Lemmy.World ToS and the murder of the UHC CEO
Lemmy.World ToS and the murder of the UHC CEO
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.
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.
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.
?? So, discussing jury nullification by itself, or suggesting ‘crimes that have not yet happened’ - itself is not a violation (i.e. someone should disturb the peace) but suggesting that “someone should disturb the peace and everyone on the jury, should they be prosecuted, should advocate for jury nullification” is a violation of the ToS?
I’m not understanding that part.
People in the US have justifiable revulsion to its rapacious healthcare system leading to outright un-aliving of a large segment of the population. One might argue that it's a silent genocide of the underprivileged. This incident has highlighted that sentiment in a way that may effect real change and in a way his untimely demise may lead to positive health outcomes. Suppressing the expression of that anger could have the opposite outcome.
I can understand (though not agree) with banning clear advocation for violence of CEOs, but the "I haven't had a reason to smile this much in a while" message that got the user banned was too far.
We will still consider suggestions of jury nullification for crimes that have not (yet) happened as advocation for violence
I see jury nullification as similar to self defense, just at a larger scale. I take this message as "You're not allowed to talk about defending yourself for future occasions, only ones that have already happened."
I guess talking about owning a gun for self defense can be seen as "advocating for violence" but that's a narrow minded view, where nullification is only used when the ethics are on the greater good, like thousands of deaths vs the one.-
If Jury Nullification is legal and allowed, then frankly covering that exact thing up is an abomination and y'all should be utterly ashamed of yourselves. Since when is Lemmy in the habit of backing an establishment while not allowing people involved to know the full picture? Genuinely shameful and disgusting behavior.
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Yeah, I'm not going to ever remove anything from my communities relating to that or to the violence against the CEO. There is no difference between Brian Thompson and any other mass murderer on the planet. Are you asking me to protect Hitler or Pol Pot as well from criticisim and glee over their death? No? Then I am sure as fuck not going to do it for this guy.
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Personally my big takeaway from the comments here is that either many people think administrating a large internet platform is a joke and happens on its own and you don't find 10+ legal notices in the PO box every week, or that - and I've read about this before - reading comprehension in the english-speaking world has fallen dramatically in recent years and people are genuinely unable to read paragraphs of text of non-trivial content and/or shifting subjects within same sentences, something you learn around 6th grade in school but sadly rarely need after school in modern times.
At what point is supporting the prosecution of this assassin advocating for violence? The social murder done by the CEO is so many orders of magnitude greater, and the state will do violence to the killer to defend the industry's right to do social violence.
Nobody was having this conversation when people rightly cheered the deposing of Assad. Guess what? That involved violence, a lot of it. That was state-backed violence too though, so I guess we're all just fine with it.
The state calls its own violence "law" and that of the people "crime".
I guess lemmy.world is happy to just go along with whatever the state wants. It's just insulting that you pretend it's about "violence" and you expect people to believe you.
I don't even believe in the death penalty for most murderers.
But when your murder count would make any serial killer that did it with their bare hands instead of an email in all of history blush, with the cold calculation of a sociopath, there's really nothing more to say.
That doesn't even feel like murder, that feels like an ongoing mass slaughter.
I can empathize with murders of passion, even misguided, ignorant hatred as that was usually something impressed into them, and can relate to the very human secondary emotion of anger even if felt in ignorance, but murders of "Well if I murder these thousands of people on this newly discovered loophole, I can increase quarterly profits by 2.4%! Score!" then it becomes impossible. It's like trying to empathize with a computer devoid of any humanity.
Reddit ahh Lemmy instance
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.
tl;dr (if I am getting this right):
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Sometimes moderators don't get if something is forbidden under the TOS, or believe something should be forbidden but isn't. Ask an admin if uncertain.
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Moderators can further restrict content beyond the bare minimum of the TOS. Please don't complain to the admins if a moderator does this (in good faith, obviously).
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Conversely, moderators, please read the TOS and don't tell someone something is forbidden under it if it actually isn't.
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Previously, admins told mods to remove content re: Jury nullification when discussing violent crimes.
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Currently, this has been limited only to discussion of jury nullification of future violent crimes, as it could imply someone should actually perform said violent action because they would be acquitted via jury nullification. As far as I can tell, this is the only actual change of any rule in this post.
Summary over, personal thoughts follow: That one specific change, I don't actually have any issue with. Reasonable enough. Obviously the devil is in the details of what is forbidden under "advocating violence"; that is a monstrously complex discussion beyond the scope of this particular announcement. Furthermore, the value of some of the clarifications in this post are dependent on admins actually holding an open dialogue with users, the track record of which is... variable. (I am still waiting on a response from months ago, which I was then told would be available in a few weeks.)
Additionally, since lemmy.world remains federated with other instances which tolerate unpleasant behavior and I see no indication on this post that this will change, this functionally changes little of users' ability to access that content and contribute to it anyhow.
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Too late, I'm already out the door. You assume no one understands the nuances of hosting in a country without free speech laws as liberal as the US.
The truth is most people do. Your moderators' histrionic response was so obviously from a place of emotion, and can recall numerous times your mods have allowed speech that was similar but didn't act because they weren't personally offended.
I think you fail to understand that your audience is international. That you let your moderators power trip not from an abundance of caution but because it's more convenient for you.
I’m gonna have to switch instances because of all the terrible shit the US does, free speech is the one thing we truly get right.
And I just want to let you know what free speech is when it comes to violence:
• yelling fire in a crowded theatre when there is none: not protected
• celebrating the death of a CEO who deserved it: protected (the deserved it is irrelevant to speech, but fuck that guy)
• saying you wish other unnamed CEOs will be killed next: protected unless there’s evidence of planning and ability to carry out murdering a specific CEO
• saying you wish a specific famous person be killed, such as Elon musk: grey area, depends on if there’s evidence of planning and ability to carry out. Public figures are a higher bar to reach than the lay people.
• saying you wish to kill your neighbor John who’s not famous: not protected regardless of planning or ability, it’s assault
• saying you want to kill any person and having evidence of planning and a method to do so: not protected
• saying you wish for a whole group to die: protected if there’s no evidence of planning and ability to carry it out. One could theoretically march around with signs that say death to fags and that’s totally legal. Example: Westboro Baptist Church picketing funerals with signs such as that.
Edit: also jury nullification is not violence. You’re going with the assumption that the assassin is guilty of a crime. Is it really a crime to murder a mass social murderer? Clearly us Americans aren’t too bent out of shape that this CEO is now resting in piss.
Edit 2: would it be murder to kill Hitler after he started gassing Jews? Is it not because Hitler had an ideology that Jews were subhuman and to be exterminated? What’s different about this CEO? Sure he didn’t target specific groups like Hitler did. But his ideology is money above all, and he didn’t care how many lives he took to make that money. Why is this any different? This is the industrialization of death. This is a genocide against undesirables. Hitler killed disabled people (and LGBTQ) first before moving onto the Jews. Most of America is just numbers on a spreadsheet and when we become too expensive and cut into profits too much we become socially murdered. It’s not a crime when the rich do it to us (for profit!!!!) but it’s a crime when we fight back? You Europeans are clueless!
Divisive topic and comment section, but IMO that feels like a fair change. No stance on this topic will ever not be divisive, but I think this is probably the most impartial stance that could be taken
Common lemmy.world L
I know people want to celebrate the perish of a bad guy (me included) but if that endangers existance of lemmy.world then I think it's fair to take this celebration somewhere else.
On the ehtics pov I'm not quite conviced that celebrating death is entirely unethical. Some people are bad and society is better without them and these Dutch, Finnish and German laws might make sense locally but definitely don't make much sense in a global context.
Doesn’t the very concept of jury nullification only apply to cases where a crime has already been committed and then a jury is called upon to reach a verdict on said crime? This honestly reads as mental gymnastics. Or perhaps it could be worded better. Do you mean to say that jury nullification will be fine going forward, no matter what the crime, but you still must forbid calls to violence against named or otherwise identifiable individuals or specific groups or people and/or the glorification of violence in general? This would be better wording I think, though still hard to distinguish and enforce consistently. I find the concept of “jury nullification for future crimes” hard to grasp.
Wow what a crock of shit
"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." Ok that is utter bullshit regardless of country, and I'm no American saying that. You though, whoever wrote that, have completely revealed yourself as an utter statist monkey begging to be dominated
This seems reasonable on the whole.
In the TOS, I would appreciate it if you would make it clear to users signing up for Lemmy.world which legal jurisdiction the site at large falls under and that the content here must abide by because this is not made clear on the sign up page or in the TOS (it should be front and center, not several scrolls down the page, at the bottom, because it is the basis for everything else in the TOS). At the time of this comment this information also isn't listed on any sidebar, or about page for the site itself or the Lemmy.world community/sign up pages so far as I have been able to tell.
The TOS is a legal document and as such, changes should also probably be dated to reflect to existing users what has changed or been updated since their initial sign up and the fact that it is less likely for them to review the TOS at a later date unless you notify them (by email or similar) or they run afoul of the document. This adds important context both for the users and for the legal jurisdiction.
This is also important for moderators who may or may not live or otherwise be subject to the laws of the legal jurisdiction of the site, because naturally moderators will default to and be swayed by what is legal (or illegal) in the jurisdiction where they operate, and will more than likely also not be well acquainted with the laws and regulations outside of where they operate.
Good. huge W's to the admin team. thanks for having some maturity
So does this mean that lemmy.ml is taking over as the biggest instance?
Everything was fine until the "Jury nullification" thing? Apparently that's an American thing where a state can disregard a federal law if they find it to be unconstitutional.
What does that have to do with Lemmy moderation?
I'm sorry if this is very obvious, but I'm not American, and just learned the meaning of the term from Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullification_(U.S._Constitution)So i can talk about a case of jury nullification that happened last year, but not talk aboit how that should happen every time. Unless the crime was non violent then im ok to say "that should happen all the time".
I really like your post and the changes! Obviously it is a very divisive and polarized event. In my opinion, the lines you have drawn help in creating a productive discussion environment. I am very happy to have an admin team who can deal so well with this situation - thank you for your work and this post! I sincerely appreciate it.
So discussion of jury nullification is ok as a general topic. If someone mentions JN in the context of a crime that has not yet been committed then that’s not ok. If the crime has already been committed then that’s ok. If the crime is not violent in nature then we can discuss JN, and if we are just having a general conversation about JN that’s ok too.
Specifically, the concern is that talking about JN in the context of some hypothetical violent crime that has not yet been committed could be interpreted as advocating for violence.
This sounds pretty stupid so far, but my question is then, why wrap the ToS around specifically jury nullification? Why not just reiterate the ‘no advocating for violence’ policy.
If someone is advocating for violence, then adding on some point about jury nullification is irrelevant, they are already breaking the rule.
The nuances on this issue are challenging. On the one hand, there are those that simply see the murder as being abhorrent. On the other, there are those who see it simply as being comeuppance. I believe the issue is one coming out of deep seated and wide-spread resentment at structural inequality and in many cases, personal stories of suffering caused by the failure of the existing system. The victim was a key player in that system, but he was also a human being with children.
A key function of social media is to provide a space for debate about social issues, and to facilitate discussions about how we can collectively build a better future. The challenge for moderators is to try to find a line between extremes that balances conflicting perspectives in a way that respects the community, and I believe the intent of the fediverse to be free from corporate control of discussion. In terms of rules, the key sentence in the ToS seems to be "We do not tolerate serious threats or calls for violence."
I would suggest that:
- comments/posts that actively call for violence should be removed. e.g. "Someone should shoot all CEO's".
- comments/posts that more reflect a dissatisfaction with the system should not. e.g. "He contributed to untold suffering. I'm not surprised someone took matters into their own hands."
Your bloodline is weak.
Who made a death threat here?
Before we get to the changes, we want to remind everyone that we are not a (US) free speech instance.
I've never understood this concept. There is no such thing as "(US) free speech". Threats, coercion and blackmail obviously notwithstanding, you're either free to express yourself, or you are not. Of course I understand that right of free expression isn't something that applies to many European people, and there may be pros and cons to that, but nevertheless there is no middle ground on free speech--you're either free or you aren't.
But regardless of that, this is your own private community and you're well within your rights to moderate it however the hell you want, "free speech" really doesn't come into it at all. That's one of the main benefits to federation.
Me who just reads the news feeds I sub to and not noticing EU Drama, or that I'm on a Non-US Hosted Website all this time. LOL
So you mean to tell me this is not a Motorhead Fansite??? Well color me red
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.
Is this TOS number 15 ? Or 24?