@mike- new numbers, but ones that tell the same story we discussed on your podcast: on my server, we have about 1 moderator to 500 users. Here are the new numbers on how that dynamic plays out for major social platforms in the EU:
"X does have the worst ratio of moderation staff to users, at 1/60,249, with LinkedIn coming in second (1/41,652), then TikTok (1/22,586) and Meta (1/17,600)."
https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/x-has-significantly-fewer-moderation-staff/714650/
@tchambers Thanks for sharing! Here is a back-of-the-envelope calculation for the whole Fediverse, using data from fedidb.org:
Assuming that Monthly Active Users (MAUs) are the relevant quantity, and assuming further that there is at least one admin or moderator per server, the ratio is (1 million) to (27 thousand) which is approximately 1/37.
Take that with a pinch of salt though, it is but a very crude estimate which averages over wildly differently-sized instances etc.
(EDIT: *May* data)
@tchambers And if we look at the total Fediverse user count, not the MAUs?
There are about 10 million users according to fedidb.org, so we get a ratio of 1/370.
@fediplomacy @tchambers I think you want the total number of accounts, not just MAUs..
So 15119615 / 27788 ~= 544 users per moderator.
Yes, this is an important distinction.
It should also be noted that this is not an apples-to-apples distinction:
* How many moderator _hours_ are being used? This is going to be largely homogenous between the major platforms, it is not homogenous for the fediverse.
* How many moderators are _paid_? This is going to be largely homogenous between major platforms, it is not homogenous for the fediverse
* How much _duplication of effort_ is there?
etc.
@hrefna @thisismissem @fediplomacy Also: I'd wager that most Mastodon admins know their server users better, and know the local community that their server focuses on better than say a moderator covering all of say, France, or the entire EU...
With respect: you are dipping into wishful thinking and/or propaganda.
What do these things look like for the ten largest servers, which make up 80% of the non-threads userbase?
You may also spend more time and know your users better, but that is not a uniform value.
You can argue that there are many advantages to the way that the fediverse handles these things, but comparing with the raw numbers from the EU report is not how you do that.
@hrefna @tchambers @thisismissem @fediplomacy Another important reason there can't be an apples to apples comparison is that moderators at Facebook have almost zero discretion, they are required to comply with the letter of hundreds of pages of instructions, and their quota limits the time they can spend on a single moderation request to less than a minute.
This makes Fedi moderation more labor intensive and higher quality, but makes raw numbers comparison meaningless.
Compare the outcomes.
@angdraug @hrefna @thisismissem @fediplomacy It is a good point that quality control of commercial mods can vary too. And that many on paid services are likely so overturned -- as the mod to user rates from the EU show.