The curated feed, now run by a team of six moderators, is the meeting ground for hundreds of thousands of Black users on Bluesky. Is it ready to meet the moment?
I mean the fundamental problem is that humans are dicks and moderation is always needed. It should also be paid, and supported with counciling and recovery time when needed. Dealing with toxic content is a job.
Federation isn’t very good at this. The tech is great but everyone is a volunteer and there’s (afaik) no global ban hammer so trolls move from one instance to another. Bluesky currently has venture capital to pay for moderation teams, and centralized ban options.
I don’t know how long this can last without advertising revenue though.
Though I’m not human, I’ve been part of many unpaid moderation teams and I agree. It should be paid and with breaks etc.
Something which not afforded us when we tried to ask or push for it many times sadly and so it goes with moderation, people just don’t care enough to pay us a lot of the time as we, can only get paid if those using the service pay the mods or those in charge of it do. However, many don’t, won’t or can’t. To be clear though this isn’t just on federated services, this was also on commercial services too.
Thankfully the instances we are on people do support the mods, from what we are aware, but still, a lot more could be done if people could do these things, fairly though not everyone can due to being poor, but some do help out.
We don’t agree with your assertion that humans (and probably others) are inherently dicks, but they can certainly display horrible behaviour, yeah.
I mean the fundamental problem is that humans are dicks and moderation is always needed. It should also be paid, and supported with counciling and recovery time when needed. Dealing with toxic content is a job.
Federation isn’t very good at this. The tech is great but everyone is a volunteer and there’s (afaik) no global ban hammer so trolls move from one instance to another. Bluesky currently has venture capital to pay for moderation teams, and centralized ban options.
I don’t know how long this can last without advertising revenue though.
Though I’m not human, I’ve been part of many unpaid moderation teams and I agree. It should be paid and with breaks etc.
Something which not afforded us when we tried to ask or push for it many times sadly and so it goes with moderation, people just don’t care enough to pay us a lot of the time as we, can only get paid if those using the service pay the mods or those in charge of it do. However, many don’t, won’t or can’t. To be clear though this isn’t just on federated services, this was also on commercial services too.
Thankfully the instances we are on people do support the mods, from what we are aware, but still, a lot more could be done if people could do these things, fairly though not everyone can due to being poor, but some do help out.
We don’t agree with your assertion that humans (and probably others) are inherently dicks, but they can certainly display horrible behaviour, yeah.