And every instance admin decides which relays they want their instance to participate to - therefore the content of which instances gets forwarded by default to the federated inbox.
Moderation tools are available on all three levels of the hierarchy: user-level, moderator-level and admin-level.
As a user, you can mute reposts from certain users, report content to the mods (both of your own instance or of the instance of the offending user), mute or block users, hashtags, or entire instances.
As a mod, you have all the tools above, plus the ability to mute/block content on an instance level.
As an admin, you have all the tools above, plus the ability to block content from entire instances (what is called "defederate"), as well as control which relays forward content to the federated timeline.
And there's also an additional (often underestimated) layer of control through federation relays, whose job is to accept or reject requests of federation from other instances.
So you have much more granular and scalable tools for moderation when compared to a centralized platforms. Individual instances can also decide to target a certain type of users or topics, and therefore can be more restrictive on what content gets forwarded to them, while others can be more general-purpose, and users can decide which ones they want to join on the basis of what experience they want by default, while not losing the ability to follow whoever they like on any instance.
And, since individual instances are usually much smaller than a centralized social network, admins and mods have a much easier task moderating them. And it's also in their interest to do so: if things go too rogue on an instance and mods don't intervene, then other instances may decide to defederate the rogue node - with the consequence that the content generated by that instance will not reach other instances.
To me this sounds like a much more granular and scalable way of moderating a social network.
And every instance admin decides which relays they want their instance to participate to - therefore the content of which instances gets forwarded by default to the federated inbox.
Moderation tools are available on all three levels of the hierarchy: user-level, moderator-level and admin-level.
As a user, you can mute reposts from certain users, report content to the mods (both of your own instance or of the instance of the offending user), mute or block users, hashtags, or entire instances.
As a mod, you have all the tools above, plus the ability to mute/block content on an instance level.
As an admin, you have all the tools above, plus the ability to block content from entire instances (what is called "defederate"), as well as control which relays forward content to the federated timeline.
And there's also an additional (often underestimated) layer of control through federation relays, whose job is to accept or reject requests of federation from other instances.
So you have much more granular and scalable tools for moderation when compared to a centralized platforms. Individual instances can also decide to target a certain type of users or topics, and therefore can be more restrictive on what content gets forwarded to them, while others can be more general-purpose, and users can decide which ones they want to join on the basis of what experience they want by default, while not losing the ability to follow whoever they like on any instance.
And, since individual instances are usually much smaller than a centralized social network, admins and mods have a much easier task moderating them. And it's also in their interest to do so: if things go too rogue on an instance and mods don't intervene, then other instances may decide to defederate the rogue node - with the consequence that the content generated by that instance will not reach other instances.
To me this sounds like a much more granular and scalable way of moderating a social network.