Mastodon Rules: Characterizing Formal Rules on Popular Mastodon Instances | Companion Publication of the 2023 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
Federated social networking is an increasingly popular alternative to more traditional, centralized forms. Yet, this federated arrangement can lead to dramatically different experiences across the network. Using a sample of the most popular instances on the federated social network Mastodon, we characterize the types of rules present in this emerging space. We then compare these rules to those on Reddit, as an example of a different, less centralized space. Rules on Mastodon often pay particular attention to issues of harassment and hate — strongly reflecting the spirit of the Mastodon Covenant. We speculate that these rules may have emerged in response to problems of other platforms, and reflect a lack of support for instance maintainers. With this work, we call for the development of additional instance-level governance and technical scaffolding, and raise questions for future work into the development, values, and value tensions present in the broader federated social networking landscape.
Mastodon