Apparently, *they* are doing *something*, because there are people complaining about them going around suspending accounts for no reason. More lower quality moderation.
Ugh, maybe, they should collaborate with other instances which do similar things? In any case, I think they've worn out their utility. Artists started leaving quite some time ago.
I'm a bit worried about the new pattern of hyper-centralization (and the weird fediverse aversion of some to U.S.-based services which also cater to art, but have decent moderation practices, and might help to distribute that load, some of it seems to stem from sexphobia).
As for why a service might have trouble, the main theory I can come up with is the literally millions of people pouring into the fediverse. Anything past that would be pretty speculative.
@olives@qoto.org sorry I missed this earlier, and for some reason I can't see what you were responding to. Federation weirdness, sigh.
There's always going to be been a range of reactions to taboo-but-not-illegal art -- it's currently happening in the Lemmyverse with lemmynsfw -- or for that matter even some non-taboo topics that are seen by some as "objectionable". I agree that it's something that a lot of people are looking for and the federated approach seems like a natural for it, although Pixelfed might be a better fit for it than Mastodon.
Agreed that hyper-centralization is a problem, and also agreed that low-quality moderation is a problem -- and that awareness of cultural differences is key to good moderation. The approach of signing new people up by default on mastodon.social is ... suboptimal.