🧵 on how #Mastodon, and the rest of the #Fediverse, invisiblize the #GlobalSouth.
I have argued a few times that for all practical purposes, the global south does not exist for Mastodon, and for the rest of the Fediverse. But many people I interact with do not quite understand how this works in practice.
This series of posts is an effort to illustrate that mechanism.
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Say there is a user X on random server Y. Assume that no user on mastodon.social (for example) follows user X. Assume that users on mastodon.social follow other users on server Y. Assume further that neither server has blocked the other.
User X writes a post containing the term, say, #Namibia. The post receives no reply, no boost, no like.
Later, someone searches for #Namibia on mastodon.social. The search results will NOT include user X’s post containing the term #Namibia.
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A relay may complicate the above picture slightly. But if server Y in the above example is an isolated #GlobalSouth instance, or if it is running software (such as Hubzilla) not based on #ActivityPub, then the relay will most likely not be pulling posts from there, so the example will still hold.
In this context, remember many instances do not add relays because the additional posts pulled in through the relay increase the storage and processing costs.
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Generalize mastodon.social in the above example to all mainstream, primarily #GlobalNorth, #Mastodon servers. No user on any of those servers will ever become aware of user X’s post containing #Namibia, even if some of them consciously search for the term.
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Vihāra is an experimental Buddhist monastery: a federated hub representing the activities of a Buddhist monastery in the Himalayan Vajrayāna/Mahāyāna lineages.
