As the person that founded the most high profile Black instance in the fedi and still develops safety tools for this environment, there is still a lot of resistance in the fedi in accepting how massively it failed Black and Brown internet folks.
I don’t mind the technical discussions between ATProtocol and Activity Pub because they both have stuff to learn from each other, but the fedi damaged reputation isn’t due to technical concerns.
The fedi has a *terrible* reputation to the point people are choosing a corporate option they know is bad over a free one.
Folks really need to think about what that means.
I regularly talk to folks who left the fedi and they *consistently* say the bigoted harassment they faced on the fedi is the *worst they’ve experienced* online. These aren’t people that are unfamiliar with how digital communities work. These are veteran digital citizens that are accustomed to bad faith engagement on the web.
Fortunately, the rise of Blacksky and other independent installs are rendering Bluesky irrelevant as it continues to enshitify, but the fedi needs to accept its utter failure in regards to safety and moderation is a central reason why we are talking about Bluesky at all.
I do believe it’s possible for the fedi to still be a major player in social media.
But it has to be real about why many people believe Bluesky is the lesser evil.
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