Hey all,
Moderation philosophy posts started out as an exercise by myself to put down some of my thoughts on running communities that I’d learned over the years. As they continued I started to more heavily involve the other admins in the writing and brainstorming. This most recent post involved a lot of moderator voices as well, which is super exciting! This is a community, and we want the voices at all levels to represent the community and how it’s run.
This is probably the first of several posts on moderation philosophy, how we make decisions, and an exercise to bring additional transparency to how we operate.
“Add value and don’t be a dick” goes far as mantra.
Great read, thank you so much for sharing these, as they help build confidence for users about whether this right instance for them. Personally, beehaw.org has quickly become one of my favorite online spaces to inhabit for a long time (as you can determine by my average of 10 comments per day since joining). I love how directly your philosophy of the distributed governance of the Fediverse aligns with my own, and it feels like there hasn’t been anywhere else I’ve explored in the Fediverse where I’ve seen this kind of deep shared understanding about that the Fediverse is not a pooled cluster of compute resources, but instead a loosely associated grouping of self-governing online gathering places.
Keep being great. I have high confidence in this instance
I definitely echo this! Thinking through site philosophy and moderation policy and communicating both clearly while being honest about where the nuance lies takes work, but it is also the secret sauce that makes the community special.
I think the frequency and detail in these announcement posts is really important for establishing the culture of this space as it grows, too. It’s very transparent, and helps keep everyone reminded of what we should be doing.
I definitely put more thought into my comments here then I have in other spaces, trying to be intentional about Beeing Kind.
For example, I told someone off in another thread much more politely in much more detail than I ever would in other spaces, where pithy witty comments were the only ones that got attention.
the Fediverse is not a pooled cluster of compute resources, but instead a loosely associated grouping of self-governing online gathering places.
I haven’t seen anybody express my feelings about the Fediverse quite so succinctly, thanks for for putting this into words!
the Fediverse is not a pooled cluster of compute resources, but instead a loosely associated grouping of self-governing online gathering places.
What about those of us who desire to be part of a collective consciousness Borg-like hivemind that exists in symbiosis with our computer AI overlords?
With the Fediverse, you can have your biological and technological distinctiveness and eat it too! Perfection for everyone.
Well, then you will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own.
It’s great to hear from the mod team. I understand Beehaw as being a place that values respect, trust and discussion in good faith. I’d sum it up as “good vibes”. I made note of a comment somewhere on here that I gauged as primarily intending to rile up OP (effectively “what is the point of this post”). Not a horrendous comment by any means, but I’d classify it as being “not nice”.
Using Beehaw instead of other instances comes at the cost of missing out on places like lemmy.world, although they can certainly be used in parallel. In my view, the gain of being here is respectful conversation. I accept that some emotional volatility is to be expected when politics or the like are being discussed. Are users ever given a gentle nudge to “be(e) a little bit nicer next time”?
Are users ever given a gentle nudge to “be(e) a little bit nicer next time”?
I think the next post I want to do is specifically on the subject of moderation actions, escalation (nudge > direct request > content removal > community ban > instance ban) and how we make the decision for both the appropriate response for the infraction as well as what users can and should do when interacting with moderators asking them to change behavior.
The short and simple answer is vibes. If we step in and ask you to be nice and you swing back at us, we’re unlikely to be nice in response. If you aren’t the one escalating and you’re responding in kind or trying to deescalate then you have nothing to worry about. Being on our instance as opposed to other instances also means we’re gonna assume more good faith, since you’ve decided to abide by our rules and chose this place for a reason.
Are users ever given a gentle nudge to “be(e) a little bit nicer next time”?
yes, both through intervening on reports and temp-bans. we also have section bans at our disposal (although usually someone bad enough to ban in one section is bad enough to ban sitewide)
A major problem I encountered on another site was pedantry.
Often, people would make a nuisance of themselves by being deliberately obtuse and fixating on minor details, while not explicitly breaking the site’s rules. Though not overtly hateful or bigoted, pedantic comments could be remarkably exhausting and annoying. It could seem like someone was trolling, or trying to bait you into an argument, while skirting the rules to stay out of trouble themselves.
How do you moderate posts like that? Should they be reported?
Feel free to report anything you might find questionable or in bad faith. We keep our rules simple and very broad to avoid this exact pedantry and give mods more leeway to interpret situations as needed. If something is riding the line and is reported we may or may not remove it, but we WILL read into it and make a judgement call. Most likely someone would step in and try to steer the discussion into a more productive line.
Thank you! Overly specific rules can encourage people who are trying to break the spirit of the rule, but want to stay untouchable because they aren’t violating the letter. A bit of leeway and room for interpretation are exactly what these situations call for. Thanks again!
Yeah this is a problem everywhere especially on that other site. The more specific you make a rule the harder people rule lawyer it; well the rule says this, but I didn’t do that
Open ended rules like ours for be nice can be subjective however. One person might think telling someone how bad they look is being nice so they can change the look. The person being told they thinks the other is an asshole. But in the spirit of the rule, just be nice. Unfortunately it is a balancing act.
That behavior is often called sealioning and is a very well-worn tool in the cryptofacist’s toolbox. See also The Card Says Moops.
Oh that sealioning comic is a must-see
That’s quality right there. Plus, I forgot that site existed years ago, so now I have something new to catch up on!
Huh! Interesting. I didn’t know this technique had a specific name. Thanks!
In that case, why is it not enough to just ignore and avoid them?
If it was just occasional, then yeah, that would be the best way to handle the situation. Unfortunately, it became so widespread that I’d see it in virtually every popular thread. That’s why I asked for advice. Pedantry severely drags down the quality of conversations.
Most of the time, it was pretty obvious that these people didn’t actually care about the trivial point they were arguing over; they were just trolls who were good with language. I don’t want any kind of troll to feel welcome on Beehaw.
I see your point. Yes, I can see banning that once they’ve established a pattern.
Being a jerk is definitely not nice behavior. Most pedantic people are prone to escalation - they’ll misinterpret what you say, assume ill intent, and fire back insults in your direction. This kind of stuff is simply not tolerated. On a more nuanced level, if they’re baiting you or even just trying to prove their point and ignore yours, there’s a level of bad faith going on. If they truly wanted to have a conversation or understand your viewpoint, it’s usually very clear.
Of course, this can get tricky when discussing real world issues with real world consequences but even then, think to a measured debate or discussion on a tricky subject and how the people involved treat each other- humanity and respect is easy to recognize. Think of the nicest person you know, and how they’d talk about the same subject. We can’t hold everyone to that standard, but we can try to hold ourselves to that standard and disengage when we find ourselves failing it.
Be sure to report any and everything you see that gives you pause which hasn’t been actioned or where a moderator hasn’t stepped in. The more eyes we can get on a conversation the better we can tune into whether it’s how we’re personally viewing it versus how others do.
That’s great to hear. I visit this site to chat, learn, and relax. Others may like antagonistic debates, but I’m over them.
Also, I know y’all are super busy. Thanks for taking the time to reply!
It’s this friendly environment that keeps me on this server. Keep up the good work.
I’m really excited and happy to be a mod here. It feels supportive, friendly, and useful. I enjoy the transparency and the community aspect that all Beeples share. I am looking forward to the next steps in our adventures!
Thank you (and all of the mods, admins, and devs) for working to create a thoughtful instance on Lemmy … I love it here even though I don’t have the opportunity to spend much time online :-)
I just joined, so I can’t really speak too much about all of this from a point of experience on beehaw itself. It does seem like a lot of though has been put in this document which I do very much appreciate. In fact, it is one of the things that drove me to sign up for beehaw out of many other instances.
I do have plenty of experience moderating on “that other platform people are plenty mad at these days”. And I would like to share a few things for your consideration, if that is alright? To be clear, nothing in my comment below is intended as judgment on your current approach and philosophy. These are mostly (tangibly) related things I wrote down or bookmarked over the years that might be useful or relevant for your consideration.
As far as hate speech goes, there are indeed roughly the two approaches you outlined. Although I do think it often falls in between. I’d like to caution against the most egregious types of hate speech. I very much don’t think you’d leave those up, but I do like to share this story from a bartender about this sort of thing.
On Community-Based Moderation I do want to caution for something called the “the fluff principle”
“The Fluff Principle: on a user-voted news site, the links that are easiest to judge will take over unless you take specific measures to prevent it.” Source: Article by Paul Graham
What this means is basically the following, say you have two submissions:
- An article - takes a few minutes to judge.
- An image - takes a few seconds to judge.
So in the time that it takes person A to read and judge he article person B, C, D, E and F already saw the image and made their judgement. So basically images will rise to the top not because they are more popular, but simply because it takes less time to vote on them so they gather votes faster.
This unfortunately also applies to various types of unsavory/bigoted speech. In fact, I believe I remember reading that beehaw did de-federate from some other instances due to problems coming from them. So it seems you are aware of the principle, if only due to experience.
tl;dr Some waffling about moderation and me generally appreciating that thought is being put into it on this platform :)
Trigger warning - please be aware of this before following the link to the first article
I read the first article about the bartender and it shows, with no warning, a historical poster that seemingly has a photo of a dead child on it. I cannot unsee that. I would never seek that sort of thing out.
I thought I was just going to read a story about a bartender. Now I feel extremely distressed on a day when my anxiety was already through the roof and I need to start work.
Please, please put content warnings up for that sort of horrifying imagery.
Oh sorry :( It had been a while since I checked out the page and forgot the poster is part of the entire thing.
If you would be so kind, would you put ‘[NSFW]’ directly to the right of that link please?
Not meaning disrespect, but how on earth could you sit through history lessons in school? Plenty of themes involved imagary of that kind. Like the running and screaming kid just hit by napalm or agent orange.
We never saw anything like that in school (I’m in the UK), or were shown dead bodies/people dying/anything like that. The closest we came was travelling to places like the Somme and a lot about the world war.
TW, unpleasant content
spoiler
I remember watching a video at a concentration camp that showed people reduced to near-skeletons because of the horrors they were subjected to, starvation and so forth. I even educated myself in my own time on the horrors of nuclear war as a teen, the horrific injuries and deaths experienced by the victims of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki etc etc, but it still had a huge negative impact on my ability to function (see below) even though I was looking voluntarily.
And honestly? I **didn’t ** cope well. I have autism, ADHD and OCD (the former two I’ve only been diagnosed with in my 30s), which makes it very hard to filter out, compartmentalise or be ‘thick skinned’ about anything, despite working most of my life on it. I had a really, really hard time. It made my OCD go through the roof, I lived in constant fear and anxiety, and suffered with intrusive thoughts and images of the things I’d seen.
Unfortunately, not everyone is able to process that kind of imagery or story without it having a massive detrimental impact on their life.
In this case, I thought I was going to read a story about a bartender dealing with a patron he didn’t want in the bar, on an instance that I thought was safe from shocking content like that. Having a picture like that slapped in my face was, as I said, incredibly upsetting, and I had to spend time processing and dealing with the emotions it brought up (see disabilities above).
All I’m asking for it a content warning is all, so people can either choose not to look, or at least mentally prepare themselves. :) I hope that helps answer your question a bit, and I’m sorry if it’s rambly!
Edited to add: I didn’t mention it in my original reply because I didn’t want to be speaking on behalf of others, but there are probably a lot of people out there for whom stumbling across that sort of image would be way more traumatic for a variety of reasons. So my concern wasn’t just for me, if that makes sense?
You do make perfect sense.
Oh hey, you’re the toolbox dev. Thank you for your work! My mod teams over on Reddit got so much use out of that extension.
Words like “safe space” and “sanitized space” always seem loaded to me. It seems like it’s implying that the real problem is that people are too sensitive / too easily offended and not the person initiating the harmful content.
From what I’ve seen, there’s not an instance that necessarily aligns with my own moderation philosophy, so I plan to stay here, but I don’t necessarily agree with your approach, and I hope it’s okay to say this.
I prefer the term “tolerant space”.
The “paradox of intolerance” approach fits alongside the “safe space” terminology in that it assumes some natural order to things that needs to be understood and navigated.
Recontextualizing “tolerance” (the general idea) as “Tolerance” (the specific social contract) clarifies the situation: We are under no obligations to tolerate the intolerant because they have broken the reciprocal social contract of Tolerance.
A tolerant space is one where Tolerance is upheld and expected.
I really like this term. To be tolerant and inclusive of all people, it is necessary to exclude certain types of content. Bigotry would be the most obvious example of content that should always be removed and excluded from a space that is tolerant of all.
As a discord mod, I ALWAYS remove comments that are harmful to other users in order to have a tolerant space. I’m trying to conceive of a time when I would leave such content up as an example, as described in the OP here, and I’m drawing a blank. I can’t think of a time when it would be helpful to ever do so. It’s especially not true here where there are open modlogs. If people are looking for examples of comments that are not allowed, they are more than welcome to browse the modlogs.
I get that some people are just not educated or won’t always be perfect, but that’s still no excuse for leaving harmful content up in a public-facing way. Doing so actually makes your platform less tolerant and less welcoming.
I’ve not seen anything here that is necessarily harmful by the way, but just speaking to the philosophy described by OP.
Well said, I do like the phrase tolerance here for the reasons you’ve outlined. I also agree that by looking at “safe spaces” it’s really putting the onus on the people who are offended as opposed to the offenders.
If you roll up to a space known for its tolerance and you can’t get a long? You are probably the problem
It seems like it’s implying that the real problem is that people are too sensitive / too easily offended and not the person initiating the harmful content.
“Safe space” as a term comes from particular considerations about marginalized, especially LGBTQ+, people inhabiting academic space. The use of “safe” isn’t necessarily about the participants’ sensitivities so much as it’s in reference to a facilitator’s (such as a teacher) trustworthiness. As a queer person, can I come out to the person facilitating this space (and, possibly, to the others in this space) without fear of identity-based psychological/emotional or physical harm/violence? And can I trust that this facilitator will respect my identity and not harm me in any way?
“Sanitized space” — well, that isn’t really a term which comes from anywhere. We created it as a convenience for drawing comparison between other types of space.
Of course, the “paradox of tolerance” is something many of us are well acquainted with, and I think it’s always relevant when talking about bigotry. A space can’t be safe, sanitized, brave, accountable, tolerant, etc. unless we, as a rule, do not tolerate bigotry.
The problem with a “tolerant space” is that simple tolerance (with respect to identity) can imply some level of disagreeableness. Many people, especially queer people and people of color, don’t want to just be tolerated, as this can convey that our identities are something to be ‘put up with’ or ‘endured’ by others, when it should be bigotry that is the actual burden. In this case, what I personally want is acceptance and affirmation — to have my identity accepted, to have difference be welcomed, and to be affirmed in my experiences (especially with discrimination and bigotry).
Of course, you could say that leaving certain harmful content up makes a platform less tolerant, but as was raised in our philosophy article, what is the bar for harmful? Many of those who wrote this post, including myself, are frequent targets for bigotry, but our personal standards for ‘harmful’ aren’t universally applicable. Plus, it’s a lot harder to gauge the harm of long-form posts/comments than to moderate, say, messages in a chatroom.
The other aspect of this is: I hate having to wait on moderators and admins to take action, and I don’t want to put all the onus/responsibility for shaping the space on them. It’s glaring to me if other users don’t say or do anything about it and just leave it alone. A moderator can remove the content and ban the offending person, but it doesn’t get rid of the sour taste in my mouth that the others alongside me saw no need to do anything, which raises questions for me of their trustworthiness in handling other, more unclear instances of bigotry or more subtle prejudice.
I’ve been in spaces before which were highly vigilant in removing bigots and their speech, but even without them, what about the attitudes of others in the space? If they don’t take the right tone or approach to bigotry before the mod acts, it’s harder to trust them to listen when one of them does something less obviously harmful.
You may personally have not seen anything harmful on here, but I have seen stuff I would consider outright or subtly harmful, some of it directed at people like me. Honestly, I feel more assured when I can see that others have shown strong resistance to that kind of speech, which is what I’m really looking for to determine if a space is safe for me. Whether the content itself gets removed after that fact becomes of less consequence to me.
I’m personally more a fan of building an “accountable space”:
Accountability means being responsible for yourself, your intentions, words, and actions. It means entering a space with good intentions, but understanding that aligning your intent with action is the true test of commitment.
Accountable space guidelines allow for allies and marginalized communities to agree on a set of actionable behaviours/actions during the discussion to show allyship in real-time and after the event. It allows participants to align their well-meaning intentions with impact through a collective set of guidelines.
Accountable space guidelines do not place an unfair burden of bravery. They do not create mythical promises of safety and unicorns. They place an equal amount of onus for all to behave equitably and inclusively, to foster a deeper understanding of diverse lived experiences in real-time. (source)
I really like that term, “Accountable Space”. Thanks for introducing me!
You’re more than welcome to share your opinion. The issue I’ve found is that what’s considered harmful by different people varies quite a bit. Safe spaces online seem to run into a frequent problem of brooding persecution complexes which leads to having to self censor around specific individuals. This can lead to a very specific kind of bullying and in rare cases a hijacking of these spaces. More importantly for our purposes, it’s the assumption of bad faith that’s not compatible with what we’re trying to accomplish here- these spaces often become echo chambers for the most marginalized identities because no one is perfectly educated and omnipotent and any discomfort is viewed as problematic discussion and removed even in cases when it is tolerant (simply due to the perceived discomfort from having ones views challenged). They’re also fundamentally incompatible with intersectionality in a variety of ways, but perhaps most notably a person of privilege may be chastised for not recognizing their privilege or being educated and the person of privilege can use the idea of a safe space to censor a more marginalized individual on the grounds that it made them upset.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but I’m thinking for example of people who try to argue certain transphobic points of view, like claiming “there are two genders” or other thinly-veiled manifestations of bigotry. Imagine someone posting a Jordan Peterson video, for instance. It would only cause more harm than good to allow such things to stay up. It would push people away.
I think you’re actually being somewhat offensive by smearing people in marginalized groups with terms like “echo chamber” and “persecution complex.” That’s some really unfair loaded language you’re using there and really quite troubling that a moderator here is engaging in this type of campaign.
I disagree. I’ve seen the exact pattern of behavior Gaywallet is talking about, over and over again, in communities that vary from from YA writing advice to antique appraisal. Too often, we start subjecting each other and our allies to ideological purity tests that only get more stringent every time the current crop of “bad actors” or “disruptive influences” has been eliminated. And in a really disturbing number of the cases I’ve personally seen, the community member responsible (either officially or de facto) for creating these purity tests (and judging the results) isn’t a member of any of the marginalized groups they’re policing. In the rest of the cases when they were a member of a marginalized group, these folks have had a bad habit of seeing oppression as a ranked competitive event in which whatever group they belong to is the “most” oppressed, and therefore more important than the others.
For a real example, they might excuse themselves for referring handicapped people with a slur, but are very strict about moderating other peoples’ uses of everyday words/phrases that track back to a Native American concepts, even unintentionally. In (another, real) example of this, someone in a gardening forum I used to frequent got suspended for talking about wanting to set up a circular divided plot and calling it a “wheel garden”, because it’s shaped like a wheel, without knowing that the concept of a “medicine wheel” exists. For another real example in a different forum, and I swear to fucking God that I’m not making this up, a non-indiginous moderator who constantly talked about her “spirit guides” ended up removing/muting the posts from someone in a theater subforum who asked “What do you see as the spine of this play?” because the question was allegedly ableist against paralyzed people.
The practical result of all of this is everyone either walks on eggshells around that person and their direct reports, or gets run out. We’d constantly have to be trying to anticipate what new, unwritten rule of communication was coming next, because the warnings for violating it would only come in a very narrow window before the ban hammer started being applied. We end up with a place where we can’t even criticize the worst bits of our own marginalized communities (like, in my case, complaining about bi and ace erasure in the wider LGBTQ+ space, or the dubiously minimal gains we’ve made in intersectionality) without being censured, muted, suspended, or banned for being bigoted. That’s the definition of an echo chamber, and the constant sniffing around for more and more granularly defined “bad actors” generally meets the layperson’s definition of a persecution complex (note: I am not licensed to practice psychiatry or make medical diagnoses in your state/territory).
Just talking about the fact that this problem exists, and how it begins, is not bigotry. It’s a problem. And it needs to be addressed, preferably before people start talking about (real examples) how much a POS a white musical artist is for culturally appropriating dreadlocks or how racist it is for anyone other than Romani to read tarot cards. The kinds of spaces Gaywallet is talking about don’t just pop up fully formed overnight, they start out where Beehaw is now and slowly evolve that way over time. Talking frankly about how that’s not what we want to be and about how we plan to prevent that is not problematic, it’s necessary.
“There is no cause so right that you cannot find a fool who follows it.” --Larry Niven.
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Oh, you’re definitely right in that I’ve seen communities go the other way, and you’re also right in being concerned that the transition to alt-right-friendly is frequently more common than left-ideological-purity. Which way a community slides, or, whether it slides at all, is almost exclusively down to the community’s moderation policies and enforcement.
What you’ll also see a lot of the time is a community where the cryptofacists infiltrate the discussion with carefully-phrased bigotry, walking up to the ban-line and putting just the tip of their big toe on it. Then, when other community members (rightly and validly) tell them to fuck off, the community members risk getting moderated if their request for off-fucking is phrased too harshly. The alt-right basically use that kind of bright-line moderation as a shield, and won’t hesitate to report every negative comment they receive as a reply to “But what positive benefits to society do trans people provide? I’m just asking questions.”
So moderating a safe community is hard work, no doubt. There’s a fine line between over and under moderating, and we can’t easily rely on a rules-as-written method to do it effectively. There always has to be some degree of subjective discretion, but that degree of subjective discretion can’t be so far as to become a purity test.
So, yes, I agree with you that the terms “persecution complex” and “echo chamber” can be effectively weaponized, but it’s not the words themselves that are the problem. In their appropriate context, they’d perfectly accurate and useful for the creation of models and predictions. But the alt-right is famous for taking everyday words and phrases and trying to use them against us, because, to them, words have no real meaning. They’re used like magical incatations that are expected to ward us off and confuse us, rather than as tools of communication. See: “You’re being racist against white people!”, “I identify as an attack helicopter!”, or “You’re supposed to be tolerant!”.
It would only cause more harm than good to allow such things to stay up.
Absolutely agreed, we would be removing those. What you’re talking about is a space that’s intolerant of intolerant individuals. That is absolutely this space. But a safe space, a brave space, and a ‘sanitized’ space are all different concepts. Google can be of assistance for the first two if you need more context; the latter is defined in the piece we (admins and moderators, a diverse group consisting of several poc identities, men, women, nonbinary, lgbtq+, multiple theisms, and in general a high level of intersectionality) wrote.
I think you’re actually being somewhat offensive by smearing people in marginalized groups with terms like “echo chamber” and “persecution complex.”
Apologies if any of what I said was unclear. Echo chamber is not specific to marginalized identities and nor is persecution complex. These are specific kind of environments, and behaviors respectively. The nuances of this in relation to safe spaces are spelled out in the philosophy post, and I just attempted to distill a little of what isn’t fully touched upon or elucidated into a shorter form.
I’d like to address any concerns that you have, but I’m not sure what they are. Assuming my language is loaded without asking me questions about how I’m using my language has me hesitant and afraid to share more. I don’t want to upset you, but I’m struggling to understand your concerns, and when I tried to foresee them I both missed the mark and was chastised for it. If you have anything you’d like me to talk more about, could you help me understand the underlying concern you have here? What in the original post wasn’t explained well enough, or could use additional clarity?
I guess my primary concern is with language like “see a site where they don’t see unsavory comments at all” and even with the term “sanitized space” itself. It makes it seem like a platform free of hate speech isn’t a worthy or desirable goal.
Moreover, other comments in this thread seem to suggest that there in fact have been harmful comments not removed, which to me is indefensible.
If you see offending content, it should be removed. That is literally one’s primary duty as a moderator. I’m not saying every offender should be banned without recourse, but step one is content removal.
It makes it seem like a platform free of hate speech isn’t a worthy or desirable goal.
I don’t think that’s a fair characterization of what’s happening or what is explained in the philosophy post. In fact, we explicitly state that sanitized spaces are both desirable and needed in the world, but that’s not what we’re trying to accomplish here. The relevant quote is about 1/3rd of the way down, and copied here for posterity
To be clear: a sanitized space has its place. We are not disputing the overall utility of said spaces, and it’s fine to want one. For our purposes however this is not possible or desirable - we do not wish Beehaw to be a sanitized space.
We don’t spend a lot of time talking about the why, but that’s also explained in a footnote. Unfortunately we are busy running this website and moderating the content, which is a LOT of work - there’s often hundreds or thousands of messages a day in the moderator channels discussing what content should be left up and what should be taken down. There isn’t a ton of time to spend on posts like this one, which I made sure we prioritized, so that people could have better transparency into everything happening behind the scenes.
Moreover, other comments in this thread seem to suggest that there in fact have been harmful comments not removed, which to me is indefensible.
To be clear, nearly all harmful material is removed. This post was about the stuff that falls into a gray area, which we tried to do our best to explain. If you have specific examples of speech that you take issue with and are looking for more detail into why it remained up, feel free to reach out with tangible examples and we can do our best to explain how we arrived at a consensus on whether to leave it up or take it down. Most of the cases where content isn’t removed involve individuals who are learning and some of these examples actually result in the original poster editing their post and explaining that they learned something tangible that day and apologize for causing issues.
If you see offending content, it should be removed.
This is also addressed in the post - what is offensive to one user isn’t necessarily offensive to another user, and this is explaining how we do our best to accommodate that. Earlier this week there was an individual who had been traumatized by men who was offended by the very presence of cis men on this instance. If we were to accommodate this individual, we’d have to remove all cis men from the instance. That action would be offensive in and of itself to every cis man on the instance. There’s no way to accommodate both sides of this issue and that’s what the spirit of this post is about.
Okay, I think I understand better now. The post just sounded a lot like typical moderation on another site I used to visit, where it was a huge problem with literal hate speech left up in the name of “free speech.”
To answer your question from before: Maybe you could provide these tangible examples. It might make it clearer to people like me who have read so many things like this that ended up with us being subject to slurs, threats, or worse. Again, I have not seen this here yet.
I wasn’t trying to be difficult, just trying to determine if this is in fact a good place for me. Thank you for your time and explanation.
I understand being guarded against this. I have several queer identities, one of which is being trans, meaning that I’m often the target of hate speech. I have no desire to see this on this platform, and the easiest way to explain our space is to say that we are a safe space (this is itemized in another philosophy post), but we are not a sanitized space. I’m not sure how best to collect “best of community” type posts, or show examples of what gets left up, but I think you’re not the only person that this would benefit, so I’d love for them to get collected and shown off at some point.
This post was mainly to quickly address issues like the one I highlighted above, which are tricky to navigate. This post was to help users understand when they do come across content like this (which is awesomely quite rare) why it may have been left up. We of course always encourage you to report content if you are unsure, but we don’t always have time to explain everything and this is our attempt at a compromise where we explain the ideals as an attempt to gain a little bit of trust.
A situation that might be relevant to this. For most people in the western world communism (Marxism, Leninism, Maoism and all the variants) are largely theoretical constructs.
Unfortunately there are people for whom oppression under these kind of political order has not been that far in their memories. Beehaw for good or bad seems to have inherited a connection with lemmy.ml due to historical reasons and there seems to be many users there who bring bad faith support in this context.
Does this not count as important as transphobic or islamophobic content because it’s outside the general experience of people in the western world who likely makes up a majority of users on this platform?
From the perspective of a person in say America, it’s a theoretical discussion about something that acts as counterweight to the flaws of the capitalistic system, a topic of debate. Saying oppression under communist (popular definition, not technical) regimes are made up by western media is something that might not qualify as hate speech.
I’ve lived in places where you were brutalized and sometimes executed by maoists if you dared to leave your house after 5pm.
spoiler
I’ve seen a tree which was used to kill babies of supposed anti-communists by bashing their heads against it. You could see little bits of skull on the ground in the soil after all these years.
Edit: Added spoiler tag to some disturbing content.
Thank you for making me read this in the morning. You could have asked me a question without that imagery.
We do not allow bigoted content on our platform. This is explicitly called out in many parts of our philosophy documentation.
I apologize. It wasn’t my intention to hurt people in any way. An attempt at communicating how different realities might be based on where you’re from. I’ve tried to add spoiler tags to it, though I don’t know how successful it was.
In a way I’m sorry I asked this question as well.
Thank you for apologizing, I promise I’ll be fine 💜
A question I have about this is when we have communities with diametrically opposite points of view on a topic… Eg I’m a carnivore, and while I respect vegans/vegetarians I completely disagree with them on fundamental levels. Both sides have logical arguments, but the foundations and life experiences are different. Does beehaw have space for such opposing points of views, or does it lean to one side, opposing the other?
We are not thought police. You’re welcome to have opposing views to other members of the community. But if you share a view that is fundamentally hateful, erases the humanity of another individual, or is confrontational and escalating in nature, you may find yourself getting a reminder from a moderator to be(e)have and if you don’t you may find your content removed from our instance.
I’ve seen a couple of really ugly comments recently, where a mod had replied, and I had to click on the person (wanting to block them) to realize they had been banned. I really hope a future Lemmy update shows very clearly when that happens, because right now it just looks like we’re leaving the comment up. LEaving the comment up but showing the user as banned would be a relatively okay middle ground, I think.
it’s the best way actually, because it’s instructive to the rest. a red “user was banned for this post” like it was back on 4chan, it’s really such a simple and elegant solution to communicating rules & enforcement to the userbase through example.
Thank you for this, another great read. I’ve also enjoyed reading through the comments and discussions on it and feel like I’m getting more of a handle on the balance you’re trying to strike here. I really appreciate all the clear, engaging and comprehensive comments. They’re giving me a lot of food for thought! :)
You’re strong but nuanced take on moderation is exactly why I signed up. Keep on doing what you’re doing because I love it!
Question:
“It’s ok to punch a Nazi” or “It’s ok to execute a pedo” content acceptable? and tangentially related Publishing “Mugshots of criminals” fetishism posts, in the moderation philosophy here?
My personal ethos of moderation is to recognize in written policy that we have these biases to have “they/them” which can backdoor exceptions content moderation standards. The backdoor is that if someone is sufficiently and clearly “bad” for the majority of the community then it becomes ok to wish harm on or dehumanize someone. In my opinion shouldn’t entertain these sorts of post because of the harm/damage done if the mob is wrong, or harm to ourselves by indulging in this sort of pornography of moral certainty. Because as long as a broader culture finds certain categories of people are ok to dehumanize, then there’s no (real) objective check upon what is acceptable based on the desire of that majority, even in a community like beehaw.org.
A tangible legal example which I think provides an example of my personal philosophy is how Human dignity is enshrined in the first article of the German Basic Law – which is the German Constitution. Article 1 reads:
Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.
The German people therefore acknowledge inviolable and inalienable human rights as the basis of every community, of peace and of justice in the world.
The following basic rights shall bind the legislature, the executive and the judiciary as directly applicable law.
My two cents here is that if a social media policy is to succeed, it needs something akin to this in it’s “constitution”, because to not have it opens too much moral relativism by bad-faith actors unrestrained and unconcerned by cultural norms to test and push the limits of what they can get away with by dehumanizing their enemies off-platform. ( IE: imagine Pizzagate, and it’s ultimate effect on Beehaw if it’s premise was accepted by the broader community. )
I saw a very popular post on Beehaw yesterday that clearly fit this pattern, and it seems like content designed to test the relative limits of the moderation policy of philosophy of places like Beehaw.>
___–Ideally, we don’t want people dehumanizing others, ever. Realistically, if someone is intolerant to you, we’re not going to tone police you for responding in kind. There’s nuance in there we touched on a little with this post, but it’s hard to itemize every possible human behavior.
If you see anything on Beehaw that makes you think twice about whether it should be up, please report it.
I read this as modspeak for “ideally, those posts wouldn’t be up, but because it’s usually intolerant people we’ll file the calls for violence towards these groups as just minority frustration that shouldn’t be tone policed.” Am I correct in my interpretation?
There’s annoying insults and there’s normalizing violence and dehumanization of the Other. I’m going to be disgusted with myself if I ever dehumanize even the worst person out of frustration. Have to remember that no, they’ve not monsters, they’ve made a series of bad choices that any of us could have chosen to make, we could all be “monsters” if we choose wrong enough. They’re not some odd other species of being that we could never ever fall into being.
Kick them off the platform, figure out how to make acts of bigotry illegal, but I don’t believe in violence unless it’s protecting yourself or others. And what I see looks much less like a preemptive strike to protect yourself/others and more like “whee, acceptable target, it’s punching time baby!”
I’m not sure I completely follow what you’re saying or asking, could you reword if you still have questions for me?
Ideally, we don’t want people dehumanizing others, ever. Realistically, if someone is intolerant to you, we’re not going to tone police you for responding in kind. There’s nuance in there we touched on a little with this post, but it’s hard to itemize every possible human behavior.
You’re posting that in reply to someone’s question about whether content about mugshots of awful criminals, about Nazi punching, and pedophile execution is acceptable, and their concern about whether it’s okay to dehumanize and wish harm on these people.
I am interpreting your reply as a diplomatically-worded and unclear way to say “Ideally, this kind of content would be unacceptable, but in practice we will let it fly because it’s just minority frustration at people being awful and telling them to stop would be tone policing.” I am also autistic and would like to know if my interpretation is correct, because my disability has gotten in the way of me interpreting people correctly before.
The rest of my reply to you was not a question but me stating my own views for context. I’ll try to explain it again, sorry for any confusion.
There’s annoying insults and there’s normalizing violence and dehumanization of the Other. I’m going to be disgusted with myself if I ever dehumanize even the worst person out of frustration. Have to remember that no, they’ve not monsters, they’ve made a series of bad choices that any of us could have chosen to make, we could all be “monsters” if we choose wrong enough. They’re not some odd other species of being that we could never ever fall into being.
I also heavily disagree with allowing that sort of content. Dehumanization leads down dangerous roads, such as believing you could never ever be like your enemy, because after all, they’re not human. It leads to violation of rights because hey, they hurt someone too, let’s make them feel the pain 3x worse as punishment! Allowing calls to violence just seems very bad to me too.
Kick them off the platform, figure out how to make acts of bigotry illegal, but I don’t believe in violence unless it’s protecting yourself or others. And what I see looks much less like a preemptive strike to protect yourself/others and more like “whee, acceptable target, it’s punching time baby!”
I hold the view that that content should not be allowed while also believing that Nazi content and “it’s just freedom of speech” justifications for Nazi content should be removed and the Nazi should be banned. I do not support them or their views at all, but I do support not allowing any calls to violence or dehumanization, even if the person you want to dehumanize is really really bad. I also perceive the recent Nazi-punching content to be less about violence for the sake of protecting others and more about having an acceptable target to dehumanize.
it’s just minority frustration at people being awful and telling them to stop would be tone policing
I don’t think it’s fair to characterize it as simply frustration. These people are at serious risk of harm and death by some of the individuals who have passed or may even have friends or important figures in their lives who were directly harmed or even worse killed by intolerant people’s actions. I personally see no issues in them celebrating the fact that a person who caused harm and violence on the world is now unable to do so and that the world is a safer place with them gone.
Like any comment there’s going to be an axis of acceptability that it falls upon. A short comment simply celebrating this with words like ‘nice’ or ‘lol’ is very different from a one page manifesto of insults. There’s also just the general vibe of a thread- too much negativity and short one-liners which don’t promote discussion aren’t particularly helpful for the website either, so moderators may step in and lock the post or remove comments if it’s inspiring people to act negative towards each other.
For what it’s worth I’m also a heavily nonviolent person. I would rather die than inflict harm on just about anyone, simply because I do not wish to live with that burden. I’m not one to call for violence on anyone, but I understand that the world doesn’t exist in black and white and minority individuals need space to vent emotions, including anger, in a healthy manner. I think that it’s fair and necessary and good to be intolerant towards intolerant individuals and what that means from person to person is going to be different. I’ll probably never punch a nazi for the reasons above, but I’m not going to take that away from anyone else.
Do you have any recommendations for a space like Beehaw that’s free of that kind of content? I suppose I’m oversensitive. I wouldn’t tolerate a Nazi on an instance but I also really really really do not like celebrating violence. It’s not celebrating “they can’t cause harm anymore,” it’s celebrating the act of punching. Taking an army against the Nazis stopped them from committing more atrocities on a large scale, this is fine. Never heard of punching individual Nazis stopping any of them from just plotting out how to hurt more people and get back at the person who punched them.
For me acceptable intolerance is deplatforming, making it illegal, taking away their megaphone and not letting them play ball, not “violence is GREAT against the intolerant group and we’ll celebrate it” instead of “violence is a necessary evil we sometimes have to take out to stop intolerant people for making it worse for us.” Not violating basic human rights. Even “nice” and “lol” when someone fucking dies is not something I can really get behind. I get why people have the feelings, I really do, but I don’t want to see it and I have to figure out how to curate my experience to easily avoid that given that a lot of online safe spaces for minorities actually don’t curate that out. What to do when you’re a minority that needs to not have “but freedom of speech” when people post slurs, but also needs to not have “lol” when someone dies…
I suppose I should have spoken more carefully because I fully understand the actual threat the rise of neo-Nazis can pose, especially given the anti-LGBTQ+ laws actually being enacted in the modern day. “Minority frustration” was probably reductive though I did not intend to be—I think I grabbed it from several posts on the topic of “are people allowed their vent spaces” and I need a better way to express that I understand the dangers while also managing to convey my point. I understand people need their vent spaces. I want to find a space safe from the vents.
Blocking a lot of the news subs should be pretty helpful, but I’m still curious if you know of any spaces that don’t tolerate bigotry but also don’t make room for these type of posts.
We’re probably one of the most highly moderated spaces on federated software. I am not aware of any spaces that are more moderated. I would encourage you to take your mental health seriously and if you need a more sanitized space to seek it out or work with a professional to see if there are coping strategies that can help you when you encounter this kind of behavior as it’s openly and extremely present in the world at large.
Considering that one of those is about executing someone with an internationally recognized mental illness that is out of their control. For a thought crime.
Probably not.
Objectively, no “sympathizing” happening here, factual discussion can’t happen when one party assumes the other is arguing in bad faith and uses that as a premeditated weapon to push the argument in their direction.
You make a good example as to why such content should be discouraged. Because most people will be ignorant of the real-world details, and instead follow the crowd on social media opinions and misinformation. Thus, leading to nonsensical statement such as that, where the thing they think they are talking about is entirely different than the actual thing they are talking about.
I only have one very specific situational question. On Reddit I was permanently banned from r/politics because when Rand Paul tested positive for COVID, I commented “lol.” Is that also considered unacceptable here? If it is I am fine with that, I just want to know what level of basic decency we’re expected to show towards public figures we don’t like so I can properly self-edit my tone. I am not going to go actively wishing harm on anyone but I thought this was a relatively innocuous comment when I made it and not deserving of a ban, much less a permanent one.
I wouldn’t ban someone permanently over something so minor. A mod might remove a comment like that, but that’s a really minor thing to get banned over. Celebrating the fact that a figure who did tangible harm to people can no longer do so isn’t exactly the kind of behavior I’m worried about on this site.
Cool thanks for the reply.
