In this chapter, these questions will be examined taking into account the constitution and development of the ‘Fediverse’ – more than a social network, a network of networks – focusing on a digital community that has been at the centre of the authors’ digital ethnographical work since 2018. This case study will be analysed through different standing points and dichotomic tensions: infrastructure (de-centralisation/distribution), design (mutual conditioning/mutual aid), governance (heteronomy/autonomy).
DA - 2022/11/01/ PY - 2022 DP - www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk LA - en PB - University of Westminster Press ST - Emerging Forms of Sociotechnical Organisation UR - https://www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk/site/chapters/e/10.16997/book54.m/ Y2 - 2024/01/10/11:28:37 L1 - https://www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk/site/chapters/10.16997/book54.m/download/5846/ L2 - https://www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk/site/chapters/e/10.16997/book54.m/ ER - TY - JOUR TI - Fediverse’s evolution from the Cultural-Historical Activity Theory | Fast Capitalism AU - Meza-Cano, José Manuel AU - González-Santiago, Edith AB - This paper begins by mentioning some problems we found in social networks belonging to corporations such as Facebook and Twitter, emphasizing the inclusion of algorithmic timelines, the verticality of decisions that respond to market logic, and the privacy of users’ data. This research gives rise to presenting open-source social networks as a democratic and safer alternative for their users. These social networks shape the Fediverse, the result of the union of the words Federation- Universe, and whose history and evolution we describe. We expose the main postulates of the Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) for using this theory to conduct the Fediverse analysis, characterizing it as an Activity System, and thus, investigating the foremost tensions, reasons for change, and results. Among the findings of this analysis are: the preference of users for specific interfaces, the shift in the choice of social networks by users, the suggestions and opinions of the user community, and their influence on the programming development of social networks, promotion, or abandonment of projects by developers and change in the protocols used to connect the networks. We conclude this work by emphasizing that the CHAT allows this type of systemic analysis to be carried out from the critical moments and historical milestones of a system in constant change, such as the Fediverse. Furthermore, the proposal is made that universities are those institutions with prestige and infrastructure that can promote research, criticism, and reflection on the use of social networks for the benefit of users of the social Internet. Keywords: activity system; psychology; social networks; technological mediation. DA - 2023/// PY - 2023 DP - fastcapitalism.journal.library.uta.edu LA - en-US UR - https://fastcapitalism.journal.library.uta.edu/index.php/fastcapitalism/article/view/481 Y2 - 2024/01/10/11:28:58 L1 - https://fastcapitalism.journal.library.uta.edu/index.php/fastcapitalism/article/download/481/547 ER - TY - CONF TI - The Footprints of a “Mastodon”: How a Decentralized Architecture Influences Online Social Relationships AU - Zignani, Matteo AU - Quadri, Christian AU - Gaito, Sabrina AU - Cherifi, Hocine AU - Rossi, Gian Paolo T2 - IEEE INFOCOM 2019 - IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops (INFOCOM WKSHPS) AB - Decentralized online social networks (DOSNs) have recently emerged as a viable solution to preserve the users' privacy and ensure higher users' control over the contents they publish. However, little is known about the backlashes that the decentralized organization and management of these platforms may have on the overlaid social network. This paper fills the gap. Specifically, we investigate how a decentralized architecture based on distributed servers impacts the structure of the users' neighborhood and their ego-networks. Our analysis relies on social data gathered from the decentralized micro-blogging platform Mastodon, the newest and fastest-growing decentralized alternative to Twitter. Our findings highlight that the social network supported by each server, namely instance, has a specific footprint in terms of degree distribution and clustered structure of the ego-networks of its members. Further, how users connect to people hosted in other instances is heavily bound by the server they are in. Moreover, users who tend to establish relationships in outer instances prefer to use a bunch of servers. Finally, we show that the ego-networks of the users are more clustered within the instance boundary, i.e. triangles are more likely to form among members of the same instance. All these findings suggest that the decentralization drives the social network to a structure that can be potentially very different from the usual one typical of centralized online social networks. Thus, the architecture of a DOSN is a factor developers and researchers should take into account when designing this kind of social platforms. C3 - IEEE INFOCOM 2019 - IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops (INFOCOM WKSHPS) DA - 2019/04// PY - 2019 DO - 10.1109/INFCOMW.2019.8845221 DP - IEEE Xplore SP - 472 EP - 477 ST - The Footprints of a “Mastodon” UR - https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8845221 Y2 - 2024/01/10/11:29:08 L1 - https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stampPDF/getPDF.jsp?tp=&arnumber=8845221&ref=aHR0cHM6Ly9pZWVleHBsb3JlLmllZWUub3JnL2RvY3VtZW50Lzg4NDUyMjE= L2 - https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8845221 ER - TY - JOUR TI - Drivers of social influence in the Twitter migration to Mastodon AU - Cava, Lucio La AU - Aiello, Luca Maria AU - Tagarelli, Andrea T2 - Scientific Reports AB - The migration of Twitter users to Mastodon following Elon Musk’s acquisition presents a unique opportunity to study collective behavior and gain insights into the drivers of coordinated behavior in online media. We analyzed the social network and the public conversations of about 75,000 migrated users and observed that the temporal trace of their migrations is compatible with a phenomenon of social influence, as described by a compartmental epidemic model of information diffusion. Drawing from prior research on behavioral change, we delved into the factors that account for variations of the effectiveness of the influence process across different Twitter communities. Communities in which the influence process unfolded more rapidly exhibit lower density of social connections, higher levels of signaled commitment to migrating, and more emphasis on shared identity and exchange of factual knowledge in the community discussion. These factors account collectively for 57% of the variance in the observed data. Our results highlight the joint importance of network structure, commitment, and psycho-linguistic aspects of social interactions in characterizing grassroots collective action, and contribute to deepen our understanding of the mechanisms that drive processes of behavior change of online groups. DA - 2023/12/07/ PY - 2023 DO - 10.1038/s41598-023-48200-7 DP - www.nature.com VL - 13 IS - 1 SP - 21626 J2 - Sci Rep LA - en SN - 2045-2322 UR - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-48200-7 Y2 - 2024/01/10/11:43:21 L1 - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-48200-7.pdf KW - Information technology KW - Computer science ER - TY - CONF TI - More of the Same? A Study of Images Shared on Mastodon’s Federated Timeline AU - Nobre, Gabriel P. AU - Ferreira, Carlos H. G. AU - Almeida, Jussara M. A2 - Hopfgartner, Frank A2 - Jaidka, Kokil A2 - Mayr, Philipp A2 - Jose, Joemon A2 - Breitsohl, Jan T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science AB - We offer a first analysis of image content sharing on the Mastodon platform, one of the currently most popular decentralized online social networks. Our study relies on a dataset of toots gathered from a federated timeline (hosted in mastodon.social), consisting of over 1 million images shared by more than 100 thousand users. We focus on two key aspects: (i) profiling image content in terms of presence of explicit content (e.g., violence) and (ii) exploring potential channels between Mastodon instances as well as between Mastodon and the rest of the Web. Our main results offer evidence of a large amount of explicit content shared in the environment as well as the frequent presence of such content on the Web. In addition, we estimate a consistent flow of images (including explicit content) from other Web platforms (e.g., Twitter, Reddit, Facebook) to Mastodon. Finally, we also observed several image co-sharing user communities, ultimately bridging instance boundaries. C1 - Cham C3 - Social Informatics DA - 2022/// PY - 2022 DO - 10.1007/978-3-031-19097-1_11 DP - Springer Link SP - 181 EP - 195 LA - en PB - Springer International Publishing SN - 978-3-031-19097-1 ST - More of the Same? L1 - https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-3-031-19097-1_11.pdf KW - Mastodon KW - Decentralized online social networks KW - Images KW - Information dissemination ER - TY - GEN TI - Can This Platform Survive? Governance Challenges for the Fediverse AU - Struett, Thomas AU - Sinnreich, Aram AU - Aufderheide, Patricia AU - Gehl, Rob AB - In the wake of recent high-profile crises at commercial social media platforms such as Twitter and Reddit, the “fediverse” has gained both adoption and visibility as a viable non-commercial alternative for individuals, communities, and institutions to develop channels of public communication, dialogue, and debate. In this paper, we draw upon illustrative examples from the history of digital civic discourse, and identify six ways in which history shows us how the potential benefits of the fediverse are at risk of being subverted. We will discuss several specific potential threats to these spaces of civil discourse, including: challenges inherent to distributed governance, commercial platform capture, inclusive access, moderation at scale, reputational assaults by commercial competitors, and the tacitly neoliberal techno-Romanticism familiar from previous digital innovations. These threats must be addressed collectively and proactively by key fediverse stakeholders, in an ecology whose ruling values are non-commercialism, decentralization, open source, free association, and wariness of traditional governance. CY - Rochester, NY DA - 2023/10/10/ PY - 2023 DO - 10.2139/ssrn.4598303 DP - Social Science Research Network LA - en ST - Can This Platform Survive? UR - https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=4598303 Y2 - 2024/01/10/12:06:26 KW - mastodon KW - platform governance KW - social media KW - alternative social media KW - federated social media ER - TY - GEN TI - Section 230 and the Fediverse: Instances of Mastodon's Immunity and Liability AU - Ahooja, Raghav AB - “Code is law,” scholar Lawrence Lessig famously propounded. Technological architecture defines how speech is expressed. Different social media platforms shape discourse differently by virtue of their designs. Be it by allowing users to send ‘Friend requests’ on Facebook, by fixing the character count of Tweets on Twitter, or by prescribing the maximum duration of a TikTok video - such apps shape speech, its limits, its transgressions, and its parlance. Since this space is ever-evolving, platforms with newer technological architecture continue to disrupt the expression of speech, and the newest kid on the block is Mastodon - a decentralized platform on the Fediverse - that provides its users the ability to manage and moderate their own servers (called ‘instances’) on which third-party content can be hosted. Mastodon by virtually allowing anyone to operate their own Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube equivalent empowers its users in new ways. Yet, with great power comes great responsibility. Such an innovation raises a whole set of questions about Mastodon’s liability and immunity at various levels, especially in relation to laws such as FOSTA/SESTA. In this paper, I discuss the potential answers to these questions. CY - Rochester, NY DA - 2023/04/17/ PY - 2023 DO - 10.2139/ssrn.4421665 DP - Social Science Research Network LA - en ST - Section 230 and the Fediverse UR - https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=4421665 Y2 - 2024/01/10/12:07:39 KW - policy KW - platform governance KW - social media KW - Mastodon KW - content moderation KW - Fediverse KW - Section 230 KW - Communications Decency Act KW - decentralized KW - FOSTA/SESTA KW - immunity KW - law KW - liability KW - sex trafficking ER - TY - NEWS TI - Should I join Mastodon? A scientists’ guide to Twitter’s rival AU - Stokel-Walker, Chris T2 - Nature AB - The open-source platform has added nearly half a million users in little more than a week — but should scientists make the leap? We examine the pros and cons. DA - 2022/11/10/ PY - 2022 DP - www.nature.com LA - en ST - Should I join Mastodon? UR - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03668-7 Y2 - 2024/01/10/12:09:07 L2 - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03668-7 KW - Technology KW - Scientific community KW - Society KW - Software ER - TY - JOUR TI - Toxicology Rounds: Is Mastodon the New Twitter for EM? AU - Gussow, Leon T2 - Emergency Medicine News AB - An abstract is unavailable. DA - 2023/02// PY - 2023 DO - 10.1097/01.EEM.0000920072.89407.2d DP - journals.lww.com VL - 45 IS - 2 SP - 12 LA - en-US SN - 1054-0725 ST - Toxicology Rounds UR - https://journals.lww.com/em-news/Fulltext/2023/02000/Toxicology_Rounds__Is_Mastodon_the_New_Twitter_for.11.aspx?context=LatestArticles Y2 - 2024/01/10/12:14:04 L2 - https://journals.lww.com/em-news/Fulltext/2023/02000/Toxicology_Rounds__Is_Mastodon_the_New_Twitter_for.11.aspx?context=LatestArticles ER - TY - JOUR TI - Shifting your research from X to Mastodon? Here’s what you need to know AU - Abbing, Roel Roscam AU - Gehl, Robert W. T2 - Patterns DA - 2024/01/12/ PY - 2024 DO - 10.1016/j.patter.2023.100914 DP - www.cell.com VL - 5 IS - 1 J2 - PATTER LA - English SN - 2666-3899 ST - Shifting your research from X to Mastodon? UR - https://www.cell.com/patterns/abstract/S2666-3899(23)00323-9 Y2 - 2024/04/22/12:35:17 L1 - http://www.cell.com/article/S2666389923003239/pdf L2 - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/38264715 ER - TY - JOUR TI - Showing your ass on Mastodon: Lossy distribution, hashtag activism, and public scrutiny on federated, feral social media AU - Dunbar-Hester, Christina T2 - First Monday AB - This paper presents an account of technopolitics in Mastodon, noncommercial, decentralized social media. Mastodon’s significance has further risen in light of Twitter/X’s recent decimation of its public sphere functions; a noncommercial and ideally public alternative to commercial social media is (even more) urgently needed. The autoethnographic narrative presented here, hinging on a dispute initiated and sustained by an intemperate donkeykeeper in Europe, is idiosyncratic, to say the least. But it reveals meaningful aspects of the network’s features, which point to both the promise of such an architecture and to how it falls short in hailing other users and facilitating transparent communication, two important and related functions in democratic communication online. If we appraise Mastodon in view of civic commitments, this peculiar episode contains lessons for thinking about distribution, conviviality, and their intersections in social media. I show how Mastodon has been designed for “lossy distribution” and argue that this has implications for optimizing democratic functions of noncommercial social media. DA - 2024/03/09/ PY - 2024 DO - 10.5210/fm.v29i3.13367 DP - firstmonday.org LA - en SN - 1396-0466 ST - Showing your ass on Mastodon UR - https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/13367 Y2 - 2024/04/22/12:35:22 L1 - https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/download/13367/11592 ER - TY - GEN TI - Everyone Everywhere All at Once: The Fediverse Problem AU - Mahadeva, Nikhil AB - Recent history has seen the increased adoption of decentralized social networking, also known as federated social networks, by everyone from regular users to the European Union. However, the incentive structures that make current regulation of interactive service providers functional rests on presumptions that apply to conventional social media but not to federated social networks---federated social networks are not-for-profit entities and do not rely on data collection and ad sales to exist. When everyone can operate their own social media network, with little incentive to moderate under existing law, it can only be expected that our long-standing expectations of a sanitized experience break down. The focus of this paper is on the issue of how current law, if left unchanged, will grant sweeping immunity on a far wider level than could have been imagined in 1996, while simultaneously leaving gaps that will no longer be as effectively filled by the self-preservation instincts of conventional social media networks. CY - Rochester, NY DA - 2024/01/15/ PY - 2024 DO - 10.2139/ssrn.4716427 DP - Social Science Research Network LA - en ST - Everyone Everywhere All at Once UR - https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=4716427 Y2 - 2024/04/22/12:35:24 L1 - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID4716427_code6479965.pdf?abstractid=4716427&mirid=1 KW - Instagram KW - Internet KW - Communication KW - Twitter KW - Social Media KW - Technology KW - Mastodon KW - Section 230 KW - ActivityPub KW - Content KW - Decentralized KW - Digital KW - EU KW - Facebook KW - Federated KW - Immunity KW - Law KW - Meta KW - MeWe KW - Moderation KW - Networking KW - PeerTube KW - Privacy KW - Protocol KW - Regulation KW - Tech KW - X KW - YouTube ER - TY - JOUR TI - Análisis de la investigación sobre el Fediverso: Mastodon, Lemmy, Pleroma y otras de sus plataformas AU - Lázaro-Rodríguez, Pedro T2 - Infonomy AB - This article presents the results of an analysis of the research about the Fediverse, Mastodon, Lemmy, Pleroma, and other fediverse platforms, considering 60 documents retrieved. Publications increase in 2022 and 2023, coinciding with Elon Musk's arrival on Twitter and the so-called waves of migration to Mastodon. The main type of document is the conference article, followed by scientific journal articles and preprints. Much of the publications are open access or free and English is the main language. On the other hand, the main topic is the nature of the Fediverse and its values of federation, decentralization, openness, and its horizontal structure based on instances. Other important topics are the analysis of contents and consumption, and activism. Finally, the article focuses on the relationship between the scientific community and the Fediverse, commenting on some cases of unethical treatment and collection of data from the people in the Fediverse, and highlighting and thinking about the relationship between the values of the federated universe and those of open science. DA - 2024/03/06/ PY - 2024 DO - 10.3145/infonomy.24.017 DP - infonomy.scimagoepi.com VL - 2 IS - 2 LA - es SN - 2990-2290 ST - Análisis de la investigación sobre el Fediverso UR - https://infonomy.scimagoepi.com/index.php/infonomy/article/view/34 Y2 - 2024/04/22/12:35:28 L1 - https://infonomy.scimagoepi.com/index.php/infonomy/article/download/34/62 KW - Mastodon KW - Fediverso KW - Redes sociales KW - Ciencia abierta KW - Comunidad científica KW - Descentralización KW - Federación KW - Instancias KW - Lemmy KW - Pleroma KW - Software libre ER - TY - GEN TI - The Effects of Group Sanctions on Participation and Toxicity: Quasi-experimental Evidence from the Fediverse AU - Colglazier, Carl AU - TeBlunthuis, Nathan AU - Shaw, Aaron AB - Online communities often overlap and coexist, despite incongruent norms and approaches to content moderation. When communities diverge, decentralized and federated communities may pursue group-level sanctions, including defederation (disconnection) to block communication between members of specific communities. We investigate the effects of defederation in the context of the Fediverse, a set of decentralized, interconnected social networks with independent governance. Mastodon and Pleroma, the most popular software powering the Fediverse, allow administrators on one server to defederate from another. We use a difference-in-differences approach and matched controls to estimate the effects of defederation events on participation and message toxicity among affected members of the blocked and blocking servers. We find that defederation causes a drop in activity for accounts on the blocked servers, but not on the blocking servers. Also, we find no evidence of an effect of defederation on message toxicity. DA - 2024/04/02/ PY - 2024 DO - 10.48550/arXiv.2404.02109 DP - arXiv.org PB - arXiv ST - The Effects of Group Sanctions on Participation and Toxicity UR - http://arxiv.org/abs/2404.02109 Y2 - 2024/04/22/12:35:31 L1 - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.02109.pdf L2 - https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.02109 KW - Computer Science - Social and Information Networks KW - Computer Science - Human-Computer Interaction ER - TY - CONF TI - An Exploration of Decentralized Moderation on Mastodon AU - Bono, Carlo Alberto AU - La Cava, Lucio AU - Luceri, Luca AU - Pierri, Francesco T3 - WEBSCI '24 AB - Decentralized Online Social Networks (DOSNs) are rising as a valid alternative to traditional centralized platforms like X (Twitter) and Facebook. Mastodon is to date the most widely recognized decentralized social media service. Thousands of servers have been deployed in the last few years due to the availability of open-source software which allows anyone to easily join the network of interconnected servers. Nonetheless, akin to other social media, Mastodon encompasses instances that host harmful or inappropriate content, which demands moderation. However, the decentralized nature of Mastodon servers poses novel challenges for content moderation. In this work, we explore the dynamics of decentralized moderation on Mastodon through the main tool offered to servers’ administrators, namely blocklisting servers to prevent users of an instance from interacting with the content of these servers. Our goal is to shed light on the main traits that characterize blocklisted instances on Mastodon and investigate the emergence of common blocklisting patterns toward specific groups of instances. C1 - New York, NY, USA C3 - Proceedings of the 16th ACM Web Science Conference DA - 2024/05/21/ PY - 2024 DO - 10.1145/3614419.3644016 DP - ACM Digital Library SP - 53 EP - 58 PB - Association for Computing Machinery SN - 9798400703348 UR - https://doi.org/10.1145/3614419.3644016 Y2 - 2024/04/22/ KW - Mastodon KW - Content KW - Moderation KW - Network KW - Social ER - TY - GEN TI - Decentralised Moderation for Interoperable Social Networks: A Conversation-based Approach for Pleroma and the Fediverse AU - Agarwal, Vibhor AU - Raman, Aravindh AU - Sastry, Nishanth AU - Abdelmoniem, Ahmed M. AU - Tyson, Gareth AU - Castro, Ignacio AB - The recent development of decentralised and interoperable social networks (such as the "fediverse") creates new challenges for content moderators. This is because millions of posts generated on one server can easily "spread" to another, even if the recipient server has very different moderation policies. An obvious solution would be to leverage moderation tools to automatically tag (and filter) posts that contravene moderation policies, e.g. related to toxic speech. Recent work has exploited the conversational context of a post to improve this automatic tagging, e.g. using the replies to a post to help classify if it contains toxic speech. This has shown particular potential in environments with large training sets that contain complete conversations. This, however, creates challenges in a decentralised context, as a single conversation may be fragmented across multiple servers. Thus, each server only has a partial view of an entire conversation because conversations are often federated across servers in a non-synchronized fashion. To address this, we propose a decentralised conversation-aware content moderation approach suitable for the fediverse. Our approach employs a graph deep learning model (GraphNLI) trained locally on each server. The model exploits local data to train a model that combines post and conversational information captured through random walks to detect toxicity. We evaluate our approach with data from Pleroma, a major decentralised and interoperable micro-blogging network containing 2 million conversations. Our model effectively detects toxicity on larger instances, exclusively trained using their local post information (0.8837 macro-F1). Our approach has considerable scope to improve moderation in decentralised and interoperable social networks such as Pleroma or Mastodon. DA - 2024/04/16/ PY - 2024 DO - 10.48550/arXiv.2404.03048 DP - arXiv.org PB - arXiv ST - Decentralised Moderation for Interoperable Social Networks UR - http://arxiv.org/abs/2404.03048 Y2 - 2024/04/22/12:35:33 L1 - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.03048.pdf L2 - https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.03048 KW - Computer Science - Computation and Language KW - Computer Science - Computers and Society ER - TY - JOUR TI - Studying the Adoption of Mastodon: A Systematic Literature AU - Sabo, Eduard AU - Gesthuizen, Tim T2 - 21st SC@ RUG 2023-2024 DA - 2024/04/22/12:35:59 PY - 2024 DP - Google Scholar SP - 8 ST - Studying the Adoption of Mastodon UR - https://research.rug.nl/files/975865684/proceedings.pdf#page=11 Y2 - 2024/04/22/12:35:59 L1 - https://research.rug.nl/files/975865684/proceedings.pdf#page=11 ER - TY - CONF TI - Das Fediverse: Social Media im Wandel AU - Kuketz, Mike T2 - Das Recht der Daten im Kontext der Digitalen Ethik DA - 2024/04/22/ PY - 2024 DO - 10.5771/9783748944461-167 DP - www.nomos-elibrary.de SP - 167 EP - 184 LA - de PB - Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG SN - 978-3-7560-1716-4 978-3-7489-4446-1 ST - Das Fediverse UR - https://www.nomos-elibrary.de/10.5771/9783748944461-167/das-fediverse-social-media-im-wandel?page=1 Y2 - 2024/04/27/06:15:01 L1 - https://www.nomos-elibrary.de/10.5771/9783748944461-167.pdf ER - TY - CONF TI - Polarization in Decentralized Online Social Networks AU - La Cava, Lucio AU - Mandaglio, Domenico AU - Tagarelli, Andrea T3 - WEBSCI '24 AB - Centralized social media platforms are currently experiencing a shift in user engagement, drawing attention to alternative paradigms like Decentralized Online Social Networks (DOSNs). The rising popularity of DOSNs finds its root in the accessibility of open-source software, enabling anyone to create a new instance (i.e., server) and participate in a decentralized network known as Fediverse. Despite this growing momentum, there has been a lack of studies addressing the effect of positive and negative interactions among instances within DOSNs. This work aims to fill this gap by presenting a preliminary examination of instances’ polarization in DOSNs, focusing on Mastodon — the most widely recognized decentralized social media platform, boasting over 10M users and nearly 20K instances to date. Our results suggest that polarization in the Fediverse emerges in unique ways, influenced by the desire to foster a federated environment between instances, also facilitating the isolation of instances that may pose potential risks to the Fediverse. C1 - New York, NY, USA C3 - Proceedings of the 16th ACM Web Science Conference DA - 2024/05/21/ PY - 2024 DO - 10.1145/3614419.3644013 DP - ACM Digital Library SP - 48 EP - 52 PB - Association for Computing Machinery SN - 9798400703348 UR - https://doi.org/10.1145/3614419.3644013 Y2 - 2024/04/28/ L1 - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2312.05668 KW - Mastodon KW - Fediverse KW - Polarization KW - Signed Network ER - TY - THES TI - From Network to Platform to Protocol: Mastodon’s Ethos and the Sociotechnical Imaginary of the Fediverse AU - Mönnink, Skip de AB - The sociotechnical imaginary of the Fediverse, a network of alternative social media (ASM), is one wherein technology empowers the marginalized, fosters community participation, and challenges the monopolistic tendencies of corporate social media (CSM), ultimately advocating for a more equitable and democratic Internet landscape. This master thesis examines how the sociotechnical imaginary constructed by the Fediverse, focusing on the ethos of Mastodon, is engaged in counter-hegemonic struggle against CSM to reshape the vision of social networks as open-source networks instead of proprietary platforms. By combining media genealogy with critical discourse analysis, this research found (i) Mastodon as an ASM is committed to open participation, decentralization, and community-oriented social media, based on Free/Libre Open-Source Software (FLOSS) ideology. This (ii) ethos contains traces of earlier networks like Usenet, embodying democratic values and anarcho- syndicalist principles. Finally, (iii) that the open-source protocol ActivityPub is key to realizing the sociotechnical imaginary of a democratic Internet. The open-source protocol perspective reveals how Mastodon supersedes the existing dichotomous understanding of ASM as it creates a network that is open while consciously limiting the ability to network, to expand its ability to connect. DA - 2024/// PY - 2024 DP - studenttheses.uu.nl LA - EN M3 - Master Thesis ST - From Network to Platform to Protocol UR - https://studenttheses.uu.nl/handle/20.500.12932/46353 Y2 - 2024/05/08/06:02:09 L1 - https://studenttheses.uu.nl/bitstream/20.500.12932/46353/1/4520467_Skip_de_Monnink_Thesis.pdf ER - TY - JOUR TI - Time for Medicine and Public Health to Leave Platform X AU - Timpka, Toomas T2 - JMIR Medical Education AB - Digital technologies have for more than fifty years been employed for creation and distribution of knowledge in health services. Adding to applications for clinical decision support and population health monitoring, digital social media have in the recent decade been employed for knowledge translation, i.e. used in the process where research findings created in academic settings are established as evidence and distributed for use in clinical practice, policymaking, and self-management of health. Until today, it has been considered normal for medical and public health institutions to have social media accounts for dissemination of novel research findings and facilitating conversation about these. However, recent events such as the transformation of the microblog Twitter to platform X has brought to light the fact that the social media industry needs to exploit user data to generate revenue. In this Viewpoint article, it is argued that a redirection is required of social media use in the translation of knowledge to action in medicine and public health. A new kind of social internet is currently forming. The fediverse denotes an ensemble of open social media that can communicate with each other, while remaining independent platforms. In several countries, government institutions, universities and newspapers use open social media to distribute information and enable discussions. They control their own channels while being able to communicate with other platforms through open standards. Examples of medical knowledge translation at open social media platforms where users are less exposed to disinformation are also beginning to appear. The current status of the social media industry calls for a broad discussion about the use of social technologies by health institutions involving researchers and health service practitioners, academic leaders, scientific publishers, social technology providers, policymakers, and the public. This debate should not primarily take place on social media platforms, but at universities, in scientific journals, at public seminars, and other venues allowing transparent and undisturbed communication and formation of opinions. DA - 2024/05/24/ PY - 2024 DO - 10.2196/53810 DP - mededu.jmir.org VL - 10 IS - 1 SP - e53810 LA - EN UR - https://mededu.jmir.org/2024/1/e53810 Y2 - 2024/06/02/10:51:39 L2 - https://mededu.jmir.org/2024/1/e53810 ER - TY - CHAP TI - Moderating the Fediverse: Content Moderation on Distributed Social Media AU - Rozenshtein, Alan Z. T2 - Media and Society After Technological Disruption A2 - Hurwitz, Justin (Gus) A2 - Langvardt, Kyle AB - Current approaches to content moderation generally assume the continued dominance of “walled gardens”: social-media platforms that control who can use their services and how. Whether the discussion is about self-regulation, quasi-public regulation (e.g., Facebook’s Oversight Board), government regulation, tort law (including changes to Section 230), or antitrust enforcement, the assumption is that the future of social media will remain a matter of incrementally reforming a small group of giant, closed platforms. But, viewed from the perspective of the broader history of the internet, the dominance of closed platforms is an aberration. The internet initially grew around a set of open, decentralized applications, many of which remain central to its functioning today. CY - Cambridge DA - 2024/// PY - 2024 DP - Cambridge University Press SP - 177 EP - 192 PB - Cambridge University Press SN - 978-1-00-918477-9 ST - Moderating the Fediverse UR - https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/media-and-society-after-technological-disruption/moderating-the-fediverse/A9018A2868DBE98ED59BA66BC6C25913 Y2 - 2024/06/02/10:51:43 L1 - https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/A9018A2868DBE98ED59BA66BC6C25913/9781009174428c15_177-192.pdf/moderating-the-fediverse.pdf L2 - https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/media-and-society-after-technological-disruption/moderating-the-fediverse/A9018A2868DBE98ED59BA66BC6C25913 KW - social media KW - Mastodon KW - Content moderation KW - First Amendment KW - freedom of speech ER - TY - THES TI - Improving Content Moderation in the Fediverse AU - Anaobi, I. H. AB - The Fediverse is experiencing a growth in popularity, becoming a viable alternative to Twitter and other “centralised” social networks. The recent acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk, which has sparked controversy, has further intensified this phenomenon. The Fediverse encompasses an expanding array of decentralised social networks, such as Pleroma and Mastodon, which all share the same social federation protocol, known as ActivityPub. Each of these decentralised social networks is composed of independent servers (aka ”instances”) run by different administrators. Users can create accounts on any given server, allowing them to use the platform. Importantly, servers can then “federate” together in a peer-to-peer fashion, allowing users to interact with individuals on other servers. This creates a physically decentralized system that underpins a global set of interconnections. The general concept of the Fediverse is appealing as it promises increased openness and freedom of speech. This level of freedom, however, also creates a conducive environment for the growth of toxic communities. There is therefore need for content moderation. This important task lies with specialized users on the instances referred to as administrators. Such users are responsible for managing all aspects of the server and community. In centralized platforms, there are ongoing initiatives to automate the moderation process, not to mention the large pool of paid human resources. On the contrary, instance administrators within the Fediverse frequently run their instances as volunteers, and the majority of their moderation activities are carried out manually. For example, this may involve reviewing posts and deleting any that contravene certain terms of service. Because of this, “amateur” platforms have developed strategies to make the procedure easier to perform, often sacrificing the quality of decision making. This thesis therefore argues that it would be beneficial to propose ways to inject some automation into the process. The above motivates the research. The major goal of this thesis is to understand how content moderation is carried out in the Fediverse, identify what challenges are faced, and propose solutions to these challenges. To achieve this goal, we first conduct a large-scale measurement campaign to collect data. As a case study of the Fediverse, the measurements focus on one platform called Pleroma. Pleroma is a microblogging platform that has comparable functionality to Twitter. We then characterize Pleroma with the aim of understanding how administrators moderate currently. We then identify and quantify the challenges with the current mode. Lastly, we create and develop proposed efficient moderation frameworks that are specifically customised to the decentralised structure of online social networks. This thesis therefore offers a comprehensive analysis of the Fediverse, focusing on the historical development and underlying principles of instance federation and the construction of the Fediverse. A key theme throughout the thesis is identifying major challenges that do not exist in prior ”centralised” solutions. Due to the unique characteristics of the Fediverse, there exist a variety of challenges that are inherent in the task of collecting data from Fediverse platforms. To address this, in Chapter 3, we propose a data collection approach for both our preferred platform, Pleroma, and a comparable platform, Mastodon. We then proceed to characterise our dataset and offer an understanding of the various user timelines that users can utilise for communication. Our categorization includes a significant discussion of the function of instance administrators in the Fediverse. Using the data, the thesis then focuses on one particular function in the Fediverse: content moderation. This is the process by which server administrators ensure that users obey the terms of service, e.g., removing hate speech or spam. The thesis offers insight into the different types of federation policies available to administrators, how administrators have applied these federation policies, and to which instances these policies are applied against. The thesis explores two problems in this domain. The first challenge that arises is the problem of “collateral damage”, explored in Chapter 4. Collateral damage refers to users who are impacted by the application of policies against their instance due to actions of other users on their same instance. For example, this happens when an entire instance is blocked due to the activities of just one person. We find evidence that over 95% of users on moderated instances experience such collateral damage. To address this concern, we make recommendations on the implementation of federation policies. Further, we develop a model capable of recommending certain instances to administrators that may require more nuanced moderation rather than an outright reject. It is possible to make accurate predictions (f1=0.76) regarding instances that require such finer grained moderation. One explanation for this collateral damage is that administrators do not have sufficient time to make fine-grained decisions regarding moderation. Thus, being overburdened, especially as volunteers, is another major challenge that administrators may encounter. Chapter 5 explore this issue. We find that instances are often “understaffed”, with the majority of instances only having a single administrator, and recruiting no other moderators to assist, despite many having over 100K posts. We investigate the extent of this overhead and examine potential strategies to mitigate its impact. We observe a diversity of administrator strategies, with evidence that administrators on larger instances struggle to find sufficient resources. We show that it is possible to predict (f1=0.85) which instances will have policies applied against them and design WatchGen, a tool that flags particular instances for administrators to pay special attention to. Pleroma is one example of a Fediverse platform and dataset collection in the Fediverse can be challenging. As a result, we believe it will be of significant benefit to be able to apply solutions built on one platform to another. For example, models built on data from Pleroma being applied to data from the Mastodon platform. In Chapter 6, we explore this possibility. For this investigation we use WatchGen from Chapter 5 to test this model transfer. We achieve promising results with an f1-score of 0.59 when applying WatchGen built exclusively on Pleroma data to Mastodon data. We believe this can be improved with more training data. The thesis is concluded in Chapter 7, bringing together the findings to highlight a clear set of remaining challenges. DA - 2024/06/20/T08:20:12Z PY - 2024 DP - qmro.qmul.ac.uk LA - en M3 - Thesis PB - Queen Mary University of London UR - https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/97538 Y2 - 2024/06/27/03:25:45 L1 - https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/bitstream/123456789/97538/2/Final%20Thesis.pdf ER - TY - JOUR TI - Open-Source Software, Fediverse and Custom ROMs as Tools for a Sustainable Internet AU - Rödiger, Stefan AU - Kögler, Martin AU - Birkholz, Mario DA - 2024/07/04/07:23:32 PY - 2024 DP - Google Scholar UR - https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stefan-Roediger/publication/381773235_Open-Source_Software_Fediverse_and_Custom_ROMs_as_Tools_for_a_Sustainable_Internet/links/667e59a5714e0b03152fd660/Open-Source-Software-Fediverse-and-Custom-ROMs-as-Tools-for-a-Sustainable-Internet.pdf Y2 - 2024/07/04/07:23:32 L1 - https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stefan-Roediger/publication/381773235_Open-Source_Software_Fediverse_and_Custom_ROMs_as_Tools_for_a_Sustainable_Internet/links/667e59a5714e0b03152fd660/Open-Source-Software-Fediverse-and-Custom-ROMs-as-Tools-for-a-Sustainable-Internet.pdf ER - TY - JOUR TI - Privacy Policies on the Fediverse: A Case Study of Mastodon Instances AU - Tosch, Emma AU - Garcia, Luis AU - Li, Cynthia AU - Martens, Chris T2 - Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies DA - 2024/// PY - 2024 DP - petsymposium.org SN - 2299-0984 ST - Privacy Policies on the Fediverse UR - https://petsymposium.org/popets/2024/popets-2024-0138.php Y2 - 2024/07/07/18:02:12 L1 - https://petsymposium.org/popets/2024/popets-2024-0138.pdf ER - TY - CHAP TI - Mastodon gegen Twitter, Fediverse gegen Facebook – Was kann das dezentrale Kommunikationsnetz besser? AU - Welchering, Peter T2 - Neue Plattformen – neue Öffentlichkeiten: KI, Krisen und Journalismus A2 - Hooffacker, Gabriele A2 - Kenntemich, Wolfgang A2 - Kulisch, Uwe AB - Journalismus steht unter Druck. Medienhäuser und Journalist*innen kämpfen mit digitalen Transformationsprozessen. Teilweise stehen sie den neuen Öffentlichkeiten, die sich auf neuen Plattformen bilden, ziemlich hilflos gegenüber. Teilweise lehnen sie ihnen bisher nicht bekannte Plattformen und die darauf vertretenen Teilöffentlichkeiten aus arroganter Selbstüberschätzung ab. Dabei haben Akteure und Kommunikatoren im Fediverse in der Vergangenheit durchaus bewiesen, dass mit dem Fediversum-Ansatz einige aktuelle Probleme des Journalismus durchaus gelöst werden können. Ein Blick darauf lohnt. CY - Wiesbaden DA - 2024/// PY - 2024 DP - Springer Link SP - 45 EP - 54 LA - de PB - Springer Fachmedien SN - 978-3-658-44659-8 UR - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-44659-8_4 Y2 - 2024/08/02/05:15:40 ER - TY - BOOK TI - Sistematična analiza decentraliziranih družbenih medijev AU - Polančič, Gregor AU - Brdnik, Saša AU - Perša, Tomi AB - Monografija z naslovom »Sistematična analiza decentraliziranih družbenih medijev« naslavlja prepoznano raziskovalno vrzel preučevanja decentraliziranih družbenih medijev. Pri tem je posebni poudarek na konceptualnem vidiku, ki omogoča prepoznavanje logične zasnove, arhitekturnih značilnosti, potencialov in specifik družbenega medija ter primerjavo s centraliziranimi sorodnimi rešitvami. Predstavlja zbirko medsebojno primerljivih poglavij, ki opisno in analitično preučujejo najvidnejše predstavnike pokrajine decentraliziranih družbenih medijev v letu 2024. Poglavja so rezultat projektne naloge študentov Univerze v Mariboru, Fakultete za elektrotehniko, računalništvo in informatiko, ki so v okviru predmeta »Arhitektura družbenih medijev« sistematično in mentorirano preučevali izbrane decentralizirane družbene medije. DA - 2024/05/13/ PY - 2024 DP - press.um.si LA - sl PB - Univerzitetna založba Univerze v Mariboru SN - 978-961-286-864-2 UR - https://press.um.si/index.php/ump/catalog/book/857 Y2 - 2024/08/02/05:15:43 L1 - https://press.um.si/index.php/ump/catalog/download/857/1277/4084 KW - social media KW - Fediverse KW - students KW - Analiza decentraliziranih družbenih medijev KW - analysis KW - Decentralised social media analysis KW - decentralised social media design KW - družbeni mediji KW - študenti KW - zasnova decentraliziranih družbenih medijev ER - TY - JOUR TI - An update on Rogue Scholar in the fediverse AU - Fenner, Martin T2 - Front Matter AB - The Rogue Scholar science blogging archive joined the fediverse in August of last year. This week I want to report on an updated strategy for Rogue Scholar, and what it means for science blogs participating in Rogue Scholar. The fediverse is a collection of community-owned, ad-free, decentralised, and privacy-centric social DA - 2024/01/29/ PY - 2024 DO - 10.53731/dnfg0-hge29 DP - blog.front-matter.io LA - en UR - https://doi.org/10.53731/dnfg0-hge29 Y2 - 2024/08/02/05:15:45 L2 - https://blog.front-matter.io/posts/an-update-on-the-rogue-scholar-fediverse/ ER - TY - GEN TI - Creating a city for all of us: a role for the Fediverse in archiving civic urban memory AU - Lister, Pen AU - Norris, Trevor AB - A paper examining the concept of urban civic memory archives utilising the model of the interoperable Fediverse. Debate draws on a range of disciplines and reflects on human-centred urban living, cultures and lost histories, systems thinking, datafied processes and lives lived in modern smart future city spaces. Mindful of recent increasing interest in the Fediverse to support individual and organisational social media in open decentralised ways, we propose the Fediverse as a natural framework by which to create civic memory archives within public ownership and civic curation, with full digital interoperability for a true civic urban memory archive that all citizens can interact with and contribute to DA - 2024/01/15/ PY - 2024 DO - 10.31235/osf.io/te2ms DP - OSF Preprints LA - en-us PB - OSF ST - Creating a city for all of us UR - https://osf.io/te2ms Y2 - 2024/08/02/05:15:47 L1 - https://osf.io/te2ms/download KW - mastodon KW - archives KW - civic KW - fediverse KW - memory KW - smart cities KW - urbanism ER - TY - JOUR TI - Rogue Scholar joins the Fediverse AU - Fenner, Martin T2 - Front Matter AB - Today I am happy to announce that the Rogue Scholar science blog archive has joined the Fediverse, the federated social network that communicates using the ActivityPub protocol. I have launched a Mastodon instance at Rogue Scholar Social that accepts Science Blog bots as accounts, publishing summaries of blog posts. Science DA - 2023/08/21/ PY - 2023 DO - 10.53731/f1mhr-wps22 DP - blog.front-matter.io LA - en UR - https://doi.org/10.53731/f1mhr-wps22 Y2 - 2024/08/02/05:15:48 L2 - https://blog.front-matter.io/posts/rogue-scholar-joins-fediverse/ ER - TY - JOUR TI - A Mastodon Corpus to Evaluate Federated Microblog Search AU - Wiegmann, Matti AU - Reimer, Jan Heinrich AU - Ernst, Maximilian AU - Potthast, Martin AU - Hagen, Matthias AU - Stein, Benno DA - 2024/// PY - 2024 DP - Zotero LA - en L1 - https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3689/WOWS_2024_paper_5.pdf ER - TY - GEN TI - Trust and Safety Risks and Engineering Patterns Through the Lens of Issue Resolution: An Empirical Case Study in Mastodon and Diaspora AU - Cramer, Geoffrey AU - Maxam III, William P. AU - Davis, James AB - Trust & Safety (T&S) Engineering is an emerging area of software engineering that mitigates the risks of harmful interactions in online platforms. Numerous studies have explored T&S risks on social media, taxonomizing threats and investigating individual issues. However, there is limited empirical knowledge about engineering efforts to promote T&S. This study examines T&S risks and the engineering patterns to resolve them. We conducted a case study of the two largest decentralised SMPs: Mastodon and Diaspora. These SMPs are open-source, so we analyzed T&S discussions within 60 GitHub issues. We analyzed T&S discussions that took place in their online repository and extracted T&S risks, T&S engineering patterns, and resolution rationales considered by the engineers. We integrate our findings by mapping T&S engineering patterns onto a general model of SMPs, to give SMP engineers a systematic understanding of their T&S risk treatment options. We report that T&S issues are a challenge throughout the feature set and lifespan of an SMP. A taxonomy of 12 solution patterns are developed, paving the way for academia and industry to standardize Trust & Safety solutions. We conclude with future directions to study and improve T&S Engineering, spanning software design, decision-making, and validation CY - Rochester, NY DA - 2024/03/22/ PY - 2024 DO - 10.2139/ssrn.4768911 DP - Social Science Research Network LA - en ST - Trust and Safety Risks and Engineering Patterns Through the Lens of Issue Resolution UR - https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=4768911 Y2 - 2024/08/02/05:35:53 L1 - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/253959e7-22da-4d0c-bc6d-1d81f0d7c556-MECA.pdf?abstractid=4768911&mirid=1 KW - Empirical software engineering KW - Engineering decision-making KW - Risk KW - Social media platforms KW - Trust & Safety engineering ER - TY - JOUR TI - Exploring Platform Migration Patterns between Twitter and Mastodon: A User Behavior Study AU - Jeong, Ujun AU - Sheth, Paras AU - Tahir, Anique AU - Alatawi, Faisal AU - Bernard, H. Russell AU - Liu, Huan T2 - Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media AB - A recent surge of users migrating from Twitter to alternative platforms, such as Mastodon, raised questions regarding what migration patterns are, how different platforms impact user behaviors, and how migrated users settle in the migration process. In this study, we elaborate on how we investigate these questions by collecting data over 10,000 users who migrated from Twitter to Mastodon within the first ten weeks following the ownership change of Twitter. Our research is structured in three primary steps. First, we develop algorithms to extract and analyze migration patterns. Second, by leveraging behavioral analysis, we examine the distinct architectures of Twitter and Mastodon to learn how user behaviors correspond with the characteristics of each platform. Last, we determine how particular behavioral factors influence users to stay on Mastodon. We share our findings of user migration, insights, and lessons learned from the user behavior study. DA - 2024/05/28/ PY - 2024 DO - 10.1609/icwsm.v18i1.31348 DP - ojs.aaai.org VL - 18 SP - 738 EP - 750 LA - en SN - 2334-0770 ST - Exploring Platform Migration Patterns between Twitter and Mastodon UR - https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/ICWSM/article/view/31348 Y2 - 2024/08/02/05:36:01 L1 - https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/ICWSM/article/download/31348/33508 ER - TY - JOUR TI - Automatización y mantenimiento de un servidor Mastodon AU - Rodríguez-García, Marcos AB - En este proyecto, se explica cómo se ha llevado a cabo el desarrollo de la automatización de la instalación y el mantenimiento de un servidor de Mastodon, una red social descentralizada y de código abierto similar a Twitter, con el uso de Ansible, un potente software de automatización. Algunos de los temas que se tratan son las tecnologías utilizadas, las metodologías usadas para el desarrollo y la arquitectura de los componentes del proyecto. DA - 2024/06/25/ PY - 2024 DP - burjcdigital.urjc.es LA - spa UR - https://eciencia.urjc.es/handle/10115/35039 Y2 - 2024/08/02/05:36:04 L2 - https://burjcdigital.urjc.es/handle/10115/35039 ER - TY - MANSCPT TI - A Kantian Right to Fediverse Access, Or: For a Digital Enlightenment on the Social Web AU - Bingemann, Jan Niklas DA - 2024/// PY - 2024 DP - PhilPapers ST - A Kantian Right to Fediverse Access, Or L2 - https://philpapers.org/rec/BINAKR ER - TY - CONF TI - Decentralized Networks Growth Analysis: Instance Dynamics on Mastodon AU - Sabo, Eduard AU - Riveni, Mirela AU - Karastoyanova, Dimka A2 - Cherifi, Hocine A2 - Rocha, Luis M. A2 - Cherifi, Chantal A2 - Donduran, Murat AB - Federated social networks have become an appealing choice as alternatives to mainstream centralized platforms. In the current global context, where the user’s activity on various social networks is monitored, influenced and manipulated, alternative platforms that offer the possibility of owning and controlling one’s own data are of great importance. Mastodon stands out among decentralized alternatives in the fediverse. C1 - Cham C3 - Complex Networks & Their Applications XII DA - 2024/// PY - 2024 DO - 10.1007/978-3-031-53503-1_30 DP - Springer Link SP - 366 EP - 377 LA - en PB - Springer Nature Switzerland SN - 978-3-031-53503-1 ST - Decentralized Networks Growth Analysis ER - TY - GEN TI - Taming the Free: Content moderation in the Fediverse and the Role of the DSAThe current legal framework for content moderation in the Digital Services Act (DSA) is focused on centralized digital services. This makes it challeng CY - Rochester, NY DA - 2024/06/26/ PY - 2024 DP - Social Science Research Network LA - en ST - Taming the Free UR - https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=4886386 Y2 - 2024/08/05/04:55:40 L1 - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/4886386.pdf?abstractid=4886386&mirid=1 KW - content moderation KW - fediverse KW - compliance KW - decentralised social media platforms KW - digital services act KW - dsa ER - TY - JOUR TI - Do Servers Matter on Mastodon? Data-driven Design for Decentralized Social Media AU - Colglazier, Carl AB - When trying to join Mastodon, a decentralized collection of interoperable social networking servers, new users face the dilemma of choosing a home server. Using trace data from millions of new Mastodon accounts, we show that new accounts are less likely to remain active on the network’s largest general instances compared to others. Additionally, we observe a trend of users migrating from larger to smaller servers. Addressing the challenge of onboarding and server selection, the paper proposes a decentralized recommendation system for server using hashtags and the Okapi BM25 algorithm. This system leverages servers’ top hashtags and their frequency to create a recommendation mechanism that respects Mastodon’s decentralized ethos. DA - 2024/// PY - 2024 DO - https://workshop-proceedings.icwsm.org/pdf/2024_43.pdf DP - Zotero LA - en L1 - https://workshop-proceedings.icwsm.org/pdf/2024_43.pdf ER - TY - JOUR TI - “Don’t research us”—How Mastodon instance rules connect to research ethics AU - Wähner, Marco AU - Deubel, Annika AU - Breuer, Johannes AU - Weller, Katrin T2 - Publizistik AB - Mastodon is a decentralized social network that has recently gained in popularity due to the platform changes of Twitter (now X). When it comes to collecting and analyzing data, the technical structure of such a decentralized network not only has methodological but also ethical implications. Mastodon consists of a large number of individual instances (around 17k), and each of these instances typically have their own set of rules, which may also address the use of data. Against this backdrop, we investigated whether and how Mastodon instances address the scientific use of data. Our analyses focused on active instances with English-language rules. Based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative content analysis, our results show that only a small portion of instances mention the scientific use of their data. Instead, the majority of rules rather focuses on user behavior and interactions. Based on the results, we formulate recommendations for researchers who want to work with Mastodon data. The recommendations are informed by the results of our empirical study and guided by general ethical principles for the examination of data from social media. DA - 2024/08/01/ PY - 2024 DO - 10.1007/s11616-024-00855-6 DP - Springer Link VL - 69 IS - 3 SP - 357 EP - 380 J2 - Publizistik LA - en SN - 1862-2569 UR - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11616-024-00855-6 Y2 - 2024/08/25/09:16:19 L1 - https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs11616-024-00855-6.pdf KW - Social Media KW - Mastodon KW - Artificial Intelligence KW - Forschungsethik KW - Medical Ethics KW - Research Ethics KW - Text Analysis KW - Textanalyse ER - TY - JOUR TI - Análisis del cambio climático en Mastodon mediante técnicas de minería de datos y redes sociales AU - Raduán Llopis, Victoria AB - Este trabajo de fin de grado examina cómo las personas ven el cambio climático y las tendencias en la red social descentralizada Mastodon. Se abordan las limitaciones de plataformas centralizadas como Twitter, que tienen sesgos algorítmicos y limitan el acceso a los datos. El análisis de sentimientos, de redes sociales y la minería de datos se utilizan para explorar los debates climáticos. Se ha utilizado la API de Mastodon, almacenamiento en MongoDB, integración en Neo4j y análisis. Los hallazgos muestran patrones como la polaridad de las opiniones, los temas más debatidos, las comunidades de usuarios y los influenciadores principales. Se analiza cómo la actividad de los usuarios está relacionada con los eventos políticos o climáticos relevantes. Las conclusiones indican que las redes sociales descentralizadas son cruciales para estudiar el discurso sobre este tema importante, ya que brindan una perspectiva más diversa. Este documento mejora la comprensión de la percepción pública y las dinámicas sociales relacionadas con este problema ambiental. DA - 2024/06// PY - 2024 DP - titula.universidadeuropea.com LA - spa UR - http://titula.universidadeuropea.com/handle/20.500.12880/8876 Y2 - 2024/08/31/17:16:38 L1 - http://titula.universidadeuropea.com/bitstream/20.500.12880/8876/1/TFG_VICTORIA%20RADUAN.pdf ER - TY - JOUR TI - Trouble in paradise? understanding Mastodon Admin's motivations, experiences, and challenges running decentralised social media AU - Zhang, Z. AU - Zhao, J. AU - Wang, G. AU - Johnston, S.-K. AU - Chalhoub, G. AU - Ross, T. AU - Liu, D. AU - Tinsman, C. AU - Zhao, R. AU - Van Kleek, M. AU - Shadbolt, N. AB - Decentralised social media platforms are increasingly being recognised as viable alternatives to their centralised counterparts. Among these, Mastodon stands out as a popular alternative, offering a citizen-powered option distinct from larger and centralised platforms like Twitter/X. However, the future path of Mastodon remains uncertain, particularly in terms of its challenges and the long-term viability of a more citizen-powered internet. In this paper, following a pre-study survey, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 16 Mastodon instance administrators, including those who host instances to support marginalised and stigmatised communities, to understand their motivations and lived experiences of running decentralised social media. Our research indicates that while decentralised social media offers significant potential in supporting the safety, identity and privacy needs of marginalised and stigmatised communities, they also face considerable challenges in content moderation, community building and governance. We emphasise the importance of considering the community’s values and diversity when designing future support mechanisms. DA - 2024/// PY - 2024 DP - ora.ox.ac.uk LA - English ST - Trouble in paradise? UR - https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:9e9ea5d1-f02b-4f65-8f83-9a72e9e46213 Y2 - 2024/08/31/17:16:45 L1 - https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:9e9ea5d1-f02b-4f65-8f83-9a72e9e46213/files/s9593tw968 ER - TY - GEN TI - An evidence-based and critical analysis of the Fediverse decentralization promises AU - Xavier, Henrique S. AB - This paper examines the potential of the Fediverse, a federated network of social media and content platforms, to counter the centralization and dominance of commercial platforms on the social Web. We gather evidence from the technology powering the Fediverse (especially the ActivityPub protocol), current statistical data regarding Fediverse user distribution over instances, and the status of two older, similar, decentralized technologies: e-mail and the Web. Our findings suggest that Fediverse will face significant challenges in fulfilling its decentralization promises, potentially hindering its ability to positively impact the social Web on a large scale. DA - 2024/08/27/ PY - 2024 DO - 10.48550/arXiv.2408.15383 DP - arXiv.org PB - arXiv UR - http://arxiv.org/abs/2408.15383 Y2 - 2024/08/31/17:16:46 L1 - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2408.15383.pdf L2 - http://arxiv.org/abs/2408.15383 KW - Computer Science - Computers and Society ER - TY - CHAP TI - Decentralised Networks as a Tool for Fighting Disinformation and Censorship: The Fediverse and Free, Collaborative and Open Networks AU - Salaverría, Ramón AU - Martínez-Costa, María-Pilar AU - González Tosat, Clara T2 - Journalism, Digital Media and the Fourth Industrial Revolution A2 - Sixto-García, José A2 - Quian, Alberto A2 - Rodríguez-Vázquez, Ana-Isabel A2 - Silva-Rodríguez, Alba A2 - Soengas-Pérez, Xosé AB - The presence of disinformation and hate speech has multiplied on several centralised social networks. Since its purchase by Elon Musk in 2022, Twitter (renamed X) has taken controversial measures to increase profits, at the cost of degrading the content offered to users. Other networks, such as TikTok, are suspected of serving as a resource for international espionage, or of stimulating addictive behaviour among minors. Faced with the threats derived from the strategy of these social networks, decentralised network alternatives are emerging, including the so-called fediverse of networks such as Mastodon, with models based on open collaboration and dynamics far removed from the trending topics. This chapter analyses the recent evolution of centralised social networks, showing the problems derived from their transformation. It then analyses the opportunities and limitations of decentralised networks as a resource for overcoming these problems. In particular, it explores the resilience of these networks as a tool for combatting disinformation and censorship. CY - Cham DA - 2024/// PY - 2024 DP - Springer Link SP - 15 EP - 25 LA - en PB - Springer Nature Switzerland SN - 978-3-031-63153-5 ST - Decentralised Networks as a Tool for Fighting Disinformation and Censorship UR - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-63153-5_2 Y2 - 2024/09/06/04:26:43 ER - TY - JOUR TI - An analysis of mastodon adoption dynamics based on instance types AU - Sabo, Eduard AU - Gesthuizen, Tim AU - Bouma, Kelvin J. A. AU - Karastoyanova, Dimka AU - Riveni, Mirela T2 - Social Network Analysis and Mining AB - Federated social networks have become an appealing choice as alternatives to mainstream centralized platforms. In the current global context, where the user’s activity on various social networks is monitored, influenced and manipulated, alternative platforms that offer the possibility of owning and controlling one’s own data are of great importance. Mastodon stands out among decentralized alternatives in the fediverse. In this study, we conduct a time-based dynamics analysis of various Mastodon instances, from popular ones to country-specific servers. Moreover, we conducted an analysis of registration account dynamics based on certain topics, such as academic, political and activism in general. Throughout the paper, we reveal the user adoption of Mastodon from multiple instances and metrics. Our results show a growth pattern of instances in terms of accounts in certain periods of time, and due to social events, reinforcing our assumption of it being already trusted as a decentralized platform. Our work holds significance in the wider context of studying and understanding the adoption rates of decentralized networks as ethical alternatives to centrally controlled ones. DA - 2024/09/07/ PY - 2024 DO - 10.1007/s13278-024-01341-7 DP - Springer Link VL - 14 IS - 1 SP - 184 J2 - Soc. Netw. Anal. Min. LA - en SN - 1869-5469 UR - https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-024-01341-7 Y2 - 2024/09/09/13:13:15 L1 - https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs13278-024-01341-7.pdf KW - Mastodon KW - Decentralized social networks KW - Artificial Intelligence KW - Decentralized systems KW - Privacy in networks KW - User adoption ER - TY - JOUR TI - Periodismo y redes sociales alternativas del Fediverso: estudio de la presencia de medios nativos digitales y matriciales en Mastodon AU - Quian, Alberto AU - López-García, Xosé AU - Soengas-Pérez, Xosé T2 - Revista Latina de Comunicación Social AB - Introduction: We analyze the presence of newspapers on Mastodon, the most popular social platform in the Fediverse and an alternative to X (Twitter) in this ecosystem of decentralized and interoperable networks. Methodology: A subsample of newspapers (n=20) and accounts (n=28) on Mastodon was obtained from a sample (n=38) of digital native and legacy media in Spain. Official and unofficial, bots and non-automated, active and inactive accounts, instances where they are hosted, and links to Mastodon on media websites were identified. We also identified the date the accounts were created to check if they appeared before or after Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, which boosted Mastodon’s popularity. Results: We identified 13 official accounts (10 native and 3 legacy), none on owned instances, and 15 unofficial accounts (9 legacy and 6 native) connected via RSS by Mastodon instances administrators. Legacy media show a higher proportion of active accounts than digital natives. The proportion of automated accounts is high for both categories. A ‘Musk effect’ is observed in accounts creation. Only elDiario.es and El Salto (digital natives) offer links on their websites. El País (legacy) has the oldest account, and El Salto is the one that shows the greatest commitment to Mastodon. Discussion: The analyzed media do not take advantage of the full potential of the technological sovereignty provided by Mastodon. Conclusions: The template used, and the results open up new lines for academic research on a social platform (Mastodon) and an ecosystem (Fediverse) barely explored in the journalistic field. DA - 2025/// PY - 2025 DO - 10.4185/rlcs-2025-2338 DP - nuevaepoca.revistalatinacs.org IS - 83 SP - 1 EP - 40 LA - es SN - 1138-5820 ST - Periodismo y redes sociales alternativas del Fediverso UR - https://nuevaepoca.revistalatinacs.org/index.php/revista/article/view/2338 Y2 - 2024/09/14/04:06:06 L1 - https://nuevaepoca.revistalatinacs.org/index.php/revista/article/download/2338/5043 KW - Twitter KW - Mastodon KW - Fediverso KW - Elon Musk KW - descentralización KW - periodismo KW - redes sociales alternativas ER - TY - JOUR TI - Public sentiment on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict: insights from YouTube, Mastodon, and Google Trends AU - Mazzeo Rinaldi, Francesco AU - Miracula, Vincenzo AU - Picone, Antonio AU - Occhipinti, Ornella T2 - Mathematical Population Studies AB - This research employs a comprehensive methodology to delve into public sentiments surrounding the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, incorporating unconventional data sources—YouTube comments and Mastodon. Departing from the traditional reliance on Twitter, our systematic approach involves keyword-driven content identification, leveraging Google Trends to establish five pivotal keywords. Mastodon searches employed straightforward hashtag strategies, while the intricacies of YouTube required an exclusive focus on official newspaper channels to mitigate polarization risks. Rigorous data cleaning ensued, retaining only English-language texts and eliminating extraneous elements. The resulting dataset was subjected to Sentiment Analysis and Emotion Detection, providing a nuanced understanding of public sentiments across platforms, totaling 253.3 K texts. DO - 10.1080/08898480.2024.2401339 DP - Taylor and Francis+NEJM VL - 0 IS - 0 SP - 1 EP - 25 SN - 0889-8480 ST - Public sentiment on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict UR - https://doi.org/10.1080/08898480.2024.2401339 Y2 - 2024/09/14/04:06:31 KW - 68T50 KW - 91C99 KW - 91D30 KW - Behavioral data KW - information retrieval KW - network analysis KW - NLP techniques KW - opinion dynamics ER - TY - GEN TI - Safeguarding Decentralized Social Media: LLM Agents for Automating Community Rule Compliance AU - La Cava, Lucio AU - Tagarelli, Andrea AB - Ensuring content compliance with community guidelines is crucial for maintaining healthy online social environments. However, traditional human-based compliance checking struggles with scaling due to the increasing volume of user-generated content and a limited number of moderators. Recent advancements in Natural Language Understanding demonstrated by Large Language Models unlock new opportunities for automated content compliance verification. This work evaluates six AI-agents built on Open-LLMs for automated rule compliance checking in Decentralized Social Networks, a challenging environment due to heterogeneous community scopes and rules. Analyzing over 50,000 posts from hundreds of Mastodon servers, we find that AI-agents effectively detect non-compliant content, grasp linguistic subtleties, and adapt to diverse community contexts. Most agents also show high inter-rater reliability and consistency in score justification and suggestions for compliance. Human-based evaluation with domain experts confirmed the agents' reliability and usefulness, rendering them promising tools for semi-automated or human-in-the-loop content moderation systems. DA - 2024/09/13/ PY - 2024 DO - 10.48550/arXiv.2409.08963 DP - arXiv.org PB - arXiv ST - Safeguarding Decentralized Social Media UR - http://arxiv.org/abs/2409.08963 Y2 - 2024/09/22/08:47:14 L1 - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.08963.pdf L2 - https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.08963 KW - Computer Science - Computation and Language KW - Computer Science - Computers and Society KW - Computer Science - Human-Computer Interaction KW - Physics - Physics and Society ER -