This is a very interesting article about the long-term sustainability of the Fediverse for moderators, administrators, and developers. We’ve already had two of our lovely Beehaw admins take breaks to take care of themselves as they experience the burnout associated with maintaining a community, and I think for a lot of use we already know how exhausting it can be to take a center stage position in an online community.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any great starting points for what to do, but at least talking about it is a start.
Does the Fediverse have more of a mental health problem than other social media sites? Or is it just more visible and more likely to be hidden away?
Yeah, exactly. Commercial social media sites pay workers in low-wage countries to moderate content. Plenty of stories out there about the toll it takes on them, but it’s easy enough for the commercial sites to just keep finding more cheap labor. Fedi is mostly volunteers so it’s quite different, and much more visible.