Conference item
Trouble in paradise? understanding Mastodon admin's motivations, experiences, and challenges running decentralised social media
- Abstract:
- 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.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
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- Files:
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-
(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 589.3KB, Terms of use)
-
- Publisher copy:
- 10.1145/3687059
Authors
- Publisher:
- Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
- Host title:
- Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
- Journal:
- Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction More from this journal
- Volume:
- 8
- Issue:
- CSCW2
- Pages:
- 1-24
- Article number:
- 520
- Publication date:
- 2024-11-08
- Acceptance date:
- 2024-05-30
- Event title:
- 27th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2024)
- Event location:
- San José, Costa Rica
- Event website:
- https://cscw.acm.org/2024/
- Event start date:
- 2024-11-09
- Event end date:
- 2024-11-13
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
2573-0142
- ISSN:
-
2573-0142
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
2023599
- UUID:
-
uuid_9e9ea5d1-f02b-4f65-8f83-9a72e9e46213
- Local pid:
-
pubs:2023599
- Source identifiers:
-
W4404172456
- Deposit date:
-
2024-08-28
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Zhang et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2024
- Rights statement:
- © 2024 Owner/Author. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial International 4.0 License.
- Notes:
- This paper will be presented at the 27th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2024), 9th-13th November 2024, San José, Costa Rica. For the purposes of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Accepted Author Manuscript version arising from this submission.
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