i don't have the words to properly situate this within the current discourse right now but you all should be aware that the fediverse is historically an anti-trans and anti-gay space also
when mastodon first started, activitypub didn't exist yet. the fediverse was a bunch of GNU Social instances communicating over the OStatus protocol. these instances were well-established, and they did not take kindly to the popularity of Mastodon and all the new users taking over their existing, quiet culture
the existing, quiet culture, by the way, was a bunch of channer shit and blatantly anti-gay and anti-trans memes. the instance we saw most often on the federated timeline in those days was shitposter.club, a place which virtually every respectable instance now has blocked. mastodon didn't really *have* blocks back then
we made this space our own through months of work and a fuckton of drama and infighting. but we did a good enough job that when mastodon took off, OUR culture was the one everybody associated it with
bad instances have always existed and every good thing about the fediverse today was hard-fought and hard-won. making it better will mean more work, fighting, and winning
i’m tired of reductive takes like “the fediverse shouldn't be bad; the fediverse should be good” which erase both the history of struggle and the actual tactics used to get us where we are now
addendum to this: the fediverse is living software and the affordances it provides are not static or stable. i AGREE with the take that new communities need space to figure out how to make those affordances work for them, but i think it historically has been EQUALLY important that those communities have an active hand in actually creating and promulgating those affordances. when the fedi started it didn't have post privacy settings, much less CWs. the queer masto community applied pressure and in some cases actively developed these affordances to meet our needs. if we hadn't we would not have been successful here
setl monsterpit, long live glitchsoc, etc etc
the fediverse IS bad; get over it and get to work and maybe we can achieve something cool