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.
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I think diversifying mods is a good idea.
The one who “misinterpreted” the rules is a mod of pretty much all the main subs on world.
There’s a handful of accounts like that. And they hold way too much sway on the instance as a whole. It’s what got reddit in trouble. Mods would add each other as mods in other subs, and it ended up with a whole bunch of super mods with way more influence then they should have had. Especially since that mainly happens when mods agree on things.
Make a limit, even 10 which feels huge would be better than nothing.
Otherwise a handful of people can chase away the entire userbase. Because when a big news story breaks, they control almost all the serious discussions. Which is what happened here. And it’ll happen again if things dont change.
I think diversifying mods is a good idea.
Great, so then every post gets 10 chances to be incorrectly identified and culled? We don’t need diversity of opinion here, we need quite the opposite. We need a unification of opinion so that rules can be solidified around that.
We need a unification of opinion so that rules can be solidified around that.
No one says we wouldn’t. That would still have to come from the admins…
The point is one rogue mod can’t “misinterpret” something and enforce it in:
News, Politics, World News, and World News Politics.
If they limited a single mods crossover, then it would mitigate the damage done by “misinterpreting”.
Like, this is basic compartmentalization, it has nothing to do specifically with the fediverse or even social media…
You just don’t set up an organization where a handful of people have day to day control, especially when it’s all volunteers. You got to spread it around for a multitude of reasons.
No way, get this outta here. Last thing we need is the same mod on every community on every instance going wild with power. This line of thinking allows and empowered that sort of behavior.
many communities would be happy to have more mods. many of these cases come from the lack of people volunteering to moderate a community. this is already being considered when people are promoted as moderators in communities by our admin or community team if a community doesn’t have active moderators. we already try to find people that aren’t already moderating as many communities in those cases.
I 100% get it.
I mod one sub because it was vacant and someone asked me, and another because I was going to post there but it was vacant so I requested it.
We 100% need more people to step up.
But even if those subs just opened the door, the same ones will still be above everyone in the chain.
Especially with communities where the top couple mods gave up on their account and it’s a zombie. Someone could be 3rd or 4th and defacto head mod.
Just a suggestion though, it would have prevented the appearance in this situation from being “lemmy.world’s official stance” because one person misunderstood something.
Misunderstandings are going to happen, it’s unavoidable. If you want a way to mitigate the damage, it’s limit how much reach each person has. Pruning is a natural part of growth, and any mod that gets their feelings hurt about it…
Well, that’s the type of person we would be doing this to protect against. Someone who lets their feelings get in the way of moderation.
Then step up to volunteer your services as a mod? Reportedly the tools are terrible and the reason why there are so few mods is that so few are willing to do the job. If a limit were to be placed, without having such volunteers, then how would all those empty positions be filled?
The one who “misinterpreted” the rules is a mod of pretty much all the main subs on world.
That’s because few want to. I’ve been asked myself whether I want to mod multiple communities because the current mod isn’t active, and some of those aren’t even small.
But reading comments on Lemmy across all the instances as a whole, fuck all if I’d want to. That’s sooooo much work. So yeah, naturally nobody wants to mod.
So yeah, go and mod. Change starts with you!
If you look at someone’s profile, you can see what communities they mod…
Or you can just keep wildly assuming things and hoping you’re right.
Or just read the existing reply chain before making your own reply?
You had lots of options bruh. But you’ve also made over 5% of the comments in this thread, and you didn’t do that in any of them either.
Just randomly telling everyone what your uninformed opinion is about stuff…
I’m glad you haven’t taken up anyone’s offers to mod anything. And I truly mean that.
Yea this became a huge part of why reddit got so shitty. There needs to be a cap implemented on how many subs a mod can manage.
Anyone who wants The Adjuster to be imprisoned is supporting violence against him. Imprisonment is a violent act. Drag thinks the Lemmy.world admins should make sure to remove any comments advocating imprisonment.
While I agree that the murder of the CEO can be morally justified in certain aspects, we have to face the facts. Murder is murder, and I believe glorification of it is wrong. Wouldn’t the killing of a CEO just lead to the appointment of another, making the whole thing pointless? It’s possible that a new CEO will do things differently, but they’d probably do more or less the same. In the end, all the murder achieves is CEOs fearing for their safety and eventually hiring bodyguards, making them even more disconnected from society, and even less likely to donate to charity or the poor. For these reasons, I think lemmy.world is doing the right thing, I don’t think that murder of anyone not convicted of war crimes should be glorified, I’d prefer to stay neutral on such topics.
Lame. Jury nullification is good and necessary in this case. Saving people’s lives shouldn’t get you punished, regardless of your motives.
Wow I wasn’t even planning to leave but this nonsense just convinced me. Thanks!
To the people saying they are switching instances:
Shouldnt you have switched a long time ago or just never joined the biggest instance?
Is there any negative to not having or any positive to having a big instance like lemmy.world?
This seems reasonable on the whole.
Common lemmy.world L
Jury nullification should not be a banned topic. It’s perfectly legal and is the only direct way citizens can object to interpretations of the law. The very fact that the courts and government don’t want people to know of it is a testament to its effectiveness in cases where the public will opposes the government in matters of law. Particularly when public opinion differs drastically from a strict interpretation of the law, but most especially when citizens find a law, its often limited proponents, or its execution to be objectionable, unconscionable, cruel, or unwilling to take circumstances into consideration. It’s crucial for us to all understand our limited power over the government, especially when it’s acting in an oppressive manner, violating human rights, ignoring the principle of justice in favor of a literal interpretation, or is otherwise objectionable by the majority of citizens as opposed to the minority of lawmakers.
Why not have lemmy.usa where americans can freely discuss the american solution to every american problem aka guns?
Removed by mod
Lmao jury nullification is legal and just.
What is this corporate bootlicking?
It’s also used to tell people they should go do something because “no jury in the world would convict you”. Like when white juries in the American south actually refused to convict white people who murdered black people, no matter how much evidence there was.
When Jury Nullification is mentioned on it’s own it’s fine. When it’s mentioned in combination with calling for violence, it’s bad. And it should be bad, we’ve seen it used so badly we created the Federal Civil Rights statutes that allow the Feds to effectively step in and prosecute those racially motivated murders in a different state.
The story you tell is bad, but it’s also kind of what democracy is. Being judged by your peers. That white people should be allowed to murder black people with no consequences is what the people decided. The problem in that situation isn’t the system, it’s the people. The system was enforcing the will of the bad people who represented society.
And how did that situation get better? Heroes broke the law and used violence or the threat of violence to change society. Heroes like John Brown, who killed slavers, and Malcolm X, who armed black people on the streets. Abraham Lincoln went to war with the southern states. People died because of his orders.
It doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re from. Your rights were scrawled in blood.
John Brown was a hundred years before any of it stopped. He hardly helped stop it. Fight it, sure. Stop it? No. And Malcolm X may have helped Congress see the need but the majority of it stopped when the federal government was able to prosecute people for civil rights violations and force states to let black people onto juries.
John Brown seized the federal armoury in 1859, two years before the start of the american civil war. The journey to equality for black americans took hundreds of years and it’s still not complete yet.
Removed
Idunno what you said, but I agree
Jury nullification is your duty when the laws are unjust
Broseph, I can’t have sympathy. The income inequality won’t let me. People aren’t cheering the unaliving necessarily, but the fact that one of these people actually answered for their crimes, in whatever form that took. Because courts weren’t gonna make him.
I think this is a good time to remind everyone that the strength of federated social media (and a big reason why we’re all here) is that no private company or country’s laws can have total control over the fediverse.
Everyone who runs an instance is going to have a different risk-tolerance for legal issues however, and I can’t fault anyone for making a judgment call that they feel best protects the server and their users. I don’t know anything about Dutch or Finnish laws, but I’ve seen many recent articles about people arrested in Germany for their social media posts that were considered hateful or violent (which is frankly a culture shock to me as an American), so I can see why some of the posts on Lemmy in the past week would be concerning.
In my interactions with the .World admins, I’ve seen nothing but people trying to run an instance in the most fair and neutral way they can, and I personally trust them to make the hard calls when they come up. That being said, if you’re frustrated with the legal concerns of a host’s country or have had a run-in with a mod that upset you, it only strengthens the fediverse if you spread out or create similar communities elsewhere.
Awesome response. I do not hold any grudges against the early over-moderation that took place. It is truly a sensitive subject. However, I feel allowing free speech (within reason) in a situation like this is important for both sides (the Bourgeoisie and all of us poors) as it gives us a chance to vent some pent up steam and it hopefully gives them an insight into how close things are to getting out of control and give them a chance to correct some bad behaviors.
