AaronSo one thing this post discusses is governance of servers. When I joined Mastodon, joining a server which is cooperatively/democratically governed seemed like the natural and obvious choice, so I found one and joined it. I still think that and hope people create more cooperatively governed servers. But the structure of the activitypub protocol does place natural limitations on how much governance of servers can shape the fediverse. It doesn't use the exact words but a major theme is that everything is about power and it's essential to look at where structures place power.
Ooze 𓁟@FWAaron 100% this.
Moderation is a huge problem. People join instances and just trust the moderation. When I first came to Mastodon I joined an instance after asking some questions of the admin about how it was run. I then became a moderator and that's when it all fell apart. No one was moderating the moderators. Suffice it to say incredibly questionable things were going on and the users were oblivious.Those things had a huge effect on the instance and were invisible.
Lynn@Lynnkelly @FWAaron Each instance runs its own moderation. Most do it in a totally non transparent manner. There are some exceptions e.g. koectiva.social who list their moderators and servers they have blocked.