Recently, there has been several incidents of toxic behavior from Mastodon users (threats, harassment, doxing, or worse) directed at developers and outsiders, and many have pointed out that, to outsiders, Mastodon can feel unwelcoming (and even toxic). Some go so far as to say that Mastodon's culture is toxic.
This is contrary to many people's claims that Mastodon is nicer and better than other platforms and is a safe space from abuse. Many people have countered that claim by saying that you are only safe from abuse if you are from certain tribes or classes of people, and that if you are on the "good list" they will protect you, and if you are on the "bad list," they will ban you or even attack you. And some ethnic minorities actually feel unwelcome on Mastodon because of this.
I try to avoid placing labels on a broad group composed of millions of people, because not everyone fits the stereotype, and innocent people get mislabeled in the process. But, at the same time, I have to acknowledge that there are toxic people on Mastodon that ruin the experience.
I think, like many things, that the loudest are not necessarily the majority. And when you have a case of loud bullies demanding that everyone do it their way, the safest thing to do is to just keep your head down, hoping that they don't notice you. So people who disagree with their behavior don't say anything since they don't want to be the next target of abuse.
There is a sad statistic that people who have been abused are more likely to become abusers themselves. Not all of them, obviously, but people who grow up in abusive environments unfortunately pick up the same traits and tactics as the abusers, often not realizing that they, themselves, are using abusive tactics. They often use the justification that if they do it to their enemy, it is not abuse. What they don't realize is that the people who abused them thought the same way. They are literally copying their abuser's behavior except they switched who the target is.
The people who end the cycle of abuse are the ones who made a conscious decision to not be that way. They decide to take the high road instead of the low road. They decide to be kind and loving, instead of mean and hateful. They decide to follow principles instead of protecting someone or attacking someone based on which tribe they belong to.
How this relates to the Fediverse and Mastodon is that many people came here to escape the abuse. So when the outsiders come in, they become afraid, since they fear being abused again. A natural reaction, especially when the abuse was traumatic for them.
But, unfortunately some of those people are examples of the abused becoming abusers, and they lash out in unhealthy, counterproductive, and toxic ways, perhaps because they never learned how to deal with situations like this in a healthy way.
There are things we can do to protect people from abuse, and many of us are committed to stopping abuse. But to do that, we have to stop looking at abuse from an "us versus them" viewpoint. If we really want to effectively address abuse online, we have to address the behavior, regardless of who is engaging in it, while at the same time being compassionate with people, since many of the abusers have been abused themselves.
We can build a safer fediverse for people. Part of that is creating better tools that allow people to better protect themselves from abusers. But part of that is changing how we deal with abuse itself. Just because someone was abused, that does not mean they get a free pass to engage in abuse themselves. That just leads to more attacks and counterattacks, which is the opposite of what we want.
So, is Mastodon's culture toxic? I don't know. But I do know that we have to deal with toxic behavior, regardless of where it comes from.
