Securing Federated Platforms

• DOI: 10.54501/jots.v2i2.171
• Publication Date: 2024-02-29T08:15:03Z
• Authors: Yoel Roth; Samantha Lai

As the social media landscape undergoes broad transformation for first time in over a decade, with alternative platforms like Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads emerging where X has receded, many users observers have celebrated promise of these new services their visions governance structures that empower consumers. Drawing on large-scale textual analysis platform moderation policies, capabilities, transparency mechanisms, as well semistructured group interviews developers, administrators, moderators federated platforms, we found face considerable obstacles to robust scalable governance, particularly regard persistent threats such coordinated behavior spam. Key barriers identified include underdeveloped technologies lack sustainable financial models trust safety work. We offer four solutions collective security risks identified: (1) institutionalize shared responses critical harms, (2) build transparent into system, (3) invest open-source tooling, (4) enable data sharing across instances.