A screenshot of TurtleIsland.social Media Mode courtesy of @CvkvlvBeadwork@turtleIsland.social

Continued from:
A Native perspective: TurtleIsland.social vs. Bluesky Part 2

All social media has racists, bigots, trolls and shitasses

TurtleIsland.social/Mastodon and Bluesky are no exception to this. Though both currently lean to the left and are generally respectful, over and above the racists, bigots, trolls and shitasses, there is this whiteness that pervades much on both platforms.

TurtleIsland.social and most of Mastodon block at server level the majority of right-wing servers. Bluesky at best labels conservative elements that seem to be on the rise as the platform grows.

However, on both platforms, it is the self righteous liberals and the authoritarian far left that produce the most anti-Indigenous energy.

Moderation differences

On TurtleIsland.social server level and personal level blocking tools work well, but mostly because they are combined with an Indigenous instance moderation that is anti-Indigenous savvy. Most moderation reports on TurtleIsland.social are anti-Indigenous in nature and easily closed without issue. On a non-Indigenous instance this would not necessarily be the case. There will always be white people that think they understand Indigeneity better than actual Indigenous people, but not on TurtleIsland.social.

TurtleIsland.social/Mastodon has server level and user level block lists. You can also upload following lists and feed lists. With a friends help, you can very quickly get an account up to speed.

On TurtleIsland.social and many small or medium sized Mastodon instances, users have a personal relationship with the admins/moderators and/or the admins/moderators are very accessible.

On Bluesky, one can report schmucks to who knows who and hope it goes well. For the most part though, users are reliant on personal blocking tools which fortunately are more extensive than Mastodon. Users can subscribe to public/shared blocklists on Bluesky as well as block various labeled type of users. Near as I can tell, Bluesky does not delete/suspend even extreme users but it will label them.

It is worth noting that on Bluesky and TurtleIsland.social/Mastodon, block lists can be abused and in some cases are a weapon of racists or white bigots that think they are anti-racist. Such is social media…

Algorithm differences

Both platforms have some generalized feeds and user created list capabilities. Bluesky also has feed customization features and lists are always public. Mastodon has no feed customization features and lists are always private. I wish lists on both platforms could be individually set to public or private.

Because TurtleIsland.social/Mastodon is community based, the local feed (live feeds > this server) is the most important feed to me. Bluesky is not community based, so there is no local feed. Both have some generalized feeds and follower feeds. Both platforms benefit greatly from user specific lists or hashtag feeds in my opinion.

Culture differences

The REALLY BIG BIG BIG THING about Bluesky is there are so many more Native/Indigenous people on #NativeSky than #NativeMastodon. Not as many as were on #NativeTwitter but there is a big gap between the numbers on Mastodon compared to Bluesky. Hopefully this changes over time, but in the meantime Turtle Island has community and engagement advantages.

A part of where Mastodon falls short in my opinion, has to do with getting on the right instance. A TurtleIsland.social experience is going to be much better than a Mastodon.social experience, especially if you are Native/Indigenous. But will you know TurtleIsland.social is a choice when you head to Mastodon.social to sign up? Probably not. And does white Mastodon care? Probably not. So more often than not, inexperienced users have to overcome their fear of migration or just start fresh on Turtle Island.

Engagement differences

Bluesky does not have a culture which promotes sharing (reposting). With no algorithm, this requires much higher follower counts than Mastodon. At the moment, I have ~2400 followers and engagement rates equal to or higher than someone on Bluesky with 10,000-20,000+ followers.

Bluesky also has many more follower collectors that just collect follow-backs and do not engage with them. Likewise, Bluesky has many more bots and spammer/scammers than Mastodon. Mastodon does have its share of romance spammer/scammers, but they generally only last a few hours tops before they are deleted.

If you want real followers and real results, TurtleIsland.social has the edge here generally.

Supporting Native social media

The mass majority of non-BIPOC users do not support BIPOC instances on Mastodon, preferring white ownership. A great deal of BIPOC users also do not support BIPOC instances on Mastodon. I think this is an effect of colonialism, leaving many people with false impressions that white ownership is more stable and reliable. Of course this is not true, and Turtle Island seeks to help change that.

There is a set of allies that are very supportive to TurtleIsland.social, including financially. Allies have been instrumental in keeping TurtleIsland.social alive. Many allies want to see BIPOC instances succeed and some even make TurtleIsland.social their home instance.

Naturally on Bluesky there is no such thing as a BIPOC instance, but I have no doubt if there were, there would be similar rates of BIPOC disinterest to Mastodon.

Decolonization of digital spaces

Bluesky, of course, will always be a colonial space subject to the mercy of corporate and government control. No amount of advertising will change that.

TurtleIsland.social holds the promise of a relatively decolonized space as the community grows, and benefits of Native ownership and administration/moderation. Fortunately for today’s political climate, I repeat TurtleIsland.social servers are in France, so there may be some respite from the extremist US government, should things continue to escalate.

All the above said, I enjoy both TurtleIsland.social and Bluesky. Together they make for a fairly complete Native/Indigenous experience.

Mvto!
-Yehuda

This link will become live when Part 4 (Technical) is released shortly:
A Native perspective: TurtleIsland.social vs. Bluesky Part 4

Please check back. Mvto!