The Fediverse has a Mental Health Problem
Over the past year the Fediverse, which includes software projects such as Mastodon and Pixelfed, has been thrust into the spotlight, experiencing growth at an incredible pace, with thousands of new instances/servers being setup for many diverse communities. The collapse of Twitter has also brought attention to the fragile nature of social media, bring attention to finding alternatives to corporate owned social media through developing new platforms for images, videos, writing, and books, and providing alternative experiences to existing large players in the fediverse, such as Firefish (formerly CalcKey).
We’ve also seen significant interest from research groups, and the founding of non-profits to try to tackle the big, hard challenges of operating social media services.
The Fediverse has also received significant interest from existing large corporations, such as Mozilla, Wordpress, Medium, Flipboard, and most recently Meta, drawing ever more attention to the Fediverse, the software projects, the problems they face, and the social issues and politics of federated social media.
At the same time as founders of federated social media being compared to founders of household names Twitter and Facebook, there’s also been a shift in how social media is funded: The fediverse is inherently not advertising-funded, unlike the “free” social media giants that the general population is used to.
It’s all just open-source and volunteer driven, it depends on work which is often under paid or unpaid labour of individuals to exist and thrive.
We’ve also seen various contributors start to face financial hardships given the lack of funding available for their crucially important work. I know this first hand, as my personal savings being decimated whilst I struggle to make contributing to the fediverse sustainable — and I’m not alone here.
There’s an enormous amount of under appreciated work in developing the software and improving crucial aspects like adding trust & safety features, improving the fediverse for minority groups, and adding much requested user-facing features.
For instance the most well known Fediverse project, Mastodon, has a CEO who earns under €30,000 per year—compare that to the Twitter or Facebook CEOs who earn millions per year. Mastodon’s main codebase only has two paid contributors working on it, with a small group of active contributors volunteering at personal expense.
Maintainers of projects that track harmful instances and abuse on the Fediverse are also financially challenged and in need of funds, for instance, Ro’s work or those of many others in the trust & safety space.
In the past nine months, we’ve seen more than a dozen instances just go dark and shutdown, often in response to inter-instance fights and disagreements. Reasonably well known cases include large instances such as mastodon.lol or mastouille.fr disappearing, but also many smaller instances disappearing because the administrators and moderators of these instances burn out or face a personal emotional toll and abuse so great that they need to step away to survive personally.
Running a social media service is not an easy task, even if it is easy enough to buy a domain, and setup a server: building and maintaining a community has a cost.
Recently there’s been discussions around the idea of Instance Succession Plans, to help protect users from losing their accounts when individual administrators of instances burn out or throw in the towel.
If you’re an instance administrator or moderator, I do urge you to try to keep the atmosphere of the Fediverse cooler: try to avoid publicly making call-outs and shamings. You might find that an email or a chat with the other person or team might resolve the issue more amicably. Not every administrator or moderator has all the context and historical knowledge that you do, and they may also be dealing with things that you are unaware of, so please, treat each other with kindness, even in the face of potential awfulness.
We’re also working on ways to improve this, for instance improving blocklists with voting and a means to discuss or appeal decisions and instance blocks, additionally, Daniel from Pixelfed is working on a dispute resolution site for operators of Fediverse servers.
This growth has all come at a huge significant cost, and now I’m not talking about the financial cost, but instead the Mental Health cost.
We need to tackle burnout and mental anguish in the Fediverse, and we need to tackle it now, before something terrible happens.
As one administrator recently stated in conversations behind closed doors, “when I hit peak burnout out, the last thing that crosses my mind is succession plan. The first thing that i think of is “why does this feel so lonely”. We’re good at isolating people into doing dumb things”. To which another admin followed up with “It’s all the external pressure that is soul crushing.”
We’ve also almost seen the lead developers of various projects call it quits when they’ve been subjects of abuse, harassment, or death threats.
If we don’t address our socio-culture problems and the mental health issues within the Fediverse, we’re going to ultimately become our own worst enemies, and go down in history for the negative effects of our movement, and not the positive results that we all wish to see.
If you want a certain feature, or are waiting for the release of a new version of the software you use, or have a bug: I urge you to please be patient with the developers. There’s an enormous amount of work to do, and every project is understaffed and strained for finances at the moment.
Avoid tagging the individual developers specifically, as this will only increase their load. Instead ask nicely and clearly, then wait for a response, we’re usually an incredible attentive bunch of friendly folks.
From my experiences being involved in the Adult Industry for several years (I have a startup that’s trying to make the world a better place for sex workers), I know that we’re not alone in having significant mental health problems facing members of our community.
In the Adult Industry, the stigma, challenges, and isolation faced by sex workers was so significant that the industry was experiencing many suicides that could have been prevented.
The adult industry stood up and said “enough is enough”, and formed various support groups to help address the challenges facing the community. One such group is Pineapple Support, a non-profit that offers sex workers mental health support, therapy, legal counsel, financial aid and many other resources. It’s funded by a collection of the large adult industry companies, as well as individual donations.
Now seems like the time to start a Fediverse Support non-profit.
I’m not sure exactly how this would work, given the pre-existing severe lack of funding available in the fediverse, but I think we need to find a solution. We need to address the mental anguish administrators and moderators face. We need to address the funding shortages that cause extreme financial stress on the people critical to building the software that powers the fediverse.
Perhaps this is where VCs and large for-profits can step up? What’s in it for them? Doing something good in the world and preventing potential suicides which are ultimately the inevitable conclusion of too many mental health problems.
We’re starting to agree as a society that we need healthier social media, a better town square, so let’s make sure we provide the support that’s needed to achieve that better world we so desire.
Would you like to discuss this piece? You can do so by using the hashtag: #FediverseMentalHealth.
If you’re experience mental health issues: know that you’re not alone and there is help & support out there:
- US: https://988lifeline.org/
- UK: https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/mental-health-services/where-to-get-urgent-help-for-mental-health/
- Germany: https://www.telefonseelsorge.de/ or 116 117
- Australia: https://www.lifeline.org.au/
- More hotlines: https://www.helpguide.org/find-help.htm
Edited 30/07/2023: Added section specifically addressing some less than desirable behaviours from moderators and instance admins that has caused some of the mental health problems faced by other admins.
Edited again 30/07/2023: Added section about demands of fediverse software developers from users of their software.
About the author
Emelia Smith is a principal software engineer, with extensive experience building startups & products. She most recently worked for Sir Tim Berners-Lee (yes the guy credited with inventing the world wide web).
Currently, Emelia is working on trust & safety technology, moderation tooling, and filling the gaps in interoperability between Fediverse software. Also a regular contributor to the Mastodon project, initially contributing to the moderation tools in 2018 after volunteering as an early moderator for the now infamous Switter.at instance.
She’s also the founder of Unobvious Technology UG, which aims to improve the safety, security and profitability of Sex Workers, and advance the adult industry.
