A History:
Fringe Mastodev
Part
I: The Beginnings
This post is the first in a series of posts chronicling my personal history of involvement with the fringe development scene on Mastodon, detailing the origins of the movement, and touching on a number of larger cultural developments and trends taking place in the Mastodon communit{y|ies} more broadly. Fringe development is my term for the development work (research; design; coding) taking place on forks and individual instances of Mastodon, without the intention of sending that work upstream, and without mainstream acknowledgment or recognition. Increasingly, as Mastodon as a project grows, I believe that it is this development work that happens on the fringes that will shape the future of the software.
Due to Mastodon's nature as a GPL‐licensed, open‐source project, TootSuite upstream has the ability to profit off of fringe development work with little in the way of compensation or acknowledgment, obscuring the origins of its features, and making the project appear as the singular creation of one enlightened organization—or developer. This could not be further from the truth. Acknowledging and recording the troubled history of the Mastodon software is essential to prevent the narratives of these other developers—frequently, marginalized actors doing important work for their communities—from being lost.
For those of you who arrived at this post from somewhere else, my name is KIBI Gô, and for the past year or so I've been one of the most prolific fringe developers of the Mastodon software. My curriculum vitae in this respect mostly consists of my work for GlitchSoc, the first successful Mastodon fork, where I was the primary, and frequently full‐time, developer for the period from roughly – (8 months). Aside from GlitchSoc proper, I have been involved in such Mastodon‐adjacent projects as Ardipithecus, Laboratory, Labcoat, Snow Web Client, Ratatootille, Mastodon GO!, MonStrPub, Monstodon, ActivityPress, and SlashBang. (Most of these names will probably be unfamiliar to you, if you didn't follow me at the time I was working on them.)
This post is intended as a retrospective of the past nineteen‐plus months, starting with Mastodon's February 2017 schism, and going up through the present‐day, chronicling my time working within the Mastodon community and with the Mastodon software. For those of you who have been following along with me on this journey, it is intended to offer some clarity as to where all of these ideas and projects have gone, and what my plans are moving forward. For those of you who haven't, I'm hoping it will shed some light on Mastodon's early history and the forces and factors which have made it what it is today.
I first joined Mastodon on . I've already touched upon the climate of Mastodon in those early few months in my previous retrospective, Mourning Mastodon, and I honestly don't have much more to add. (Mourning Mastodon, and its political context, will be discussed in further detail later in this series.) Instead, I want to start with the moment when that initial cohesion met its first major stumbling block, when Mastodon stopped being singular, and when I first found myself getting involved as something more than a user.
February 2017
This story begins, as perhaps it ought, with Mastodon's most significant, controversial, and distinctive feature: the Content Warning (CW). As a technological feature, Mastodon received Content Warnings on , roughly 19–20 months ago, at time of writing. In truth, Mastodon already had Content Warnings prior to this, but they looked like so:
@marrus_sh:
sensual// gurl yvsg hc lbhe fuveg, naq lbh srry gur puvyy bs gur avtug nve juvfx njnl gur snvagrfg tyvfgravat bs fjrng, bayl gb or ercynprq ol gurve jnez oerngu qbja lbhe arpx naq puvyyrq svatref genpvat qbja lbhe fvqrf #np https://youtu.be/QHin8ri__Sk
That is, they consisted of a plaintext description followed by ROT13‐encoded text. These were used primarily for lewds—sometimes posted straight to the public timeline—but by the end of January they were prevalent enough in‐general that Mastodon guides of that era needed to explicitly tell new users how to process them. There were concerns from the development community that the massive amounts of ROT13 on the site would drive away new users, and this was one of the driving forces between CW adoption.
To be clear on these points:
- CWs are a feature developed by the community,
- They already had widespread adoption before a line of code was committed to the Mastodon repository, and
- The technological incorporation of CWs into the software was aimed, among other things, at making them easier and more accessible for people to use, especially for outsiders.
Mastodon culture moved incredibly fast in those days, and by the time rolled around, there were already a set of community practices in‐place dictating when and where they should be used. These were largely carried over from the ROT13 days, but were enforced more stringently now that adding a CW was as easy as clicking a button.
That said, the transition from ROT13 to built‐in CW wasn't entirely without turmoil. CW‐jokes—where the content warning was the setup and the body of the toot was the punchline—existed from the very first day, and were frequently used by people testing out the feature for the first time. Memes like SOME(BODY) and IT'S BEEN also took no time at all to surface, and made CWs into a core part of Mastodon culture. Even so, there was a segment of the population who thought that this was a mis‐use of the feature, that CWs should be used as trigger warnings exclusively, and that CW‐jokes were trivializing the trauma of those who depended on them for safe navigation online.
@marrus_sh:
the content warning system was designed to be flexible and accommodate multiple use-case scenarios, including potentially harmful content but also spoilers for episode 47 of spongebob. there is such a thing as *overuse* imo, but not misuse per se.
@marrus_sh:
it's weird that this has been such a discourse item when it has been called a spoiler system / spoilertext from the beginning iirc?? and there were accessibility concerns wrt rot13 but never anyone saying “oh you shouldn't've rot13'd that” as far as i remember. is this just an issue of branding / the fact that the toggle says “content warning”??
@marrus_sh:
i thought the whole reason we switched away from calling things trigger warnings and started calling them content warnings was because it was a more flexible label and prevented this kind of discourse, smdh
CW politics
was a
refrain which was taken up very
quickly by a number of passionate
users—anyone who is on Mastodon today
is likely familiar with this norm.
Remember that this was just
after the inauguration of the 45th
President of the United States of America,
Donald J. Trump, and that much of Mastodon's
initial base was queer
leftists from Twitter who joined in
,
when post‐election fervour was at its
peak.
It had been a rough political year for all of us,
and time and space away from the steady
stream of disheartening news was something
many sorely needed.
However, early in February, this community standard was weaponized, as white, trans users—who, for the record, posted un‐CWed trans shit in their timeline all the time—started taking it to the mentions of people of colour whenever the subject of race came up. It was an incredibly unfair double‐standard, which effectively amounted to white people restricting the domain of public discourse to only those things which made them feel comfortable. In an attempt to demonstrate the sillyness of their position, I've created a table, reproduced below, which lists some things that these white randos may or may not have responded angrily to seeing on the Public TL:
| Probably OK | Probably Not OK |
|---|---|
smdh this cis boy making my latte fml |
smdh this white boy making my latte fml |
Trebuchet TERFs |
ugh trebuchet all these racist randos in my mentions |
trans witches are Powerful |
#BlackGirlMagic |
Keep in mind that CWs, as a technological feature, had only existed for about a week at this time.
If you thought Content Warnings were a recent phenomenon, GeoCities would like to have a word with you.
The people of colour I followed at the time were infrequent posters, and (to my knowledge) managed to dodge the event; the white people I followed were (again, as far as I could tell) not directly involved. As a result, it took me a few days to piece together what was going on, and most of what I learned came secondhand (from people discussing it on the PTL) or thirdhand (from private communications with friends). You can see the awareness dawning if you look closely:
-
@marrus_sh:@mastodon.social my girlfriend is yelling at people on the internet and i would show solidarity but i don't know why or what about so instead i'm just yelling about dogs. this works,
@marrus_sh:@mastodon.social you know how when you get a new puppy and they just try to copy everything you do except they do it wrong because they're a puppy? did you know i was raised by dogs,
-
@marrus_sh:@mastodon.social i'm going to bed now but did you know Mastodon has about as many user accounts as there are *people in my town*?? and as many people registered in the past WEEK as *went to my college*?? i don't have a point to this except if you expect some kind of singular unified community to emerge from that somehow… um… idk but my college experience was a little different.
@marrus_sh:@mastodon.social idk sometimes the rhetoric on here can kinda make it seem like we're all the same and have the same background and expectations or even belong to the same communities and like. we're not. and that's a good thing. imo.
@marrus_sh:@mastodon.social social networks live and die by their diversity work. and social networks live and die by their diversity work. imo.
-
@marrus_sh:@mastodon.social i've been hesitant to throw stones because without actual demographic information to back it up i can't tell if masto is incredibly homogeneous or just my circles are, but ime we need more diversity on this site. imho.
@marrus_sh:@mastodon.social i went to a school that was *very* white and university staff would go up to POC and be like “hey what can we do to attract more minorities to campus” and their response would always be like. dude. why would i, a person of color, want to go to a college and be surrounded by white people all the time. why would i want to go to a college where i don't have a voice or decent representation.
@marrus_sh:@mastodon.social and this is a problem mastodon has. again i can't speak for actual demographics, but the impression that i and i think a lot of people have gotten has been one of kinda white, urbanite tech culture. as someone who is white but isn't urban and isn't tech, *i* can get turned off by that sometimes. as you add intersections i can only imagine that effect increases.
@marrus_sh:@mastodon.social we need to start actively elevating diverse voices and we need to carve out spaces for people who don't fit the existing masto mold to fit in. we can't do this “gay communist tech furry” thing forever. or, i mean, we can, but it means some marginalized people will never feel at home using the service.
-
@marrus_sh:@mastodon.social Realtalk though, every day I log onto twitter and I see people (mostly, people of color) doing important work critiquing whiteness and racism and sexism and transmisogyny and what have you, organizing and making a difference and making a change. Would #BlackLivesMatter have taken off on Mastodon? Actual question. #YesAllWomen? #SayHerName?
@marrus_sh:@mastodon.social Because from alot of what I've seen it's like, we don't do that here. “I don't want to have to see your critiques of my whiteness, tag that shit and keep it hidden.” (Like, not what content warnings are for, folks.) Features are more than just technology. Where are the communities of support, where are the journalists, where are the activists? And you wonder why people leave. And you wonder why people go back.
@marrus_sh:@mastodon.social When there is legislation being passed that is putting me and the people I love at risk, when there are communities in danger that need our help, you can't ask me to keep that stuff under wraps. You can't ask me not to be vocal. Not when that stuff is as core to who I am as a person as any gender or sexual label. Like, so much for inclusion when we can't ever visibly mourn.
@marrus_sh:@mastodon.social Twitter: “Hey followers my friend can't get into the US because of the #MuslimBan please send help and best wishes.”
Mastodon: “OMG birdsite getting all wild about politics so glad we don't have that here #whyijoinedmastodonLike I know I'm caricaturing here but also fuck that noise. Yall should be getting angry. Yall should be getting upset. Like, I mean, take care of yourselves. But come on.
@marrus_sh:@mastodon.social It has felt like “no politics” (or “keep politics hidden”) has been the cry here since day one, but we've yet to really define what “politics” means. Does being black count as “politics”? What about being trans? If my queer friend down in SF goes to a rally and ends up hurt, is that suddenly “politics”? If I try to change my name, am I being “political”?
@marrus_sh:@mastodon.social The brunt of my question is this: To what extent is (some of) our anti-politics culture standing in the way of people living their lives in a visible, open manner? And I say “people” but obviously not all people are affected by this equally. And: If people can't live their lives in a visible, open manner on Mastodon, is it any wonder they choose a different service where they can?
@marrus_sh:@mastodon.social Like, I understand the wear of being surrounded by this stuff all the time. Believe me, I get it. But sometimes you don't have a choice. Sometimes this stuff is your life whether you like it or not. And I'm not gonna just sit back and watch a bunch of white queers avoid talking about racism because they're afraid of destroying the sanctity of their “safe space”. Like, safe for whom. Really.
@marrus_sh:@mastodon.social This is not saying we shouldn't use content warnings. This is not saying it's okay to dogpile, or call people out unnecessarily, or promote harassment. This isn't saying you shouldn't act judiciously when it comes to posting to public/unlisted/private/whatever. These tools exist for a reason. Use them.
But when shit goes down, show up. What is the point of calling yourself a community otherwise.
The Aftermath
The above narrative is probably not unfamiliar to many of the people of colour on Mastodon today, because this shit still happens. Mastodon's white users remain more sensitive to issues of race than issues of gender, and continue to leverage their white fragility in an attempt to silence and contain nonwhite voices and complaints. Whereäs Mastodon's trans community has largely been granted the self‐autonomy to decide what kinds of topics are or aren't acceptable, or which do or don't require advance warning, with respect to trans issues, for much of its history Mastodon's nonwhite communities have not had the size or leverage to do the same regarding issues of racial injustice.
Nevertheless, the landscape of Mastodon today is far more open and optimistic with respect to garnering change in this area than the Mastodon of nineteen months ago ever was. At that time, reports didn't even exist yet, users were mostly confined to a single instance, and the question of when and where and what is considered politics had been circulating unresolved since Fidel Castro's death on literally the third day after I'd joined. Consequently, the do white people have the right to police when and where and how people of colour talk about race question blew up to encompass a number of other topics, like what is Mastodon's role as a safe space versus communication and organizing platform.
From these questions, two broad camps emerged, and these were informed by race and politics—but also by fundamental differences in how people used the site. The first camp didn't want anything resembling an uncomfortable topic crossing their feeds—even and especially during community disputes. The most sympathetic of these users were folks who had active social media accounts on Twitter and other platforms, and who used Mastodon as a safe‐space refuge and not as a replacement for other sites: I'm already bombarded with politics on Twitter; why should I have to deal with it here? Of course, there were also those who just didn't want their privilege challenged. Many of the users in this camp went on to serve as the founding body for awoo.space (nothing against Awoo), which was registered as a domain on .
@marrus_sh:
i don't mean to keep beating a dead horse with this. i am a strong advocate of both privacy features and content warnings, and i think having a separate, depoliticized "safe-space" instance aside from the mainstream is probably a good decision. but whenever we talk about safe spaces, two questions leap to the front of my mind: (1) safe space for whom? (2) what happens when the personal becomes political? and i always worry about their answers.
@marrus_sh:
if i am a undocumented trans person of color, from a nation where being trans is a crime punishable by death, whose very existence is illegal no matter where i turn, is this a safe space for me? when what other people call "politics" is just me trying to get through my daily life? and if not, fine, but be up-front about it. don't claim to be a safe space for everyone if you can't be a safe space for refugees.
@marrus_sh:
i am worried about the way in which boundaries can become closets, and the psychic damage of not being able to live life without always having a warning out front. many of us are queer, i think we know those stakes.
again, i agree with pretty much every decision that has been made. these are just questions.
The other camp was largely populated by those individuals who had hoped to use Mastodon as a Twitter‐replacement, who wanted to speak openly and frankly about their experiences and community concerns, and who didn't take kindly to white randos telling them what they could or couldn't say or how. For the incredibly debate‐minded, icosahedron.website was established () as an instance with lighter moderation and instance‐blocking policies, and was more friendly to openly political content. (The specifics of this have to deal with the Mastodon / GNU Social divide and the perceived walled garden of mastodon.social at the time, which is beyond the scope of this narrative.) For everybody else, the options were either to leave Mastodon altogether, or to stay on mastodon.social and fuck shit up when the opportunity presented itself. People of colour, who often had existing networks of support on Twitter, tended to take the first option; queer white users, who sometimes didn't, tended to be more comfortable with the second. (There was also a third option of investing the time and energy to operate an instance of your own on this platform which had just mistreated you, which, unsurprisingly, nobody went for.)
Ardipithecus
After making the light rants quoted above, I mostly fell silent on the issue of Mastodon's February schism, out of equal parts…
- …not wanting to incite additional drama.
- …not wanting to make Mastodon any more factionalized or openly hostile than it already was.
- …not feeling it was my place to discuss, as someone who had mostly experienced everything from the outside. (I kept waiting for someone else who was better‐informed to flesh out a comprehensive take on the subject. But, you know, unlike me, they all had lives.)
- …needing to maintain my social connections to mastodon.social, as they made up my sole point of access for any sort of trans community or resources.
And if you have spoken to me about or heard me make reference to these events before, you have probably noticed my reticence towards going into any sort of detail, for some or all of the reasons above. At the same time, however, underground plans were brewing. The writing was on the wall with regard to how the Mastodon project would treat its most marginalized users whenever their needs came into conflict with its existing (albeït, at the time, also‐quite‐marginalized) base, and so @KitRedgrave and I almost immediately began working on an independent fork of the software, codenamed Ardipithecus, to liberate the codebase from the questionable decisions of its development team. This was, to my knowledge, the first serious attempt at forking Mastodon. The first commit was made on .
One of the Mastodon Project's biggest failings was that it lacked any sort of strong mission statement or purpose— beyond simply replace Twitter. Mastodon's rules were a series of prohibitions: certain things were not allowed (and they were good things to disallow), but there was no sense of what the project actually stood for. Consequently, when push came to shove, the Mastodon project was only willing to react in cases where somebody had broken the law, and not to proäctively defend its users. Kit and I agreed that we wanted an instance which did things differently, and I drafted a rough sketch of five Principles for guiding instance management, under the tentative name of GLASSCAFE. After our plans regarding Ardipithecus were more firmly formalized, we decided on LuciCity as the final name for our instance. (It never launched, but Kit did purchase the domain name.)
In the time since this original sketch was created, the problems of instance and community management have been tackled time and time again across the fediverse, and a number of best‐practices, which may or may not be reflected in the above, have emerged. At the time in which we were doing this work, however, it was all unprecedented. This was a time when private toots still didn't federate—and that was fine, because everybody lived on mastodon.social.
Aside from wanting better community management, we also wanted a more flexible, customizable, and human(e) software, with better documentation and standardization of features, a slower, more transparent development process, and a more open and developer‐friendly approach to pull requests. At the top of our wishlist was the splitting of Mastodon's frontend and backend, which we had planned as our breakout feature. Neither of us liked Mastodon's existing branding, and we wanted Ardipithecus to have a look of its own.
/about/more
As the above screenshot shows,
Misson
and Principles
are prominently positioned on the
Ardipithecus About page.
The colour scheme is inspired by old
newsprint and is intended to invoke
a warmer, less–Incredibly
Online feel.
Before that February, I had never interacted with React, Redux, or Ruby on Rails before, and the week between our decision to fork the software and its first commit was mostly spent by me taking the crashiest of crash courses. Coming into this, I was a Gender Studies major and fantasy/romance writer whose experience with programming for the web was mostly limited to static websites, dictionaries for fictional languages, and the occasional (bad) HTML5 browser game.
My reasons for bringing up Mastodon's February schism aren't simply to stir up drama or to show how nothing has really changed. This is what got me into Mastodon development.
To be continued.