So my question today is:
How will mastodon be governed? What's to stop the bad guys opening up instances and joining the federation?
Who says that subversive content is not allowed and should be taken off the instance, or banned.
Lots of challenges for a nascent platform I think..

@eileenb Admins and instances are autonomous. Each can decide what instances they do (or don't) peer with. This isn't unlike other network protocols like email (SMTP) or internet routing (BGP). There are channels for admins to talk to each other (an organisational mailing list), and tools which are built into protocols and servers themselves (Mastodon is only one of several at play).

It's safe to assume bad guys /will/ open instances, or worse, guys or girls who simply don't care what happens.

@dredmorbius yeah - that's what I mean. So if someone on an instance starts tooting in a language that the admin doesn't understand - how will that be governed? Its a huge headache for companies like Twitter and FB - will be even more so here I think...
@eileenb I /strongly/ expect that there's going to be some translation engine implemented Real Soon Now. There's already support for /specifying/ languages, and instances might decide that they are an X language-zone only, say.