There were two notable moderation incidents on mastodon.social and mastodon.online in the past 24 hours that I would like to address. In the first, a post was wrongfully removed due to a report claiming it contained a dogwhistle, and in the second, a person was wrongfully suspended due to a report claiming it's an impersonator. Both were undone and apologies issued.

The moderation team is bigger than ever and so is the amount of reports we have to process. We're dealing with unprecedented growth despite having closed registrations on these servers weeks ago. Some false positives are unavoidable, but we understand these mistakes are upsetting and unacceptable, and we are trying to do better. Luckily all moderator actions can be appealed and reversed.

@Gargron You haven’t reversed the massive dent in the trust and trauma for those on the receiving end however. Apologies are important, but they wash over quickly. Where is the evidence that they will learn, and that similar mistakes won’t be made. “Moderator actions can be appealed & reversed” is hardly a guarantee of safety.

@i_jayas @Gargron This presumes there's some future where humans are infallible and won't make mistakes again. This is not one of the options. All you can usually expect from anyone is "doing your best" and "reversing bad decisions."

@Gargron @mikebabcock “White men doing their best”: fills you with so much confidence. Especially when they reply out of turn.

@mikebabcock now might be a good time to educate yourself instead of asking someone else to do the work for you.

@i_jayas

@mikebabcock, first, making a philosophical statement about someone’s actual strife is marginalazing their concerns.
Second, it’s unclear whether you considered who the person posting was, before responding. It’s easy to say “doing your best is all anyone can do” in order to shirk the responsibility of accountability. … (continues)