Hello World,
following feedback we have received in the last few days, both from users and moderators, we are making some changes to clarify our ToS.
Before we get to the changes, we want to remind everyone that we are not a (US) free speech instance. We are not located in US, which means different laws apply. As written in our ToS, we’re primarily subject to Dutch, Finnish and German laws. Additionally, it is our discretion to further limit discussion that we don’t consider tolerable. There are plenty other websites out there hosted in US and promoting free speech on their platform. You should be aware that even free speech in US does not cover true threats of violence.
Having said that, we have seen a lot of comments removed referring to our ToS, which were not explicitly intended to be covered by our ToS. After discussion with some of our moderators we have determined there to be both an issue with the ambiguity of our ToS to some extent, but also lack of clarity on what we expect from our moderators.
We want to clarify that, when moderators believe certain parts of our ToS do not appropriately cover a specific situation, they are welcome to bring these issues up with our admin team for review, escalating the issue without taking action themselves when in doubt. We also allow for moderator discretion in a lot of cases, as we generally don’t review each individual report or moderator action unless they’re specifically brought to admin attention. This also means that content that may be permitted by ToS can at the same time be violating community rules and therefore result in moderator action. We have added a new section to our ToS to clarify what we expect from moderators.
We are generally aiming to avoid content organizing, glorifying or suggesting to harm people or animals, but we are limiting the scope of our ToS to build the minimum framework inside which we all can have discussions, leaving a broader area for moderators to decide what is and isn’t allowed in the communities they oversee. We trust the moderators judgement and in cases where we see a gross disagreement between moderatos and admins’ criteria we can have a conversation and reach an agreement, as in many cases the decision is case-specific and context matters.
We have previously asked moderators to remove content relating to jury nullification when this was suggested in context of murder or other violent crimes. Following a discussion in our team we want to clarify that we are no longer requesting moderators to remove content relating to jury nullification in the context of violent crimes when the crime in question already happened. We will still consider suggestions of jury nullification for crimes that have not (yet) happened as advocation for violence, which is violating our terms of service.
As always, if you stumble across content that appears to be violating our site or community rules, please use Lemmys report functionality. Especially when threads are very active, moderators will not be able to go through every single comment for review. Reporting content and providing accurate reasons for reports will help moderators deal with problematic content in a reasonable amount of time.
It’s crazy to see the stark difference in
- CEO killed and that’s bad, you can’t say anything negative about dead people with families
And
- President of Syria is dead and that’s good, we should all be able to agree that Freedom Rings with the execution of this human filth
Real mixed bag of moderation from a community that seems overwhelmingly in favor of killing certain kinds of people and extremely touchy about other kinds of people.
If you doubt this, stop and do one simple thought experiment. What would you be allowed to post on Lemmy if police identify, track down, and execute the CEO Slayer?
It’s all down to the instance owners political compass. However they ‘feel’ is how the rules are made. They’re treading a very dangerous line given how this platform is still in its infancy and we all just migrated from reddit after their owner decided to do the same.
If you lift the hood of Lemmy up too far, I think you’re going to find a lot of the same cockroaches underneath.
I had a feeling that was the case. Going to have to switch instances and set my own up and only federate with ones that aren’t so censorship heavy.
If you want a US based-instance
- https://discuss.online blocks hexbear and lemmygrad
- https://lemmy.today does not block anyone
If you want a non US instance
- https://sopuli.xyz blocks hexbear and lemmygrad
- https://lemm.ee has a very short blocklist
Thank you kind stranger! I actually started a hexbear account just to see what that instance was all about… but those people seem … somehow beyond psychotic, hard to even classify because of how unhinged they are. It almost reads like satire half the time but not in a good way. So I just want to thank you for giving instances that block that toxicity.
Hexbear is something. !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works can be useful if you want to have a look at what is happening there
Ahh you see this has all been already settled for you, take the case of Twitter.
Calls of violence are not allowed on Twitter! Wow so simple right? What if there was a notorious user who was also a US President and made a call for violence? Well… guess what Twitter clarified those rules by saying:
You’re allowed to call for violence if you’re talking about America’s foreign policy.
That’s why you can say “death to Assad” but you can’t say “death to healthcare CEO”. It’s all propaganda anyway. While there are liberals who truly believe “all lives matter”, they’re few and far between, most liberals use civility as cover for their ideology. That’s why healthcare CEO death is bad, but Assad death is good.
You’re allowed to call for violence if you’re talking about America’s foreign policy.
Cool cool cool. Glad we got that cleared up. Liberty, Whiskey, and Sexy are back on the menu.
Hey the really cool question is: when is .World going to start complying with German law and purge all the pro-Palestinian content because it’s “antisemitism”?
Depending on which community you’re in, mods are already doing it.
