@stephanie @kissane "I don't know, I've been seeing a lot of black and white statements lately (and I'm sure I've made some too)."

Well, it *is* important to not be too black and white about being too black and white. There *are* lines that should not be crossed; the trick in figuring out which ones those are :)

But yeah this is a topic I've thought about a lot, and ultimately I think a lot of the purity people are probably absolutely correct...the disagreement fundamentally in more about the severity of the connequences. I can talk all day about the dangers of Google consuming the net but if I'm talking to one of my friends who doesn't own a computer, doesn't use social media, and needs an hour to get logged into their email when they're expecting something...well why the hell would they care? Sure it'll likely eventually affect them through government/corporate capture but at that point the argument is getting so abstract and there's so many other interventions available...

The purists are right...for a given lifestyle with a particular set of priorities. A single problem in isolation often will be black and white; the prioritization is usually where things get tricky. Because it's not just about what should be prioritized, but implicit in the question is *by whom*? I saw a post a little while back from someone who had asked the Mastodon devs to do more work on moderation tools, and the reply was essentially that they'd love to but they have other tasks they're working on that they feel are more important right now. So the complaint really was not that they don't care, but that they don't care *enough*. And I'm not sure I disagree with the devs, although maybe for a different reason -- I'm not sure I want them to be the ones making those decisions. I don't actually know how any of them identify but for the sake of example, is a cis straight German man in the best position to decide how to protect a queer latinx community?

And Mastodon is hard because that question of *by whom* isn't usually there on other social networks. Who needs to prioritize moderation on Twitter? Well...Twitter does. They're the only ones who can. But on an open network with open software that work can be done by anyone. So on Twitter the argument pretty much ends at "something should be done!" but here that is only the beginning. We all have the opportunity to contribute to WHAT should be done and BY WHOM. And that discussion is bound to get messy!