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 you fail to understand that your audience is international.
I think you fail to understand that being international means that your American-centric views take a backseat for once in your life.
Still waiting for a large generalist US-centric instance to emerge
If the last criteria is defederation from hexbear.net, then there is strong hope for Discuss.Online. Though I don’t know if they would want to host a political community that would involve such controversial topics. They probably would be welcoming to like an AskUSA one.
I’m on dbzer0 which is federated with hexbear and I honestly haven’t noticed anything bad from there. I always heard horor stories about it before I signed up here but it has actually been remarkably tame. I mean, they’re obviously leftist but I’ve seen far far worse tankie shit from just lemmy.ml.
Look through this list and sort by monthly active users (MAU): https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy
The server location info doesn’t seem 100% accurate, but it should still help. I would suggest either the instance I use, lemmy.sdf.org (run by an American, technology-oriented non-profit org), or perhaps lemmy.zip, which also looks good - I started looking into it but haven’t fully vetted it yet.
By the way, I don’t think that being in a larger instance has much benefit, by the way. In fact, I tried one of the larger ones and found that it suffered performance-wise, so I went back. You can get pretty much everything from every other Lemmy instance, especially one that doesn’t block and is not blocked by other instances (lemmy.sdf.org also applies here).
Edit: lemmy.zip seems to be subject to the laws of the UK, according to their code of conduct.
https://legal.lemmy.zip/docs/terms_of_service/
The website and the agreement will be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the United Kingdom and the European Union.
https://discuss.online/ is US based and just defederated hexbear
By the way, I don’t think that being in a larger instance has much benefit, by the way.
Content accessibility can be an issue due to the way instances only fetch remote communities if a local user is subscribed. Also, having a larger userbase usually means that the instance has been around long enough to show some good track record for the instance
It’s an American story, effecting 100’s of millions of Americans directly. So no, not this this time. See a therapist to work out all this reflexive anti Americaism
It’s an American story, effecting 100’s of millions of Americans directly.
And it’s not an American server. So live with it. You’re not entitled to do whatever you want in whatever space you want just because you’re American and have feelings about something.
Then like I said, don’t call yourself world and continue to promote yourself as the authoritative instance. This instance is the the default for all the mobile apps.
Being happy that a man responsible for the deaths of thousands is an “American Centric View” now.
And don’t call yourself “world” if you cannot reasonably accommodate a wide rage of views. Call yourself “Dutch” and make your limitations clear.
You world sycophants want the benefits of being the authoritative instance without the responsibility.
The USDefaultism is already strong back in reddit, but sadly it seems to be worse on Lemmy. Tired of seeing folks from US acting like they’re the main characters, kinda puts me off using this platform
!asklemmy@lemmy.world added a rule to remove US politics questions. That was a welcome change
