People ask me what it’s like to be a moderator. Our discussions reveal that a lot of what we do is a mystery. So, I’m gonna lay it out for you. Specifically about the unique fediverse moderation model, mutual aid, and mental health.

What Fediverse Moderation Looks Like

Centralized networks like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter create rules that please executives and shareholders. Those decision makers don’t have to be ethical—and they rarely are.

They obey money. Big money. And big money is never on the side of the people. Big money gets rid of fact checkers, amplifies malicious bigotry, and platforms nazis.

The fediverse is decentralized. That means there isn’t one server for all accounts and it’s not run by one company. It’s a network of servers (or instances), each self-owned/operated. Sometimes that’s one person, but most often is a small team. And each team makes its own rules for moderation. They all communicate symbiotically to create the single social network.

There’s a common theme to the rules. While not universal, the majority of instances focus on ethics and inclusivity. Those who don’t get blocked through a process called “defederation.” This is a global block between instances. It means no one on the blocked server can interact with anyone from the server who moderated it.

This makes the entire fediverse community stronger. At a local level, on our server, we have a process that seems to serve us well.

What Mas.to Moderation Looks Like

There are three moderators on our team and about 185,000 accounts. About 12,000 of those are active monthly. But they’re able to interact with an estimated 12 million total fediverse accounts. So…we have our hands full. But it’s manageable. Our queue is never very long.

The baseline process works like this:

1. Someone reports a post or an account
2. The report shows up in our queue
3. One of us reviews the report and either resolves (dismisses) or moderates
4. If we moderate, the account receives an email notification with an appeal option
5. If they appeal, we see that in our queue with their plea
6. One of us reviews the appeal and either accepts or rejects

We also have a house rule that no one can act on an appeal for their own moderation. It’s a good way to keep each other in check. Especially because sometimes we don’t agree. This is okay. We just talk it out together and try to make the best call.

There’s an array of moderation options we use:

• Delete one or more posts
• Limit the account (only their followers will see their account)
• Suspend the account
• Send a warning
• Freeze the account (lock them out)
• Force posts to be flagged as sensitive (blurred)

There are five key things to know about the process…

It’s Hard

No decision is easy, and many decisions aren’t binary. There’s lots of gray area, even with explicit rules. We often receive reports that don’t violate those rules. It’s simply someone saying they don’t like what another person said. We aren’t argument referees, but people expect us to be. If that argument becomes harassment or discrimination, it’s time for intervention. But even that isn’t always straightforward.

We Get Some Things Wrong

We’ll sometimes debate for days on a single report. We always do our best to make the right call. Even so, we sometimes make mistakes. We’re willing to accept appeals when that happens.

We Get Most Things Right

We get a lot of things right. You can’t even imagine some of the traumatic things we see. Things we can’t ever unsee.

We’re Targets of Both Love and Hate

We get lots of love, but we get spit on a lot. Some people lose their minds when they’re moderated. They’ll publicly shame us or call for uprisings against us. Quite literally. I’ve even been known to vent about it because it gets exhausting.

Moderation Doesn’t End in the Queue

Some moderation is urgent or the severity requires additional action. We report all CSAM content to legal agencies in relevant countries. And with posts containing violent threats. We do our best to track the location of the offender. Then we report IPs/emails to domain registrars and web hosts.

It’s also important to note that we don’t moderate reports of ourselves, which actually happens. As of this writing, I’ve been reported five times. All were (objectively) resolved without moderation.

One challenging topic is mutual aid (community economic support).

Mutual Aid

First off, I believe in mutual aid. I don’t trust wealthy people or government systems to inherently take care of people. We need to take care of each other. Good, healthy mutual aid is a beautiful thing. This is the way.

But moderating mutual aid is a conundrum. The posts are from either people in need or scammers, and it’s not always easy to tell which one it is. We want to protect our Mastodon community from the latter. So we have to make judgment calls.

Sometimes it’s obvious, but most of the time we have to do some sleuthing. We analyze the account and related IP addresses. We conduct reverse image searches and research online profiles. It’s detective work.

I’d like to say we always get this right. We don’t. And it breaks our hearts if we make a mistake on this one. But we try to get it right. We really do.

Because we care, all of this has an impact on our mental health. Some negative, some positive.

Negative Impact on Mental Health

Content warning: I don’t details about traumatic content. But I do mention some topics that may be triggering.

Much of what we do is routine. But things can get bad, mentally. We take breaks when needed, knowing the others have our back. I’m grateful for this. Because I have definitely needed it.

There are two usual suspects that push the envelope:

1. Traumatic content
2. Being personally-targeted by people we’ve moderated

Traumatic Content

This section is difficult to discuss. I’ve tried to represent moderators as a whole in the rest of this article. But I’m going to personalize this section. Even though other moderators have shared similar sentiments, I don’t want to speak for anyone else on this.

I’ve seen some things. Really, really, really unimaginable things. Things I never wanted to see in my life that are now in my brain. And I’ve brought almost all of them to therapy.

People get reported for obvious things: slurs, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, etc. It’s painful to repeatedly see those words. Even when they’re not directed at me, I hate seeing them. It reminds me of the hate that exists in the world. It muddies the waters while trying to find strength to have even a sliver of optimism about the state of the world. I find myself saying “fuck you, asshole” while moderating these posts.

But there are other reports that stand out. You know these people exist in the world, but when you see them first hand it’s horrifying. CSAM in particular. But also violent threats, especially when used with discrimination.

The words and sentiments alone are hard to moderate. But often there are images. And try as I might, I am unable to shake them.

Targeted Attacks on Moderators

We’re volunteers trying to keep everyone safe, not monsters. And, yet, we get targeted. Sometimes personally. That’s not okay.

I’m certain every moderator has a story. Mine is that some people targeted my family. I discovered that some nazis found a photo of my kids from one of my lectures. They posted it to some repugnant forum, engaging in a racist, homophobic, bigoted hate fest.

They got my kids involved. My kids! Why? Because I dared delete a post filled with the same types of attacks against someone of color on Mastodon.

Positive Impact on Mental Health

The upside is that moderation gives me some control.

Watching a fascist autocracy unfold before your eyes is terrifying. Everything is collapsing on a massive scale in myriad ways. It’s enough to make a person feel helpless.

While it’s not monumental, I do get to curb some of that fascism through moderation. I get to push buttons with labels that read “delete post” and “suspend.” When some ignorant sociopath is harassing people, I get to wave a magic wand and make them disappear. At least from our corner of Mastodon.

That’s empowering. And meaningful. It does make a difference because I get to silence them. I can’t begin to describe how good that feels. Just a little tiny bit of justice.

We also once helped someone who posted a cry for help. He was talking about ending his life. Someone reported his post to see if we could help, and we did. Every once in a while I check on his account. He’s still there, posting cool stuff. I like to think we played a role in that.

Conclusion

So that’s a firehose of information, but it’s only part of the story. If you read this far, you deserve a cookie. If I could invite you over for one straight out of the oven (I make a mean vegan cookie) I would. For now, keep reporting the bad people and we’ll do the rest.

Thanks for taking the time to go on this journey with me.

Resources

If you’re new to Mastodon and the fediverse, free yourself from invasive tech and big social. Here are some resources to help you:

• Join me on Mas.to. It’s way better than Twitter, I promise. Create an account, flesh out your profile, write an introduction, then say hello to me. I’ll be happy to share your introduction and help you get acclimated.
• Learn everything you wanted to know (and more) about the fediverse from Fedi.tips.
• Mastodon search is pretty powerful. I wrote a guide for getting the most out of it.
• The fediverse has maybe the most powerful hashtags in social networking. But they should be accessible. I wrote a guide for that, too.

There’s a massive list of fediverse platforms, which can be overwhelming. Other than Mastodon, here are the ones that will look most familiar to you:

• PeerTube (like YouTube)
• Pixelfed (like Instagram)
• Friendica (like Facebook)
• Lemmy (like Reddit)

Like this? Find out when I publish new work.

I’m Mark Wyner, an activist, dad, husband, Designer, writer, public speaker, and Mastodon moderator. If you want me to write for you or speak at your event please say hello.

Like this? Find out when I publish new work.

I’m Mark Wyner, an activist, dad, husband, Designer, writer, public speaker, and Mastodon moderator. If you want me to write for you or speak at your event please say hello.

Mark W.rites

2024-08-10 22:12:30

Guide for Using Mastodon Search: It’s Easier and More Powerful Than You Might Think

One of the biggest complaints I hear about Mastodon is that its local search is unusable. It certainly was. But not anymore. Now it’s quite powerful, if you know the basics. So here’s a primer for you. Because I love Mastodon, you, and good UX.

A few notes before we begin:

• Mastodon is decentralized. This means every instance has its own data that may or may not be known to yours. Search is relative to known data (more on this from Fedi.tips).
• This primer is in reference to the core search functionality in the main UI, which is what you see when you connect to Mastodon in a desktop or mobile browser. There are a number of mobile apps, each of them treating search wildly different, including the official Mastodon app.
• What I share here will undoubtedly change. These tips are ephemeral. I’ll do my best to edit this with updates as I noticed changes to the UX/UI. If you notice something I’ve gotten wrong, please reach out to me. I’m friendly and willing to correct mistakes.
• People can opt-in/out of search. So some folks and their posts aren’t findable this way. Mastodon developer Renaud Chaput has more info on this.
• Servers need to enable “Elasticsearch” for full-text search to be an option. If full-text search doesn’t work for you, your server admins haven’t enabled this.

Search anatomy

Mastodon search can be simple or robust. The former is type-and-go, like any search engine. The latter enables you to really fine-tune what you’re seeking, by optimizing specificity.
Fig 1: search anatomy
You can search by word(s) and then, if you want, further refine the results using the following options:

1. Has: the post includes media, a poll, or an embed (also usable with has but not in the UI: image, link, video, and audio)
2. Is: the post is a reply or marked as sensitive
3. Language: the actual ISO language code (i.e. Eng or En)
4. From: the username of the account (“from:me” works for finding your own posts)
5. Before, during, and after: ISO dates (YYYY-MM-DD) which aren’t intuitive but are functional (more on ISO date formats)
6. In: the post is global or I’ve created/interacted with it (favorited, boosted, or replied)
7. Operators: you can combine any of these, so a + operator isn’t necessary. But you can exclude words or options with a – operator. (i.e. “-word” or “-is:type”)

Search type

Mastodon supports full-text search or hashtag search. Each yields different results, but there is some overlap, which is helpful. (Read more about hashtag accessibility.)

Both types can target profiles, hashtags, and posts. Or a query can simply be submitted, and the results will be grouped into each of these. They match as follows:

1. Profiles: returns all accounts who have the search query in their bio or their username
2. Hashtags: returns a list of case-insensitive hashtags that match or are close to the search query (i.e. “product design” returns #ProductDesign and #Product Design, while “typography” returns #Typography and #TypographyInTheWild)
3. Posts: returns every post that includes the search query

As mentioned, there’s a lot of overlap. But there are good reasons to use one over the other.
Fig 2: full-text search
The main reason to use full-text search is because it yields a larger pool of results. The ratio of words vs hashtags in a post is almost always in favor of the former (at least they should be). And some folks use hashtags scarcely or simply don’t use them at all.
Fig 3: hashtag search
Hashtag searches are more explicit in what they return, even though they return results in the same way. The primary reason to search by hashtag is to tap into that shared ecosystem.

“#DogsOfMastodon” won’t return the same thing as “dogs of Mastodon.” The former will return Nicole Sandler’s account (Laffy) because she uses the hashtag in her profile (see fig 4 below). The latter will not, because she doesn’t use that phrase in her profile.
Fig 4: profile match
So it’s a little nuanced, but there is a difference between them. The one thing that full-text search offers that hashtags do not, is the option of exact matches for usernames. In fig 2 above, you’ll see a “quick actions” option for “go to profile @[url=https://a.gup.pe/u/typography]typography group[/url].” Because there is an account by that name, you can go straight to it.

You can also go straight to any of the targets by choosing one from the “quick actions” options. If you want to explicitly find posts matching your search query, you don’t have to key/submit. You can key your term then select your target.

Keying “#DogsOfMastodon” and submitting will return the “all” results, grouped by target. If you’re only interested in posts you can type your query and then choose “go to hashtag” or “posts matching” (see fig 5 below).
Fig 5: results target

Targeting hashtags vs targeting posts

The UX for this is quite ambiguous. You’d think that both would yield the same results, because if a hashtag is used in the post it would be relevant in either scenario. However, that’s not the case.

So why have both? It’s complicated…

Choosing “go to hashtag” from “quick actions” will take you to the actual URI for that hashtag (i.e. “#DogsOfMastodon” returns /tags/DogsOfMastodon on my instance). So it’s not necessarily search results, per se, but a link to that hashtag.

Yes, hashtags have their own URIs. There are two reasons for this. First, there’s metadata associated with hashtags. Second, and more importantly, you can follow hashtags on Mastodon in the same way you can follow accounts. (See these in fig 5.)

Note: choosing “go to hashtag” from the menu is not the same as choosing “hashtags” from the target tabs. The latter simply shows you a list of hashtags matching and related to your search query.

If you’re searching for posts, I strongly recommend using the “go to hashtag” instead of “posts matching.” The hashtag view yields far more results than the latter.

In all or library

While most of the search options are intuitive, this one is not. But it’s simple once you understand it.
Fig 6: in all
In “all” is basically an open search through all posts. I haven’t been able to find the real purpose for it, because it simply returns posts that match the query. So I believe it’s not really helpful.
Fig 7: in library
However, in “library” can be quite useful. Choosing this means it only returns posts you’ve interacted with. If it’s your post or someone else’s that you’ve favorited, boosted, or replied to it, it’s in your “library.” As seen in fig 7, the results show a reply that I favorited as well as one of my own posts.

With great power comes great…results

The real power in the Mastodon search is being able to mix and match the search options.

As mentioned, searching in Mastodon can be really simple: type and send. But using the search options for a detailed search is very powerful.
Fig 8: mix and match
Want to find a poll you posted two years ago? Easy (see fig 8). Want to find a reply to you from someone that may have included a link? Easy. Connect the dots and create your recipe. Mastodon search has you covered.

Conclusion

Mastodon didn’t invent anything new here. In fact, these options may look familiar to you. But robust search is relatively new to Mastodon. It’s a game changer that fixes what was one of the most frustrating aspects of Mastodon. It’s something that people have (rightfully) complained about en masse.

New to Mastodon? Don’t be a stranger. It’s the best social network you never knew you needed. If you’re ready to dive in, find me on mas.to and I’ll be happy to help you find your way.

Thanks to the following people, who helped me with tips and recommendations.

• Stn for inspiring me to write this piece and offering some tips
• Katzentratschen for a handful of additional resources
• Delta Wye for sharing some oddities with case sensitivity and spaces
• Claire Barnes for suggesting clarification on ISO date formats and additional resources
• Luca Hammer for recommending a note about operators

Happy searching!

#Mastodon #Fediverse #Search #FediTips #MastodonHelp #MastodonTips #SocialNetworks #Guide #HowTo

Like this? Find out when I publish new work.

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I’m Mark Wyner, an activist, dad, husband, Designer, writer, public speaker, and Mastodon moderator. If you want me to write for you or speak at your event please say hello.

Like this? Find out when I publish new work.

---

I’m Mark Wyner, an activist, dad, husband, Designer, writer, public speaker, and Mastodon moderator. If you want me to write for you or speak at your event please say hello.

Hashtag Accessibility, by Everyone for Everyone - Mark Wyner - Medium

I posted about hashtag accessibility on Mastodon and LinkedIn that got a lot of attention. There were so many replies from people who didn’t know about the accommodation I outlined, who vowed to…

^{Mark Wyner (Medium)}