Mastodon Governance
===================

Tagline:
Codes of conduct are great,
being able to change them is even better.

Most reasonable
Mastodon instances,
at least those that haven't been
defederated from basically everyone,
have
vaguely-similar
and
fairly reasonable codes of conduct.
Examples include
`hachyderm.io`_,
`babka.social`_,
or
`tech.lgbt`_.

.. _hachyderm.io: https://hachyderm.io/about
.. _babka.social: https://babka.social/about
.. _tech.lgbt: https://tech.lgbt/about

Of course,
a code of conduct implies moderators
who exercise reasonable judgement
to enforce it.
Once again,
most of these servers seem to have a reasonable
moderator team
and,
as far as I know,
a record of reasonable decisions.

Great!

To be clear:
if you are have an account on one of these systems,
and you have a disagreement with the moderators,
my prior assumption is that the moderators are in the right.
If anyone goes off and annoys the moderator teams of
any of the servers I mentioned,
I will be upset.

This is a rant.
After this positive prelude about
codes of conducts
and
moderation,
there needs to come the issue.

The issue is
*governance*.
Who gets to say
"the code of conduct on hachyderm.io
does not protect me?"

In some sense,
with apologies to the bard,
you can, or so can anyone.
But will it change when you say so?

Only if the BDFL agrees.

This is a distinct
*advantage*
of hachyderm over the others I mentioned.
The others don't even tell you who has
to agree.

Is it a coalition of the moderators?
Is it the owner?

If the server is owned by a company,
as,
for example,
`mastodon.social`_
is,
then the answer is at least somewhat clear.
Somewhere between the board of directors
and the
owners of the company,
the buck has to stop.

.. _mastodon.social: https://mastodon.social/about

Is the owner allowed to unilaterally change the CoC?
Sell the server and all of its assets?
Probably, in most cases.

The only instance I know that has put a decent amount of thought into it is
`social.coop`_.
In their
`wiki`_
they have
`bylaws`_
and stuff.
This makes the change process
*legible*.

.. _social.coop: https://social.coop/about
.. _wiki: https://wiki.social.coop/home.html
.. _bylaws: https://wiki.social.coop/docs/Bylaws.html

I have some confidence that if I joined as a member,
and wanted to change the code of conduct,
I could submit a proposal.
Even more importantly,
if someone submitted a bad-faith proposal to,
say,
remove
"racism"
from the
Code of conduct,
I could put in a
"Block" vote
to make it almost impossible to pass.

I will note that I think it is not perfect.
The
`fiscal partnership`_
seems a bit more loosy-goosy than I would like.
I
*do*
like that the process of ending the fiscal relationship
is clearly outlined.

.. _fiscal partnership: https://wiki.social.coop/docs/Partnership-with-Platform-6.html

This makes
social.coop
a
"winner by default"
rather than an example of best practices.
A
"winner by default"
is still an impressive achievement!

What I
*want*
is not to have a
"winner by default".
I think the right way to accomplish it is not to add
*governance*
to
*mastodon*,
but
*mastodon*
to
*governance*.

Serious non-profits should consider setting up an instance
which allows,
at least,
members in good standing to open an account on.
Ideally,
the non-profit already has some code of conduct for its
social spaces
that it could apply.