The bystander effect in full display on Micro.blog.
@pratik yikes. I don’t see replies in my feed (maybe I should change that), so I missed this. Sorry you went through all that.
@pratik I understand that interaction didn’t leave you with the best feeling, but I don’t know if this is a fair characterization either given the asynchronous nature of how people consume timelines and Manton asking people to step back (which was probably for the best because I admit I was getting a little steamed with where things were going).
@humdrum Yeah, I completely missed the whole thing as I was largely offline or distracted during the whole conversation. I'm only just catching up now.
The one element that makes me sad about it that micro.blog, as a community, has usually operated with the presumption of good faith readings - people tend to read what you say and give it the most positive interpretation.
It's quite disconcerting to see someone do the reverse of that to @pratik's post.
@pratik I have seen the original thread from day 1 and honestly have tried hard not to get too involved in this, mostly because I have had similar experiences in past very long time ago and Micro’s response to you affirmed my faith that not much has changed. @manton could’ve easily begun his reply to you as your post did not violate our community guidelines, however, this is a great opportunity for us as a company to evaluate what is moderation and how we respond to it. We will have more to say about this soon after we deliberate on this, and we want to ensure micro is a safe space for everyone… or something like that. Instead he’s mostly rambled on and on about community, values, ethos, but Jesus this isn’t THAT hard. All you are asking for is a public validation of whether you did something wrong or not because someone else accused you publicly. It’s not hard to say NO you didn’t, or YES you did. If it was YES you did violate, Is it likely that you would have continued to drill and publicly debate what part of guidelines you violated ? Probably very YES to that too. But that’s the risk as @manton as a leader has to take. What I see from the entire thread is they have just taken a very “chodd na yaar” approach towards you. Not a great look IMO and what a missed opportunity by @manton and team. FWIW i routinely post and call out privilege in my posts too and frankly in a lot more direct and curt way than you do. This thread has been a good eye opener for me too!
@stupendousman I've reviewed my replies again this morning and don't think they're that rambly. 🙂 I said we're learning from this, that it's better resolved in private (we already sent a private email to @pratik in support of him), that if there had been a violation something would have happened (the post remains online), and that @jean likely wanted to write something longer later.
@manton I might have been harsh in your critique to be fair as well. Your point is well taken, but honestly @pratik has far more grace and patience than I do in how he handled it. I probably would not have reacted the same way if someone publicly called me out like that; and also why I just dont use my real name and avoid putting as much private information about me in spaces like these. But its just me. And yes I would be so happy with a private micro.blog account with follows/followers hehe (feature request alert!).