basically idk if this is a question, or meant to cause a discussion(?) on moderation styles. i'm also interested in differences as a result of server software (pleroma vs misskey vs mastodon) and their default approaches to federation.

i've been thinking a little bit lately about what seems to be the predominant moderation strategy on a large part of the fedi, that is, to try to preemptively block everything, by (presumably) keeping a very close eye on the fediblock hashtag, and for some, hunting through the network to get to know all the horrible things on there, as preventative measure. for those who do this, do you feel this approach is effective? how does your exposure to all of this make you feel about wider parts of the network? do you feel the need to moderate literally the entire network, and if so, do you feel burnt out by this proposition? how much of your time does this take up?

i hear sometimes from admins who take this approach that 'if you can't take this emotional strain, you shouldn't be an admin', or something along those lines. anyway, i thought it might be interesting to share my thoughts from/experience administrating a server here for over a year now, and how my approach has been fun and rewarding, as well as really not that mentally taxing or difficult, and the reasons why i think that is.

i stopped following such resources very early on my time in the fediverse, because it really isn't and shouldn't be normal to think about pedophilia, nazism, etc, on a near-daily basis, and i sometimes found myself falling into alt-right rabbit holes which to say the least weren't doing the best for my mental health, and as a result, my headspace and general worldview.

the approach i decided to take was more laid back, where we focus on only moderating actively the people on our instance, and treating everything else reactively. this means, at the moment, we block no servers, as far as i can remember. in addition, the amount of times i have had to delete a post/block somebody for harassment, transphobia, racism, etc COMBINED, in our entire time here, is enough to count on only one hand. it's not like i haven't said things in the past that wouldn't make me the target of said harassment either.

with the new influx of people especially, i feel like people have forgotten the main incredible power of this place, the federation. around the time i switched to this method, i wrote a post on my blog[1]. tl;dr, federation does a lot of the moderation work for you, because posts have very limited reach, and the smaller the instance, the more effective this is (i assume, which is why i would be interested to hear from moderators of bigger servers with different moderation styles). also, variation in moderation style is a strength of this platform.

on moderation styles, a large failure of the fediblock system is that 'bad actors' vary from pedophiles, to other leftists who feel victimised my their own community for insinuating something that could possibly be read as racist (see: cancel culture tropes). the policing that is going on, and particularly the essentialism (people who do bad things are bad people), is largely unnecessary, and causing a lot of wasted time infighting, when in reality, a lot of it could be sorted out by agreeing to disagree with one another, and leaving each other alone, or having honest non-judgmental conversations with one another where we allow each other to grow, without the imminent threat of the eye of sauron (fediblock) causing chats and discussions to turn into battles between entire communities, often rallying around admins and prominent minority figures, (re-enacting social idolatry and influencer culture, causing real harm to the mental health of people who you probably share a lot of values with), with the threat of not just the enemy of the day being excommunicated, but entire communities.

i've missed a lot of points here and will probably develop this into a proper essay encompassing a lot more at some point but i will be interested to see if anybody reads this little thing first and something productive gets kindled.

anyways, fuck jannies💖

p.s. i also feel that lately, the fediblock hashtag has become a vector in and of itself for unnecessary conflict, as so many people are following it.

[1] https://blos.sm/thoughts/fedi: if u are to read this keep in mind this is my experience, and sadly i feel recently things have become more toxic in a couple spaces dear to me here, despite refusing to engage with it

#fediadmin #mastoadmin #fediblockmeta #fediblock