IFTAS

You’ll notice we’ve given the project a fresh name this year. We’ve shifted from “Moderator Needs Assessment” to the Social Web Operations Survey because the roles across our independent spaces have grown so much. If you’re managing server infrastructure, handling legal and compliance tasks, dealing with industrialised spam waves, or doing the heavy lifting of frontline content moderation, this survey is built for you.

We run this survey every year for a very simple reason: to gather the hard numbers and real-world feedback we need to support the people building community on the open social web. Your experiences tell us exactly how to structure our guidance, where to prioritise our safety tool development, and how to advocate for resources that keep independent spaces sustainable.

We’re completely network-agnostic. Whether your community lives on ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, Pixelfed), ATProto (Bluesky), Nostr, Matrix, or independent spaces on Discord and Reddit, your feedback is essential. Any platform, any protocol.

We want to hear from the entire spectrum of people keeping these communities and services ticking, from single user instances to major service providers.

We know everyone is stretched for time, so we’ve rebuilt the survey on Tally this year. It’s lightweight, fully mobile-responsive, EU-based, and takes under ten minutes to complete. Every single question is completely optional, and all responses are processed anonymously.

We’ll be running the survey for a full month, so there’s plenty of time to get your thoughts in and pass the link along to your peers.

Take the survey: https://tally.so/r/81MW6k

See the 2025 report: https://about.iftas.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Social-Web-Trust-Safety-Needs-Assessment-Report-2025.pdf

The Social Web Operations Survey (historically the Moderator Needs Assessment) is an annual survey conducted by IFTAS to track the technical workloads, safety pressures, and operational resource gaps across decentral, independent networks (including ActivityPub, ATProto, Nostr, as well as volunteer-driven networks like Reddit and Discord).

Key Benchmarks (From our 2025 Survey)

• 45% of independent platform administrators concurrently juggle three or more major operational responsibilities, acting as systems engineers, community policy creators, and frontline moderators all at once.
• The ecosystem is facing a clear attrition of practitioners with a significant retention drop among administrators and safety team members who hit three to six years of activity without formal structural support.
• Mass-automated spam waves and coordinated disinformation campaigns have officially overtaken individual user report processing as the number one daily time and infrastructure drain on platform operators.
• The average ratio of active moderators to hosted accounts widened significantly over the past data cycle, shifting from 1 per 1,200 accounts to roughly 1 per 3,500 accounts.

In May 2024, we launched IFTAS Connect as a community platform to support volunteer moderators, administrators, and safety advocates across the decentralised web. Our vision was to provide a central space for collaboration, resource sharing, and mutual support, especially for those working in independent and often under-resourced environments.

Despite several hundred moderators signing up and expressing early interest, sustained engagement across the Connect portal and its associated Matrix Space (a collection of chat rooms) has remained limited. As we evaluate our role in this evolving ecosystem, we believe it is time to step back from hosting a dedicated community platform and refocus our resources where they are most impactful.

As a non-profit organisation, IFTAS relies on community support to operate. Our financial and staffing capacity is not unlimited, and hosting platforms such as Connect comes with direct costs, both technical and human. In the current environment, where funding has diminished, we must prioritise sustainability and impact.

After 18 months of operating Connect, it is clear that this particular space has not provided the kind of active collaboration we had hoped for. We believe that this may be a reflection of the need for smaller, more targeted, and organically driven networks of support. This is not a failure of the community, but rather an opportunity to rethink how collaboration can best be facilitated across diverse, decentralised projects.

We remain deeply grateful to those who participated, contributed resources, and helped build a shared understanding of moderation and safety in federated systems. The need for community remains, even if the model needs to evolve.

We extend our sincere thanks to everyone who joined IFTAS Connect, contributed their time, knowledge, and questions, shared resources, supported others, or otherwise helped build the space. Your efforts helped shape the Community Library and informed our broader work in ways that continue to matter. We are especially thankful to the moderators and safety contributors who helped keep the space respectful, accessible, and safe throughout its operation.

IFTAS Connect and the Matrix Space will remain available for existing accounts until 30 October 2025. After that date, both will be permanently shut down. New accounts can no longer be created.

The Connect Community Library will be preserved in static form on the IFTAS web site. Unless otherwise marked, all content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 licence, feel free to preserve copies of anything you deem valuable. The full archive will also be made available to any project, server, or individual who wishes to mirror or reuse the material.

The aggregated news feed from Connect will transition to a Channel.org feed. This will offer continued updates on trust and safety, regulation, and federated technology developments in a lower-overhead format. When this is ready, we’ll announce it on @iftas@mastodon.iftas.org.

IFTAS will not be hosting a new community forum ourselves. However, we will point to third-party community spaces that align with our values. In particular, we encourage moderators to review the discussion forum hosted at @moderation@activitypub.space. This community is available to any moderator on the Fediverse, and participation does not require a separate account. Simply mention @moderation@activitypub.space from your existing account to post or engage in the conversation.

For those seeking a more private communication channel, we will be operating a Signal group chat for verified community moderators. Participation will be by @iftas@mastodon.iftas.org, and membership will require demonstrated moderator responsibilities on a Fediverse server that hosts community accounts. This space will serve as a light-touch backchannel for peer support, coordination, and urgent queries. We will also offer a Signal group for the SW-ISAC, geared toward both admins and moderators to share information about network abuse, spam, illegal content and other threats. Send a direct mention to @iftas@mastodon.iftas.org for access to these groups.

No member data or content from IFTAS Connect or the Matrix Space will be shared, transferred, or retained after closure. All account information and related backups will be permanently destroyed following the shutdown.

IFTAS was created to support decentralised online communities in building safer, fairer, and more resilient digital spaces. That mission remains unchanged.

• We will continue advocating for shared resources, moderation tooling, and transparent practices. Our annual survey and other activities will continue.
• We will maintain our role in threat intelligence sharing, with a focus on coordinated abuse, network harms, and platform-level safety.
• We will continue working in support of marginalised communities, prioritising human rights, privacy, and safety online and offline.
• Jaz will continue to attend relevant conferences, maintaining relationships with internet safety regulators and ensuring the perspectives of decentralised communities are represented in wider policy and safety conversations.

The closure of IFTAS Connect is not the end of community collaboration. It is a recalibration. We remain committed to supporting moderators and trust and safety teams with open resources, shared intelligence, and public-interest advocacy. We invite those who share these values to stay connected through our web site, our Mastodon account, the news channel, and future initiatives that reflect the needs of decentralised communities.

CARIAD is intended to provide new service providers a basic, first step in reflecting the domain blocking activity demonstrated by high volume, well-regarded service providers, as a means to observe the most widely-blocked domains. IFTAS Needs Assessment respondents; community members; and advisors have asked for a shared knowledge of the most commonly blocked domains. The CARIAD list reflects the observed domain blocks affecting roughly 50% of all Mastodon accounts.

CARIAD combines data from two sources:

1. A curated aggregation of the blocks in place on high volume and well-moderated Mastodon service providers. To be eligible for observation, each service provider is reviewed for the following criteria:
   1. Have been in service for at least 6 months;
   2. Themselves have a demonstrable set of domain blocks already in place;
   3. Not themselves appear on the IFTAS denylists.
2. The IFTAS Do Not Interact list, a manually-reviewed list of domains labelled by harm.

iftas-cariad-latest.csv (Mastodon import format)

The permanent file location is:

https://about.iftas.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/iftas-cariad-latest.csv

(The file path includes ‘/2026/06’ which will not change; the current version will overwrite any previous version at this URL)

See Denylist Management Tools for third-party tools to import or implement this denylist.

IFTAS CARIAD Denylist Output – HTML table view of this denylist

The inclusion criteria is a mix of North American, Western European and Southeast Asian service providers. This biases the list in favour of white and global north speech and prejudices, and as such should be used only by new service providers who are comfortable reflecting the aggregated views of white or global north service providers.

Additionally, the sources represent some of the largest service providers, who have generally favoured preserving relationships over blocking speech and content, and therefore are less likely to take action against domains that others may consider worthy of blocking. Larger service providers are also less hesitant to block a small service with few accounts, which may lead to unintended aggregation of this bias.

As new entries become eligible for inclusion, they are reviewed by IFTAS. If approved for inclusion, entries are listed with the majority recommendation. Domains listed on the IFTAS DNI list are included at the IFTAS severity level, regardless of observed sources.

The database and its associated lists is reviewed at least quarterly by IFTAS to ensure the criteria are working as intended, and not causing harm to any community.

As and when domains fail to meet inclusion they will be delisted.

In order to appeal a listing, a request must be sent from an address at the listed domain (eg: abuse@example.com) to our contact address below, with evidence that the issue has been resolved. We may verify the address by sending back a confirmation message asking for a response.

Delisting requests must be sent to the delisting email address, written in English language, in text form: delist-cariad (a) iftas (.) org

Requests are typically investigated and processed within three business days.

All delistings are free of charge.

As an observational list, all listings are observed and reported. Each individual listing will remain on the list for as long as a listing is visible on any of the sources and meets the requisite threshold.

Access to the CARIAD list will be free and available via the domain observatory service. No payment is required for use of the list, nor for listing or delisting requests.

Members of the public may make enquiries about the list, or raise issues, using the email contact@iftas.org

We are excited to announce that @ted@an.errant.cloud and @andresmh@hci.social have joined the IFTAS Advisory Board!

Ted is a distinguished leader in open-source technology and digital public interest work. With his deep expertise in fostering privacy, transparency, and ethical tech practices, Ted brings invaluable insight to our mission of building safer, more equitable digital spaces.

Ted’s career spans pivotal roles in both corporate and nonprofit sectors, with a particular focus on open-source solutions that empower users and prioritize ethical use of data. As Director of Product at Mozilla, he led projects that promote user privacy and responsible tech development. Before Mozilla, Ted was the CEO of DocumentCloud, where he helped investigative journalists access critical information through open-source tools that strengthened transparency in the media landscape.

Andrés leads multidisciplinary research teams that build and study technologies designed to help people connect and collaborate in new ways. He is the director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at Princeton and an assistant professor in Princeton’s Department of Computer Science. He also serves on the board of Crisis Text Line. Andrés and his team have created and deployed social technologies used by millions of people, including the Scratch web site—an award-winning online community for children to learn programming.

At IFTAS, we are committed to creating a decentralised social internet that is safe and inclusive. Andrés and Ted bring a wealth of experience in trust, safety, and decentralised technologies to help steer our initiatives. In joining the advisory board, they will offer strategic guidance on key projects, including our ongoing efforts to develop a robust content classification service for detecting and mitigating harmful content in the Fediverse.

We are thrilled to welcome Andrés and Ted to our team, and we look forward to the exciting collaborations ahead as we continue working toward a safer, more just digital world.

The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is EU legislation aimed at curbing the power of dominant digital platforms, known as gatekeepers, by enforcing obligations that promote fairness and competition. These rules have been fully in effect since March 2024.

The European Commission is now reviewing the DMA’s impact, with a report due by May 2026. A public consultation now invites input from those most affected, including SMEs, civil society, and end users. Key areas under review include the effectiveness of the rules, their impact on users, and whether interoperability obligations should be expanded to cover social networking services.

In our response, IFTAS welcomes the progress made so far in addressing the dominance of powerful digital platforms. The current interoperability requirements for messaging services are a positive step, but they leave out a crucial part of the online experience: social networking.

At present, the DMA does not require the largest platforms to allow interoperability across core social networking functions. This includes timelines, follower relationships, and public content engagement. As a result, users are effectively locked into closed systems. If they wish to move to another service, they must leave behind their connections, visibility, and data.

We believe this is a missed opportunity to support fair competition, user choice, and digital rights.

Our submission recommends that the Commission extend Article 7 of the DMA to cover social networking services, using open technical standards such as ActivityPub and Matrix. These standards are already in use across federated platforms.

These platforms are often home to marginalised communities, mutual aid groups, and other public interest networks that rely on decentralised and safer alternatives to mainstream services. Without meaningful interoperability, these open networks remain cut off from the dominant platforms.

This reinforces existing power imbalances and prevents smaller services from reaching wider audiences. It also raises the cost of switching for users who want to leave exploitative platforms but cannot take their networks with them.

We also emphasise that interoperability must be implemented with clear safeguards. These should include strong protections for content moderation, user consent for data sharing, and measures to prevent harassment and abuse across connected services.

A more diverse and inclusive digital environment is already possible. Open standards and federated platforms show that a healthier ecosystem can exist, one that supports safety, transparency, and genuine competition. With stronger obligations in the DMA, the European Commission has the chance to make this a reality.

Our response is below.

IFTAS Submission to the DMA Review Consultation

re: https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/Consultation_Review_DMA

Question: Do you have any comments or observations on the current list of obligations that gatekeepers have to respect?

The current obligations under Article 7, focused on interoperability for number-independent interpersonal communications services, represent an important step toward platform accountability. However, they fall short in addressing interoperability across core social networking functionalities, such as feeds, follower relationships, and public content interactions.

We recommend extending Article 7 to include interoperability obligations for gatekeepers offering social networking services, using open standards such as ActivityPub (https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ – a Recommendation of the World Wide Web Consortium [W3] 23 January 2018). These standards already (https://ngi.eu/impact-stories/decentralised-social-media/) enable safe, decentralised communication across a federated ecosystem, as demonstrated by Mastodon, PeerTube, Pixelfed, and other open platforms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub#Software_using_ActivityPub). The absence of interoperability in this domain enables entrenched gatekeepers to consolidate user attention and restrict market access. Platforms with dominant social graphs and proprietary content ranking systems benefit from network effects that create structural barriers to entry for new or smaller services. This stifles innovation and reduces consumer choice in the online communications space.

Question: Do you have any other comments in relation to the DMA obligations?

IFTAS recommends that gatekeepers be required to:

• Publish and maintain interoperable APIs for social functionalities (posting, following, content and account discovery)
• Support recognised open standards (e.g. ActivityPub, Matrix [https://spec.matrix.org/latest/] )
• Enable meaningful interoperability with decentralised services while maintaining content moderation standards.
  

Without such obligations, the core social networking layer remains closed and non-contestable. Users cannot easily switch providers without losing their connections, reach, and history – all of which gatekeepers use to maintain lock-in. Additionally, without protocol-based competition, the market tilts toward scale and surveillance, rewarding platforms that exploit user data most efficiently. This creates a race to the bottom in terms of transparency, accountability, and platform governance. In contrast, open standards foster an ecosystem of diverse service models – including non-profit, cooperative, academic, and small business platforms – that can operate interoperably, safely, and competitively.

Question: Do you have any concrete examples on how the DMA has positively and/or negatively affected you/your organisation?

IFTAS supports decentralised online platforms and self-governed digital spaces. While the DMA’s provisions on messaging interoperability are a positive signal, the ongoing exclusion of core social networking functions from interoperability obligations remains a barrier.

For example, Mastodon and PeerTube platforms often host critical infrastructure for marginalised communities and mutual aid networks, yet remain disconnected from dominant gatekeeper platforms. Users who wish to migrate from a non-interoperating platform to a an open, federated platform cannot bring their social graph or maintain connections with their existing audience. Content posted in open, standards-compliant systems cannot be discovered or engaged with by users on major platforms, despite technical feasibility. Platform switching costs remain prohibitively high due to the lack of reciprocal interoperability. This reinforces monopolistic dynamics and discourages competition based on quality, safety, and trust, instead rewarding incumbents who control data flows and visibility algorithms.

Question: Do you have any further comments or observations?

IFTAS encourages the European Commission to take a leadership role in advancing interoperability by design, through:

• Supporting protocol-level mandates for interoperability of social networks,
• Recognising and recommending existing open standards such as ActivityPub and Matrix,
• Funding the development and adoption of open tools and federated ecosystems through public interest initiatives.
  

To ensure safety and human rights are upheld, we also recommend the inclusion of safeguards to:

• Preserve meaningful content moderation across federated systems,
• Require explicit user consent for data portability and federation,
• Protect marginalised users from cross-platform harassment and coordinated harm.
  

A future-ready DMA must not only limit market power, but also ensure that digital public infrastructure remains plural, rights-respecting, and inclusive. Expanding the DMA’s interoperability provisions would promote greater market diversity, reduce systemic dependencies on dominant actors, and enable a healthier, more dynamic digital public sphere.