How moderation works
Moderation in Acorn is about keeping your community a good place to be, on your terms. This page explains the pieces. The next one shows you how to do the work.
Labels, not just deletion
Big platforms moderate by deleting and banning. Acorn gives you a fuller range. The core tool is a label: a mark you put on a post or an account that can add context, hide something behind a warning, or flag it for follow-up. Removal and bans are still there when you need them, but they're not the only lever.
Just as importantly, you get to set your own labels!
Your labeler
Behind the scenes, your community has its own labeler: the service that holds your labels and records every decision. It belongs to your community, like your data server does. When you act on a report, it's your labeler doing the work, and the record is yours.
Where reports come from
Members flag content they think needs a look. Each report lands in your queue with the reason attached. Nothing is acted on automatically; a report is a request for a human to decide, and that human is you or a moderator you trust.
Who moderates
You start as the sole steward. As your community grows you can bring in moderators: people you give the job to, working the same queue with the same tools. You stay in control of who has the role.