Hello World!
We’ve made some changes today, and we’d like to announce that our Code of Conduct is no longer in effect. We now have a new Terms of Service, in effect starting from today(October 19, 2023).
The “LAST REVISION DATE:” on the page also signifies when the page was last edited, and it is updated automatically. Details of specific edits may be viewed by following the “Page History” reference at the bottom of the page. All significant edits will also be announced to our users.
The new Terms of Service can be found at https://legal.lemmy.world/
In this post our community mods and users may express their questions, concerns, requests and issues regarding the Terms of Service, and content moderation in Lemmy.World. We hope to discuss and inform constructively and in good faith.
I think that community guidelines/ code or conduct should still exist at a top level, in a digestible form, and not nested within a legal document.
They can still be part of the legal document, but should be made more accessible if said guidelines are cared about.
Otherwise you’ll find that it’s a set of expectations that no one reads (And likely cannot find even if they where looking for them), when those expectations are critically important to community health.
They will be a part of our support page along with other helpful content, we expect to share it widely very soon! :)
Do not engage in content manipulation such as posting spam content, vote manipulation through using several user accounts or consistently down-voting a user. Vote for the content, not for the person.
Whoa there. I don’t do any of that, and I think my account history and behavior speak for themselves, but in any given single thread, when trolls be trollin’ they rarely limit themselves to just one comment because the point is to ignore and provoke, NOT to converse or exchange ideas.
So a little clarification would be helpful. If you are speaking about following a user from thread to thread via their post history and downvoting them whenever they post anything at all, in any discussion about anything – “downvote stalking” – then sure, I see your point and it’s well taken.
But if you’re saying I can only downvote the first asinine volley of provocative stupidity from a given user in one specific thread, and must not downvote any of the successive proofs of idiocy and/or bad faith they offer in that same thread to support the first, I just don’t know if I can keep my itchy trigger finger holstered.
As an aside, one of the cool things about the Fediverse is that many users can see who downvoted them; I think that’s more of a real deterrent against weaponizing downvotes than any other policy or action. If you were to turn that on for lemmy.world as well I think it would get you better voting behavior from users all around.
The best way to fuck a democratic process up is making votes public. No one should feel like there’s a “deterrent” to voting. All that does is create incentive to reward/punish people for how they vote.
Voting is what fuels the content aggregation, too. It is a very bad idea to deter people from voting how they please because it strangles the algorithm of the data it needs to sort the content. You want people voting, a lot. That’s what makes the whole thing work.
Edit: which is to say nothing of how bad it will get when people make tools that help automate retaliation for downvotes. You can potentially state an opinion in a comment and set up a bot to auto block every downvoter, then share that list publicly. You may think that sounds like a great system for weeding out hate but I promise you it’s going to be far messier than that, and more importantly, this kind of retaliatory shit hurts the aggregation even more.
Votes on lemmy are inherently public, due to how federation works.
The US is based on Federalism and we don’t make our votes public
Votes are public on Lemmy, in the sense that if you have admin access to an instance that is federated you will be able to find who upvoted which posts/comments in the database.
That should really be changed so that you can only see the cumulative votes from any given instance and only a user’s specific instance will have records of their individual upvotes and downvotes.
That would make pushing posts to the top via botting way too easy, and far harder to detect. Federation is intentionally set up so that instances do not trust each other.
so less than 1000 people can see up/downvote data. not exactly “public”
You can see upvote info by viewing from kbin. Upvotes are displayed as favorites there.
All Lemmy instances have up/down votes. its disabled by default in each users’ settings. Literally just go into your settings once, and look around.
Lol
IIRC
Kbin recently removed the abilityto show who faved/unfavved a post for Lemmy instances.Edit: guess they did not 🤦
It is quite easily accessible. Here
I swear there was discussion about hiding faves coming from lemmy… guess they decided not to. At least you can still follow people and see who else is following them… 🤦
It’s pretty easy to spin up a temporary instance in a VM.
Since upvoting is most of what I do, I think it’s great that people can see it was me who upvoted them.
I don’t mind the accountability of a downvote at all. If I didn’t craft a specific reply, it lets people know who to ask if they genuinely don’t understand why their content was problematic.
You can potentially state an opinion in a comment and set up a bot to auto block every downvoter, then share that list publicly.
Shhh dont give them ideas
No one should feel like there’s a “deterrent” to voting.
. . . It is a very bad idea to deter people from voting
You misread. What I wrote:
deterrent against weaponizing downvotes
Voting and weaponizing downvotes are two very different things.
To be clear, I used the phrase “weaponizing downvotes” to paraphrase the intent behind the written policy I quoted in full. Here it is again:
Do not engage in content manipulation such as posting spam content, vote manipulation through using several user accounts or consistently down-voting a user. Vote for the content, not for the person.
Seems like you have a problem with the policy then, because it is requiring you to self-regulate your own voting, and to specifically NOT vote as you please, but in a way that is best for the community as a whole.
I’ve had a user disagree with me and then go through my entire post history and downvote every single one of my comments. I don’t get why someone would do that but I can see why Lemmy.world would put it against their terms of service.
I get that all the time. It amused me greatly until the day I found out I can turn off the Fantasy Internet Points entirely. Now I have no idea if my votes are up or down or sideways.
And I don’t care.
Why is it necessary to count votes cast an unlimited time after posting. The best policy is to register votes in the UI for the user but silently ignore votes after max duration. So they can feel like they stuck it to you while not having an unreasonable effect. You could even detect and silently discard downvotes that matched that pattern or rate limit the downvotes against one party silently.
It happened to me, and it was the She-Ra fans who did it. They were angry that I called them monarchists.
“Not my previous updoots😭”
proofs of idiocy and/or bad faith they offer
Then a downvote is justified, same user or not.
If you were to turn that on for lemmy.world as well I think it would get you better voting behavior from users all around.
I don’t think so. I think the more likely scenario is this would lead to people weaponizing other’s downvote history, and then very quickly people would stop downvoting completely. You’d have less downvotes overall, which is not always a good thing. At that point they should just remove the ability to downvote altogether, they’ll be accomplishing the same thing.
I think that if you access Lemmy via api, you can see who downvoted you specifically. I’d prefer it’d be turned off as I think people feel better about participation when they don’t have to go on the record to other users officially.
Just for clarity: it’s not viewable through the API. As others have said, you need to spin up an instance. In contrast to the API, this means it’s not free (due to server hosting and domain name costs), and it’s not necessarily easy (for the non-techies).
So you’re saying a motivated individual can still quasi weaponize it.
Imagine getting blackmailed because someone knows you upvoted that kink content or whatever
Multiple accounts. It’s somewhat unfortunate, but in a public ecosystem like the fediverse, it’s pretty much a requirement to compartmentalize separate aspects of your personality. Particularly if you dare to hold different opinions on different things that don’t align with majority social groups of people.
Honestly, not writing this from some dedicated “introspection” account, already makes me slightly uncomfortable 😐
That sounds like an awful complicated way to say you care about what other people think too much
Or maybe I’ve met too many people who care too much about what I think 🤷
If you were to turn that on for lemmy.world as well I think it would get you better voting behavior from users all around.
Is it possible on Lemmy interface ? I thought that data required to have a look at the database
Not through the Lemmy webUI, but if you spin up an instance and subscribe to communities, the posts and comments will start getting federated to your database.
That’s what I had in mind, thanks
5.0.6: No visual content depicting executions, murder, suicide, dismemberment, visible innards, excessive gore, or charred bodies. No content depicting, promoting or enabling animal abuse.
This rule needs an exception for war reporting, and posting evidence of criminal activity or police misconduct.
Not just war reporting. There are legitmate medical discussions that can be aided by such depictions. There should be an exception made for legitimate educational images. Otherwise technically a biological textbook on dissection runs afoul of this rule.
I second this. Educational content should be an exception.
fucking lawyers ruin everything
Then stop fucking lawyers :D
You can’t say that word, no? /s
True. “L*wyer” is a very taboo word in almost every civilized society.
And hobbyist
Not really tbh. We don’t need to personally see that stuff — it can cause lasting trauma. Knowing it exists and who did it is enough for war reporting.
We need a NSFL tag. Reddit created NSFW but never created the other one.
Should copy mastodon instead with content warning tags. They function similar to nsfw/nsfl filters, but instead are filled with custom text as a warning. So the same function for nsfw could get used as “movie spoilers” or something.
The current spoiler tag work this way
... Gore Text or photo ...Unfortunately not all frontend or client support it yet.
For content the spoiler tag allows to change the title to show any string of text. You may put “NSFL” anywhere you see fit.
But specific tags for posts would be a necessary feature for sure.
Citizens of free and democratic societies have a fundamental need to be informed of what is going on in the world and their communities, free of bias or censorship, so they can make informed, reality based decisions and instruct their representatives in government on how to carry out the will of the people. When you start filtering and curating peoples’ perception of reality to fit an agenda or narrative you’re talking away their agency (you tankies wouldn’t understand what that word means), and interfering with their duties as a citizen.
I have to agree with Astrealix on this. Information should be free. But information and snuff videos are two different things. I want information. I don’t need or want to be constantly exposed to gore content. And I don’t consider myself badly informed because I didn’t see one guy chopping another guy’s head in 4K-HD.
I don’t need or want to be constantly exposed to gore content.
A simple blurred image until clicked would prevent that, like it currently does with NSFW content.
I don’t need you deciding what level of gore that I am allowed to see
More importantly, we don’t need to be limiting the discussion of incredibly important political issues such as was just because the imagery is ugly. War is ugly, and reminding everyone of that is vitally important in preventing future wars. When we forget how ugly war truly is, we begin to allow for its glamorization. Much better for me to see the atrocities of war than for my children to experience them firsthand.
But they aren’t. You’re free to go to an instance that hosts those images.
Conversely if lemmy.world hosted gore, you’d be free to go to an instance that bans it. What a non statement.
I’m complaining about the policy. Saying I’m not allowed to complain about the policy, because that’s not what the policy says, is dumb.
Let me make it clearer: I don’t like this section of the terms and I’d like to hear their reasoning for why they made that policy decision.
Your reason for liking the gore ban makes no sense so I’m dismissing that as a possible reason for the admins’ decision.
First of all, I am from Hong Kong and utterly hate the CCP and tankies. It’s frankly insulting that you would compare me to them when they consistently fight for the complete eradication of the Hong Kong identity.
But more importantly, there’s a line to be drawn there. I agree that it is important to be informed — but you don’t need Israel tweeting photos of dead babies onto everyone’s Twitter feeds and traumatising people to be informed that babies died. You don’t need to personally witness every single gory detail of humanity’s terrible sins in order to know that things have happened. That’s what people do as a job in journalism, and they have lots of protection to make sure they’re not traumatised by it. The average Lemming doesn’t need to see that.
what’s a “tankie”
Russian apologist who supports Russia in the Ukraine war is how I understand it.
Also they support the CCP
They have a veneer of communism but they really just support authoritarianism especially among geopolitical enemies of the USA.
Authoritarians of the left. For example, they support Putin because they’re against NATO, and they praise Mao, Stalin and other brutal dictators.
This is a private instance, not a government. This is so dramatic lol. You clearly disagree with the tankies and you aren’t on their instance, right? So if you disagree with lemmy.world policies, you can just do the same.
We don’t need to personally see that stuff
I find it difficult to understand that something should be banned because some people “don’t need” to see it. Then don’t look at it? And I’m talking specifically for war reporting now. I’m not talking for generic gore. It is war reporting. It is something that happens. By hiding it it only helps to enlarge our safe bubble and live in it. Sorry, this is not the world. If you want to live in your safe bubble it is up to you, but making it sound like the “correct way to handle reality” is wrong imo
I agree that it’s fine to make a rule against it on a privately funded instance but definitely do not agree with your line of thinking. Sometimes you can’t understand the gravity of horror without seeing it, and sometimes you must understand it to be motivated to do something about it. A little trauma of is sometimes necessary to be an informed citizen of the world.
Get traumatized by gore for “thoughts and prayers” on
FacebookLemmydeleted by creator
Good thing these people weren’t on the internet in the early 2000’s with sites like rotten.com or toxic.com. much simpler days
Idk, I preferred meatspin and lemonparty.
Bluewaffle?
cavemen were simpler too, go ahead and fully revert already plz.
I’d rather not go on Tic Tok, but thanks for the suggestion
You so cute
this is unhelpful also
Thank you, I do what I can
then don’t look at it
It’s easier not to look at when you know where it’s prohibited from being posted.
We could just make it opt-in. Then it’s impossible to accidentally click on it.
You can opt in by visiting a community on another instance that allows it.
That’s not how opting in works, at all.
Yes we do. Gore and mutilation are part of life. It should be shown on public television and kid’s shows so maybe we can finally understand the consequences of senseless warfare in future generations.
Checks notes…
mumbles something
Ah yes so kids have previously been exposed to, in the normal course of life:
- Early civilization life at all in general
- Gladiator events
- Hangings
- Burning people alive
- Ad nauseam
So those were the most peaceful eras of humanity then, by your logic, yeah?
PTSD is a real thing. Trauma is a real thing. Yes, we are much too desensitised to war. Yes, we should absolutely be outraged and we need to recognise that warfare is terrible. That doesn’t mean that access to traumatisation should be easy. Look at suicide rates of veterans, for example. Trauma is a real thing, and there’s a reason there is so much research dedicated to protecting journalists etc. who have to look at this stuff so they can tell us the truth.
Look at suicide rates of veterans
I bet this is referring to the US veterans as I doubt there are other countries with such statistic and I wanted to say that IDGAFF. They chose to go fight in the other side of earth thinking they are doing good. Going back and realizing how wrong they were and that in fact they were killing people inside their homes and who never were an actual threat. The reason of the suicides is this tragic realization.
lol there are studies on it done for Russia, Ukraine, UK, Dutch UN troops who intervened in Srebrenica…
Ukraine has been defending itself. Dutchbat we’re trying and failing to maintain peace and instead watched as a massacre happened.
Yes, the US has more statistics, as it often does for psychology because many people don’t treat it seriously. That doesn’t mean the problem doesn’t exist.
The people downvoting you better be as consistent when it comes to Australias tobacco packaging.
Sounds good to me, I don’t know why you are getting downvoted friend
Because they don’t know what they’re talking about. Although neither do I tbf
I know, right? Thanks for the support.
They aren’t Reddit, they’re an instance. There’s no reason they need to allow that. That content can be for other instances.
That is bad logic and no justification.
They’re an instance, they can put a rule requiring every comment to include the text “I’m a little teapot”.
That doesn’t imply it would be a good rule which is what we are disagreeing about. Pointing out they CAN have a rule is irrelevant.
what we are disagreeing about
In a federated system, the relevant part is each instance CAN have different rules. If you don’t like one set, or consider it “not good”, then go to an instance with a different set, or start your own.
“start your own”
“start you own!”
“Start you own start your own”
There should be a rule that allows for violence against people who say that
There should be a rule that allows for violence against people who say that
Are you suggesting to… “start your own”, violence? 😛
And people can criticize that choice.
Sure, they can. And people can point out it’s the instance owner’s choice.
Libertarianism is a garbage ideology.
That’s what lemmy.ml is for. This instance is too big for its own good.
I like what I see. Everything looks like a set of conditions I can support. I am not sure about the gore part, but I can understand why people wouldn’t want that can of worms.
4.1: No one under 16 years of age is allowed to use or access the website.
Someone’s going to need a stretcher for the roblox mods.
I’m not sure if I should be angry at yet another attempt to exclude young people when the internet is already practically the last refuge in which they are allowed to exist at all…
… or laugh my ass off that literally anyone thinks this rule will be obeyed.
It’s about legal liability. The admins don’t want to have to worry about dealing with all sorts of EU and US regulation for minors so they can have an official policy that minors can’t use the site.
Nobody really cares if kids participate but it’s not the admin’s responsibility to bend over backwards for regulations to accommodate them.
Sir, I just need you to confirm you date of birth is indeed: Jan 01 1999
But have no fear. It’s not the rule people should worry about, its the punishment!
Clause 66, section 6: All ages 16 of less will be sentenced to 15 days in the meme mines. And possibly made mandatory mod of Boomer Memes for an hour. May the odds be ever in your favor.
No one wants kids shitting things up dude
I want young people being able to express themselves equally and without fear.
Remember Lemmy does not only have safe content and communities, and this includes our federated network. If you think kids should be able to view some of those, then you are free to disagree. We are happily following obligations.
An instance doesn’t have to follow, or show, the content from all the instances it’s federated with. If you chose to do so, that’s your choice, there is likely another “kids friendly” Lemmy federation split on the horizon.
And the admins (and myself, for that matter) want to exist without the risk of doing a perp walk because Little Timmy saw a peen.
I’m on an NSFW Lemmy instance. I have multiple NSFW accounts spread over the various platforms, and my single biggest fear is that some shithead kid is going to ignore the giant “18+ only” warnings because they’re so MATURE for their age, they’re going to find adult content (or worse yet, try and message me and pretend they’re over 18 so I don’t block them), and one of their relatives find out and call the police. Intentionally done or not, I’ve seen exactly that scenario play out, ruining the lives of multiple people through no fault of their own.
The Lemmy admins all have to worry about this exact same thing too, except they have to worry about every kid and every NSFW account/community, unless they decide to either play whack-a-mole with the various NSFW instances, or move to default deny federation and only federate with known-SFW communities. And that’s on top of the existing CSAM spam concerns that they appear to have only recently gotten under control.
I don’t give a single solitary flying fuck about whether children can express themselves equally. They’re NOT equal to an adult, because I don’t risk jail time by showing off my [REDACTED] to them.
Let’s take a look at what comments look like when you encourage kids to sign up
Broo 💀💀
bro woke up and chose violence
And who could forget this classic
🔥🔥🔥
Age limits are entirely self-selected. If you’re dumb enough to out yourself as breaking them, you were probably not contributing to the community in the first place
I don’t necessarily. I remember when I was young, and hanging around on BBS’es and forums all the time. I was a little shit.
I remember when I was young and the Internet was the only place I felt like I wasn’t constantly being talked down to. It was the only emotionally safe space I had.
This sure as hell ain’t the place for them.
Said of essentially everywhere.
And then old people wonder why young people are so anxious and depressed these days…
I don’t wonder. I know. It’s because they’re on the internet instead of going.the.fuck.outside.
There is zero wrong with putting age limits in place.
News flash, kids exist and adults already have their safe spaces.
Agreed but the puritans that have to give it up before we can expect sites like this to overexpose themselves to legal action.
I’d like to see rules for moderators, for instance they cannot ban users based on participation in other groups
Great idea indeed. The rules for moderators have been in the works for a while, and will hopefully be published very soon.
Thanks for replying. I’d also like to suggest:
- Moderators MUST point out in any ban or deletion message what rule was broken and copy the comment in it if it was deleted.
- There needs to be a contact that admins moderators (mod for mods) for appealing misbehavior by mods
- Group rules must comply with Lemmy’s terms of service
- Repeated moderator abuse, after warnings, should result in the loss of mod privileges
- Bots cannot be used to ban users. A person needs to put some thought into it. For instance, a bot might ban based on forbidden words but the comment may be quoting someone using them.
This was something that caught me off guard on Reddit. I saw some edgelord in the comments of a shitpost sub roleplaying as a third reich Nazi. I commented „Halt die Fresse.“ which is German for STFU. I immediately got banned from the main BLM sub.
And it happened over and over again. Some Mods on Reddit are just full of themselves.
In reddit I questioned the logic of an anti-vax group and immediately got banned by about a dozen bots in other groups because I had commented in a “forbidden” group. There was no attention paid to the content of the comment. So much for reddit being a forum for discussion.
If you can’t moderate a group without using ban bots then you shouldn’t be moderating.
As a former mod, I understand why some mods used automatic bans. I modded a few moderate sized subs and noticed posting trends in other subs amongst troublemakers. “For some reason”, many active posters in r/TheDonald, r/Conservative, and similar subs were far more likely to be offensive or hurtful and didn’t have much that was interesting, helpful, or constructive to say. Certainly nothing valuable enough to tolerate their shit. When we’d temporarily block one of them for name calling or other personal attacks, we’d get messages ad nauseam claiming we had violated their first amendment rights, that they were going to find and harm us in some way, or just a bunch of further name calling and personal attacks. I had two try to dox me. Poorly. They weren’t very bright.
With that being said, we didn’t use auto bans because they’re chickenshit. Yeah, they would save us a fair amount of time and aggravation, but they’d also ban people like you and me, who may have told some Nazis to fuck off or explained, line by line, how the latest thing Joe Rogan or Bench Appearo shit out their mouth was exactly that: shit. If you’re going to mod a community, it’s kind of what you sign up for. If you can’t handle it, then quit or get more backup. Don’t ruin it for others because you can’t or don’t want to deal with the unpleasant aspects of the job.
Bench Appearo
Ever since I heard this phrase, I occasionally like to imagine someone finding out they have magical abilities because they accidentally summoned a sex swing after saying “fuck ben shapiro”
Ban bots are the stupidest thing. I once wandered into a alt right conspiracy sub and called everyone the r-word. Got banned from there, got banned from another unrelated sub for posting there, and got an automated message from the admin team for using that word.
To be fair, using ableism that way is scummy and I won’t argue against that. But getting banned from justiceserved out of nowhere was just dumb.
If you want to ban trolls, be my guest. I am pretty triggerhappy with the block function myself. But as you said, preemptively banning people makes you look unfit for that position.
5.0.4: Do not post illegal content of any type. Do not engage in any activity that may encourage, facilitate or provide access to illegal transactions. Do not share or encourage the sharing of abusive or sexually suggestive content involving minors. Any violent or otherwise inappropriate behavior involving a minor will also always be strictly prohibited.
5.0.4 seems to be in conflict with the existence of !piracy. I’m not complaining about its existence, just mentioning that it seems to be a conflict.
“Illegal content of any type” is an incredibly thorny concept. Illegal where? Where the poster is? Where lemmy.world is hosted? Within some nebulous consensus of Western nations? Only the US states that matter, excluding Wyoming and Montana?
It’s illegal to be gay in Saudi Arabia or Uganda. Is gay content not allowed? Switchblades are illegal in California but not in neighboring Oregon. Am I not allowed to talk about switchblades? It’s illegal to export strong encryption technologies from the US. Am I not allowed to talk about encryption? Etc., etc., etc.
It was quoted just a bit above you, dude:
7.0: The website and the agreement will be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and the Republic of Finland Suomen.
I’d argue “transaction” implies an exchange… If you pirate content you either are giving something freely, and receiving nothing, or are receiving something while giving nothing.
If you’re not a leeching piece of shit (like I am) then technically torrenting IS a transaction
like I am
Machine… I will cut you down, break you apart, splay the gore of your profane form across the STARS! I will grind you down until the very SPARKS CRY FOR MERCY! My hands shall RELISH ENDING YOU… HERE! AND! NOW!
*
It was hard to decide whether to post this copy-pasta or just ‘you fuck’
This whole comment is /j, I don’t care that much
Heh, wait until you remember that if you block outcoming traffic it will be hard to download something at a decent speed (unless there are a lot of peers)
What you argue is less relevant than the legal definition in the Netherlands.
Does !piracy@lemmy.world exist? If it does I can’t find it.
Technically exists, but has been inactive for months. The active piracy communities are !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com and !piracy@lemmy.ml - neither of which are hosted by lemmy.world.
Those communities aren’t hosted on lemmy.world and therefore not subject to its terms.
edit: if I’m not mistaken, those communities (or the instances they’re hosted on) have been banned from lemmy.world, so if you’re logged in as a lemmy.world user, you cannot see them anyway.
I think they were recently refederated.
Correct.
huh, interesting
in my country only uploading is illegal, not downloading so not necessarily.
What matters is the laws in the location of the server and/or the person who owns the domain and runs the site.
And the terms explicitly state which location whose laws it believes they fall under:
The website and the agreement will be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and the Republic of Finland Suomen
So… does anyone know how legal/illegal piracy is in the Netherlands and Finland?
Illegal in the netherlands. Not sure about finland
Regarding Section 1.0, the portion “lemmy.world (“Lemmy.World,” “we,” “us,” or “LW”).” You may need to include the term “our” since it’s used quite frequently throughout the document.
trusting you to fairly enforce these rules since they are beyond my willingness to parse. IANAL That said, golden rule always applies. If a suspension or ban is warranted, please require a clear reference to the violation so behavior can be modified in the future. Hate getting banned with no reason or hope of avoiding future violations.
In this regard, this is pretty damning: https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/554307/Just-wanted-a-warning-Lemmy-World-is-perhaps-worse-than-reddit
Also, adding having to agree to the Terms of Service when a new user creates an account is good, but does nothing when they create the user from another instance. Lemmy instances that want to implement this might want to consider forcing users coming from other instances to have to agree to general Terms of Service before they can fully participate.
That thread filled with people who got banned from Lemmy World. You think everyone there is arguing in good faith?
And some of the reactions to the new ToS have been quite aggressive towards the admin team, even though there is nothing there that changed how people can use our site. Be a decent person and you are welcome, that is the document’s purpose.
We had reactions telling us “fuck off corporate shills” and “suck my balls” and publicly stating they will be a problem and then it’s Shocked Pikachu when they get banned and start threads everywhere.
As you pointed out, people who sign up on Lemmy World have to agree to these terms by typing “I agree” in the sign-up form. We’re looking into other options for existing users.
Part of what you are saying may be true, but what the OP is claiming definitely isn’t. The Internet Wayback Machine links to the “offending” comment, which they couldn’t have manipulated, and the modlog reason on lemmy.world isn’t lying. Worse, it was a comment in this thread where “Users may express their questions, concerns, requests and issues regarding the Terms of Service, and content moderation in Lemmy.World. We hope to discuss and inform constructively and in good faith.” that got him banned with the claim that he was “disagreeing with the Terms of Service” because of it, and it does not seem that any apology or acknowledgement has been sent.
Speaking of which, you can go through OP’s history in their kbin.social account and find out how he was defending your admin team from the reactions you are complaining about until he had his comment history completely deleted and his account banned on lemmy.world.
The problem isn’t just with existing users, the problem is with new and existing users from other Lemmy instances who aren’t going to have the same Terms of Service as you. You are basically going to have to come up with a way to get them to agree with it before they can participate in it, and given that this server seems to be within the EU, that probably also means some additional GDPR concerns when obtaining if you are trying to cover yourselves legally.
That does look like they deleted the person by accident. When people are attacking you, it’s hard to see everyone clearly.
If it’s hard to see clearly, then such a person should not be an admin.
This is all volunteer and by donation, be the change you want to see. Mistakes happen. Having been a mod, it’s way harder than it looks. I can’t imagine how hard an admin is.
Except that according to OP’s comments elsewhere, they haven’t apologized or communicated directly with them, they haven’t answered their ticket, and the entries in the modlog of them doing those actions have been removed. Nothing about that looks like the actions of someone making an accident and owning up to it.
The reason that was archived hardly makes it seem like an accident:
Banned @InternetTubes
reason: disagreeing with the Terms of Service - don’t worry your content is gone
https://web.archive.org/web/20231020022523/https://kbin.social/u/@InternetTubes@lemmy.world
https://web.archive.org/web/20231019235547/https://lemmy.world/modlog
OP has also pointed out that you can search for HEISENBERG in a more recent modlog and look back and see that a lot of entries have been removed, https://web.archive.org/web/20231021224842/https://lemmy.world/modlog . This is about the only thing that could seem like an accident, even if the timing does make it seem suspicious.
There’s also another person joining in and making claims that seem to support that they act this way: https://lemmy.ml/comment/5060380
That all does sound like there is a rogue admin, have you contacted Ruud or another one of the admins? This isn’t a faceless organization, but a volunteer one. Someone could have came in to do harm, or this is a shitty instance (I’m leaning towards it being an attack). I haven’t had anything weird happen, but I’ve been naive about this before. Ruud could be being naive too. I think we’d love to know how this all turns out, so keep us updated.
According to OP, they believe it was the same admin who’s been writing the ToS because of the last comment and the ban reason although there is no direct evidence of it. They did provide a screenshot of a ticket having been made in mastodon.world that hasn’t been answered.
Just looked at Ruud’s account, and he has been inactive for a few weeks now, he may not be available and this may have been done in his absence. I think Antik has been the only one to reply, but saying that a whole instance is untrustworthy and associating to people complaining about how this server has handled itself seems like deflection, specially when OP seems to have defended lemmy.world against those very same criticisms in the past.
I really just wanted to know, but having no clear answer is an answer to itself. I’ll just let this alt become my new main so I don’t have to risk the wipeout. It still leaves a lot of possible potential damage, but people are crowding around this instance, whatchagonnado.
Your account is brand new, which of the banned users are you?
What do you mean? Are you suggesting new users from other servers should explicitly be asked that question? It seems like just confirming their freely given consent and acceptance of the Terms of Service would cover it. Otherwise, it just seems like you are trying to derail the intent of this community to fish for excuses.
Just pointing out that you signed up on one instance to complain about the TOS and bans of another one. And that was your first and only action. Pretty sus but I am sure you have no stakes in this
“Derail the intent of this community”, what?
I signed up to use Lemmy. It’s federated. I’m also free to sign up in multiple instances as well, just as I’m free to choose to sign up with a new account to discuss something that concerns me, specially when it involves getting entire accounts purged and banned for reasons that don’t seem clear and for which there is evidence that it isn’t just someone with a beef. Are you implying alts should be illegal?
I’m sure the admins share the same concerns as you, and will perform and act as they consider appropriate. It is absolutely none of your concern and your suspicions mean nothing, not to mention you seem to have difficulty reading the bar on the side.
You ban people for disagreeing with you no matter if they’re in good faith or bad. I’m going to assume everyone you banned is in good faith until proven otherwise due to your track record.
deleted by creator
That’s true, but the problem goes beyond making a mistake when it also involves how they are handling it. I doubt this would be a problem if they admitted their mistake and if they had apologized and made whatever amends they could. Instead, the user is still banned, https://lemmy.world/u/InternetTubes , and the reason for the ban no longer shows up on the modlog which also seems to be getting increasingly more empty.
The only thing that they have going for them regarding this incident is allowing this discussion to go on, but having also been on reddit long enough, I know how well that could easily mean just wait to see how it pans out and see if it goes away.
You anal?
am not a lawyer
We.
This seems to bring LW closer to Reddit. /s
But seriously, what is the point of all of this? It only seems to overcomplicate things. Now a user will have to:
- Follow the ToS
- Follow the CoC
- Follow whatever rules a community’s sidebar states
- Match whichever mod’s interpretation of all the above
In that order, or any other order? I see nothing about protesting the breach of the ToS by either the CoC or some community, or some community’s mod… so which supersedes which?
How is this going to be communicated to users commenting/posting from other instances? Or is this only applicable to users registered on this instance? In which case, what is going to be applicable to federated users?
What are the user’s rights?
- Users Responsibilities: 4.x
- Our Rights: 6.x
- Users Rights: none?
If you want to establish this as a legal document, then you’re missing at least a section.
If this is about giving as many reasons as possible to remove/ban content/users, it’s all unnecessary, just say “mods can remove/ban whatever”; it’s a private instance, you can do that.
If this is about having a ruleset that protects the users from arbitrary mod decisions… I see none of that in there.
Ultimately it’s just “we’re gonna act like how reddit admins act”.
Simplified version: Dont be an asshole.
FIN
Using a free service is not a right, it’s a privilege. Which can be revoked at any time for any reason. Grow up.
It seems like simply reading the post and having an understanding of how federation works would address most of the points you’ve made.
The remaining:
- What are user rights?
Anything that’s not restricted? That’s why we have rules and not an allowances list.
And if you have an issue with humans moderating, oh well, good luck.
I know perfectly well how federation works. The core of my questions have nothing to do with federation, they’re about people and how they’ll #### rules to death.
But since you brought it up: you may want to also consider the implications of mods from federated instances making decisions about content on LW communities.
What are user rights?
Anything that’s not restricted?
As I said, if you want to establish this as a legal document (often called “Terms of Service”)… then you may really want to check with a lawyer on that.
And if you have an issue with humans moderating, oh well, good luck.
Maybe I wasn’t clear; this isn’t about me having an issue, this is about you missing a few issues. Take it or leave it, I have no stake in this.
Allowances? They’re talking about guarantees.
A lemmy bill of rights? Interesting… what kind of stuff would you expect to see on such a document?
Not my idea, but let’s make it a Constitution while we’re at it. Dibs on the first Supreme Court seat.
You really expect me, your average idiot, to read a legal document to learn the rules and abide by them?
It’s not hard to read and it’s pretty clear. IMHO it’s better than most ELUA text I’ve seen.
Besides with the scale at which this site is growing it would be STUPID of them NOT to put up something like this. At the bare minimum it’s protecting their asses from liability if/when someone decides to sue them. They can’t point to that text and say this is what/why we took the actions we did.
I trust in the Golden Rule, and my behavior within carries me to victory!
I trust that the Golden Rule will be “enough the same” - compared to the given rules here - so that I will not break any rules!
Yes! Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
Thanks for being upfront and clear about things. I know it’s not easy.
If you don’t have anyone on the team who has great soft skills I’d suggest you put out a call for “community managers.” Mostly for things like this.
Keep up the great work! I’m glad to see how everything is coming together. 🍻
7.0: The website and the agreement will be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and the Republic of Finland Suomen.
oh ok, some operational details make more sense now
How does a TOS work with federation??? I have no intention of breaking rules to be clear, and I assume if I did I would just get banned? I’m just curious what the legal implications are.
I can see and interact with content on lemmy.world without ever visiting it, which feels like a grey area on the “accessing or using” part right at the beginning of the TOS. Maybe include a definition for what “accessing” is and can include in the context of the fediverse?
Then again it might not matter, idk.
Lemmy.World’s Content Policy would apply to all content that is hosted by or served by us. “Served” in this case also means showing federated posts to our local users, which can indeed be moderated on our side.
When a cross-instance user posts to a lemmy.world community, or participates in a LW-hosted post, then the Terms of Service keeps its enforce-ability. You may be able to see Lemmy.World’s federated content without visiting the site, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be moderated by Lemmy.World’s admins and community moderators. We were previously having software issues where removals did not federate, but that seems to be in the past now.
tl;dr: If it is visible on Lemmy.World, then it is subject to the ToS
tl;dr: If it is visible on Lemmy.World, then it is subject to the ToS
I get how this makes sense, but legally this seems clearly false. The end user is interacting purely with their own instance, its their instance that is pushing the content to LW servers. If we’re putting on the big boy pants, we might want to make sure they’re the right size. There probably needs to be actual legal consideration about all of this, with a particular look into the implications of federation.
When a cross-instance user posts to a lemmy.world community, or participates in a LW-hosted post, then the Terms of Service keeps its enforce-ability.
Since we both know how federation works, and asking for a boost from an LW’s community user (“posting to a Lemmy.world community”) involves an active use of LW (does it?)… broadcasting up/down votes or boosts to LW, does also constitute “active use of lemmy.world”, or doesn’t constitute “access to and active use of lemmy.world”?
Can a federated user get banned for up/down voting or boosting the wrong content on LW? Can it be for interacting with wrong content hosted on a federated instance that actively forwards the interaction to LW because some other LW user happens to be subscribed to the federated community?
By accessing or using the website, you and the entity you are authorized to represent (“user” “you” or “your”) signify your agreement to be bound by the Terms of Service.
BTW, many legislations require an explicit acceptance of the Terms of Use as a “legal document”, making that part either meaningless or illegal. How is it in the case of LW’s “Kingdom of the Netherlands, and the Republic of Finland Suomen”?
The without ever visiting is the grey area. Federated instances provide the interface to the underlying instances, so yeah you kind of are “visiting” it if you interact. But you’re right, the mods of any given instance that host the content source get to decide what happens after the fact.
But the other federated instance is essentially mirroring it. Another instances users are not using Lemmy.world directly, they are viewing mirrored content, and then if they reply, they are doing it elsewhere, and it is getting passed on to L.W.
How was this handled for Usenet? I think it was just assumed that if you were propagating Usenet Content, you knew that implied diversity positive and negative.
IANAL, but probably not, any more than reading and sending email on Gmail visits Hotmail or Proton or has to follow their terms of service. I’m using sopuli.xyz, all the content I interact comes from and goes to there, what it and lemmy.world do after that doesn’t have anything to do with me.
Exactly, this TOS probably needs consideration for instance to instance interactions, and lemmy itself should probably have granular options for federation of everything, including mod actions. Federation options seem too course as they stand.
I assume the privacy policy is under construction?
It is private
Yes!
Correct! It is still in the works and will be coming out in the future.
#todo: Privacy policy
