Uncensored social media: a working reference

Uncensored, applied to social media, does not mean that nothing is ever removed. It means that no single authority can remove something everywhere. On the networks built for this, a post lives on the server its author chose, and only that server's operator or the author can delete it. Another server can refuse to show it, a client can hide it and a reader can block it, but none of them can reach across the network and make it disappear. Censorship becomes a local decision that others are free not to follow.

That is a different thing from the platforms that advertise themselves as uncensored. A company that promises free speech still owns the servers and writes the terms, and its promise lasts only as long as its owners and its payment processors allow. The structural version, with open protocols, many operators and identities that can move between them, is the subject of these notes, because it is the version that survives a change of mind.

The notes describe the protocols in use, how moderation works when there is no centre to do it, the law that still applies to everyone who runs a server, and the consequences, both welcome and unwelcome, of taking the censor out of the middle.

Four open protocols carry most of the uncensored social web, and each draws the line in a different place.

ActivityPub has been a W3C Recommendation since January 2018 and is the protocol of the Fediverse: Mastodon, Pixelfed, Lemmy, PeerTube and, since 2024 and in part, Meta's Threads. Every account lives on one server, and servers exchange posts and follows directly. Removal is the operator's decision, and a server that objects to another can stop exchanging with it altogether.

The AT Protocol, built by Bluesky and opened to other operators in 2024, separates the parts. A personal data server holds an account's posts, relays gather them, applications present them, and labellers, which anyone may run, attach the warnings and blocks that a reader chooses to subscribe to. An identity is a decentralised identifier and can move between servers together with its followers.

Nostr removes the server from the identity altogether. An account is a pair of cryptographic keys, posts are signed events, and relays, which are plain servers anyone can run, store and forward them. A relay may refuse an event; the author publishes it to another, and readers choose which relays they read.

Matrix, in use since 2014, is a protocol for rooms replicated across home servers. It is used for conversation more than for public posting. A room's history exists on every participating server, so no single operator can erase it.

What decides a protocol's reach is which platforms adopt it, the cost of running a server, and whether identities can leave when an operator changes course.

Taking away the central moderator does not remove the work. It moves it.

On the Fediverse the unit of moderation is the server. Each has rules, an operator who enforces them, and the power to silence or suspend a remote server for its own members. That last measure, called defederation, is tracked informally through shared blocklists and the FediBlock hashtag. The Mastodon server covenant asks operators to moderate actively, and IFTAS, a non-profit organisation for trust and safety on federated networks, publishes guidance and shared signals for those who do.

On Bluesky's network the unit is the label. Independent labellers mark accounts and posts, and each reader subscribes to the labellers they trust, so two people using the same application can see different networks. On Nostr the units are the relay and the client. A relay declares what it will carry, and clients provide mute lists and web-of-trust filters under the reader's control. In every case the reader's own block and mute lists do more of the work than they did on the large platforms.

The model has two clear strengths: a poor decision stays local, and a community can set standards stricter than any global platform would. It has two clear weaknesses: the same illegal content must be found and removed by thousands of operators separately, most of them volunteers without tools or legal advice, and the burden of harassment falls hardest on whoever runs the smallest servers.

The absence of a central censor does not mean the absence of law. Whoever runs a server on an open protocol is, in law, a hosting provider, and the duties written for platforms fall on that person too, sometimes scaled down but not waived.

In the European Union the Digital Services Act binds every hosting service. It must offer a way to report illegal content, act once it knows of it, and give a statement of reasons for every restriction. Micro and small enterprises are exempt from some obligations, but not from those on illegal content.

In the United Kingdom the Online Safety Act 2023 applies to any user-to-user service with a link to the country, whatever its size. Its duties on illegal content have applied since March 2025 and its duties on child safety since July 2025. Ofcom has said plainly that volunteer-run forums are within scope, and several closed rather than carry out the required assessments.

In the United States, Section 230 protects an operator from liability for users' posts and for removals made in good faith. That protection is what makes running a public server feasible at all. It does not extend to federal criminal law, and the duty to report child sexual abuse material applies to every provider.

Identity adds a second layer. A key-based identity on Nostr cannot be revoked by anyone, which protects a dissident and a fraudster alike. Data protection law still applies to the relay that stores the events, and a server operator in Europe is the data controller for the accounts it hosts.

What will change this picture is enforcement, which has so far fallen on the largest platforms; test cases against small operators, of which there have been few; and the protocols' own tooling for the legal minimum, which is improving.

The consequences of uncensored social media arrive in both directions, and a fair account lists both.

On the credit side there is no single switch. When a state blocks one platform or an owner changes its rules, the networks built on open protocols absorb the migration. The Fediverse grew in each wave since 2022, and Bluesky gained millions of accounts in the week Brazil blocked X in 2024. Identities and followers can move, so a community's archive is not held hostage to one company's fortunes, and local rules let a community be stricter, or looser, than any global policy.

On the debit side there is everything a central moderator used to absorb. Spam waves hit every server at once; a coordinated wave in February 2024 filled Mastodon servers with automated sign-ups faster than volunteers could close them. A study published by the Stanford Internet Observatory in 2023 found child sexual abuse material on Fediverse servers that no shared system was detecting. Harassment finds the smallest servers the softest targets, misinformation moves without a trust and safety team to slow it, and the volunteers who run the servers burn out, so that servers close and take their members' histories with them.

The trade is not new. It is the trade every open network has made since email, and the purpose of a reference is to make it visible. The stream on this site follows sources that document both sides.