The Nexus of Privacy @ thenexusofprivacy @lemmy.blahaj.zone

[The Nexus Of Privacy](https://privacy.thenexus.today/) looks at the connec

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Thanks for making the effort to research it ... there are some great examples in this thread and some of the cross-posts (although some were so egregious that the mods took them down). Also, did you follow the links at the beginning of the article? They're talking about Mastodon (I'll include some examples from Lemmy in the revised version) but give an idea o the overall dyamics. In any case, I'll put in a big more about the problem in the revised draft.

That's a great point, can I quote you on having seen it on Lemmy quite a few times?

Thanks very much for the feedback, I really appreciate the time you put into it and. you bring up a lot of very good points. For "start making" vs "making" and "less toxic" vs "more welcoming", I'm intentionally choosing the weaker forms to emphasize that these are only the very first steps. I know it's a harder sell this way but it's important to set expectations. It's a good point about how some allies saying :"listen to me!" take space from marginalized groups, I kind of feel like I've got that covered by betweent the combination of #1 and #2 but maybe it's worth making more explicit.

Agreed that the discussion of repeated questions could be more explicit. (It's not necessarily sealioning, although sometimes it is; often it's the same one or two reasonable questions from a huge number of people.). But that's not actually the key point I'm trying to make. Instead, to relates to this:

the way that this point is currently worded, it sounds fallacious (inversion of the burden of the proof)

Many people react that way but think about it a little more. It's a fact. Mutliuple Black people have proven it repeatedly. There is no further burden of proof, it's only whiteness' denial that makes it seem like an open question and entitlement that makes it seem like Black people should produce more evidence. The annoyance factor is a big deal too, but it's secondary.

And, good catch on the typo, thanks!

The community is called "Fediverse", and this is about the fediverse, so yes it is the correct audience.

And there's plenty of anti-Blackness on Lemmy. In fact there's even a bunch of anti-Blackness in this thread -- as somebody on another instance said, it's illustrates why other instances have defederated lemmy.world! So, if you're looking for examples, have a look at this thread.

Thanks very much for wading in, @alyaza@beehaw.org - and thanks again to all the mods for taking action here. Any thread about racism in the fediverse becomes evidence of racism in the fediverse, sigh.

More positively, though, I got some very helpful feedback here from @Kwakigra@beehaw.org, @SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org and @kalanggam@beehaw.org ... which is appreciated, and testimony to the fact that clearly a lot of people on Beehaw do get it!

Thanks very much for wading in!

Good feedback, thanks much. I did check with Black people about directing folks to #BlackMastodon and the @ blackfedi group -- but I should probably be more explicit about not posting their, and your general point about not barging into spaces where you're not invited is importat and something I should highlight. I'll add something to the "and tht's not all" section about working on your biases and behaviors more generally. And also good point about stressing the intersectional aspects more. Greatly appreciated!

Thanks much, I very much appreciate the supportive words! And, great analysis, thanks for that as well. Although, if you think things are bad here you should see the lemmy.world thread, where it's down to -47. And just imagine how much worse it would be if I were Black!

These things are basic, but most white people aren't doing them -- even people who think of themselves as staunchly pro Black. And there are multiple examples in the article of how white people might be impacting Black people unintentionally, for example thisiswomanswerk talks about how hand-wringing messages of symptay many times are themselves microaggresive, and suggestions like "Stop asking Black people for evidence of the anti-Blackness" and "Stop telling Black people that they'll experience less racism if they change instances (aka servers)"

No, "color blindness" perpetuates structural racism. Here's one study looking at that. Seeing Race Again Countering Colorblindness across the Disciplines has a lot more, although it's focused on law and academia.

Yeah, the section on "Listen more to Black people" didn't really cover the challenges on Lemmy. I added this:

If you're on a platform like Lemmy which doesn't yet have similar hubs, it's more challenging. One option is to use other social networks, news aggregators, and search engines to find articles, papers, and videos by Black people – and post them yourself to help others listen.

How's that?

Thanks, all good points, I'll try to work them in! The boosting is somewhat tricky, the general guideline is "boost posts tht people want boosted, don't boost posts that they don't want boosted", but it's not always clear which is which (unless they. have "Please boost" in there somewhere)

Thanks! It's an important point but I'm not surprised it's meeting with such pushback here. And, to be fair, as somebody pointed out in another thread, the current title of the section doesn't match the current text, which focuses more narrowly on posting less specifically about anti-Blackness ... so there's room for improvement. But, my guess is that's not why most people are downvoting it 🤣

The very first sentence in in quote at the beginning of the article describes what prompted this

"In recent days, folks such as @ErickaSimone@mastodon.social, @KimCrayton1@dair-community.social, @timnitGebru@dair-community.social ... and many, MANY more have been speaking out about how toxic fedi culture is for Black folks and how the tools we have access to just aren't enough."

If you want examples, there are links in the first paragraph of the article (after the quote), and section #1 describes how to find more. The first paragraph also defines anti-Blackness:

beliefs, attitudes, actions, practices, and behaviors of individuals, institutions, software, and systems that devalue, minimize, and marginalize the full participation of Black people

Yep. Agreed both about encouraging people to move to tools that better fit their needs -- and also agreed that it's a symptom, not a cause. Part of the challenge is that migrating from Mastodon to another platform (or for that matter even from one Mastodon instance to another) you lose your posting history, and there isn't any good way to move an entire instance yet. And yes, Lemmy has a problem.

Indeed. Funny how that works! Glad you thought it was reasonable, and agreed that point 2 needs work.

Thanks, glad you like it! And yeah, there have indeed been some reddit-like things said in this thread. Oh well, comes with the territory. The lemmy.blahaj.zone thread is somewhat better so far (famous last words).

My guess is that the fediverse will split into regions that decide to address anti-Blackness (and everything else) and others that ... don't. Similarly, some platforms will focus on improving safety and others ... won't. Lemmy's likely to be in the "won't" category but time will tell!

From the article

Dr. Johnathan Flowers' The Whiteness of Mastodon, Ra’il I'Nasah Kiam and Marcia X's Blackness in the Fediverse, and the links in Dogpiling, weaponized content warning discourse, and a fig leaf for mundane white supremacy have some of the history.

To get feedback! I often send out drafts to newsletter subscribers and post them on Mastodon and in the !thenexusofprivacy@lemmy.blahaj.zone community ... I got a lot of good feedback on this one which is incorporated in the revised version.

Preemption is bonkers from a privacy perspective, and also flies in the face of the basic principle that the states are "the laboratories of democracy." But from a corporate perspective preemption is wonderful ... it keeps pesky pro-privacy states like California and Washington from ever raising the bar above whatever can get through Congress! So historically privacy advocates and organizations have always opposed preemptive federal legislation. But that wall cracked in 2022, where EPIC Privacy joined pro-industry privacy orgs like Future of Privacy Forum to support a preemptive bill (although EFF and ACLU continued to oppose the preemptive aspects).

The argument for supporting a preemptive bill (not that I agree with it, I'm just relaying it) is that the federal bill is stronger than state privacy bills (California unsurprisingly disagreed), and many states won't pass any privacy bill. Industry hates preemption, industry hates the idea of a private right of action where people can sue companies, most Republicans and corporate Democrats will do what industry wants, so the only way to pass a bill is to include at most one of those. So the only way to get that level of privacy protection for everybody is for people in California, Maine, Illinois, etc, to give up some of their existing protection, and for people in Washington etc to give up the chance of passing stronger consumer privacy laws in the future. California of course didn't like that (neither did other states but California has a lot of votes in Congress), and Cantwell's staffers also told us in Washington that she was opposed to any preemptive bill, so things deadlocked in 2022.

With this bill, I'm not sure why Cantwell's position has changed -- we're trying to set up a meeting with her, if we find out I'll let you know. I'm also not sure whether the changes in this bill are enough to get California on board. So, we shall see.