Since its launch in 2016, Mastodon has been known as a “Twitter type”, but it has never really taken off. When Elon Musk bought the bird’s social network, users disgruntled and worried about the billionaire’s management switched to Mastodon. However, all is not rosy for the platform team.
Baby Mammoth Didn’t Know Where It Was Going (Mastodon/Play)
With the increase in the number of users, Mastodon’s administration and moderation format is overloaded. In the social network, users log into servers. Each server has its administrators, all volunteers, who work to keep the space on the social network respectful.
Overloaded Mastodons can cause “leaks” to administrators
Mastodon’s proposal is similar to the forums and Discord servers, a decentralized place that follows the “Murici law”: everyone takes care of themselves. Did you violate your group rules on Mastodon? The application of the sanction is up to a director, unrelated to the top management, whatever the violation and the applicable sanctions. Here is one of the current platform problems.
With the boom in users, from 300,000 active users to 2 million in October, these administrators have seen their (voluntary) work multiply. With this overload, violations of social network rules, servers and legislation go unpunished.
For example, if any posting violates the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (what Epic Games did not follow), it is up to the server administrator to take charge of the situation, blocking the content and reporting the user who has committed the violation. Otherwise, the blame falls… on themselves.
Whatever the origin, rumors must follow the legislation where do they come from? (Image: Vitor Pádua / Tecnoblog)
In an interview for Ars TechniqueCorey Silverstein, a digital law attorney, explained that administrators don’t understand this risk. To make matters worse, there is still a discussion in the area about the scope of other countries’ laws on social networks: if the server is accessible in Brazil, it must also follow our laws — and we’re not talking about having an office in the country .
The advantage of this format is that the social network can work with a small moderation team, the downside is…everything else. With overloaded servers, the chances increase that administrators won’t moderate content in time. If they can be sued for not removing content, why would they want to remain admins?
With this format, Mastodon could see growth stall or even start losing more traditional users. They too are outraged by the new members of the social network.
The Mastodons: Civil War
Civil War also takes place in Mastodon (Image: Disclosure/Marvel)
Apart from these issues, Mastodon is the same as almost all social networks today: it has short posts (up to 500 characters), DMs, feeds, photos, videos, sharing, favorite messages option. Similar to Twitter, but it’s not twitter🇧🇷 Here begins the civil war of the social network.
Longtime Mastodon users like the social network as it is. Those who come from Twitter want the platform to become Twitter without Elon Musk. At the moment, there are no indications that Mastodon will adapt to be Twitter before October 2022. Whichever way the platform goes, it can’t please the Greeks and Trojans – and then Mastodon will end up losing some of the “defeated” group.
With information: Ars Technique
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