Moderation update from CWG
Dan Phiffer Tue 21 Apr 2026 8:43PMPublicSeen by 162The Community Working Group operations team (CWG) met on April 17 and discussed a moderation case related to the Zeitgeist LLM client and its developer, Laurie Voss, who has been suspended on Social.coop since March 24. Today CWG is adjusting that moderation action to a limit setting and we wanted to explain our reasoning here.
The initial decision to suspend Voss was motivated by protecting the membership of Social.coop. Without any opt-out mechanism, the software he created violated our Federation abuse policy by subjecting our members’ posts (including DMs) to LLM processing. Now that the software supports an opt-out mechnism that violation no longer applies.
We also considered whether Voss's conduct on the thread discussing Fediverse expectations of consent rises to the level of a suspension. Laurie Voss is not a member of Social.coop and we considered whether non-members should be held to the same Code of Conduct standard that we expect of ourselves. While the CWG moderation actions only apply to members—a suspension in our Mastodon instance does not have any effect on other instances—it remains the basis for how we decide how to handle incoming reports and those mod actions do ultimately shape how our membership experiences the Fediverse.
The CWG came to a consensus that if we were to consider another similar report again, without a violation of the Federation abuse policy, most of us would moderate it as a limit instead of a suspension. However, we still find that Voss's conduct does violate the CoC, so the limit mod action seems justified to us.
We also think it's important for the CWG to develop a more clear set of formal conditions, with input from membership, that guide how we moderate cases. There currently is no mechanism to dispute moderation decisions and there should be. And the coop also needs deliberate further on policies relating to how LLM systems process our posts.
The CWG understands the frustration that members may feel when they disagree with a particular moderation case, and that our deliberations may not seem responsive enough when members do feel a need to object. While we cannot commit to having emergency meetings whenever a dispute arises we do think it's important to communicate an expected timeline for handling future disputes.
We are continuing to discuss how conversations with concerned members can happen more productively in the future. When complex cases like these arise, we want to set appropriate expectations about our ability to deliberate effectively. We think it's more important to come to a good decision using a process that builds trust than it is to get there quickly.
Aaron GKWed 22 Apr 2026 3:41PM
Thanks for the update. I think there's a need for folks to discuss possible changes to the code of conduct and federation abuse policies. Many folks felt that strong action like suspension against things like AI scraping is already warranted because scraping is often or usually disrespectful of consent. Additional folks felt that at least social.coop policies should be updated to spell this out more clearly. If anyone wants to take a thoughtful shot at starting that discussion I think it would be welcome and I'd be willing to help if possible. If no one else gets that started I will probably take a shot soon when I have time.
Caitlin Waddick, FWG/OCFri 24 Apr 2026 9:05PM
Hey yall, I am thankful to Dan for this update. ... I am a member of the Organizing Circle. I do not know all the details, but I understand that there were some strong opinions and "hard feelings" around a conflict as a response to this situation.
Thank you to @Matt Noyes for moderating the conflict. We are a stronger community for expecting conflict, normalizing it, and working through it, while caring for each other.
For those volunteers serving on our Working Groups and the Organizing Circle, are there next steps around this conflict that are needed, in your view? Or, is this conflict marked resolved, in your view? ... Maybe certain sensitive comments should not be posted here, or at all; yet, please do not let hard feelings fester completely out of sight. We are a cooperative community.
Thank you to our Community Working Group for continuing to evolve our content moderation policies and guidelines. I appreciate that you all worked hard to try to develop and apply our moderation policies as best you can. You showed up and hung in when "the going got tough."
The Organizing Circle members also made note that we can develop a policy about when our meeting notes are public and when they are private and confidential. In particular, since the CWG is speaking privately and confidentially about specific people, it would be expected that some portion of their meeting notes are not public or that public meeting notes might provide descriptions that the reference certain people anonymously to protect their privacy.
OC Members: @Caitlin Waddick, FWG/OC, @Dan Phiffer , @Flancian, @pjw@social.coop , @Luke Opperman , @Ammar , @Eduardo Mercovich , @Melissa Santos
Former OC Members: @Kathe TB , @MarieVC (social.coop/@MarieVC), @Matt Noyes
Other WG members: @Calix , @Andrew Escobar (Andres) · social.coop Finance Working Group , @Josh Davis, @Alex Rodriguez , ...
Dan PhifferSat 25 Apr 2026 1:42PM
@Caitlin Waddick, FWG/OC thanks for this follow up, I do think there are follow up actions from the meeting. The CWG has some changes in policy we’re considering, we’ll make sure to share them to Loomio once we reach consensus. And I intend to share meeting notes with everyone who was present and figure out how much of it we want to make public, if any.
Luke Opperman ·Tue 21 Apr 2026 9:56PM
Thanks for keeping us informed as you've talked this through, no disagreement here. Process-wise, I think this one went pretty well actually - perhaps there are contexts for a more formal and private disputation, but in general I think Loomio as the exception-handling venue is just fine, bringing input back to your regularly scheduled working group meetings.