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Trouble in Paradise? Understanding Mastodon Admin's Motivations, Experiences, and Challenges Running Decentralised Social Media

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Zhang, Zhilin, Zhao, Jun, Wang, Ge, Johnston, Samantha-Kaye, Chalhoub, George, Ross, Tala, Liu, Diyi, Tinsman, Claudine +3 more·2024·Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
DOI 10.1145/3687059
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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.

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  • Governance decisions in decentralized social media are typically made by instance administrators, who tend to be more responsive and accessible than executives of large, centrally-operated social media platforms during times of user dissatisfaction.

    “Governance decisions are typically made by instance administrators [5,32], who tend to be more responsive and accessible than the executives of large, centrally-operated social media platforms [4,56,119] during times of user dissatisfaction.”

    From Seeing the Politics of Decentralized Social Media Protocols (2026) · cites this paper as [119]

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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 [119]

  • 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 [119]

  • Protocols make key decisions about how to decentralize that are likely to give rise to dynamics documented in recent empirical work, such as challenges faced by admins of ActivityPub-based social networks.

    “We suggest that protocols make key decisions about how to decentralize that are likely to give rise to those dynamics documented in recent empirical work, such as challenges faced by admins of ActivityPub-based social networks [5,119] as they take on key roles as operators of Spaces, Servers, and Clients.”

    From Seeing the Politics of Decentralized Social Media Protocols (2026) · cites this paper as [119]

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Cites

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Authors
Zhang, Z., Zhao, J., Wang, G., Johnston, S.-K., Chalhoub, G., Ross, T., Liu, D., Tinsman, C., Zhao, R., Van Kleek, M., & Shadbolt, N.
Affiliations
  • University of Oxford (GB)
  • Stanford University (US)
  • University College London (GB)
  • University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
ORCID
Venue
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Published
2024-11-07
Volume
8
Issue
CSCW2
Pages
1-24
ISSN
2573-0142 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1145/3687059
OpenAlex
W4404172456
Cited by
16
References
72
Citations by year
2026: 9 · 2025: 7
FWCI
13.36
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • Research at the University of Copenhagen (University of Copenhagen) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford (Ethical Web and Data Architecture)
  • Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (1535259)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › Media and Digital Communication
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Privacy, Security, and Data Protection
Keywords
Mastodon, marginalized communities, content moderation, community building, platform governance, online safety, lived experience

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