Fediverse blocklists: Moderation in noncapitalist social media

Abstract

Content moderation is a key form of labour on social media. While much of the scholarly attention has been given to paid or voluntary content moderation on corporate social media, this paper draws attention to content moderation on noncapitalist, alternative social media. Specifically, it focuses on the use of shared instance blocklists on the fediverse, a noncentralised network of community-run social media sites. The paper draws on critical analysis of the act of listing, which finds that listing is an administrative and moral act that introduces three problems: Lists don’t carry their own selection criteria, they are binary, and they can grow. However, listing also produces knowledge. Drawing on this literature as well as participant observation and interviews, the paper explores how fediverse blocklist developers attempt to mitigate the problems of lists while also generating knowledge about content moderation in noncapitalist social media.