Sakurajima Updates – August 2023

As July ends, Sakurajima has grown considerably ever since Elon made a lot of damaging moves on Twitter, now known as 𝕏. Believe it or not, as of today, our Mastodon server has 421 monthly active users, and our Firefish (formerly Calckey) server has 88. This brings the total to 509 monthly active users across both servers, which is good.

Of course, a fraction of this is just a bunch of blank accounts that never got used after a week that we disable and intend to purge if they remain unclaimed. A small percentage of it is SPAM and accounts that broke the rules upon joining that we suspended.

Going forward, I expect the monthly active user total to drop slightly. Signups will require approvals once the Monthly Active User account total reaches 600. This is to manage the growth and size of the server. Anyone on Sakurajima may already use invite links to invite their friends. I can give invites out to creators who create content on Japanese culture or media to bypass the approval process.

Suspension of Pawoo.net

Tomorrow from our announcement last week, we will suspend Pawoo, upgrading our block from a limit. Pawoo was limited with media rejected in the past due to reports of CSAM and lolicon/shouta. While Pawoo has had numerous issues regarding moderation in the past, this issue worsened after the Mask Network bought them over. Ever since we are hearing instances where actual CSAM is being posted. This happened in April and recently when Misskey IO (the official Misskey server) suspended Pawoo temporarily.

With that, this is the final straw. Pawoo hasn’t been in a good place for a while. Looking at the federation stats of Pawoo, only about 25 people are being followed over there, and 2 users are following our users from Pawoo. This is compared to our users following 479 users at Misskey IO and 54 of Misskey IO’s users following our users. We know that this won’t impact our users that much. At the end of the day, safety is our number one priority.

We will be doing the suspension Saturday morning. Please back up your follower list if you are following users there and see if they are available elsewhere.

Moderators Wanted

Now that Sakurajima Social has grown, we are looking for moderators to respond to reports. If you are on the Fediverse for at least a month and have no strikes against you, you can ask to become one. Just send a DM to @chikorita157@sakurajima.moe providing a reason why. If I can trust you, I will invite you to our Discord channel and grant you moderation powers. Also, only users online at Sakurajima Social regularly and over 18 should apply.

In closing remarks, given the amount of growth and the Fedidrama, it has been a stressful month. I hope things will be smooth sailing as more people switch from X to Mastodon or whatever Fediverse software of choice.