Plural and not human, don’t refer to us with any human-related words or include us in humanity in any way. First ‘person’ pronouns will change based on who/what is talking.

Not here to punish, your punitive mindset is showing.

Ask more questions, assume less.

  • 11 Posts
  • 301 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: April 18th, 2022
  • Lime Buzz@beehaw.orgtoTechnology@beehaw.org•Blacksky Is Nothing Like Black Twitter—and It Doesn’t Need to BeEnglish
    1·
    6 days ago

    I am glad you asked. Whilst it is primarily a social issue, the lack of good moderation tools tie into it.

    The main developer behind mastodon is well known for not giving a shit about moderation and has attacked those who actually do good moderation before both in words and by making the moderation tools confusing and in some uses useless for users and admins alike.

    The flagship instance of mastodon proves this as it is still not behind any kind of verification when you try to sign up to it meaning spam bots and the worst people can openly sign up which is something instances and people who care about moderation don’t allow as checking users aren’t nefarious is a good first step.

    It’s also got many many users on it which is likely intentional as a lot of social media creators both commercial and non commercial think it is a numbers game and that is all that matters rather creating something sustainable and pleasant.

    This had a knock-on effect in that many of the tools he created for moderation he changed, such as making the reporting tools for users have one reporting like “I don’t like this” or something effectively go in to the bin, never seen by admins or moderators because he in part runs one if the biggest mostly unchecked/not well moderated instances and so instead of moderating well wanted to do less work in moderating which big fucking red flag there that your instance is too big and you aren’t really concerned with moderation.

    Not caring about moderation means that other instance admins and users have to do your work for you whilst you can gleefully ignore all the problems you cause, especially if you also develop the code and don’t give users or admins the tools they need or keep making changes to make it less and less something unique and to be cherished and more and more corporate which is exactly what it seemed like he wanted in the first place, for it to be twitter but with a bit more care though lessening that as time went on.

    So whilst it is a social issue, tools and the way the technology is thought about and the way the technology is presented to users and admins alike helps as does listening to what is useful and what is not.

    That is what mastodon could do: give a shit and stop messing with moderation tools whilst developing better ones and listening to users and admins, especially the most vulnerable or those who care about what is needed.

    P.S. Oh and he also removed one of the timelines from the mobile app he developed for using mastodon because on his instance it was a mess and so thought it was useless because he refused to do good moderation, I think that says a lot as well.

  • Lime Buzz@beehaw.orgtoTechnology@beehaw.org•Blacksky Is Nothing Like Black Twitter—and It Doesn’t Need to BeEnglish
    4·
    9 days ago

    Though I’m not human, I’ve been part of many unpaid moderation teams and I agree. It should be paid and with breaks etc.

    Something which not afforded us when we tried to ask or push for it many times sadly and so it goes with moderation, people just don’t care enough to pay us a lot of the time as we, can only get paid if those using the service pay the mods or those in charge of it do. However, many don’t, won’t or can’t. To be clear though this isn’t just on federated services, this was also on commercial services too.

    Thankfully the instances we are on people do support the mods, from what we are aware, but still, a lot more could be done if people could do these things, fairly though not everyone can due to being poor, but some do help out.

    We don’t agree with your assertion that humans (and probably others) are inherently dicks, but they can certainly display horrible behaviour, yeah.

  • Lime Buzz@beehaw.orgtoTechnology@beehaw.org•Blacksky Is Nothing Like Black Twitter—and It Doesn’t Need to BeEnglish
    3·
    9 days ago

    I mean, it is a systemic problem in that society is racist, social media reflects that. It could be the one to change that in part if people cared enough to fix things both online and off. But they don’t, they’re so dedicated to upholding the structures of white supremacy and remaining willfully ignorant that they end up caring just about themselves.

    Having said that, whilst Bluesky may or may not care about moderation on a global level (I’ve heard mixed things), I think this kind of community building and user level block lists is a good thing, so it may work out for now.

    Like all commercial ventures into anything online I do expect it’ll become enshitified eventually, but for now may it long continue and hopefully drive the devs, moderators and actual users of the fediverse to care and introduce better moderation features or actually care about doing it and stopping the many white supremacists etc on the network through various means.