important, I think, for @staff to encourage features that provide alternative means of discoverability not just for general purposes but specifically for supporting communities of marginalized people within the user base, making it easier for those folks to find each other and also amplifying their voices without exposing them to harassment. That's a hard line to walk, and I don't know what the best solutions are. The proposed webring functionality might help here? Or (consensually) featuring/promoting certain users. And potentially @staff reflecting on their own demographs as well in the hiring process since they have a position open...
Also it's useful to remember that when we talk about making spaces unsafe for nazis and terfs because that is a prerequisite to making it safe for anybody else, we also have to consider that even entirely benign allies actually should feel uncomfortable some of the time if the space is to be made safe for the marginalized. Being decentered is uncomfortable.
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There's also a class dimension here, with the user base skewing to techy folks from middle/upper class backgrounds. (And important to distinguish here between people whose background is poor/working class vs. people from middle/upper class backgrounds who happen to be broke, although broke people of any background experience deprivation.)
