Velvet Silmeria!Mánibranðr @FreyaManibrandr@awoo.space

@grainloom I had friends on there. I silenced their instance a while back because of moderation that is inconsistent at best and outright hostile at worst. The moderators have a tendency to point fingers at other instances when they are alerted to bad behavior on their own instance, often changing the narrative to make it sound like they are the victim in any situation. (See: DARVO, thread pinned on my profile.) @twistylittlepassages

we are not offering receipts. enough people have told us a pattern of harm exists, many of whom are well known and trusted by us. we believe them. you don't have to, but we're not going to try to prove it to you.

so the decision to defederate is us saying, we won't pretend this kind of thing is okay anymore. we don't get to decide how other people moderate their instances, and you can make your own calls about what works best for you. but we want to create a safe space here on weirder.earth for our users, including and even especially our Black users. this is one way we can move toward that goal.

sometimes the harassment has involved blatantly false accusations, overtly racist comments, and being dragged into fights the target had nothing to do with. again, these things are not easy to see if you're not a target or close to the target. but the harm is real, and our inaction and silence give permission for it to continue. the three instances we're defederating from have been a haven for a significant number of these harassers.

highly visible Black fedi members have come up against a lot of indirect harassment on the fedi. often this takes the form of shitposting about them, which serves to "brigade" or recruit allies of the shitposter to talk more shit. if you're not in on what the shitposters are talking about, it looks like fun snarky joking. if you're the target, though, you know, and it suuucks.

obviously that was too late for PV, and we're truly sorry about that. we already had a PoC mod, and we put out a call to recruit more. we now also have a Black mod in an advisory capacity (and we're looking for more PoC mods, and collecting donations to pay them). and as we've looked more into the stories of why so many Black people have left the fediverse, we found some outstanding patterns.

but that's the way this kind of thing works: it's done in a way that is invisible to white people, and unignorable to its Black targets. what I did see was Black members of the fediverse, one after another, complaining about these kinds of issues, and most of them leaving.

when PV closed, weirder.earth mods said, this is really bad. why is the fedi so unfriendly to Black people? and what can we do about it?

Ro, its founder, can be short-tempered and defensive at times, but whenever he put his foot in his mouth, he got waaay more blowback for it than a white guy would have.

before and after PV shut down, Black people have been leaving the fediverse, saying they were tired of getting harassed here. the fediverse has an antiblackness problem, they said. I didn't see what they were talking about (I am white).

playvicious.social (often referred to as PV) was the only Black-led public instance on the fediverse. it shut down about a month ago, after having announced its shutdown some time in advance. it was frequently the focus of controversy, and its mods got a lot of harassment when they tried to call out antiblackness.

Here Comes Daredevil

Finished commission for @BxFenns -thank you!
Quite pleased with this one

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