One of the speakers said #Mastodon is full of tech white people, but I think that misrepresents us. Theres a huge academic/science comm, media/journo folks, political activists, artists, as well as trans and LGBTQ folks all through those other comms. Mstdn IS a bit yank-centric, but that's changing. If you interview coders theyll tell you its techy, but interview others theyll tell a different story. Also, what about Lemmy, Firefish etc? #fediverse#activitypub#decentralized#ngi2023
@citrus_marine exactly. Though I didn't know that. Also, I see a reasonable cultural/ethnic diversity. It's never gonna be a perfect statistic representation and there are wealth/access to technology issues that are also relevant, but I think it's a lot more than a bunch of techno geek heads.
I am also seeing these proclamations quite frequently, often by people that leave no opportunity untouched to repeat their argument. And I wonder what purpose all that serves, but to me it seems it certainly won't help increase diversity to basically tell people "don't go there". Otherwise my timeline is pretty diverse.. but who am I to say so as a white, male geek, right? 🤷
@smallcircles@citrus_marine I think it's a kind of protectionist elitism. The person on the forum panel also made very negative comments about the Fediverse having lots of problems with hatespeech and user harassment etc which I feel were totally inappropriate and unrepresentative of the general atmosphere, and gave a very misleading impression. Completely backfired at the event.
Lucky that it backfired, as I sure hope that representatives in that room, among which those involved with the EC's EUVoice/EUVideo pilot will prolong their presence on the Fediverse. EU Commission is leading the way as a shining example of government institutions making the choice for open Social Media alternatives. They might go much further when that is formalized, and give the example to other institutions to move of corporate-owned megaplatforms.
@smallcircles@citrus_marine I really think the EU acts as a kind of litmus test to the future. Germany and the Netherlands are also very innovative in this area. Koen de Jonge was a panellist at this event and he made pertinent comments about decoupling from proprietary platforms. He singled out my text chat comment about the BBC also trialling fediverse communications :) - FYI, in my humble capacity Im writing about the Fediverse in every paper I publish now.
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