“A Blocklist is a Boundary”: Tensions between Community Protection and Mutual Aid on Federated Social Networks

The Fediverse (the network encompassing Mastodon, Pleroma, Lemmy, etc.) provides a decentralized alternative to traditional social media platforms, making it both an important refuge for marginalized users and a platform which is well-suited for conducting mutual aid. One emergent type of moderation action for maintaining mutual aid spaces on the Fediverse is the use of community boundary blocklists, which we define as shared lists of Fediverse servers intended to be imported as a common blocklist. However, the use of community boundary blocklists has incited conflict on the Fediverse, with many users left cut off from their communities and sources of support due to actions outside of their control. Using an approach rooted in constructivist grounded theory, we interviewed nine Fediverse users, including a mix of community boundary blocklist curators, server staff, and regular users, to determine key tensions between community moderation and mutual aid practices. From our interviews, we identify the novel perspective of community stewardship as an act of mutual aid. We extend existing collective action and mutual aid frameworks to understand why this perspective conflicts with more typical mutual aid activities. We also observe how federation as a protocol encodes a negative form of consent, allowing users to interact by default and individuals to consent for their entire instance, leading to consent violations. From these insights, we develop a series of community-sourced suggestions for Fediverse platform designers, blocklist curators, and community staff to help address these conflicts and protect marginalized users.