Fantastic accomplishment!♥️👍🏿
https://19thnews.org/2023/07/chanda-prescod-weinstein-physicist-tenure-rare-feat/
And when she tried to join the Fediverse, she was greeted with a barrage of hate, sexism, racism, and anti-semitism that should have never been allowed to happen.
So now no one on Fediverse gets to interact with her directly about her work on here. Our loss. 😢
Which is why we'll make it so that this type of terrible welcome is unlikely to happen again. Allowing it to happen to her was a choice. We will make better ones.
@mekkaokereke hadn't seen this news, it rules!
@techghoul @mekkaokereke great that she'e got tenure. Just wish it wasn't so difficult for black women to get parity.
Can you tell us more about how it came about she had such a bad landing in the #fediverse?
What needs to be done to ensure it never happens again?
Short-ish version:
1) There's a list of really bad Mastodon instances that only exist to host CSAM and launch attacks on Black folk, brown folk, Jewish folk, women, LGBTQIA folk, and other marginalized groups. It's a full time job keeping up with new additions to that list.
2) Some experienced admins do this work to block them, but most new admins don't. There are now 26K instances, most of which have new-ish admins that don't block this "worst of the worst" list.
@mekkaokereke @marjolica @techghoul
I guess this is a difficult thing to respond to, one the one hand they SHOULD be blocking / dealing with this, as a vast majority of people would expect them to. On the other hand we are NOT here to TELL others what they can / can't do on/with their own servers.
However in the case of CSAM and the other content you are citing, this problem is going to impact everyone one of us, like it or not.
So can we offer help / support to new admins, running ones own server sounds fun, exciting etc, but there is little mention of the fact that this material is out there and as an admin you need to be part of the solution to block it.
Perhaps we need to make it clear and be open in guides that this IS a huge problem and one should consider that if setting up instances.
There is a sign somewhere that says, something like
Teenagers
Tired of your stupid parents making up the rules
Move out, get a job pay the rent / bills while you still know it all.
In other words, it is NOT as easy as you think
Same goes for running an instance, I get that without running one.
So how can the rational / moral / ethical / law abiding members of this community help?
