Combatting Misinformation in Decentralised Social Media: Understanding User Engagement and Incentives

The spread of misinformation has become a pressing issue on social media platforms. Decentralised social media, which use open-source software and/or blockchain technology, are particularly prone to misinformation in the absence of a central platform authority. At the same time, the decentralisation of social media introduces new user-centric approaches to combatting misinformation combat that their centralised counterparts are unable to provide. Information Systems (IS) research is needed to understand the engagement in, incentives for, and implications of combatting misinformation on decentralised social media. In this paper, we report preliminary findings from an interview study with users from different decentralised social media platforms such as Mastodon, Hive, and Lemmy. Based on an inductive analysis, we develop a model of misinformation combat incentivisation in decentralised social media. The model explains how community-led moderation and sociotechnical incentive structures such as token and reputation rewards replace centralised, operator-driven misinformation combat initiatives.