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Comment by Pocomon | Hacker News Reader

‘Black folks have always been huge culture drivers on social media platforms and other tech products. Systemically excluded from access to capital and distribution, Black folks leverage creativity to make social media platforms their “own” without ever having true ownership.’

I really don't get it. Who has been excluding ‘black folks’ from digital spaces. Does any of the other users of social media actually own the platform.

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Not "digital spaces", but "capital and distribution".

It's basically saying that the black population does have an impact on culture although there are no black CEOs of social media companies, just in a vaguely victimist black pride sort of way.

There were a few dust-ups of this sort that I saw on Twitter back before Gamergate started (and during Gamergate) where there were accusations that people were brigading visible black users on Twitter to push them off the site or get them banned with report spam. I don't recall whether it ever got to the point that it was covered in the news - and I can't find any articles about it - but it wouldn't surprise me if things like that have continued to this day.

So at the very least, I recall hearing about it happening. It doesn't surprise me if people are claiming to have experienced it firsthand.

He means they don't own the social media companies, not that they're excluded from using them. But of course that's still silly because almost nobody of any race owns a social media company, at least not enough to have any control over it.

Have you looked at response-Tweets on X lately?

I've opted out of social media so you will have to clue me in. (Mainly because of the trolling and the excessive moderation)

Twitter is a racist cesspit. I deleted my account a while ago but recently decided to give it another go to follow some sports reporters. The amount of racism, xenophobia and hateful content that gets pushed in front of you is absurd. I imagine huge amounts of racism is a turn off for people that aren't white.

Allowing every drive by commentator is a huge mistake in building an actual community. Communities are built by people invested in the platform.

In the early to mid aughts I was part of couch surfing. It had a lot of purpose built in friction and it created an amazing tight knit group of people that I still consider my best friends. Once the pressure from Airbnb and investment money caused them to remove that, it became terrible.

Sometime never growing a community over a small group of invested people is the right choice.

The same thing happened with NextDoor. When it was small and just involved a few hundred people in your immediate neighborhood there was a real community on there. Then the kept expanding the size and now you have people that live no where in your community ruining the experience for everyone.

Yeah, this is gonna cause more and more segregation in online spaces.

Sucks, but I guess this is why we can't have nice things.

The fact my experience has been downvoted speaks volumes of the current state of online discourse.

Are you implying that white people are the most racist group of people (when classifying by skin color)?

I don't imply that at all. No idea how you came to that conclusion.

> I imagine huge amounts of racism is a turn off for people that aren't white.

Please explain what you mean by this then?

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