Mark W.rites

2025-07-20 07:06:39

Being a Mastodon Moderator

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.

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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.

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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.

Verified pro-Nazi X accounts flourish under Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s X is a thriving hub for Nazi support and propaganda, with paid subscribers sharing speeches by Hitler or content praising his genocidal regime.

^{David Ingram (NBC News)}

Markus Korporal

2025-07-11 04:40:20

In meinem Heimatort #Oerlinghausen möchte die AfD einen jungen Mann aus ihren Reihen zum Bürgermeister machen, der so ein richtiger kleiner Sonnenschein ist.
Ob die Mitgliedschaft bei der Burschenschaft Germania Niebelungen, Hetze gegen Menschen mit Transidentität, Besuche bei Treffen rechtsextremer Kaderschmieden oder ein "nächtliches Sieg heil" in internen Chats - der adrette Anzugträger aus dem nahen #Bielefeld hat mit 27 schon ganz gut vorgelegt, um in der AfD vorn mitzumischen.

Nun ist es aber so, dass der Job des Bürgermeisters mit einer Verbeamtung einhergeht.
Und das Beamtenrecht verpflichtet Staatsdiener dazu, sich durch ihr gesamtes Verhalten zur freiheitlich demokratischen Grundordnung im Sinne des Grundgesetzes zu bekennen und für ihre Erhaltung einzutreten.
Zudem beginnt laut einer Handlungsempfehlung der Bundesinnenministerkonferenz der Schutz vor extremistischen Bestrebungen im öffentlichen Dienst bereits vor der Einstellung in ein Beamtenverhältnis. Insbesondere im Auswahlverfahren müssen die Behörden prüfen, ob Bewerber:innen die Eignungsvoraussetzungen der Gewähr für die Verfassungstreue erfüllen.

Im vorliegenden Fall sach ich ma so: doubt it.

Meine Bedenken diesbezüglich hab ich für @dielinke dann mal schriftlich an den Wahlleiter der Stadt Oerlinghausen (ja okay, und an die Presse, die im Rat vertretenen Parteien und meine Mama) übermittelt, und damit die gestern terminierte Sitzung des Wahlausschuss auf 180 Sekunden verkürzt:
Der amtierende Bürgermeister erklärte im völlig überfüllten Raum kurz und sachlich: Da ist was dran, hatten wa so noch nie, müssen und wollen wir vernünftig klären - bis nächste Woche, Tschö mit Ö.

Die offiziellen AfD-Vertreter kamen unglücklicherweise drei Minuten zu spät zum Termin, und ihre sorgsam einstudierten finsteren Mienen wichen schnell einem den Personen sehr viel mehr entsprechenden verwirrt bis dummen Gesichtsausdruck.

Auch wenn das alles also gestern insgesamt ein 10/10 Tag für mich war - es zeigt was hier in NRW und gerade in #Ostwestfalen abgeht:

Mit Ergebnissen von teils fast 40% bei der letzten Bundestagswahl im Rücken drängt die AfD bei der #Kommunalwahl in NRW in die Stadträte und die Bürgermeisterämter.
Und wir alle sind aufgerufen alles zu tun um diese Leute daran zu hindern mit ihrer hasserfüllten Ideologie unser Zusammenleben zu vergiften.

Organisiert euch in Parteien, Gewerkschaften oder sonstwo, bleibt aufmerksam, werdet laut und bleibt untereinander solidarisch.
Und bitte interessiert euch (auch) dafür was in den kleinen Städten abgeht, wo Widerstand oftmals komplizierter ist als sich mit 50.000 anderen Leuten in einer Großstadt bei ner Demo hinzustellen.

P.S.: Und den ganzen Scheiss bräuchten wir natürlich nicht, würde die AfD endlich verboten werden - @AfDVerbotJetzt