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.
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?
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!
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.
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.
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!
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
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.
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!
“Add value and don’t be a dick” goes far as mantra.
What about misinformation?
Without downvotes it will slowly bubble up to the top because the only barrier is finding enough people gullable or ignorant (precisely, not demeaning) enough to believe it. Or if it’s “pop culture misinformation”, it rises to the top by virtue of it being popular misinformation.
Both of those are not ideal for quality conten, or fact based discussion and debate when vote counts exist. As more often than not more votes = more true to a layman.
We’ve seen this on any other platform that has “the only direction is up” mechanics, because the only direction is up.
Another risk is promoting misinformed communities, who find comfort in each other because their shared, incorrect, opinions of what should be fact based truths find common ground. I don’t think those are the kinds of communities beehaw wants. Thankfully community creation is heavily managed, which may mitigation or remove such risks entirely.
What I’m getting at is what will the stance be here? If beehaw starts fostering anti-intellectualism, will that be allowed to grow and fester? It’s an insidious kind of toxicity that appears benign, till it’s not.
To be clear I’m not saying these things exist or will exist on beehaw in a significant capacity. I am stating a theoretical based on the truth that there is always a subset of your population that are misinformed and will believe and spread misinformation, and some of that subset will defend those views vehemently and illogically.
I would hate to see that grow in a place that appears to have all the quality characteristics I have been looking for in a community.
The lowest common denominator of social media will always push to normalize all other forms and communities. It’s like a social osmosis. Most communities on places like Reddit failed to combat and avoid such osmosis. Will beehaw avoid such osmosis over time?
Most misinformation is poorly veiled hate speech and as of such it would be removed. Down votes don’t change how visible it is, or how much it’s spread. You deal with misinformation by removing it and banning repeat offenders/spreaders.
I would argue that only a subset of misinformation of veiled hate speech. The rest, and majority, are misinformed individuals repeating/regurgitating their inherited misinformation.
There is definitely some hate speech veiled as misinformation, I’m not arguing against that. My argument is that’s not the majority. There are severity scales of misinformation, with hate speech being near the top, and mundane conversational, every day, transient factual incorrectness being near the bottom.
There exists between those two a range of unacceptable misinformation that should be considered.
A consequence of not considering or recognizing it is a lack of respect for the problem. Which leads to the problem existing unopposed.
I don’t have a solution here since this is a broad & sticky problem and moderating misinformation is an incredibly difficult thing to do. Identifying and categorizing the levels you care about and the potential methods to mitigate it (whether you can or can’t employ those is another problem) should, in my opinion, be on the radar.
If you’re volunteering to take it on, feel free to put together a plan. Until then you’ll have to trust that we’re trying to moderate within scope of the tools we have and the size of our platform, but we’re still human and don’t catch everything. Please report any misinformation you see.
Maybe my edit was too late! I did not communicate my objective clearly and edited my comment to reflect that.
I’m not proposing you solve misinformation, but rather that you recognize it as more than you stated, and respect the problem. That’s the first step.
This is not something I can do, it is only something that admins can do in synchrony as a first step. I am doing my part in trying to convince you of that.
Only after that has been achieved can solutions be theorized/probed. Which is something I would happily be part of, and do foot work towards (Though I’m sure there are experts in the community, it’s a matter of surfacing them). That’s a long term project, which takes a considerable amount of research and time, doing it without first gaining traction on the problem space would be a fools errand.
At the risk of sounding abrasive (I intend no disrespect, just not sure how else to ask this atm), is that understood/clear?
Edit: Want to note that I am actually impressed by the level of engagement community founders have had. It’s appreciated.
Yes it’s one of many problems with modern social media, no I don’t have time right now to elaborate a plan on how to tackle it. Something on this subject will likely come much further in the future but right now I’m focused mostly on creating the docs necessary for people to understand our ethos more when I’m not busy living my life.
An excellent example of very sneaky misinformation was an article in the Guardian the other day, which kept talking about 700,000 immigrants. Since 350,000 of those are foreign students, that is a blatant lie. Foreign students aren’t immigrants.
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.
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!
It’s this friendly environment that keeps me on this server. Keep up the good work.
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 (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 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.
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.
Question:
What’s the stand on discussing points of view on charged subjects?
For example, I got banned from Reddit for discussing the possible thought process of someone who might be attracted to minors. Reason for the ban: “sexualization of minors”… even though the content policy refers to the act itself, not to its discussion.
Is it allowed in here to discuss negative or controversial points of view expressed, or actions taken, by third parties? Or does it taint the whole discussion? Are there some particular “taboo” themes that would do that, while others might not? Would such discussions be allowed with a disclaimer of non-support, or get banned anyway?
I sometimes like to reflect on, and discuss, some themes that I understand some might find uncomfortable or even revolting. I also understand that there might be themes not allowed in the server’s jurisdiction.
If this was the case, then I think a clear list of “taboo themes” could be useful to everyone, even if most of the moderation was focused on applying a more flexible set of rules.
Any discussion topic which involves potentially dehumanizing others is not a topic that should be ‘debated’. So talking about whether phrenology has any merits is off the table, because it dehumanizes anyone who isn’t white. Discussing what constitutes rape can often lead to dehumanizing women.
Subjects like this are often rife with bad actors, who weaponize language with techniques like just asking questions (JAQ), concern trolling, appealing to nature or other methods. Perhaps more importantly, they’re often discussions on topics for which no one present is an expert, and for which an expert opinion is necessary to have any kind of fruitful discussion.
In general you should ask yourself - is there someone who exists who could be seriously uncomfortable or harmed by this discussion happening in the first place? If you’re discussing any topic about which people have been seriously harmed or killed by (and not simply reporting the news), the answer to this is pretty much unequivocally do not have that conversation here. As a general rule of thumb, any topic which you have self described as the following:
some might find uncomfortable or even revolting.
is probably not a good candidate for this website. Minority individuals are subject to this kind of behavior practically everywhere else in the world and we’re not interested in having those discussions here, either.
As an aside, the very fact that you are self aware enough to see this is something others find problematic but have not questioned yourself as to why these discussions need to happen is something you should be questioning yourself about. Do you feel this way about every subject for which you have no education? Do you have these kinds of discussions about complicated medical issues or do you listen to your doctor? Do you hypothesize about the necessary conditions for deep sea life to thrive, or do you leave those questions to marine biologists? I mean this in as non-confrontational a way as possible, but rather as a question to someone who seems to value the process of thinking and arriving at a well-reasoned conclusion, why do you think that you have the tools to discuss these topics without having acquired the necessary education to weigh in with any kind of credence? I don’t discuss the theoretical limitations of spacecraft because I’m not a physicist and I realize that I need a physicist in order to come to any kind of reasonable conclusion.
OK, I understand the general rule of not making people uncomfortable, and agree that some subjects tend to attract bad actors more than others.
My reason for discussing —not “debating” as in a confrontation— some subjects that I know little about, is that I find it a good opportunity to learn more. Both through own research, self-reflection, and… you never know who might chime in with more knowledge from a different point of view. More importantly, there are actual experts on the Internet, some do offer their point of view, but even experts don’t have the full picture, may have outdated knowledge, and a respectful “non-expert” can sometimes add a bit that might help both learn something.
Education is not an all or nothing, thanks to the Internet (which has sources ranging from the Wikipedia to preprint papers), it’s relatively easy to acquire an education in a very narrow field, that is better than that of someone who has more education in a much wider field. Having expertise in one field, while acquiring narrow education in another, can lead to synergies and knowledge transfer that wouldn’t happen otherwise… which requires the parties to talk, or discuss the matter in the first place.
But going back to not making people uncomfortable… there is another issue: I’m not an expert in all the things that might make others uncomfortable.
For example, I only learned about the issues surrounding phrenology, by looking into it after seeing it mentioned in this instance’s rules. Previously, I just considered it debunked science and nothing more. I’m sure there are many other subjects like that which I don’t know the full implications of.
Wouldn’t it make sense to have at least a non-exhaustive list of some of the subjects to avoid, for those who might learn something from it? Or should people acquire that education on their own, before participating?
PS: In the particular case of listening to your doctor, I have actually learned more about a few particular issues, than some of the doctors I’ve met. Some have been grateful for the extra knowledge, some have been dismissive, some have switched to “patient talk” mode when they realized I actually understood them “talking shop”, which I find demeaning.
even experts don’t have the full picture, may have outdated knowledge, and a respectful “non-expert” can sometimes add a bit that might help both learn something.
You’re not wrong, but we don’t have the tools to screen out bad actors and to moderate appropriate, professional discussions on complicated, nuanced topics with experts to help address what’s signal and what’s noise. This is simply not the venue for that.
Wouldn’t it make sense to have at least a non-exhaustive list of some of the subjects to avoid, for those who might learn something from it? Or should people acquire that education on their own, before participating?
I want to point out two things here:
- We have taken an explicit stance against itemized rules to try and prevent rules lawyering behavior - an explicit list invites people to go “but it’s not on the list!”
- Yes, you should educate yourself by at least googling the subject first. If you see a lot of heated discussions, it’s probably something that makes other people upset. If it’s something that requires a lot of education to understand, it’s also probably not a discussion destined for this space.
we don’t have the tools to screen out bad actors and to moderate appropriate, professional discussions on complicated, nuanced topics with experts to help address what’s signal and what’s noise
I don’t think you need experts in a given field to recognize whether a discussion is being conducted in a respectful and constructive way or not. The participants themselves are likely to tell you that through the report function.
Suggestion: For tools, would it be possible to set a discussion to be collapsed/hidden/flagged when in doubt? (like what Reddit does through downvotes, but via mod action) Then just let the participants continue if they wish, without disturbing the rest of the community.
you should educate yourself by at least googling the subject first
That requires identifying that I lack some education in it, and while I’m all for it, after so many years there are likely many subjects that I think I have enough education to present a point of view about, even if I might be wrong. Googling each and every possible subject “just in case” before commenting, isn’t practical.
If you see a lot of heated discussions, it’s probably something that makes other people upset.
Heated discussions get used politically all the time, and in this age of AI chatbots, professional troll farms, mis- and counter-informative spam, and such, they can even be faked precisely to get them out of rational discussions.
I don’t think “heat” is a good indicator of whether a subject should be avoided or not; pretty much all the subjects for every community in here, are used in heated discussions somewhere else.
If it’s something that requires a lot of education to understand, it’s also probably not a discussion destined for this space.
Wouldn’t that leave only the most mundane, bland and minimum common consensus subjects? But if everyone knows everything already, with the same point of view, what’s there left to talk about?
an explicit list invites people to go “but it’s not on the list!”
Suggestion: I think stating that it’s a “non-exhaustive list of examples” would take care of that. Right now there is one example (phrenology), all I suggest is adding more examples.
(and anyway, Reddit’s explicit list didn’t stop them from banning me for talking about something only tangentially related to one of the points… ultimately, instance admins have all the power, even to edit user comments, Reddit did it)
I don’t think you need experts in a given field to recognize whether a discussion is being conducted in a respectful and constructive way or not.
That’s okay that you don’t think so, but we as a team absolutely do. It’s part of the reason we’ve not created communities such as “mental health”, “legal”, and other places which are at risk of uninformed opinions causing serious and actual harm.
would it be possible to set a discussion to be collapsed/hidden/flagged when in doubt?
This functionality does not exist. Even if it did exist, I would not want it used for this purpose.
That requires identifying that I lack some education in it
It sure does! There’s an educational burden for you if you want to speak about subjects which have real world effects on others but not on you. If you don’t do that research before asking questions, that’s your fault and not ours - it’s not difficult to ask yourself the question of whether something might negatively effect others or to at least do a cursory search on google, go to the library and find some reading, or otherwise receive some base level of education before discussion a charged question on the platform. You have a responsibility to your fellow humans to be educated in this manner before broaching a topic in a public space.
there are likely many subjects that I think I have enough education to present a point of view about, even if I might be wrong
In the scope of the document linked, we’re going to take into consideration the viewpoints of others. People who are sufferers of sexual abuse won’t particularly like you going on amateurishly about whether you think there are real risks, however, so if you try to start a conversation about this you might find your content removed and if this becomes a repeat problem you may end up temporarily and eventually permanently banned.
I don’t think “heat” is a good indicator of whether a subject should be avoided or not; pretty much all the subjects for every community in here, are used in heated discussions somewhere else.
I don’t agree with this statement at all. If a discussion ultimately questions someone else’s humanity, it’s not a great subject to discuss when those people are present. Or if you do, and do so without considering the opinions and thoughts of this group or at the very least become educated on this issue, you should expect consequences to your speech - such as being insulted, having your comment removed, or being removed from your platform entirely.
all I suggest is adding more examples.
I don’t have the time or energy to build a list of all content in the world aimed at dehumanizing others. If you do, more power to you, I’d encourage you to make and maintain said list with my blessing.
we’ve not created communities such as “mental health”, “legal”
You may not have created specific communities, but both mental health advice and legal commentary are being offered in the communities already created. Does this mean those contents should be avoided and/or reported? I hope not… they’re actually interesting.
There’s an educational burden for you if you want to speak about subjects which have real world effects on others but not on you.
That gets us back to my initial question: if I speak about a subject that has direct effects on me, but only tangentially references effects on others but not on me… what’s the stance on that?
go to the library and find some reading
Fun fact: my “sexualization of minors” ban on Reddit came from citing a book… so this doesn’t seem like a safe recommendation… 😐
People […] won’t particularly like […] amateurishly […] you might find your content removed and if this becomes a repeat problem you may end up temporarily and eventually permanently banned.
I got that, don’t make people uncomfortable. I’m even fine with backing off when made aware of it, even if I actually have more than amateurish knowledge about a subject. Heck, I’m even fine with my expert knowledge getting removed (did that on Reddit myself already).
What I wouldn’t like, is to get banned because someone felt uncomfortable and I wasn’t made aware, or someone thought that someone might have felt uncomfortable by proxy, without a chance to fix it.
If a discussion ultimately questions someone else’s humanity, it’s not a great subject to discuss when those people are present.
I agree with that.
My objection was that there are people “out there” who will use any subject to dehumanize others, even when the subjects themselves are not inherently dehumanizing and can otherwise be discussed with respect. Should we let third parties guide which subjects should be banned, just because someone might have seen them use it in a dehumanizing way?
There is also the matter of which people “are present”, since the contents here are public and even federated, so technically “everyone is present”.
I don’t have the time or energy to build a list of all content in the world aimed at dehumanizing others. If you do, more power to you, I’d encourage you to make and maintain said list with my blessing.
Yeah… it’s not an attractive task. I was thinking that since mods are going to see the content anyway, you could run it as a kind of FAQ, just add items to a list when you see them appear on the instance. Kind of “I’ll know it when I see it, and now everyone else will too”.
I wonder if a list could be extracted from the modlog… I’ll look into that.
The best I can say to you at this point is that if you’ve received pushback in the past it’s probably not meant for this site. I can’t itemize everything for you. I understand you’re neurodivergent and need a bit more clarity on what’s acceptable and what’s not but I don’t have the time to build that list for you. Maybe just avoid any subject you have questions about or haven’t seen others discussing to be safe
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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 💜
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.
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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
I already see Beehaw as a sanitized space, to be honest. It was the first instance I had signed up for, but I switched almost immediately due to the lack of content and constant defense of censorship. I can sympathize with people who may want a safe space of sorts, but a safe space is just an echo chamber, the same way that the right has created communities where no one can challenge their deranged views.
90% of posts I’ve seen in Beehaw have devolved into arguments of equity where everyone must take in every advantage or disadvantage that every marginalized group has ever experienced and factor that into their position, or they’re guilty of posting from a “white” point of view, or else disenfranchising every group of minorities. Not to mention that thread about Affirmative Action, in which the comments seemed to espouse a purely Black point of view, not taking into account how it may have a positive effect on Asian admissions, and completely ignoring the discussion of how admissions should be merit-based no matter what (even if that means all of our ivy-league colleges are filled with Asian students, who historically place a much higher importance on education than the rest of the world).
I don’t have high hopes for any sort of meaningful discussion happening here.
Feel free to point those point of views that you feel are missing. Though, if you don’t have hope for meaningful discussion, consider simply leaving.
Not to mention that thread about Affirmative Action, in which the comments seemed to espouse a purely Black point of view, not taking into account how it may have a positive effect on Asian admissions, and completely ignoring the discussion of how admissions should be merit-based no matter what
Honestly, there was no shortage of people arguing the type of position you’re discussing, but if you see a lack of it, you’re more than welcome to post/comment.
I don’t have high hopes for any sort of meaningful discussion happening here.
Then have discussion elsewhere, nobody is forcing you to post or participate here. You already said yourself that you have an account on another instance because you feel that way. There’s no need to come here and wax poetic about how you don’t see any “real discussion” happening, and doing so isn’t going to dramatically alter moderation policy. If you disagree with a discussion, again, feel free to post or comment. If you don’t think any real discussion will come of that or you disagree with moderation policy, you’re welcome to find community elsewhere.
As an aside:
Asian students […] historically place a much higher importance on education than the rest of the world
This isn’t really historical so much as it is stereotyping. Asian people aren’t a monolith. We don’t all align culturally, and we don’t all have the same attitudes. We aren’t all treated the same as other Asian people, nor do people in Asian diasporas all have the same socioeconomic outcomes.
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!
