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.
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!
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.
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
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!
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.
“Add value and don’t be a dick” goes far as mantra.
Unrelated to this post, but I’m a teacher, and I love telling (high school) students to “stop being a dick.” It always gets a reaction, deescalates, redirects attention away from the drama/instigator, and (I hope) is memorable for the “dick”.
But students just think I’m being inappropriate by calling a kid a dick. (It’s very intentional! … Just like when I “accidentally” swear.)
Teacher here and I do the same. It’s a line to walk - I can’t do it too frequently, but occasionally using language like this is more authentic, descriptive, and effective. My students love it and appreciate the break from sterilized teacher speak.
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.
I just joined, so I can’t really speak too much about all of this from a point of experience on beehaw itself. It does seem like a lot of though has been put in this document which I do very much appreciate. In fact, it is one of the things that drove me to sign up for beehaw out of many other instances.
I do have plenty of experience moderating on “that other platform people are plenty mad at these days”. And I would like to share a few things for your consideration, if that is alright? To be clear, nothing in my comment below is intended as judgment on your current approach and philosophy. These are mostly (tangibly) related things I wrote down or bookmarked over the years that might be useful or relevant for your consideration.
As far as hate speech goes, there are indeed roughly the two approaches you outlined. Although I do think it often falls in between. I’d like to caution against the most egregious types of hate speech. I very much don’t think you’d leave those up, but I do like to share this story from a bartender [nsfw warning due to Spanish civil war poster with dead child] about this sort of thing.
On Community-Based Moderation I do want to caution for something called the “the fluff principle”
“The Fluff Principle: on a user-voted news site, the links that are easiest to judge will take over unless you take specific measures to prevent it.” Source: Article by Paul Graham
What this means is basically the following, say you have two submissions:
- An article - takes a few minutes to judge.
- An image - takes a few seconds to judge.
So in the time that it takes person A to read and judge he article person B, C, D, E and F already saw the image and made their judgement. So basically images will rise to the top not because they are more popular, but simply because it takes less time to vote on them so they gather votes faster.
This unfortunately also applies to various types of unsavory/bigoted speech. In fact, I believe I remember reading that beehaw did de-federate from some other instances due to problems coming from them. So it seems you are aware of the principle, if only due to experience.
tl;dr Some waffling about moderation and me generally appreciating that thought is being put into it on this platform :)
Right - most of our communities are not image-based so I’m not too worried about “the fluff principle”.
We definitely have no problem deleting anything that’s clearly bigoted. You can feel free to look at the modlog to see that we delete though sometimes things there can be quite awful so I caution you of that as well.
so I’m not too worried about “the fluff principle”.
Do note that this principle doesn’t just apply to purely image based submissions and comments. Maybe I should have picked a different example for what I was attempting to say. But in general, it applies to all sorts of content that is easy to digest and easy to agree with. It is why I mentioned the defederated instances I read about as often people that are actively promoting bigoted views communicate in ways that stands out to other bigots. If you have then a heavy influx of outside users these sort of comments and submissions can easily get boosted into view without your own community being all that actively involved.
Having said that, I think you as a team already have plenty of experience with this and are at the very least aware of it. I still figured I’d mention it.
Trigger warning - please be aware of this before following the link to the first article
I read the first article about the bartender and it shows, with no warning, a historical poster that seemingly has a photo of a dead child on it. I cannot unsee that. I would never seek that sort of thing out.
I thought I was just going to read a story about a bartender. Now I feel extremely distressed on a day when my anxiety was already through the roof and I need to start work.
Please, please put content warnings up for that sort of horrifying imagery.
Oh sorry :( It had been a while since I checked out the page and forgot the poster is part of the entire thing.
If you would be so kind, would you put ‘[NSFW]’ directly to the right of that link please?
Done
Thanks!
Thank you so much for this!
No worries! :) thank you for replying.
Oh hey, you’re the toolbox dev. Thank you for your work! My mod teams over on Reddit got so much use out of that extension.
Same. Thanks for Toolbox @Creesch@beehaw.org !!!
It’s this friendly environment that keeps me on this server. Keep up the good work.
Thank you for this, another great read. I’ve also enjoyed reading through the comments and discussions on it and feel like I’m getting more of a handle on the balance you’re trying to strike here. I really appreciate all the clear, engaging and comprehensive comments. They’re giving me a lot of food for thought! :)
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’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!
It’s great to hear from the mod team. I understand Beehaw as being a place that values respect, trust and discussion in good faith. I’d sum it up as “good vibes”. I made note of a comment somewhere on here that I gauged as primarily intending to rile up OP (effectively “what is the point of this post”). Not a horrendous comment by any means, but I’d classify it as being “not nice”.
Using Beehaw instead of other instances comes at the cost of missing out on places like lemmy.world, although they can certainly be used in parallel. In my view, the gain of being here is respectful conversation. I accept that some emotional volatility is to be expected when politics or the like are being discussed. Are users ever given a gentle nudge to “be(e) a little bit nicer next time”?
Are users ever given a gentle nudge to “be(e) a little bit nicer next time”?
yes, both through intervening on reports and temp-bans. we also have section bans at our disposal (although usually someone bad enough to ban in one section is bad enough to ban sitewide)
Are users ever given a gentle nudge to “be(e) a little bit nicer next time”?
I think the next post I want to do is specifically on the subject of moderation actions, escalation (nudge > direct request > content removal > community ban > instance ban) and how we make the decision for both the appropriate response for the infraction as well as what users can and should do when interacting with moderators asking them to change behavior.
The short and simple answer is vibes. If we step in and ask you to be nice and you swing back at us, we’re unlikely to be nice in response. If you aren’t the one escalating and you’re responding in kind or trying to deescalate then you have nothing to worry about. Being on our instance as opposed to other instances also means we’re gonna assume more good faith, since you’ve decided to abide by our rules and chose this place for a reason.
Are users ever given a gentle nudge to “be(e) a little bit nicer next time”?
Yeah this is absolutely something we try to do, although there are some situations where it is easier than others. In a big, busy !politics thread sometimes things might get noisy enough that we just have to prune whole threads, though thankfully that’s been pretty rare so far. But when we’re able to and when we think that a user is acting in good faith, we do try to engage with them and give them a chance to correct the way that they’re interacting with folks.
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.
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 have “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.
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.
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!
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.