@ricci @dialecticalmusings @cwebber @innocentzero Plus it's completely possible to run one-user ActivityPub instances. I basically don't have to moderate anything there, and yet I host a number of my publications' accounts there which both post to and reply/boost others' content.

The "hard zone" is probably instances which have many dozens or a hundred+ users, requiring much more hands-on oversight but lacking financial resources. Under that or well over that, it's a different story.

@cwebber @innocentzero @ricci

I did say

… legally responsible for moderating the entire slice of the Fediverse visible to their instance.

so I am aware that a Fedi instance owner does not have to literally moderate the entire network. :-)

Why is the increase in moderation load (necessarily) linear though? Say, I am an instance owner, and a new user joins my instance. If she follows the conventional Fedi wisdom (“you are your own algorithm—follow a LOT of people and build a rich feed”) and immediately follows a lot of users from other instances, and if many of those users post a lot, and/or boost a lot, then all those posts will now land on my instance, and I am legally responsible for moderating them. Similarly, if my new user starts boosting a lot of posts from other instances, then I am responsible for moderating those too. So at least in this hypothetical example, the moderation load increases exponentially.

Of course, in case of an inactive user, the load may not increase at all.

I think the more important point is the uncertainty of not knowing what new stuff from other instances may suddenly start landing in your storage. (When I earlier said “more or less the entire network”, it’s this uncertainty that I had in mind.) Your existing user may start following some toxic person, and suddenly in comes the deluge. You may not have the bandwidth to look at some moderation report, and by the time you get round to it, the issue may have blown up.

In comparison, an admin/owner has a lot more authority and control over their own users, so there isn’t as much anxiety.

My only point was this: a PDS owner in the ATProto world does NOT have to moderate stuff originating on any other PDS. In the ActivityPub world, this option does not exist. To a lot of people, this difference matters.

By the way, you said:

If you want to form a community, with standards, you either need to run an appview, in which case you are truly moderating the entire network, not just the portion your users interact with …

I was under the impression that a PDS can directly communicate with another PDS without the need of an intermediary relay or AppView. Isn’t that correct? So couldn’t someone host a PDS + AppView (no relay), directly communicate with a small number of PDSs, and have their AppView show only those conversations? Wouldn’t this PDS + AppView setup be the equivalent of a Fedi instance? I could be wrong, but I believe wafrn does something like this on the ATProto end.

Regarding your broader argument:
I agree with you that moderation is a critical part of community building. (A corporate executive may say that in case of social media, moderation is the product.) I also know that moderation is a social + political + economic exercise, in addition to being a technical measure.

Personally, I think we need to urgently imagine what ought to be the political economy of social media. Is the Fediverse a public utility? If yes, who is providing the public utility? The state? Which state? Or some NGO? Some philanthropist? To whom is the public utility being provided?

Or is the Fediverse a market of commodities? If yes, who is selling those commodities? To whom?

One can ask similar questions about the ATmosphere. (The movers and shakers in that world seem to imagine it as a market of commodities, as you point out. But that may be just Americans on autopilot, there may be no deep thought behind it.)

The questions of moderation and community building are deeply entangled with the questions of political economy. People arguing about moderation and community building often have fundamentally differing visions for the political economy of the Fediverse, but those differences never get unpacked, so people end up talking past each other.

@ricci @dialecticalmusings @cwebber @innocentzero

What about we all run single-user servers, like #holos or something ?
No need to have moderation at scale, everyone is responsible for his own opinion and everyone can decide the people he wants to speak with.

My posts are public, if public means that everyone can potentially see them.
They won't be read by the whole world anyway