So, most of the posts in the thread under https://akko.disqordia.space/notice/AMOna3GxzSqiJN6t9M are gone now, which is probably a good thing - but having seen it before stuff was deleted, I feel like it made an interesting case study in antiblackness and is something I wanna talk about.
Like, let's be clear: this is fully us going "someone is /wrong/ on the Internet". It's not researched or anything, and I'd love to see us set right if we get details wrong. It's interesting, though, and maybe informative.
Fedi meta below.
antiblackness fediblock meta (1/6)
Okay, so, first of all, singling out for criticism the people who blocked you is often a bad look? I get it, I get it, but it's the kind of thing that you see pretty often from folks who absolutely refuse to take criticism - and being open to criticism is incredibly important, especially for instance mods. It's a really hard job and we're not gonna get everything right, so we need to leave space for us to be called in on stuff.
antiblackness fediblock meta (2/6)
Anyway. Second: publicly denouncing the mod decisions of a Black instance is not something to be done lightly. Racism is real and antiblackness is real, and those things /predispose/ people to mistrust Black folks' judgment, to create and amplify attacks on Black folks. When you're talking about a Black instance, mistakes are more damaging and more likely.
And "I run Ubuntu so why did an Ubuntu instance block me" is /terrible/ logic.
antiblackness fediblock meta (3/6)
Three: ubuntu.buzz is named for the African political philosophy, not the Linux.
And, y'know, colonialism, right? It's totally fair that you wouldn't know where the Linux took its name from - white tech people have way more PR money than Black African philosophers.
...but Eris called this "unfortunate naming".
antiblackness fediblock meta (4/6)
Like, I'm not gonna pretend to understand Eris's logic, here. It doesn't make sense to me.
But we have to bring in the first thing again, because /racists/ would /definitely/ want to claim that ubuntu.buzz is wrong for treating African political philosophy as more important than a computer thing that borrowed its name. And by calling it unfortunate, Eris is, intentionally or not, saying the racists are right.
re: antiblackness fediblock meta (4/6)
@Felthry I won't argue with you about that - it's a pretty questionable choice.
- 🎒