Moderation and community management on federated social networks

Cybernaut network members Monir Mooghen and Maia Kahlke Lorentzen are researching how moderation and community management works on federated social media networks, like Mastodon.

As many users looked for alternatives to Twitter after Elon Musks takeover, Open source based, decentralized networks Mastodon and the wider Fediverse has seen a sharp increase in users.

Many were sceptical that user-driven and decentralised social networks could keep up with moderation tasks, as these are largely done by volunteer admins and moderation teams on the thousands of different servers that make up the Fediverse.

This research project, funded and commissioned by Softer, looks to examine how moderation and community management works in practice on social networks that are largely user-driven and non-commercial.

The research will be published under a Creative Commons License, and will result in a set of recommendations and tools for moderators and admins looking to set up decentral social networks.

Do you want to participate?

We are collecting data through surveys and interviews.

If you would like to contribute, please consider responding to one of our surveys, hosted on the open source survey platform Limesurvey:

Are you an admin or moderator?

Survey for Admins and moderators of Mastodon/Misskey or other Fediverse servers

Are you a user?

Survey for users of Mastodon, Misskey or other Fediverse servers

The survey does not collect personally identifiable data from you, and we do not publish or quote your responses to the long-form text questions in the publication of the research unless you explicitly allow us to do so.

If you would like to answer more questions in an in-depth interview, you can let us know at the end of the survey

About us

Monir Mooghen has  a background in techno anthropology. Maia Kahlke Lorentzen has a background in media science. We both  have extensive personal experience with digital community care.

We are also both active Mastodon users, you can find us at solgudinde@helvede.net and maiathecyberwitch@helvede.net.