 It just occurred to me that across the 4,000 #Mastodon servers each with their #MastoAdmin plus their moderator teams... we have more content moderators tracking reports and complaints than Twitter does. For the folks who keep asking about how we're going to scale, we're on it. 91 comments
@jaz it looks like we’re all moderating ourselves so far. Just happy to have escaped @Archieinrye @jaz I assume the issue will be members of the federated universe that do not moderate as we would prefer. So what happens then, is it easy for other nodes to exclude those networks? cc @mikarv @lilianedwards @mathver #NewbieQuestions @j2bryson @Archieinrye @jaz @mikarv @lilianedwards @mathver Yes, a node can blacklist other nodes.  @j2bryson @Archieinrye @jaz @lilianedwards @mathver very easy to both silence instances (people can still choose to follow individuals on them and boost them, but normally they won’t get stuff from those instances) and suspend them (prevent federation). users can also exclude individual users or whole instances themselves. admins can also IP block to prevent abuse. open question about whether more advanced spamming strategies will emerge (eg spinning up instances), but one step at a time. @jaz Ha! Completely didn't think of it this way, but you're so right. (#poorTwitter) @jaz How much time would you say is currently spent on this moderation per day on a server like Twt Cymru? Just curious @carlmorris Hmm, right now this is my full time16 hour job, but that's community management, server admin, tech support... I'd guess two to three hours of that is content moderation right now. The other moderators are helping too. @jaz OK... waw! Just read this, which looks relevant to projections of future demand on Mastodon servers: https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/08/1062886/heres-how-a-twitter-engineer-says-it-will-break-in-the-coming-weeks/ @jaz @carlmorris that was a really interesting read! How can Mastodon be more scaleable and resilient? What things do you think are missing from the ecosystem? @jaz I’m looking for info on how to reach my server’s admin for assistance on an accessing my account. Thanks I’m advance. @jaz The problem is with the one I’m posting from. I am able to use the mastodon mobile app on my iPhone, but can’t log on to my account anywhere else. I’m afraid if I lose the app for some reason I will lose access to the community I’ve already found and then have to start over. When I try to sign in I just get an error message that says my email or password are incorrect. I tried change password and that failed, too. @SinclairLewis the server you're on is undergoing a tremendous amount of activity and things like forgotten password emails might be taking some time. Your server administrator is not getting much sleep right now so if it's not urgent, I'd sit tight till things calm down a bit. In the event that you do in fact lose access, you can email the staff email address on your server's homepage. @jaz Thank you so much! I have the email address and will wait for a few weeks until things calm down. So grateful for my new community. @jaz I know everyone must be overwhelmed right now and I’m okay on the mobile app for now. I am so appreciative of everyone at Mastodon who has made room and welcomed those of us who are new here.  @jaz now if only we could convince people to consider the mod ratio when picking a server @LeftyLayman @scanlime @jaz Kind of a conflict of interest since mastodon.social and mastodon.online have the lowest ratio of all servers pretty much :ablobgrimace: @rune it is only a conflict of interest if they want to grow forever which might not be ? And I would say modo per *active* user more than just users ;) @LeftyLayman @scanlime @jaz @Cryptie @LeftyLayman @scanlime @jaz It a bit of a moot point whether we consider total users or active users since it's still like 0,1 moderators per 200k+ As for their intentions to grow forever.. they're not doing a lot to avoid it. Setting up .online was basically just to shard the hardware setup, but they continue to onboard anyone in the name of saving new people from having to think. @jaz 4000 servers are serving ~1M active users. Twitter has ~200M users. Scaling Mastodon to Twitter without altering ratios requires 800k servers and say 2M mods. Possible? Sure. But what you're seeing right now in terms of influx is a trickle compared to required future scaling if fediverse services were to take over from corporate monoliths. it's quite a challenge, and likely to require some innovation along the way! @tjradcliffe Twitter didn't have 4M mods. Most of us are up over 1,000% in three days, seems like it's going fine. Some servers more than others are having some trouble, but the network is up and people are enjoying it. "Scaling Mastodon to Twitter" isn't the goal; scaling to meet the needs of people who want a friendly, personable, hate-free, ad-free, data mining-free social network option is. TBD how many people that really is. As I said, we're on it. @jaz Hi Jaz, thanks for having me on here. I saw the backroom comment earlier, are we as a horde going to be an issue? How do you expect funding to pan out, subscription or ads? Just ignore if busy. From Caerleon so a Welsh server seemed right in my dotage! 😂 Kind regards Ian @Tanhouse1 Na, it's all good, it's why we're here, and we're very glad more people are interested in considering a different kind of social media network. Not everyone will stay, and that's okay too. In the meanwhile, we try to win you all over with simple kindness and a lack of ads 😃 Funding will be an issue for some, for sure. Some of the new ones that popped up this week will learn the hard way. But anything linked @ joinmastodon.org knows what they're doing, shouldn't be any major issues. @jaz That's one way to look at it, but there's no uniform rules on moderation either so it's not really an apples to apples comparison.  Indeed, and moderation is about using our own judgement to report problem content, rather than trying to rely on an AI to do it. We report because we CARE not because it is our job to do so. I think that also makes a difference.  @jaz In the wider community, sure. Not so sure about the ratio on mastodon dot social. But yes. That's why we need to keep servers small and encourage those on the big ones to get their band together and recruit a tech and migrate to their own place. @jaz Thought I'd run a poll on twitter for outreach. They don't generally bother to show anyone my posts though. They mostly just show adverts and bluechecks as far as I can see. @thisisjoyyy there's https://github.com/mastodon/documentation where you can contribute, but - and I mean this firmly tongue in cheek, - it's quite high on the list that the writes spell the product name correctly 😉 @thisisjoyyy no matter, I see a misplaced comma and a typo in my reply, so we're all good. 👍 @colonel_sponsz although they do all seem to wear underpants. On the outside. @jaz 4000 is a lot. Is there a central place to see that list? Numbers here seem small: https://joinmastodon.org/servers @trelayne the servers on joinmastodon.org have publicly signed the Mastodon Covenant https://joinmastodon.org/covenant and they are the very best starting place for new comers. However... @jaz Thanks so much! I'm new to this platform and realize that I really need to think of these as massive IRC channels and can't just post anything anywhere (I guess). Thanks for the covenant—will check it out. @trelayne you posted just fine mate all is good, did you see the second link for the list of all servers? @jaz Things seem to be going quite well so far which is encouraging! I've been thinking about the verification/trust issues inherent to distributed platforms like this and I wonder if we could develop some sort of community ranking system (like Google's page rank for websites). Example: I could up vote or down vote you and depending how many people have up/down voted me that action has more or less weight. It's a very complicated problem to solve, but would allow for crowd-sourced "trust". @kent I hear China figured it out. Not something you'll get a lot of traction from on this network (IMO) https://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-system-punishments-and-rewards-explained-2018-4 @kent you know, that was a snarky reply and I'll leave it up to teach myself a lesson. My reaction was to the notion that we can devolve a personal human judgement to the crowd, or the machine learning, or the algorithm, or a billionaire. Who you trust is on you. Who you trust to tell you who you trust is also in you. This network specifically removes stats from easy view. It's on you to read, consume, confer, decide. And yes, "whom". I know.  @jaz @PhilosopherNo375 already added to the hat this month. I suggest a here is how you help with each server @jaz I love this. I do data science with a lot of open source python and its awesome what distributed cooperative communities can produce!  @mykd It's not a linear progression. Maybe we have extra moderation capacity right now. The fact is, we have over 4,000 admins (for over 6 million members) and an unknown number of moderators -already- working on this problem, we are not at our limit with the numbers we have. The larger point is, this is what the network is about. We federate. We moderate. It's built in. @jaz Oh, I know, I was just playing around. I'm sure that the necessary tools will develop quickly as the need for them becomes increasingly important. @mykd @jaz For example, removing gab.com from the majority of servers stopped an amount of moderation work before it happened. Taking a quick look at what's on gab.com's page, it looks like the fedi's successfully constructed a troll-prison (or perhaps 'zoo', since they're a spectacle).   @jaz oh yeah, I forgot that I still occasionally receive #WTSocial emails. I think his insight and vision would be helpful in #fediverse @jaz this is what it is and this is why I like this platform!🤷🏼♀️#ISaidWhatISaid 🙄 @jaz Similarly, Wikipedia at its scale can only work because it has thousands of volunteer editors and admins. It would be too expensive to be run by a corporation, moderated by employees. @jaz I wish I had found this place sooner. Following some amazing people and much nicer conversation. Some of the people I originally followed on Twitter and started following here, I unfollowed, as their vibe did not really suit this platform. Being very protective and those who have been here for a while, have been so gently helpful to us newcomers, blundering around.  @jaz Twitter mod is just a disposable employee that follows a ToS script while waiting out a clock. A server admin has legal things to watch out for and their reputation on the line, more to lose imo. @jaz My biggest fear is burnout. I really hope we manage to spread ourselves thin enough that it’s not too much work for each admin. @jaz I'm sure there are some well run instances. I'm also equally sure that the admin and moderation "teams" are in fact one person.  @jaz@toot.wales Not sure where you got the 4,000 number from, currently there are 6,027 publicly tracked #Mastodon instances and 11,167 publicly tracked total #Fediverse instances. @jaz 🙏 from a newbie flying from the bird 🐦 and hoping i remember to do content warning on political posts ...as I see many aren't @Arjay @rhyn it's a per-server thing, but there's a general community understanding that certain topics - while acceptable - should require a second click to avoid having a forced presentation of divisive or inflammatory content. It's also great for punchlines 😃 See for more background: https://github.com/joyeusenoelle/GuideToMastodon#what-does-cw-mean @jaz Good point but...you moderate one post or one person on Twitter and it's done and done. In Mastodon, the same person and same post has to be moderated again and again and again... @paolovicini Just like Email. My service provider blocks certain emails. Other providers block other emails. Some block none. Some Email servers are one guy. Some are massive corporations. Some are somewhere in between. And just like Email had to mature and go through some pain with every major uptake, so will this protocol. How it matures, well, you're watching it in realtime 😃 @jaz real time yes, both the meltdown of the Bird App and the growth of… something else. Interesting times. #twitterexodus |
Gregory's Server
@jaz@toot.wales Yup, horizontal scaling is usually better than vertical scaling.