@mike- new numbers, but ones that tell the same story we discussed on your podcast: on my server, we have about 1 moderator to 500 users. Here are the new numbers on how that dynamic plays out for major social platforms in the EU:
"X does have the worst ratio of moderation staff to users, at 1/60,249, with LinkedIn coming in second (1/41,652), then TikTok (1/22,586) and Meta (1/17,600)."
@tchambers Thanks for sharing! Here is a back-of-the-envelope calculation for the whole Fediverse, using data from fedidb.org:
Assuming that Monthly Active Users (MAUs) are the relevant quantity, and assuming further that there is at least one admin or moderator per server, the ratio is (1 million) to (27 thousand) which is approximately 1/37.
Take that with a pinch of salt though, it is but a very crude estimate which averages over wildly differently-sized instances etc. etc.
@hrefna@thisismissem@fediplomacy A fair point that it is only one data point, but it is the only data on moderation the big platforms have submitted to the EU to this degree.
And as a non-paid Moderator, I am sure with certainty that I do more work on this than I would if I were paid at a 9-5pm gig.
@hrefna@thisismissem@fediplomacy Also: I'd wager that most Mastodon admins know their server users better, and know the local community that their server focuses on better than say a moderator covering all of say, France, or the entire EU...
@tchambers@hrefna@fediplomacy I've actually an issue open for creating a moderation statistics endpoint, to try to add transparency to moderation practices, which could help here.
@thisismissem@tchambers@hrefna Very cool! We have been discussing something like an "admin load meter" for the server status page in the team too.
We found it challenging to conceptualize it as a metric (akin to the usual CPU load thingy with averages for 1/5/15 minutes) that – looping back to the discussion in the thread above – "somehow" "correctly" conveys instance size, user base, number of posts, moderation queue length .... an interesting design question to work on.
With respect: you are dipping into wishful thinking and/or propaganda.
What do these things look like for the ten largest servers, which make up 80% of the non-threads userbase?
You may also spend more time and know your users better, but that is not a uniform value.
You can argue that there are many advantages to the way that the fediverse handles these things, but comparing with the raw numbers from the EU report is not how you do that.
@hrefna@tchambers@thisismissem@fediplomacy Another important reason there can't be an apples to apples comparison is that moderators at Facebook have almost zero discretion, they are required to comply with the letter of hundreds of pages of instructions, and their quota limits the time they can spend on a single moderation request to less than a minute.
This makes Fedi moderation more labor intensive and higher quality, but makes raw numbers comparison meaningless.
@angdraug@hrefna@thisismissem@fediplomacy It is a good point that quality control of commercial mods can vary too. And that many on paid services are likely so overturned -- as the mod to user rates from the EU show.
Did I get this right? Your argument to the indieweb.social example is that my situation may be uncommon of most Mastodon servers, and as evidence, that the 10 largest Mastodon servers may have significantly worse user-to-moderator ratios?
I think I also heard that my moderating experience and hours compared to paid mods may be unusual.
I want to consider the objections but first make sure I'm hearing them accurately.
@tchambers@mmccue@rolle imho community moderation always wins out when building online groups. We will self moderate and it’ll be fairly balanced. Is not perfect but we are generally more invested in making this a better place.
@tchambers The respective reports for each platform are linked at the bottom of that article by the way. They give a bit more information than the table shows, e.g. about moderation staff / reasons / speed of handling, and user counts.
For example, the Meta statements note that their 15k-strong staff of content reviewers "include[s] a mixture of full-time employees, contractors, and outsourced support." (same text in Instagram and Facebook April 2024 reports, pp. 21 and 20, respectively)
I've seen at least a hundred times more moderation take place on Twitter, even against the spambots, racist and transphobic content that Elmo himself endorses and boosts, compared to Meta.
I have NEVER seen Meta take down a single spam post or disable compromised accounts. Meanwhile I got auto moderated for telling a joke to a friend about his boobs.