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Mastodon Rules: Characterizing Formal Rules on Popular Mastodon Instances

Open access
Nicholson, Matthew N., Keegan, Brian C, Fiesler, Casey·2023·Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
DOI 10.1145/3584931.3606970
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Abstract

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.

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Crossref · 10.1145/3584931.3606970

Cites

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  • Prior work on decentralized social media rarely considers how the underlying protocols structure and shape the systems being examined.

    “Focused on user experiences in the context of specific app implementations such as mastodon.socialand Bluesky [5,49,82,109,119], this work rarely considers how the underlying protocols structure and shape the systems being examined.”

    From Seeing the Politics of Decentralized Social Media Protocols (2026) · cites this paper as [82]

    The Abstract and Introduction describe a study of rules on Mastodon instances, not an analysis of how the underlying protocol shapes the system. However, the paper does discuss how Mastodon's federated structure affects governance and experiences across instances, so it is not an example of work that ignores system structure. It also cannot establish the broader claim that prior work rarely considers protocols. (LLM, conf=0.78)

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  • Decentralizing power over curation disperses responsibility for filtering and contextualizing content across multiple actors, creating challenges and uneven enforcement.

    “Decentralizing power over curation similarly disperses responsibility for filtering and contextualizing content across multiple actors, creating challenges and uneven enforcement discussed in Yu et al. [116], Zhang et al. [119] and Nicholson et al. [82].”

    From Seeing the Politics of Decentralized Social Media Protocols (2026) · cites this paper as [82]

    The Introduction and Background (page not provided) describes decentralized governance as an interplay of platform policies and local moderators that can produce different experiences across communities. The Discussion and Future Work (page not provided) identifies content-moderation challenges for Mastodon instance administrators. The paper does not establish uneven enforcement or specifically discuss responsibility for contextualizing content. (LLM, conf=0.83)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • In ActivityPub, independent Server administrators act as moderators, with significant discretion over local content policies and inter-server relationships.

    “In ActivityPub, independent Server administrators act as moderators, with significant discretion over local content policies and inter-server relationships [27,82].”

    From Seeing the Politics of Decentralized Social Media Protocols (2026) · cites this paper as [82]

    The Introduction and Background identifies Mastodon as a network of independent servers connected through ActivityPub. The Discussion and Future Work says instance administrators govern local rules and content moderation, and discusses how instances make defederation decisions. These passages support the claim for Mastodon instances, but the paper does not establish it for ActivityPub servers generally; no page numbers are available in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.84)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

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Cites

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Research works printed but not linked: 2

  1. Tarleton Gillespie. 2018. Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Modera- tion, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media. Yale University Press, New Haven, UNITED STATES. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucb/detail. action?docID=5431574
  2. Lawrence Lessig. 2006. Code (version 2.0 ed.). Basic Books, New York. OCLC: ocm77638613.

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Related

Authors
Nicholson, M. N., Keegan, B. C., & Fiesler, C.
Affiliations
University of Colorado System (US)
ORCID
Venue
Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
Publisher
ACM
Published
2023-10-14
Pages
86-90
DOI
10.1145/3584931.3606970
OpenAlex
W4387606171
Cited by
18
References
19
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 8
FWCI
5.43
Type
conference paper
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
National Science Foundation (2309485)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › Media and Digital Communication
  • Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
  • Social Sciences › Safety Research › Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
Keywords
Mastodon, community rules, platform governance, harassment policy, hate speech, Reddit, decentralized platforms, platform value

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