We’re looking to put together some more detailed rules on what should and should not be submitted to the instance. Things such as, but not exclusively:
- What types of message you would always like to see removed on sight
- Whether there are any types of message which should be left up (borderline, with strong corrections from the community)
- Where the line is drawn on political views (and how gray areas should be treated)
I’ll make no bones: Moderating uk/ukpol has been a learning experience for me.
I’ve learned that there often isn’t much difference between “leaving a comment up because the community has done an excellent job highlighting flaws” and “I should have removed this hours ago, the community shouldn’t have to do this”.
As there isn’t a way to mod-tag a post, inaction on negative posts can reflect badly on the instance as a whole.
Having some clear guidelines/rules will hopefully simplify things.
And more admins should mean that if a report isn’t looked at, someone can review it as an escalation.
I’ve also enabled the slur filters. And we’ll be listening to see if anything needs adding/removing (the template had swearing blocked :| )
So…Answers on a postcard, I guess!
alright, since i’m first up to comment, i’ll start with an easy one
tiananmen square massacre denial should probably be banned or removed on sight.
i’m making this suggestion because there is a… particular… audience and demographic in the fediverse that for some reason, has issues with accepting this. i will not name this audience, because this same audience also likes to brigade posters that dare to stick their head up above the trenches and point out that actually, some of their takes might be verifiably wrong. i hope that not naming them reduces my chance of being detected, and then drawing targeted fire. one of us had to be the person to point it out, so i guess it’s my turn.
by all means, debate casualty figures, sure. debate why there were protests, sure, that’s not the thing i have issue. but if a poster is trying to sincerely argue that nothing happened, in my opinion, it’s a strong indiciation that the poster is acting in bad faith
how to implement this as a rule? maybe i would go with “no denial of historically verified massacres”? it sounds obvious really, but if you don’t spell it out, people can and will say “ahh but the mods didn’t say i can’t! 🥴”
i dunno how you want to go about it exactly, but yeah.
I think this can be covered by the “no intentionally inflammatory comments/posts” rule that u/flamingos proposed.
If someone is outright denying facts then they should just be downvoted, reported for trolling, and ignored.
I don’t engage with the communities you’re referencing so it may be things are worse than I’m aware - but the argument I’ve seen from more prominent members of the communities is that we shouldn’t trust everything provided by the CIA as it is in their interest to demonise enemy states.
I believe that’s a different opinion from outright denial of historic events so shouldn’t be censored.
I can’t imagine why these topics would be coming up in UK communities though so hopefully this is an entirely non issue and can be moderated on a community by community basis rather than instance wide.
As much as I like the idea of a trolling report function, it is a very subjective thing to introduce. Some people fall foul of believing the propaganda of their own country, and penalising them for living in a state that does this should not be a thing in my opinion. Ideally you should be convincing people of the truth with irrefutable evidence of the facts.
I’m sure we all know which instance (or instances, there’s two that stick to mind) you’re talking about! Their takes are usually crazy and extreme and their behaviour (it’s usually the one of the two that are more problematic) is annoying as fuck.
That said, it sounds like we want to censor people who are arguing in bad faith? I think this might be broad enough, but I worry that people might get banned or content censored when they raise something that is deeply against the commonly held view a the time but later turns out to be correct.
Personally I think we should just downvote people who express these “opinions”, as long as they’re not being offensive. The more rules there are the more work the mods have to do, but they can also open up the possibility of mods banning people they disagree with under the guise of that rule.
In my experience, if bad actors have a specific agenda to push they usually hang around in groups of likeminded people and search for specific discussions, posts, subjects, etc to push their agenda in. This can often results in a toxic / bad faith comment being one of, if not the most highly upvoted comments (due to brigading). Most people that take the middle ground on a topic rarely have the energy to fight against a dog pile of downvotes and bad actors. Automatically assuming that bad actors are single outliers operating by themselves is a bad position that IMHO leads to “too little, too late” moderation reactions after the damage is done and the post has turned toxic.
This is a very complex topic, and not one I believe can be solved by just letting the voting system work it out. I don’t know the right answer, it’s one I’ve been searching for, for years. But the assumption of “good faith, until proven otherwise” in conjunction with “it’s only a few bad actors” is specifically the mentality the bad actors are exploiting. IMHO, YMMV, IANAL, etc…
Key thing I think is no transphobia (or racism against GRT) For some reason they are the two things that still seem acceptable in UK online spaces and it’s just depressing.
It depends on your definition of transphobia. If your definition of transphobia is hateful comments against trans people, then yeah, sure. If it includes people who want to debate the climate, such as bathroom issues, pronoun discussions etc, then no. That’s just censorship and not allowing debate.
Same with GRT, actual racism against them, sure, ban it. But that shouldn’t be used as an excuse to stifle discussion around real issues. If a GRT community are illegally camping on land, then that’s a crime and it’s not racist to point it out.
Like everything in life, it’s nuanced.
The slur filter I have enabled is one I pinched from somewhere else, but with a lot of things removed.
General swearing is allowed through, directed slurs are supposed to be caught by the regex.
I still have no idea if it’s working, mind you, or even how it actions when it detects something.
I added the word “banana” in hopes that it might help us work it out :D
Outside of what is genuinely illegal I think it is better that speech considered to be objectionable by the community remains visible so that our collective attitude towards those things are also visible. What I mean is I would rather see bigots hounded and debated than just banned… I don’t think defaulting to the ban hammer is the way outside of specific safe spaces.
I appreciate the input. I’ll be honest, bigots getting hounded is my preference too.
But a couple of times, I’ve been hounded for not deleting the bigot posts. That’s one of the reasons I was keen to get feedback, to find out what people would prefer.
As if most of the feddit.uk members are keen for that, it’ll become policy.
Absolutely second this.
Let’s not throw blanket bans out and create an echo chamber whilst stifling discussion.
Those who break the spirit of the rules will be called out, downvoted, and argued with. This isn’t a bad thing. Serial offenders will be apparent and can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, with warnings and bans.
I say this as an admin of another large instance, having to deal this this myself.
I believe that free speech shows people’s true colours and allows you to see who to block and who to listen to.
We should listen to all opinions even if they’re wrong and stupid.
I think its better to leave something up even if its offensive so long as its not spam.
My gut reaction is to agree with you. But at the same time I wonder if it’s far easier for me to take this stance because it’s very unlikely that I will ever be the target of any kind of abuse. I sit in a very safe position, very much in a majority in almost any way other than things I can choose. So despite my first thought being much the same as yours I can’t by election but think I should instead listen to other voices around me?