I think the current methodology skews the data; consider that an instance federated with say, Hexbear, is probably going to have significantly more individual and community bans than an instance who only made 5-6 bans before recognizing the pattern and blocking the instance.

If the goal of this study is to see which places most aggressively moderate their content, you’re actually getting somewhat of the reverse.

Very interesting stuff! Defederations should count as a ban of all instance users, imo.

Yeah BlueSky is a solid side-step. It’s still for-profit and not federated but every BlueSky user is one not on X. And a lot of BlueSky’s userbase is comprised of particularly influential X users so them leaving is particularly harmful to the ecosystem.

I also think it’s funny how the journalists who repeat BlueSkys “decentralized” nonsense thought Mastodon was too weird and technical, and yet are promoting Pixelfed. Not complaining, but it is funny.