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  "path": "/post/22059222",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-04T03:19:36.000Z",
  "site": "https://lemmus.org",
  "tags": [
    "Fediverse",
    "rimu",
    "278 comments",
    "https://join.piefed.social/2026/05/04/ai-assisted-moderation-in-the-fediverse-is-happening-now-what/"
  ],
  "textContent": "submitted by rimu to fediverse\n307 points | 278 comments\nhttps://join.piefed.social/2026/05/04/ai-assisted-moderation-in-the-fediverse-is-happening-now-what/\n\nI recently discovered that some popular federated instances have been using LLM-assisted moderation tooling that evaluates whether someone has said something bannable. They do this by running a script/app that sends the user’s comment history to OpenAI with the question “analyze this content for evidence of _specific political ideology_ sentiment. Also identify any _related political ideology_ tropes“. (The italic bits are where I’ve redacted the ideology they’re seeking).\n\nOpenAI’s LLM (they’re using GPT-5.3-mini) then responds with something like:\n\nand so on, hundreds of comments.\n\nI have not named the instances or people involved, to give them time to consider the results of this discussion, make any corrective changes they want and disclose their practices at their own pace and in their own way. I have also redacted the evidence to avoid personal attacks and dogpiling. Let’s focus on the system, not the individuals involved. Today these instances and people are using it and maybe we’re ok with that because it’s being used by groups we agree with but what if people we strongly disagree with used it on their instances tomorrow?\n\nThe use and existence of this tooling raises a lot of other questions too.\n\nWhat are the risks? Fedi moderators are often unsupervised, untrained volunteers and these are powerful tools.\n\nWhat safeguards do we need?\n\nWould asking a LLM “please evaluate this person’s political opinions” give different results than “find evidence we can use to ban them” (as used in the cases I’ve seen)?\n\nWhat are our transparency expectations?\n\nIs this acceptable and normal?\n\nShould this tooling be disclosed? (it was not – should it have been?)\n\nIf you were given a choice, would you have opted out of it?\n\nCan we opt out?\n\nAre there GDPR implications? Privacy implications? Should these tools be described in a privacy policy?\n\nAre private messages being scanned and sent to OpenAI?\n\nHow long should these assessments be retained and can we request to see it, or ask for it to be deleted?\n\nOnce the user’s comments are sent to OpenAI, is it used to train their models?\n\nWhat will the effect be on our discourse and culture if people know they are being politically profiled?\n\nWhere are the lines between normal moderation assistance tools, political profiling and opaque 3rd-party data processing?\n\nI hope that by chewing over these questions we can begin to establish some norms and expectations around this technology. The fediverse doesn’t have any centralized enforcement so we need discussions like this to develop an awareness of what people want in terms of disclosure, privacy, consent and acceptable use. Then people can make choices about which instances they join and which ones they interact with remotely.\n\nAnd of course there are the other issues with LLMs relating to environmental sustainability, erosion of worker’s rights, increasing the cost of living and on and on. I can’t see PieFed adding any functionality like this anytime soon. But it’s happening out there anyway so now we need to talk about it.\n\nWhat do you make of this?",
  "title": "AI-assisted moderation in the fediverse is happening. Now what?"
}