@Gargron thanks for the transparency around this, Eugen.

@Gargron thank you for all that you do!

@Gargron will further registrations on this server be closed forever, or is there a known time frame?

@Gargron I have yet to see any of the tripe I saw on twitter on a daily basis

@Gargron thank you for your work✊❤️

@Gargron Thanks everyone at #mastodon

@Gargron keep up the superb work!

@Gargron Glad to see you address the issue and even apologize. That's a welcome difference compared to what I am used to from the bird site.

@Gargron Please pass on my thanks to everyone, this shared space is such a pleasure. Thanks for everything you all do

@Gargron Thank you!

@Gargron Thanks for the clarification. This are really good news. May I suggest a blog article about the state of the moderation of the two instances? I think this would help to clear many things up that are currently in the debate.

@Gargron Thank you for all the work you’re doing! Must be hard, suddenly being in this situation under the spotlight, with all the attention and expectations. Hope you also get some rest! 🫰

@Gargron Thank you very much. I really like this social network. It is really easy and comfortable to create content here. Once again, thank you very much for Mastodon, have a nice day and prosperity.

@Gargron We need to make sure these false positives stop happening with such troubling frequency to underrepresented folks.

@Gargron Thanks for the update - I can see an opportunity for some (hopefully foundation-sponsored) training for all instance admins/mods down the road - the Commons needs standards, and standards take time, effort and money to implement. Good luck with your work.

@Gargron as opposed to twitter where you could easily get suspended and ignored for weeks, sending appeals into the void without knowing if any real person would ever read it

@Gargron nice to see some resistance to weaponising reports to block stuff someone merely disagrees with

@Gargron thank you for the honesty, transparency, and humility.👏

@Gargron You haven’t reversed the massive dent in the trust and trauma for those on the receiving end however. Apologies are important, but they wash over quickly. Where is the evidence that they will learn, and that similar mistakes won’t be made. “Moderator actions can be appealed & reversed” is hardly a guarantee of safety.

@Gargron Ich wünsche dir viel Geduld im Moment. Mir ist schon aufgefallen, dass 'Dank' dem Debakel beim blauen Vogel auch Klientel angezogen wurde, die auch ihr abstossendes und agressives Verhalten mitbringen 😏.

@Gargron

Thank you for your honesty. This sort of transparency is not something we would get on Twitter or Facebook. The moderators are human, and thus can make mistakes. My hope we we can all learn to be better, so that these sorts of mistakes, which inevitably hit minorities hardest, don't happen again.

@Gargron perhaps these kinds of instant suspensions should need another to sign off on them?

@Gargron I know you have a lot on your plate right now, and if anything this would be way down on the list, but have you considered something like Polis for community driven moderation? It seems to *possibly* have the potential of being a real benefit to society.

https://compdemocracy.org/Polis/

I should note this is what the bird apps "Community Notes" is based on, but there's no affiliation.

@Gargron Thank your for being that transparent with the whole topic.

@Gargron keep up the good work my dudes!

@Gargron Thank you for creating Mastodon!

@Gargron Thank you for everything that you and your team do.

@Gargron
Thanks for your work !
I would like to give some money for making this all possible.
I would like to pay it bij Ideal.
Is that possible ?

@Gargron Thank you!

@Gargron Should we be worried about how the UKs Online Safety Bill and the US Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) could affect mastodon and moderation on the site if they were to pass?

@Gargron you’re doing a tremendous job!

@Gargron Appreciate the transparency! Thanks for your contribution 😊

@Gargron Fair enough. But getting this right - especially for people who routinely face so much exclusion and erasure - is the test of whether this decentralized model can really support democratic discourse for a large, diverse set of communities.

@Gargron …And this is why so many people want to be on your instance!

@Gargron you guys are great…thanks for what you do!

@Gargron the Reddit moderation model seems to scale. In Mastodon there doesn't seem to be as rigid topical structure to content, but I guess some similar topical division could be achieved by divvying up moderation by hashtags or groups of hashtags. Then you could have something like { * } for moderating any content, or any other combination. E.g. { science, astrophysics, aww, caturday }, { feminism, toxicmasculinity }. Good luck to whomever would be moderating the latter. 😅

@Gargron I think it's much better than on tw....

@Gargron I think you’re doing great under the circumstances, from what I’ve seen so far. Keep up the good work. It’ll all come together. 👍

@Gargron Thanks for the updates! Is the information on how to appeal publicly available? Hopefully only for those very few false positive cases, of course :)

@Gargron Glad to hear it! Hopefully more budget is allocated for moderation now that funding for Mastodon has increased 😉

@Gargron Great work at a very difficult moment in our history. One problem for this instance specifically is that it is a natural attractant for nubies. It is mastodon.social, after all, so it looks like it is Mastodon for people used to the monolithic services. Another issue is finding the right instance to join. I try to go through the list sometimes, and it is overwhelming. A curated list organized by subject would be very helpful.

@Gargron How are moderators trained to do this work? What is the diversity of the moderation team like? If it is mostly white, please hire more BIPOC people onto the team.

@Gargron You and your team are doing a terrific job dealing with the flood of new people.

@Gargron Now's the time, if you haven't already, to hire a moderation firm and keep the identity of the moderation staff private. Otherwise it's just pressure campaign after pressure campaign on the poor folks. I can recommend some good firms.

@Gargron

We're trying to spread the load. However, it's not easy!

Anyone know who runs joinmastodon.org? Currently showing 61 servers -- half of which are closed. There are thousands of severs.

It's the default place new users land and they have very limited choice.

Most #newbies don't Google for instances as they don't always understand, so they just pick one from this very limited list.

@Gargron have you or your moderation team reached out to the instances saying they plan to defederate from you soon, and worked out what needs to happen to stop that?

I worry that something like this child spiral out of control and fracture the mastodon part of the fediverse.

@Gargron as long as transparency continues to be a part of how things evolve, it will be great

@Gargron thank you so much for all the great work you are doing to provide a safe and engaging space #connectionsmatter and so does #languageofsafety

@Gargron moderation can be very difficult, there will be mistakes but it's fixing them that counts! All the mods are doing a great job under an unprecedented flood of toots. You've all put in incredible effort and it shows 🙂

@Gargron Thanks for all your effort. Moderation is complex even with companies with billions of dollars. Errors are bound to happen.

@Gargron You folks are awesome and I so appreciate all your hard work. Fantastic to have found a new social home!

@Gargron I don’t plan on needing the information but the suspended account: how did the contact you to appeal? Can you make appeals clear?
-and I support all no asshole rules 😊 thank you!

@Gargron Thank you for the transparency.

@Gargron hello Eugen I don’t appear to have the CW feature on my iPhone which is the only device I have to access Mastodon? Would you kindly advise please?

@Gargron thanks guys, you’re doing great.

@Gargron Thank you for everything you’re doing. This a much more pleasant place.

@Gargron I don’t envy you. But I think as long as everyone is staying precious about not having a central mechanism (at least a centralized UI) you’re going to see these issues skyrocket exponentially. Things simply will not remain stable without some adaptation.

@Gargron Thanks. An occasional false positive is a small price to pay for a positive, constructive community. I would gladly accept an apology, knowing that the moderators' intent is keeping this space free of trolls and negativity.

@Gargron

Do you publish the demographic makeup of your moderation team?

#diversity

@Gargron mastodon rocks!!!!

@Gargron How many mods are American vs. European? Asking because US norms of anti-racism (~nobody calls it anti-fascism there) differ from ours a bit, and the case I saw of the Asian woman who complained of having to read books by white men would be an obvious no-violation-of-TOS case to an American anti-racist, but a white European may be unfamiliar with nonwhite anti-racist norms (and let's face it, Berlin Antifa spaces are very white - I don't remember seeing POC at B-Lage, Lovelite, etc.).

@Gargron I notice most of the replies here are supportive, but I have to say trying to do better isn't going to cut it if moderators aren't up to the job. A lot of newcomers think of these instances as being more official; expectations should be higher. I don't see any acknowledgement that you may have a real moderation problem here, and that changes will be made. I hope some deeper reflection and real changes are implemented before these instances are allowed to grow any larger.

@Gargron
Appreciate what you're doing, I'm going to migrate to another instance to help the cause

@Gargron Constructive criticism of moderation process (to help improve):

Any moderation action that will result in the suspension of a user account should be subject to a “two-person” approval - that two people with mod privileges approve a suspension.
The second person should be encouraged to be adversarial to the motion to suspend the user - “devil’s advocate” - and have the ability to escalate to a third person (one with executive agency) to tiebreak / document / improve the process.

@Gargron I just wanted to say thank you. A lot of hard work.

I've been on Mastodon for more than a week. In that time, I haven't needed to block or report anyone. I haven't even felt a slight urge to do it.

@Gargron good luck with it all, I’ve nodded on forums over the years, can be hard work. Considering the amount of signup lately, you have all s’kne brilliantly keeping this going smoothly. Still figuring it all out, liking it so far.

@Gargron We know you all are experiencing what "going viral" feels like. I am going to cut you a great deal of slack and I suggest others do the same.

@Gargron I’m sure It’s a learning experience.

@Gargron Are you still growing the moderation team at this time?

@Gargron Transparency and appeals being possible is a huge step forwards compared to say Twitter. Plus, worst-case scenario, you can join another server if the process goes sideways somehow. I feel like federated services will be much like democracy, terrible, but far less terrible than the other things we tried.

@Gargron A Would love to see a running ticker of new users at the top of the site.

@Gargron No system is perfect, nobody is infallible. Your team has had a lot to absorb. I have been assuming that you and they are operating in good faith and I will continue to assume that. Appreciate hearing from you on the challenges and efforts to address them.

@Gargron Is there a plan to address say 1 billion users (+bots) ? How is it supposed to work on volunteers alone. Either you have 10k users/instance (manageable by a small team of volunteers) but 100k instances, so an unmoderatable amount of links+debates to designate "good/bad" instances, or 1k instances of 1m unmoderatable users. Do some have perspectives about that ?

@Gargron I know it wouldn’t really help with the workload, but would it be possible to include a second set of eyes prior to suspensions?

Maybe, make the offending post invisible on the first mod action, and throw the account into a pre-suspension queue that can be looked at on more than just the singular post? Is there a trend?

Implementing a dispute process, that is more transparent than a “you’ve been suspended” screen?

@Gargron can you hire me to moderate I have no life

@Gargron MY BEST COMPLIMENTS FROM POOR ITALY

@Gargron great to see the platform growing - even though growing to fast is never comfortable. How's your PR team is doing? I see a lot of news about Mastodon all over Internet!

@Gargron Thank you.

@Gargron
The kontiki tourist in me really loves that statement. It’s so much more honest than the birdside ever was.

@Gargron step by step

@Gargron is there a documented process somewhere for appeals? Transparency will be good. Thanks

@Gargron Speaking of #moderation have you had a look at how /. handles it using #MetaModeration ?

https://slashdot.org/faq/metamod.shtml

In my (historically very long) experience with /., meta-moderation has been quite successful at keeping the discussion civil and, well, moderate, without needing a dedicated staff of moderators.

I am quite recent on masto, though. So I don't know if this subject has been already discussed to death, and I am beating an undeed horse. Pardon me if that's the case.

@Gargron: Know @nathan by chance? He’s wrongfully suspended @CODEPINK@mastodon.lol - Which makes me question why I should even want to be here.

@Gargron I know you've resisted calls for distributed mod tools (eg. Blocklists going from instance to instance) in the past. In light of the new volume problem, would you consider being more open to such approaches and building/merging code into the main branch that would allow:
a. an instance to get admin decisions from another instance to help inform/drive their decision
b. A model where instances could publish or subscribe (via ActivityPub) to a list of mod activities.
These would help.

@Gargron everyone makes mistakes and I get the impression that the culture here is very patient and forgiving. Thanks for your candour. It honestly feels like a breath of fresh air when compared to the fragile antics of Twitter’s new owner.

@Gargron does that mean, I will get my account on mastodon.social back? You still haven't replied my mail from a year ago😂

@Gargron you and everyone are all doing a fantastic job am loving my experience 😀

@Gargron Thanks for your good work.

@Gargron A question regarding your site, do you plan on adding TLS 1.3 support? Also, your ciphersuites seem to be triggering a grade cap of B on SSL Labs due to one of the reference browsers not using a Perfect Forward Secrecy ciphersuite.

@Gargron thanks for your transparency. Your work and those of the moderators are appreciated!