Idea I just got at out #MCH2022 session about social media:
Instance moderation as a service.
Ideally, a moderator should to be able to support themselves financially. But it's difficult for a single instance to pay a moderator enough.
So, crazy idea, maybe it would make sense to have moderators who work with and are supported by multiple instances?
This is not a well-formed idea. Just spitballing here.
@deshipu sounds like a great idea. Yeah, moderation is a Hard Problem, and a lot of heavy emotional labour. You're right about how concentrating it might not be a winning strategy.
@rysiek Some instances form cooperatives & charge membership fees which cover the cost of hosting, bandwidth & maintenance. I think it is a fair way of doing it but every instance is different.
@rysiek This was basically the original idea behind https://darcy.is/ (Darcy.Is), though ... the project seems to have pivoted at least once.
(I was somewhat involved in early stages.)
@rysiek Another thought is that this is essentially the idea behind various credit-rating / reputation-tracking services. IOW: this is How You End Up with Transunion / Experian / Equifax / Dunn & Bradstreet / Lexis Nexis / Moody / etc.
@rysiek One concern I would have is about different policies for each instance, and what impact a "standardization" of moderation would have over the larger scene.
I think it would need to be a more participative thing, rather than a set product - and that might require a bit too much work from instances? Or else we'd need to arrive at some consensus about best practices and such, and that seems... distant.
But yeah, might make sense.
@eldaking yeah, totally. This was just a crazy idea I got and blurted out without putting any time nor effort into thinking it through.
@rysiek I'm not sure concentrating the shittiest parts of our jobs in one place is such a good idea. Speaking as someone whose friends worked at tech support call center. However, I could see some kind of a cooperative, where instance moderators would moderate other people's instances as well, and in exchange have some moderation-free time when someone else takes over for them. Some kind of a duty call arrangement to spread it a bit more and give people more breathing room.