Mozilla Wonders What Social Media Could Look Like If It Started With A Clear ‘No Assholes’ Policy

Content moderation at scale is impossible to do well. And, contrary to what most people believe, a huge part of content moderation is not we have to suppress this content that scares us," but just an attempt to stop people from being jerks to others." Unfortunately, too many people get confused, and think that free speech" means they get to commandeer private property to be assholes to others, which results in confusing fights over people claiming their free speech" is under attack when the reality is that a private property owner has decided you need to stop being an asshole.

But what if a social media network came along and just said upfront: our policy is no assholes and we're not ashamed to say we'll kick you out if you're being a jackass?

As I've been discussing lately, I'm excited about the various new experiments with decentralized, protocol-based social media, because it allows for much more experimentation, and because it enables both services and users to opt-in to what they feel comfortable with. More competition can mean both more innovation (perhaps leading to new insights!), but also more communities trying different things and taking wildly different approaches, allowing users to opt-in to the situation they want.

One thing I've been talking about for a while is how the Fediverse/ActivityPub model allows for the possibility of companies to come in and provide much better experiences, that might improve on the core Mastodon" approach that most (but definitely not all) people on the Fediverse use. And while some people were nervous about companies" moving into the Fediverse, I was excited to see more corporate interest, because I hoped it would lead to some more interesting approaches.

Mozilla, which announced months ago its intent to enter the Fediverse with some sort of ActivityPub-based instance, recently laid out more details of its private beta plans. Their key differentiator? They plan to be more aggressive in moderating. Rather than presenting themselves as a neutral" platform, they're admitting upfront that their moderation plans have an opinion:

Today, we're expanding Mozilla.social to a private beta. We've put a lot of work into getting to this stage, but there is a lot more to do before we open it up more broadly. We're making a long-term investment because we think we can contribute to making Mastodon, and social media generally, better.

You'll notice a big difference in our content moderation approach compared to other major social media platforms. We're not building another self-declared neutral" platform. We believe that far too often, neutrality" is used as an excuse to allow behaviors and content that's designed to harass and harm those from communities that have always faced harassment and violence. Our content moderation plan is rooted in the goals and values expressed in our Mozilla Manifesto - human dignity, inclusion, security, individual expression and collaboration. We understand that individual expression is often seen, particularly in the US, as an absolute right to free speech at any cost. Even if that cost is harm to others. We do not subscribe to this view. We want to be clear about this. We're building an awesome sandbox for us all to play in, but it comes with rules governing how we engage with one another. You're completely free to go elsewhere if you don't like them.

Now, you might not agree with that approach. But the cool thing about ActivityPub/Mastodon is that... you don't have to. You can just join another instance that takes a more free speech" type approach.

Letting a lot of communities all figure out how their own norms and rules will work, and letting users choose which ones to support and take part in, seems to function more like the analog world, where social norms, and local communities actually matter. One of the great things about social media has been its ability to connect people across the globe.

But the idea that there could be one single space, with very few rules, where everyone all meets together, has always been... a difficult concept to believe could work. The Mastodon/Fediverse setup of different communities, each with their own set of rules, where some servers agree to communicate across servers, is an interesting one that creates some really interesting incentives.

Mozilla has decided that they're going to be upfront with how their instance will run, and they think that creating a welcoming community, rather than a shitposting battle royale, makes the most sense for them:

What's most important to us is that the people who use our instance feel like their experience brings back more of what makes social great - and reduces the muck that has made it horrible.

Who knows how it will work? I think even taking such a strong stance won't solve the impossibility problem, and they will still face very real moderation challenges should their instance start to scale. And, I think they'll likely realize that figuring out who is violating these policies will still take a lot of very tricky line drawing, and people will get mad about where those lines are drawn.

But seeing more experiments and more attempts to make Mastodon useable for more people seems like a good experiment to try. And, I'm curious to see what a professionally run social media with a clear no jackasses" policy looks like.