The way the protocol works, they're not isolated, and so they're not ceding ground to other groups. I suppose the closest analogy would be an email host, in that running your own email host wouldn't materially isolate your users but it would enable you to set policies for your own users.

What is an exclusionary safe space? I've never heard of or encountered such a thing. Or are you saying that safe spaces are necessarily exclusionary, because they are welcoming people that have reasons to feel unsafe other places?

It seems like a very confusing concept to just throw out there without explanation!

It's not gated. I can still talk to people fully in the Blacksky stack and interact with their public posts.

The usual pattern is like that Alex Norris comic:

"you do not fit in here"

"okay we will make our own place"

"why are you excluding us"

"oh no"

Except here they can stay connected with the broader Atmosphere but engage on their own terms.

> I'd at least like to know what is the end game here. Have those groups effectively given up any hope of changing the country and mainstream society at large, so the new strategy is now retreating into gated communities

I noticed this occasional tendency in the west to analyze an action or behavior by hypothetically scaling it to way beyond the scope of the actual action or behavior, and I've been wondering if this is some kind of judicial application of Kantian thinking?

I'd push back on that and say, not everything has to be scaled. Not every behavior is an indictment of other behavior. People doing things isn't necessarily an argument that all people should do those same things. Nor is it an indication that those people only want to do those things that way - just because some black people want a reprieve from whatever their perception of day to day western life is, doesn't mean they've "given up" on making any changes to that society.