Mastodon has seen a rise in popularity in recent times as Twitter users sought out alternatives to Elon Musk’s platform. One of its main selling points is its decentralized nature, which protects it from the impulsive statements of billionaires. However, this very aspect that makes it appealing also presents a significant challenge in terms of content moderation.
A comprehensive study conducted by Stanford researchers revealed that over a two-day period, they discovered 112 instances of known child sexual abuse material (CSAM), along with nearly 2,000 posts featuring commonly used hashtags related to abusive content. David Thiel, the researcher, exclaimed, “We received more photoDNA hits in a mere two days than we’ve probably encountered throughout our organization’s entire history of social media analysis, and the numbers aren’t even close.” We have reached out to Mastodon for their response and will update this article accordingly.
The major issue with unfederated social media platforms like Mastodon is that no single company or entity has complete control over the platform. Each instance has its own administrators, who hold the ultimate responsibility. However, these administrators are unable to regulate and moderate the activities occurring on other instances or servers.
It is worth noting that this problem is not exclusive to Mastodon. Threads, another decentralized platform, operates under a similar model. Although not currently available, Threads plans to integrate with Mastodon, enabling its users to follow, reply to, and repost content from both platforms.
For Meta, this presents a unique challenge as it cannot exert full control over the moderation process as it would with Facebook or Instagram. Nonetheless, the company is exploring ways to address this issue. Conceivably, larger Mastodon instances and other platforms like Threads could block access to problematic instances altogether. However, this would not necessarily “resolve” the problem, as the content would still exist. It would merely segregate the content and leave it to the moderators of the specific instance to remove it.
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Deepak Sen is a tech enthusiast who covers the latest technological innovations, from AI to consumer gadgets. His articles provide readers with a glimpse into the ever-evolving world of technology.
