Moderation + support on this instance
Moderation + support on this instance
Kia ora!
What’s the plans for moderation on this instance? I guess there’s probably going to be a bit of a flood from the NZ-oriented subreddits and this seems like a smart landing place for them.
Lemmy.ml apparently has owners with weird political beliefs, and this is putting a bunch of people off. Is there going to be a set of rules/CoC for this instance?
Also, servers cost money. Any plans for adding a way for users to support the server?
Thanks for setting it up!
Hey thanks for raising this. We absolutely need moderation and moderators. This is something we will need to work on together as a community - both a Lemmy.nz and Lemmyverse community.
The (new, reddit-flooded) Lemmyverse has already had it's first CSAM widely federated, which was reported here as well as on large communities. The community it was posted to didn't have someone online to resolve it so it stayed up for hours (and was embedded in an innocent looking post). We can ban or remove posts from our instance, but this doesn't remove it for other instances. That only works if the host instance removes it. But ultimately we can't deny we are affected by this, and possibly a higher risk since most of the large instances require users to apply for an account while we currently have open registration (which if things go bad, may mean the other instances stop federating with us).
I'm the only admin so far, but this is not sustainable. We also want extra moderators around to handle things within their communities - including users nominated as responsible for building their community. But we need more users with the ability to moderate, even if this is just to remove posts we obviously don't want here such as the above.
As for more general moderation, this is something that we as a community will need to work together on. I'd like to try an approach similar to Beehaw.org. They have many admin posts talking about this but here is one that outlines what their vision is.
It's long, so you can be forgiven for not reading it, but basically it says that instead of having lots of rules that someone can then be a dick and point to the rules saying they aren't technically breaking any rules, instead you should have fewer, more general rules then encourage discussion in the community as to whether it's the kind of content they want to have in their community. They have disabled downvotes, with the idea being that you can't get away with downvoting a post you don't like, you have to actually have a discussion. I'm open to doing this here if it's what most people want, but I suspect it may not get a lot of support and that's ok too.
So that brings me to me next point - we do have rules, or at least a rule: don't be a dick. Rather than removing content that isn't consistent with the environment we would like, instead we should call out users that are posting content that don't align with our values, or in some instances a private message may be more appropriate.
I'm keen to hear other's thoughts on this approach :)
And another note - we, and the core fediverse nodes we interact with, are not mature enough to handle NSFW content. It's too much of a legal and moderation headache to handle at this stage, so please don't post it. This may change in future depending on how we grow as a community (both local and lemmyverse), but I expect that NSFW content on Lemmy will probably end up in dedicated instances (there are already some).
As for donations, I've had fediservices.nz approach me, and they have provisioned a VPS for us to use. The migration will happen probably in the next 12 hours, and will require downtime. I'm hoping this can be kept to under an hour. If it's looking bad, I'll probably roll back to this server and try again later. So anyway, if you want to donate to running the server then you can donate here: https://opencollective.com/nz-federated-services
You might want to have a chat with some of the people who have been running smaller Mastodon servers (in NZ and elsewhere).
One of the big problems on Mastodon over the last few months has been people from certain marginalised groups not feeling welcome, because they receive a torrent of hate speech as soon as they arrive. I've mostly heard this said by Black American communities, but I imagine it's happening for others too.
I think this is an inherent problem with the kind of approach you're suggesting (i.e. let people say what they want, so long as they're not breaking any laws, and let debate/downvoting sort it out). It's all very well for people who are not marginalised, or can otherwise withstand abuse due to their position in society dealing with that kind of activity. But for people who are going to be a target, it basically means they can't participate.
Another thing to think about is the old adage "if you let one nazi drink in your bar, you now have a nazi bar". Once certain extremists realise they can participate on a server like this (i.e. one not set up specifically to cater to them) you will find there is a huge influx. In their minds, being allowed on a general server is a gold mine.. they can spout hatred, not have it deleted, and potentially recruit new people. I know Reddit is far from perfect, but before they banned some of the big Trump subs, it was way worse.
Just to be clear, not saying there should be extremely heavy handed moderation, but I think the laissez faire approach you are suggesting is not likely to work long term. It might be pretty quiet here now, but Lemmy is already growing rapidly, so I don't think it will be for long. Better to have something in place to deal with those kinds of problems before you need it. (Just my opinion anyway).
I think this is an inherent problem with the kind of approach you’re suggesting (i.e. let people say what they want, so long as they’re not breaking any laws, and let debate/downvoting sort it out).
In my head, it works the opposite. If you have a list of things people can't do, they will wiggle their way around them to still be an asshole. If your rules aren't explicit then they can't be the "actually" guy.
If you just delete any posts saying hateful things, then you get marginalised people trying to participate, they get notifications saying someone has replied with something hurtful, then it gets removed and they just have to accept there are not nice people in the community. Worse, people may turn to DMs.
On the other hand, if someone says something hurtful, and 20 others reply explaining why it wasn't a nice thing to say, then they get to see that the view is not widely held but hidden, and instead most people do not hold that view.
As an example, in one of our first posts here, the OP used a derogatory term in a common colloquial way, someone replied with a link explaining why it was a problem, then the OP apologised and edited their post.
This is how I hope for things to work. In practice, many people will double down or be trolling, and we don't have to stand for that. But with my naivety I'd like there to be a chance for redemption.
I think some rules are needed e g. No hate speech, no threats of violence, no doxxing or hacking, no unsolicited sexual stuff, no illegal things, no animal cruelty or child abuse videos, no scams or spam, no advocacy of violence, harm, or self harm, no destroying the functioning of the community, Nazis can go fuck themselves, etc... The usual things so that there's clarity for mods and users
But also I think some general rules like don't be an asshole, or these rules are not exclusive mod discretion will be applied as needed to keep this place safe and enjoyable
So the thing is, the more rules you have, the easier it is for someone to be antagonistic and defend their actions with "but it's not against the rules". I highly recommend checking out the Beehaw post I linked, as well as reading their side bar links.
This blog post also also helps to explain things: https://eev.ee/blog/2016/07/22/on-a-technicality/
Almost all the things you mention are covered by the existing rule: "don't be a dick".
My personal opinion (at this very second, before it has become an issue) is that we should consider having hate speech, threats or advocacy of violence, and nazis stay visible, and having people call them out on it. If it's trolling, we can block them and remove them, but in the first instance it should be the start of a conversation.
Animal cruelty and child abuse - these I believe are obvious that they are not welcome and should be removed on sight, the user permanently banned, and the event reported to the appropriate authorities. We shouldn't need a rule to do what is obviously the right thing - but in either case we do have a rule that covers this (the only rule).
Harm or self harm - we can't hope to be a mental help forum, and this raises legal liability issues (something discussed by other instances). But I don't think we can have a one size fits all rule here, our approach to this should evolve over time.
"Destroying the functioning of the community" - this seems very subjective, but in any case I think this starts with a conversation, and if it's clear it's a troll then at that point we can take action.
I think I addressed each of your items but in any case I think you get the idea of what I'd like to attempt. That is, conversations instead of ban hammers. And encouraging users to call people out if they don't align with our values. But anyone engaging in good faith should be guided on what we expect here.
The obvious question is "how do we know what is allowed if there aren't specific rules": if you think it's on the edge, then please don't post it. If someone posts something that doesn't sit right with you, call them out on it. You are also welcome to report it, but I do encourage discussion as a starting point. Treat this like you would a real life community - for the most part when it comes to personal interactions, our laws are black and white: don't kill them, steal their stuff, etc. We don't need a law that says don't say nazi shit, because if you say nazi shit then either someone will call you out on it or people won't want to interact with you. I'd like this online community to work the same way, and will advocate for that goal as long as it feels achievable (I'm watching Beehaw closely).
The next obvious question is "if there's no defined rules, and @Dave is the only admin/moderator, how do we know he won't let the power go to his head"? I don't want this to be a dictatorship. I'd like to involve more people as mods and admins, and build a group where we can discuss cases and share differing opinions to decide on appropriate actions as a group. This won't happen overnight, but I do hope we will get there.
Basically it sounds like an interpretation of common law. If the time and effort was available it would be a fascinating experiment to assign advocates and a random selection of users to make a ruling.
That does sounds interesting in theory, but in practice it may end up a bit like /r/AITA
I can help with moderation during the reddit blackout (and influx!) but don't have time for much beyond that. I have extensive experience.
I sort of passively mod on a few telegram groups (by owner request I never applied)
Just deleting shit that's offensive or blatant spam.
Not wading in to conversations and throwing my opinion around.
There's probably plenty showing up with experience, not necessarily reddit experience.
A good first step might just to have coverage yo delete stuff that needs deleting - with a very lax approach until a bit of a culture is embedded that sets the vibe of the place.
Yeah I think that's a smart approach. Have some people that can remove obvious stuff. When we start to feel further action is needed, we can start to assemble a group to help with grey areas. I think when I get a chance I'll create a post for expressions of interest to help, both for site-wide and community specific.
A bank account to chuck donations would be nice, but not rules. They just set this up and there is no problem. Why would you want rules? You'd just end up with another Reddit. Do you need rules for a pub or an outdoor cafe table that has 10 people? The last thing a new website needs, is a debate around what rules should exist. Here, have a fake hall monitor badge and go back to reddit ;-)
I'm going to visit lemmy.ml now, to see what these weird political beliefs are. Must be pretty good if you didn't elaborate :) maybe it involves area 51 and little grey men.
The ML in lemmy.ml (and also lemmygrad.ml) stands for Marxism–Leninism, of whom supporters of this political philosophy were the majority of Lemmy users until reddit started to migrate here a week ago. The founder and lead developer of Lemmy is a supporter of this philosophy, and many people are avoiding Lemmy because of it.
However, in my view it's not a reason not to use Lemmy. Lemmy is Open Source, and uses a protocol common across other projects (such as Mastodon, a federated twitter-like platform - you can actually subscribe to Lemmy communities from Mastodon, though I believe the reverse doesn't yet work). Because of this, many other developers with all sorts of political views have joined in development, and even if the core development team takes Lemmy in a direction that the community doesn't want, the code is open source so a group of developers can fork (copy) the code and build it in the direction they want. And the two different versions can talk to each other because everything is running on the same protocol.
Please no.