Stefan
Jeff Jarvis"After a month on Mastodon, I’ve realized I was wrong."
by @malwaretech
https://escapingtech.com/tech/opinions/i-was-wrong-about-mastodon-moderation.html
Kenny MayneYes well said
Ehud@jeffjarvis @[email protected] My main concern at the moment is when admins are too easy on the trigger and defederate from (block) too many instances. I think it is hard to tell if you are on such an island and difficult to judge how harmful it is for you (for example, how many people that you want to interact with are invisible to you).
Nick Stefanski 🐦🔥@ehud @jeffjarvis from the little bit of digging, it also seem like there’s no easy way to see if someone you follow is on a defederated server? Would be useful to be able to see both, so you could know when to move, when to talk to your moderator, or those you follow… of course, since it’s open source, anyone can contribute such a tool! I need to check out their source control
[AF]2050@jeffjarvis @malwaretech This proves that apparently there's a chance for someone to change their mind like that.
I'll give in a read, then i'll try to talk it more indepth.
Duncan Blues@jeffjarvis @malwaretech "Mastodon feels much closer to hanging out with reasonable friends and acquaintances, whereas Twitter is equivalent to having 15 racists drunk uncles assigned to follow you wherever you go."
🤔👍
#truth
🤔👍
#truth
tammylisa 
@duncan_blues @jeffjarvis @malwaretech yes, and I was hooked on the crazy dysfunction of Twitter, and Facebook too - but quit & detoxed…my days are definitely better 🕊
@tamlisadem @jeffjarvis @malwaretech Twitter has all the symptoms of addictive browser games. It's algorithm is designed to keep you hooked.
Frischa@jeffjarvis @malwaretech can anyone explain why an instance owner couldn't start showing ads?
infernal_barry@Frischa nothing stops an owner from running ads if they wanted to. But their users might not like it and move somewhere else.
Scot Close@Frischa @jeffjarvis @malwaretech Like Marcus said, people are free to move to a different instance if they don't like the way theirs is being run.
Chris Renfrow@Frischa I don't think anything is preventing an instance from being supported by ads, but this instance would have to offer something that makes it worthwhile to it's users over the veritable ocean of ad-free instances.
David Brent 📚📖@Frischa @jeffjarvis @malwaretech Good question. The way I see it, the instance hosting ads - assuming they find a reliable customer* - would quickly be blocked by other instances and become de-federated as described in the OP's article.
*I haven't seen any major corporations signing up for tusk site accounts. My local library has one, though, and that is fine with me. 😎
Grapeshot@Frischa @jeffjarvis @malwaretech I guess they could, but I would leave that instance and block them. Maybe other users on that instance would, too. Not that I would care about other users leaving. Advertise away, jerks! You're all in my rear view mirror.
Jennifer Slack@jeffjarvis @malwaretech
I applaud your thoughtfulness. The bird accounts with huge followings seem to be having the most difficulty with the idea of moving to Mastodon. They operated like more top down journo - with interactive comments. Meanwhile a whole bunch of us are figuring out Mastodon and actually having conversations. This feels far more “social” than the bird ever was.
I applaud your thoughtfulness. The bird accounts with huge followings seem to be having the most difficulty with the idea of moving to Mastodon. They operated like more top down journo - with interactive comments. Meanwhile a whole bunch of us are figuring out Mastodon and actually having conversations. This feels far more “social” than the bird ever was.
Philipp Michel Reichold@JenniferSlack @jeffjarvis @malwaretech
I think so too.
Angry Centrist@JenniferSlack @jeffjarvis @malwaretech ... except most of the big accts were only interactive with lowly proles if they WANTED to be. The annoying and often unmentioned part of the Blue Checkmark Club is that they could choose to only see interactions with other blue-checkers and ignore all the little people. One more way Mastodon is a more level playing field...
3wombats@JenniferSlack @jeffjarvis @malwaretech @sloopyy Sorry but I actually had more conversations on Twitter.
DianneVotes💙@JenniferSlack @jeffjarvis @malwaretech @3wombats It might take a while. But you were probably on Twitter a long time. It will get better here. 🤗
@sloopyy @JenniferSlack @malwaretech @jeffjarvis Same here. I had the unbelievable number of 8400 followers LOL All vetted. Most of the important ones are here now. That number is still a mystery to me
@malwaretech @JenniferSlack @3wombats @jeffjarvis
Hey, I only had about 3500. 🤯 But that was enough. I was mostly a retweeter. I still drop in there a couple of times a day. Same @ as here.
Hey, I only had about 3500. 🤯 But that was enough. I was mostly a retweeter. I still drop in there a couple of times a day. Same @ as here.
Tina 
@JenniferSlack @malwaretech @jeffjarvis The “unwashed” masses are here to stay and we’re *gasp* chatting with each other!
(FWIW, I had almost 40k followers and easily left them behind when the Twit started reinstating #QANutters and #MAGAts
The #GOP has a LOT of dirty laundry and some of it is stained with Nazis. They’ll never get that smell out.
JoeBWun
Roxxx@JenniferSlack @jeffjarvis @JenniferSlack It's hard to walk away from 500k followers and the amount of interactions they have daily. Many already have migrated accounts. They're just waiting to see which platform is going to be most successful.
Rusty@JenniferSlack @jeffjarvis @malwaretech
Agreed! I think we all need to step back and look at what we want and expect from social media. Getting more of what I want here! If you are making money off of social media - you might be stuck with the bird.
Agreed! I think we all need to step back and look at what we want and expect from social media. Getting more of what I want here! If you are making money off of social media - you might be stuck with the bird.
Derek Brauders@jeffjarvis @malwaretech That's a good summary of how things might work (no plan survives contact with humans, and all that), and nice to see the positivity in it (which many have noted here, and I've seen). The other issue, troll orgs setting up their own instance, ends up going nowhere - everyone else just shuts them down. Which is brilliant, should it need to happen.
toni ✨🧠@derekbrauders Oh that happened a few times already. First with gab, then with truth social.
Judgewooden@jeffjarvis @malwaretech So basically the challenge for troll developers is the development of roaming mastodon bot instances, that can seem real across server instances. As soon as a gullible audience is on mastodon, those developers will have an incentive. So it is just too early to tell.
Matthew Herper@jeffjarvis @malwaretech what is stopping someone from creating an instance for practitioners of hate speech?
Jeff Lindborg@matthewherper @jeffjarvis @malwaretech they have - notably Truth Social is a Mastodon instance (it is blocked by nearly all servers in the federation) - Gab also famously tried this and got turned into an island very quickly and gave up on the effort.
ˈdälfən™🐬 💥 🌊@matthewherper @jeffjarvis @malwaretech Nothing prevents that. In fact, that's pretty much what Truth Social is. It's built on Mastodon code but doesn't federate with anyone.
My camera shoots fascists@matthewherper @jeffjarvis @malwaretech
The other possibility is that if they go full-Nazi, that they can lose their DNS/hosting/CDN, etc. like certain other sites have, though it took serious pressure campaigns.
Mike Mathews@Mikal Possible, but much harder since the entire instance can be packaged up and moved wholesale. There will always be someone willing to host, DNS, etc., supporting outlier ideas. @matthewherper @jeffjarvis @malwaretech
@memathews It might be easier to move a Mastodon instance wholesale than a regular website, but it's not trivial. Every bit of friction reduces their reach and ability to mass organize.
They also need DDOS protection, which is a bottleneck for them.
@Mikal Thanks for the detail, seems much harder to line up services than what the descriptions lead one to believe.
@matthewherper @jeffjarvis @malwaretech nothing! Buy the other instances can block that one, so their users would never see their shit.
John Lusk@jeffjarvis
All that friendliness doesn't seem to jive with @deadwitchflying 's experience. https://eldritch.cafe/@deadwitchflying/109435023077832359
@malwaretech
All that friendliness doesn't seem to jive with @deadwitchflying 's experience. https://eldritch.cafe/@deadwitchflying/109435023077832359
@malwaretech
Camille (@[email protected])
Attached: 3 images · Content warning: The racist museum of abuse thread. Read if white 🙃
Agilbert@jeffjarvis @malwaretech I just got on Mastadon and am wondering what the pros and cons have been for you.
Ernie Smith@jeffjarvis @malwaretech Hearing this from Marcus specifically is a really good sign. I think removing certain motivations from social media will in the long term make it run more effectively.
GreyArea@jeffjarvis @malwaretech Excellent and informative article, many thanks!
yunchtime@jeffjarvis @malwaretech excellent article, thanks!
Enrique Barcelli@jeffjarvis
Nice article.
Interesting that @malwaretech calls "traditional social media" to the current breed of "add-driven social media".
I would argue that "traditional social media" were the #BBS from the 80's, which are a lot closer to how Mastodon is moderated... so I am not sure which one to call "traditional"... 😉
Futurist Jim CarrollThat was a wonderful summary! Thank you! Anyone new to Mastodon should read it.
Gerhard KellerSo many Thanks ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ for your blog post, Marcus Hutchins 😍
Phillip Winn@jeffjarvis @malwaretech Well said, Mr. Hutchins. I think you’ve captured the full range of pros and cons in one piece.
There will absolutely be moderation-related drama in the future, possibly forever, because that is a human problem rather than a technical one, and requires human solutions, not technical solutions. But you’re right, that drama will be completely different than the sort of drama that most people are used to seeing, and the responses will be dramatically different, too.
On twitter, it seemed like the biggest problem (for me, a cisgender white man) was the presence of people devoted to hateful trolling. On mastodon, so far the biggest problem for me is the tendency to too-quickly defederate without due process, a problem caused by the people most likely to have been targets on twitter. I assume some of it is post-traumatic, in fact.
The incentives are completely different, and so far they seem to be pointing to better places. I think things are going to look radically different a year from now, but I definitely have no fear that mastodon will still be active a year from now.
Aron Fischer"The goal of Mastodon is to build a friendly collection of communities, not an attention leeching hate mill." https://escapingtech.com/tech/opinions/i-was-wrong-about-mastodon-moderation.html
MrsMurilloToYou@jeffjarvis @malwaretech Such a great explanation for us newbies! I'm grateful for the article as well as the Twitter Users Guide to Mastodon - excellent!
Dr. Cynthia Alease Smith💡@jeffjarvis I am finding it a very accepting plce so far.
JackBarrowUK@jeffjarvis @malwaretech Now all I have to do is figure out how I find my right community.
PeggyJoan ☮️💙🌈🐶@jeffjarvis @malwaretech
A very good read and enormously helpful to me. I love it here!
I have read that servers can block one another. Is this true?
A very good read and enormously helpful to me. I love it here!
I have read that servers can block one another. Is this true?
@jeffjarvis @malwaretech
One more ?:
So if I block someone, they are blocked to everyone else on my server (instance) ?
One more ?:
So if I block someone, they are blocked to everyone else on my server (instance) ?
@PeggyJoan @malwaretech No. The host of the instance can block a server for everyone.
@jeffjarvis @malwaretech I am new to Mastodon and agree with many of the things in this article. Another key thing is that there is no algorithm forcing you to spend time and meet people you have nothing in common with.
Lawrence 🇺🇸🇺🇦@jeffjarvis @malwaretech Dang. That’s a very cool read.
mistershins@jeffjarvis @malwaretech A good read, thank you! It seems to me that one of the biggest challenges for new users is understanding the flexibility you've underscored in your post. I chose my instance based on rules and the communication from the mod, but I think most users choose based on size, or just play roulette (so to speak). Of course, they can move--but I think this first barrier to understanding how one should align their instance to their own values is a hard one to overcome initially.