Cas 🏳️‍🌈♻️♿️🇬🇧 [main] @cassolotl@dev.glitch.social

I've had some breakfast and I've got a cup of tea and I've calmed down a little bit, and I'm thinking that if being here is causing me so much rage and inability to see stuff then maybe I should leave. I'm just yelling/ranting unconstructively, and I can't see Gargron looking at all of this wider uproar and changing; I feel like he's just gonna double down.

So I'm going to go, and it'd be nice to come back to the fediverse one day. :) There are lovely people here who I'm going to miss!

One of these might bring me back:

- Edit toots (https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/256);

- Gargron saying (~) "this feature is being rolled back due to opposition from the users." (He doesn't like to do that, he just says something vague and dramatic);

- Any kind of democratic process where marginalised people are represented;

- A system that enables non-coders and people from marginalised groups to review and approve something before it gets rolled out;

- All my friends leaving Twitter for Mastodon. ;)

“I left Mastodon 27 days ago”

https://medium.com/@cassolotl/i-left-mastodon-27-days-ago-ae34919290e1

A follow-up to the post I wrote when I first left Mastodon, to see what’s changed since and what hasn’t.

#mastodon

"On FOSS as a capitalism-like structure"

https://medium.com/@cassolotl/on-foss-as-a-capitalism-like-structure-baf89973c6a1

"I left Mastodon yesterday"

In fine Mastodon storming-off tradition, I've written a flipping long Medium post.

https://medium.com/@cassolotl/i-left-mastodon-yesterday-4c5796b0f548

#mastodon #meta #ForkOff #ForkOffTogether

Okay, I think that's all the closing up shop - henceforth, replies/mentions here probably won't reach me. Take care, folks. <3

Here's the results of that #mastodon branding survey, before I forget! https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HzU8ZGDaPQLSRKpOCYz1eflIg-R_vLUh-wm3zyKPK_s/edit?usp=sharing

#meta

One of these might bring me back:

- Edit toots (https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/256);

- Gargron saying (~) "this feature is being rolled back due to opposition from the users." (He doesn't like to do that, he just says something vague and dramatic);

- Any kind of democratic process where marginalised people are represented;

- A system that enables non-coders and people from marginalised groups to review and approve something before it gets rolled out;

- All my friends leaving Twitter for Mastodon. ;)

I've had some breakfast and I've got a cup of tea and I've calmed down a little bit, and I'm thinking that if being here is causing me so much rage and inability to see stuff then maybe I should leave. I'm just yelling/ranting unconstructively, and I can't see Gargron looking at all of this wider uproar and changing; I feel like he's just gonna double down.

So I'm going to go, and it'd be nice to come back to the fediverse one day. :) There are lovely people here who I'm going to miss!

I'd also like to add that cybre.space and @chr were very good to me! I was on that instance for a while, and chr was always SUPER GOOD about considering new features and trying things out to see what happened. He works really hard and stayed open to new stuff, and I really appreciate that.

Overall, my favourite places to be have been here on the glitch.socials and on https://cybre.space. :) I am really grateful for those good spaces and good admin-devs. <3

Okay so the stuff I said isn't all universally true. When I started being on a glitch.social instance, @bea and the devs were super nice - Bea has thanked me personally many times.

On Github folks often (always?) thank me for my questions and bug reports and stuff! Reporting stuff on the glitch.social Github list is always a very pleasant and welcoming experience. :)

So I just wanted to say thank you, you are all great and I appreciate all your hard work and welcoming and inclusive natures. <3

I posted the text of reply like "don't do this" with the identity blurred out, because I thought blocking the person removed their post from the thread for everyone else too, but it didn't, so yeah, I deleted the post and I'm sorry, I won't do that again omg. 😔​

@unascribed EEESH that is definitely my mistake, I thought that blocking someone would remove their reply from the thread from other people's perspectives like on Tumblr but it didn't. Deleting it now. Thanks for that.

So yeah, I'm white, and I'm not a woman, and I'm technically-minded and want to be involved in the project, and this whole website and the Github issue list and the Discord for devs are very hostile for me.

Anyone less like safe men than me will have it worse. This project is wonderful, and I appreciate the work that Gargron and everyone else does, but it is a hostile and thankless near-monoculture and I have to fight to be here.

Thank you for your patience while I ranted. <3

#ForkOff

And then there's the accessibility! We've got a (bad) image description UI and people make "add image descriptions for visually impaired users" posts that do the rounds all the time, but VISUALLY IMPAIRED PEOPLE AREN'T HERE because there are many things about the Mastodon UI that are not usable to people with screenreaders!

#ForkOff

I have been sealioned and well-actuallyed when saying the fediverse is not diverse.

White men and furries and trans women is not diverse, people! I LOVE that furries and trans women have a home here, I really do! But the presence of a single marginalised group is not diversity!

#ForkOff

I have to block SO MANY White Man Avatars on here, so many more than I have to block TERFs on Twitter as a person who shouts about being trans and having trans experiences, even!

Here's a chunk of my regex filters on the federated timeline. I had to do this because otherwise my federated timeline was unreadable as a non-coder, no matter which instance I was on.

linux|programming|sysadmin|infosec|opsec|partition

linux
programming
sysadmin
infosec
opsec
partition

#ForkOff

I have been saying from the start that this place gets MORE "well actually" and hostility for me than Twitter, and a lot of people told me it wasn't true. I'm starting to understand why that is.

It's because the people telling me these things are safe men, and I am a nonbinary non-coder, and I visibly try to get involved in a project when I can't code. I try to get involved as a user.

#ForkOff

"I only want to code something for me, and you are lucky that I am willing to share it." And that is true! I am lucky!

But the truth is that projects like this NEED the bug reports and feature requests and mock-ups and complaints by newbies and non-coders. No developer is so good that they can make something without that!

And if the developer or developers are all safe men who push anyone they don't understand away, they will ONLY EVER MAKE A WEBSITE THAT WORKS FOR SAFE MEN.

#ForkOff

Ultimately every FOSS project like this that I've run into is (or becomes) selfish in this way.

This is hard to describe. It's like... in FOSS we are meant to all have equal power. But devs sometimes think that means we should all have equal skill, and if they can fork the project so can I. And if I can't, it's just because I haven't learnt how to code then that's just a formality and a matter of time and work, and I can go and do that.

(I can't.)

#ForkOff

There is no way I could ever fork the project myself! I ask for changes sometimes because I want something that works for me and people like me. But I've been told to #ForkOff so many times - it's the standard response when you're a user and you ask for something that the dev doesn't really get.

When most of the devs are straight white cis men and you don't code, if your experiences are met with #ForkOff, a website that is made only for people NOT like you is inevitable.