Decentralized social media protocols enable users in independent, user-hosted servers (i.e., instances) to interact with each other while they self-govern. This community-based model of social media governance opens up new opportunities for tailored decision-making about information flows -- i.e., what user data is shared to whom and when -- and in turn, for protecting user privacy. To better understand how community governance shapes privacy expectations on decentralized social media, we conducted a semi-structured interview with 23 users of the Fediverse, a decentralized social media network. Our findings illustrate important factors that shape a community's understandings of information flows, such as rules and proactive efforts from admins who are perceived as trustworthy. We also highlight ''governance frictions'' between communities that raise new privacy risks due to incompatibilities in values, security practices, and software. Our findings highlight the unique challenges of decentralized social media, suggest design opportunities to address frictions, and outline the role of participatory decision-making to realize the full potential of decentralization.

翻译：去中心化社交媒体协议使用户能够在独立、用户托管的服务器（即实例）中进行交互，同时实现自我治理。这种基于社区的社交媒体治理模式为信息流动的定制化决策——即何种用户数据在何时与何人共享——开辟了新的可能性，进而为保护用户隐私提供了新途径。为深入理解社区治理如何塑造去中心化社交媒体中的隐私预期，我们对去中心化社交网络Fediverse的23名用户进行了半结构化访谈。研究发现揭示了塑造社区对信息流动理解的关键因素，例如被视为可信的管理员所制定的规则与主动管理措施。同时，我们强调了社区间存在的“治理摩擦”，这些摩擦因价值观、安全实践及软件的不兼容性而引发新的隐私风险。本研究结果凸显了去中心化社交媒体面临的独特挑战，提出了缓解摩擦的设计思路，并阐明了参与式决策在实现去中心化全部潜能中的关键作用。