I frequently come across fairly aggressive criticisms of ATProto or Bluesky on the Fediverse, but the relative moderation loads of a PDS owner and the owner of a Fedi instance are hardly ever mentioned. Apart from redistribution of relative costs, the ATProto decomposition of the network into PDSs, relays and AppViews also distributes the load of moderation differently to that of the Fediverse. If someone is only running a PDS, and using a relay and an AppView provided by other parties, then they are legally responsible for moderating only the posts by users on their own PDS. In contrast, every instance owner on the Fediverse is legally responsible for moderating the entire slice of the Fediverse visible to their instance. Essentially, the owner of every Fedi instance with a decent number of users has to moderate more or less the entire network. Moderation is a huge, unceasing burden. There are so many stories of instance owners on the Fediverse burning out due to moderation responsibilities. So from the moderation point of view, I can understand why many technically proficient people may prefer to host an ATProto PDS, but not a Fediverse instance. Of course, there is a tradeoff—if the dominant AppView censors your PDS, then you are cut off from almost the entire network. But I think a lot of people may be willing to make that tradeoff simply to preserve their mental health. #ATProto #ATmosphere #Bluesky #ActivityPub #Fediverse #Mastodon