@_elena Commercial social media platforms are built for ‘influencer’ engagement and sponsored content - the fedi is not. It’s lack of an global algorithmic feed and global moderation make this type extremely of high-engagement content difficult to achieve. Additionally, the lack of an algorithm ensures even smaller accounts have equal voice to larger ones. This comes at the cost of users having to strictly curate their own feeds through follow requests, instead of passively accepting an algorithmicly generated feed. For people used to other platforms, this model can feel burdensome, initially.
Generally speaking, it is misleading to try to compare the fedi to other social media platforms, like Bsky, X, Threads, etc. These latter platforms are singular in operations, ownership, and moderation. The fedi is best understood as a confederation of different communities (which we call instances). Each community has it’s own unique characteristics, culture, and moderation policies. No community is forced to interact with another but must come to a generalized, and understood, social contract, or face consequences of being ‘defederated’ by one or multiple instances (see various fediblock dramas). While this may create – what appears as a – hodgepodge of content restrictions or moderation policies, it is – in fact – the single most scalable and democratic model for moderation possible. This model does not rely on the exponential growth of a large centralized team or the implementation of questionable AI moderation bots, but requires merely that every new and ongoing instance abide by a general social agreement to participate within the larger fedi community.
