Language on Mastodon
About two months ago, Fosstodon (a Mastodon server I use and help moderate) was hit with a major controversy when the foreign-language posts of a user were deleted, which they’ve found racist to say the least. I do not want to comment on this situation (given that it happened, like, an eternity ago), but I want to touch on the experience I get on Mastodon as a multilingual person.
Mastodon already does a very good job when it comes to multilingualism. While mainstream social networks use ‘algorithms’ and ‘AI’ to figure out whether you’ll understand (and like) a post, on Mastodon, you’re the one who decides. Anyone can select the languages they understand, and these will be the only one that will be displayed in public timelines. I, too, make use of this feature, and it works as expected.
Except for when it doesn’t. And I’m not talking about software bugs here, but rather of some peculiarities when it comes to multiple languages.
First, the language is not auto-detected, but has to be set by a person writing the post. It would be wrong to assume that people don’t make mistakes or never forget to set the language accordingly — heck, I can imagine a lot of people don’t even realise this function exists. So, a lot of posts get flagged with the wrong language (most oftenly, English) and appear in my feed although I can’t understand what they’re saying.
Second, the language filter only applies to the public timelines (“Local” and “Global”, or, as they’re now called, “Live feeds”). This is good for those residing on big servers (like me) and/or those who like reading the global timeline (unlike me). However, it does not apply to the home feed! Now, it might seem logical that, if I follow a person, I want to read everything they post. Well, yes, unless it’s in a language I can’t understand! I will never trust automatic translation tools, and even if they’re correct, the post will probably contain cultural references I won’t get.
And this is why I’ve chosen to separate my Fediverse activity into three (once four) different profiles, one per language. And I also believe these are the main reasons as to why Fosstodon is still overwhelmingly English-only. Call me a colonialist, but it’s handy to be able to understand others and be understood by others, while not having strict borders like countries or mainstream social networks have.
This is post 008 of #100DaysToOffload. (I don’t think I’ll finish it in time, haha)