On Content Removal
docs.beehaw.org
On Content Removal # Harmful, bigoted, or generally distasteful content isn’t as frequent on our site as it is elsewhere, but these do still appear enough that we sometimes get questions about why certain comments are left up. This post is meant to help you understand a bit about how we moderate. As stated in our sidebar and in tons of other places on our site, Beehaw aspires to be(e) a safe, friendly, and diverse place.

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.

  •  Gaywallet (they/it)   ( @Gaywallet@beehaw.org ) OP
    20•1 year ago

    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.

    •  Parsnip8904   ( @Parsnip8904@beehaw.org ) 
      1•1 year ago

      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.