0. The first line of moderation should not be the instance admin. Each user account should be able to moderate mentions of their ID, or replies to their comments.

1. The top poster of a comment thread should be able to moderate all reply comments under that thread.

2. Instance admins should only delete posts that are clearly designed to offend, hurt, or viciously attack, bully, harass, gaslight, annoy etc. but should never delete a post simply on ideological grounds or heated but honest disagreement or debate. Telling the difference is very simple in almost all cases: tone and mindless repetition being the biggest giveaways of the respondent's intent. If it becomes an unwanted or unproductive argument the top poster should be able to quash replies.

3. Users should be able to click a button to block and entire thread regardless of who posts to it.

These things are not a major problem for me since I'm on a simple instance and I can add users to my personal blacklist via CLI. It would be nice to see this kind of stuff as standard, basic button functions in activitypub and fediverse since not everyone wants to run an instance and use CLI scripts to moderate.

#mastodon #fediverse #moderation #postDeletion #activitypub #social

Actually, here’s what I really think is lacking: a hide post moderation option in Mastodon.

Instead of deleting posts, moderators should be able to hide posts.

Posts that are hidden by moderators should keep their place in the timeline but state publicly that they were hidden by moderators.

(Servers other than the originating server must treat hidden posts as otherwise deleted and remove their local cache of the content. This is no different to the existing social contact for federated deletes.)

The server should also clearly communicate to the person in question (this can be automated) that their post has been hidden and that they can challenge the decision via regular channels by filing an appeal. (And, if they don’t like the moderation, they can move to a different server, etc., as per usual.)

That would feel much better to me than deleting a post outright and it can be combined with a moderation policy that promises not to delete or edit other people’s posts.

It would also allow for an appeal process and the possible reinstatement of a post should it be found that a moderation error has occurred.

CC @staff @haubles

#mastodon #moderation #fediverse #postDeletion #postHiding #authorship #censorship #ownership

Right, fediverse, let me know what you think. Long-form comments also welcome.

Mastodon instance moderators should…

#mastodon #fediverse #moderation #postDeletion