Notices by Ro (are0h@ubiqueros.com)

There's this view on the fedi that because people don't outright use slurs, they can't be racist or anti-Black, which is absurd, but people cling to this falsehood in an attempt to justify hateful behavior.

But this context speaks to how insidious whiteness operates in the fedi.

No, most people won't call me a slur, but they will ignore a boundary I've set.

The chances of one using a historically derogatory term of Black folk is low in the fedi, but people will frame me as an Angry Black Guy, a historic trope used against Black persons to justify injustice to try and invalidate my response to being attacked and abused in this space.

Nah, most people who style themselves as PROGRESSIVE won't use the language of hate to express themselves, but they will show deference and understanding to other white people while engaging in hostile and bad faith exchange with Black folks under the guise of 'discourse.'

To be honest, I respect bigots who use slurs because they are clear about where they stand. I know where to put that.

But there are a lot of people who engage in anti-Black behavior while having all of the acronyms and flags in their bios.

This is why I pay attention to behavior because that always tells what a person is really about.

The anti-defederation crowd is just the fedi's version of gamer gate.

So, here's the thing.

I'm a 20+ year web dev that has used everything under the sun, and where do I land?

Ha, plain ole flat-file HTML, CSS, and Javascript are still the best. And PHP is still rock solid on the backend.

A lot of the popular frameworks are just jobs gatekeeping the kind of people they want to work for them.

Sites should be getting less complicated to build and maintain.

The tricky question that needs to be asked is can we create tools in the fedi that make it easy for people who have specific reasons not to leave Twitter, FB, Insta, etc., to make that move?

Can we make platforms so undeniable in their utility that it inspires people to make that jump?

As a competitor, these are the kinds of challenges you live for.

This is the kind of stuff I want to build.

@sikkdays@ourempty.pub I would suggest examining why we are siloed and stuck on specific platforms, especially with the glut of tools available to build these days.

Why in the infinite potential of having an independent communication protocol, are the most popular apps on the fedi poor facsimile of platforms we are allegedly trying to get away from?

Technology exists for us to build entirely new experiences.

But we're not. The way forward involves asking deep and critical questions about why that is.