fandom.ink Extras

Federation and moderation

While subject to change, the following is a high-level overview of how moderation is done at fandom.ink.

Note that the fundamental principle behind all these decisions is to prioritise and encourage kind, earnest, and authentic connections between individuals as well as a culture of consent around content and interactions.

With that in mind:

• Instance with rules antithetical to fandom.ink’s will be Suspended. This one’s basic; if we wouldn’t allow it on f.ink, we won’t federate to it, either.
• Large, general-purpose instances (e.g. mastodon.social) will be Silenced. This is primarily to reduce the quantity of “low value” content like crossposters and automated accounts, as well as prevent the Baby’s First Masto Accounts from, uh. Making messes in the Federated timeline.
• Bot accounts that exist to repost content will be either Silenced or Suspended. Particularly the porn bots, though also includes things like the “X of the Day” bots. This one’s easy, since technically this type of content is against the instance ToS anyway.
• Bot accounts in general will be Silenced. This includes things like the botsin.space instances, RSS feed mirrors, and accounts that are primarily mirrors of someone’s Twitter. Again, the idea is to keep the majority of public timeline content to actual people posting actual things, not be a shitty half-arsed Twitter mirror.
• Brand accounts will be Silenced or Suspended. Depending on the type of content they post and its relevance to fandom. Note that “brand” in this context means things like Coke and Nike and Konami, not individual indie creators.
• Corporate, “professional” and other “hustle” instances will be Silenced or Suspended. Same as above, but Bigger. “Hustle” instances are things like the various cryptobro servers trying to shill their NFTs or whatever. “Professional” instances are for things like That One Journo instance and/or anyone trying to turn fedi into some kind of cut-rate LinkedIn. Academic instances and places like mastodon.art (which hosts a lot of professional artists) are exempt from this.
• Celeb accounts may be Silenced or Suspended. Accounts that are PR platforms or otherwise just there to broadcast someone’s ego and promote their “personal brand” can shush. Accounts of known dipshits, badtouchers, missing stairs, stan army commanders, and other “downwards punchers” will be Suspended.
• Astroturfed hashtags will be Rejected. Trending tags are for organically emerging topics, not weaponised clout campaigns.
• Instances, accounts, or services using malicious tools will be Suspended. “Malicious tools” includes anything with the possibility of compromising the safety or privacy of our users, and includes things like content scrapers and tools designed to evade or detect bans.

fandom.ink's full list of suspended and silenced servers is not published publicly. Announcements, questions, and discussions on the topic are covered on the instance Discord server.

Page last updated 15 July 2023.