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We’ve made some changes today, and we’d like to announce that our Code of Conduct is no longer in effect.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’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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
You anal?
am not a lawyer
You really expect me, your average idiot, to read a legal document to learn the rules and abide by them?
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.
I assume the privacy policy is under construction?
It is private
Yes!
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
Is commercial splatter horror fine? What about a bit of good old eldrich horror?
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.
Where are you guys based? Ultimately there is only one legal jurisdiction that applies here
Minor correction, “4.0.3” is used twice:
4.0.3: You are responsible for your own experience on the website. While we are looking to provide an entertaining platform, we are not responsible for your individual experience. 4.0.3: The reporting function may not be used without good reason. Only report content that violates the rules defined in the Terms of Service, or content that violates the rules of the community it was posted to. Personal messages may be reported if they violate any of the terms defined in this document. User profiles may be reported by messaging any of the admins listed in the website’s sidebar, or by sending an e-mail to [email protected].
I hope this is better than reddit😅
Your post has been removed by Reddit.
Reason: threatening violence
Your first post and already 5 upvotes.
These rules just make lemmy.world to be a poor man’s substitute to reddit, and seems to go against what the fediverse was all about.
First of all, permanent bans. These are great when you deal with people who are never going to change and who are clearly breaking the ToS. The problem is, people change, and admin moderation never is 100% right because no one is 100% right all the time, especially when having to deal with a massive scale of users. Considering how integral social networks are to people’s lives, and that some people are literally children who are growing up, we really should be given a remediational system with them rather than simply “instaban” if this is supposed to be a better social network than the commercial fast buck alternatives.
Second, if you permanently ban users, you run into the same problems as reddit. What happens to all of their previous comments? Do you clear them out from the system even though they had nothing to do with the ban? Do you give users the option to delete it? Do you keep in on the platform without their consent? Do you allow banned users the possibility to export their comment onto other fediverse hosts who might not have the same opinion in regards to a ban as you? How are you complying with the GDPR?
Third, if you try to suggest that a banned user can’t come back and use your platform, what about when they comment from another lemmy host account? Are you going to break the fediverse to enforce bans, or is it local account based only? Are you going to ban lemmy hosts if they refuse to permaban the same people you pemaban?
Fourth, this sort of seems like a three strike system. So, like a “look, I got two strikes way back and suddenly now twenty years after I get a strike, and because of those two, I get banned”.
Overall, it’s very, very vague. Attacking and harrassing groups sounds pretty clear, until you consider how easily it could be applied to mere criticism about a group someone doesn’t like. “participation in individual communities will only be acceptable on the condition that you abide by their rules” seems pretty clear, except when you consider communities whose moderators remove comments under false premises of rule breaking without any explanation. “You waive Lemmy.World … from any claims resulting from any action taken by Lemmy.World, and any of the foregoing parties relating to any investigations by either us or by law enforcement authorities.” - I see many lawyers try to sneak this one, but there are very few courts that wouldn’t allow me to file a claim even with this under a Terms of Service I haven’t even had to explicitly indicate I agree with if, say, lemmy.world decided to violate my GDPR protections because censors in China didn’t like a comment I made about Tiananmen Square, requested my personal private data lemmy.world has on me, and they decided to give it to them.
I see you removed the rules against transphobia and clarified that content can’t be reported if it’s not against the new rules. That sucks
Every one of our users has a right to browse and interact with the website and all of its contents free of treatment such as harassment, bullying, violation of privacy or threats of violence.
Why would we need to spell out every form of these acts? Curious.
For what I expect are similar reasons the list of forbidden image and text content gets so detailed:
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. No erotic or otherwise suggestive media or text content featuring depictions of rape, sexual assault, or non-consensual violence. All other violent content requires a NSFW tag.
I now know from this list that posting Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights” would be problematic even though it wouldn’t occur to me that medieval illustrations of fictional torture would break the rules. And I now no longer know whether this instance considers the usage of variously themed slurs as against the rules, especially in contexts where they’re not direct personal user attacks.
What is socially acceptable obviously varies widely from culture to culture, and definitely instance to instance. The brief list from the previous version helped me to identify the overall culture of the instance to figure out if I would be welcome here. Now instead I’m just not sure if a sweet Aztec decorated human skull from c. 1350CE is allowed because it is half literal human remains, half turquoise, haematite and gold mosaic.
I appreciate that finding the balance here is very difficult. It may just be because it’s late and I’m tired, but I feel less certain about what the expectations are with this version than I did the previous. I hope you will consider returning a bit more detail to section 5.
That statement is a bit like someone saying ‘all lives matter’ in response to people saying ‘black lives matter’ after another black person is gunned down.
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Did you guys talk to a lawyer before doing this? Cause I think a lawyer would explain to you exactly why.
You probably should have talked to a lawyer before trying to draft up a legal document.
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“I’m not insulting you specifically. I am just saying that I think all jewish people are secretly space aliens who eat children” and so forth. It is not bullying because it is not specifically targeting a user. There is no violation of privacy and they held short of talking about what they want to do to that ethnic group. And “harassment” is incredibly nebulous
In a good faith interaction: Common sense prevails and that is flagged under the spirit of the rule (even if I am not sure if I agree that IS against the spirit of it). But you specify stuff like this to remove any ambiguity. Largely for the same reasons you have a TOS/COC to begin with. Wheaton’s Rule was “sufficient” for small message boards back before any of us really cared about bigotry. But even that was largely replaced with real rules the moment the user count broke the hundred mark.
But also? The world is a really shitty place where the best you can generally hope for is that social media is only kind of racist and hateful (oh reddit) rather than being run by literal white supremacists. Text about discrimination goes a long way toward saying “Hey, we are at least trying”.
So is the thinking that a catch all 5.0.1 sufficient? Or will there be restoration of specific rules against discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, sexuality, etc.
Should there also be entries to cover Ginger, Blonde, Black, or a million other specific labels which could be targeted?
Isn’t singling out Transphobia a form of predjudice? Shouild we also add to the list a few thousand other terms which some people find ‘edgy’?
There are very obviously groups of people who are targeted for violence, threats, harassment and abuse based solely on who they are. Ginger, blonde and black haired people don’t experience this.
By making it explicit in a ToS or set of rules that attacking these groups of people is against the rules, the Admins could’ve made those users feel just a little bit safer and welcome on their server. Removing those explicit rules makes them, by contrast, feel unsafer and less welcome. That’s one of things .world admin team have achieved with this change.
This is an understandable concern and was certainly not the intent to make users feel unsafe or less welcome. We are going to look at adding something to cover this.
That’s good to hear.
I’m not subscribed to lemmy.world but I got a proposal on a way to handle this. Here it is:
5.0.1: Before and when using the website, remember you will be interacting with actual, real people and communities. You cannot use Lemmy.World to attack other groups of people, regardless of their sex, sexuality and gender, ethnicity and race, country of origin and residence, religious affiliation or lack of, etc. Every one of our users has a right to browse and interact with the website and all of its contents free of treatment such as harassment, bullying, violation of privacy or threats of violence.
I believe that this should be enough to clarify to those most people that no, bigotry is not allowed in your instance.
I think that’s good but protecting religion is questionable to me. I’m not saying its OK to attack people based on their religion but religion isn’t a property of a person in the way their ethnicity or sexuality is, it’s merely an opinion someone holds. If your wording is adopted, it’d be nice to see the difference between attacking who someone is and an opinion someone holds made clear.
Also needs to reference (dis)ability IMO.
The groups listed as example (notice the “etc.”) are up to the admins, I’m suggesting mostly how to word it. It’s easy to include/exclude one if they so desire.
That said, I do think that “religious affiliation or lack of” should be included. It might boil down to opinions + a bunch of epistemic statements, but it’s consistently a source of persecution.
If your wording is adopted, it’d be nice to see the difference between attacking who someone is and an opinion someone holds made clear.
Personally I believe that this is usually easy - you look at the target of the claim. For example:
- “[religion] is full of bullshit” - probably attacking the opinions or epistemic claims, thus probably fine
- “[religion] is full of arseholes” - unless contextualised otherwise, probably attacking the individuals there, thus probably not fine
This is also up to the admins here though, not me.
Also needs to reference (dis)ability IMO.
I understand where you’re coming from with this, but note that complains about ableism, in social media, are often shielding abled people against criticism, not disabled people from prejudice. Stuff like:
- [Alice] Bob! You’re being a moron. Don’t do this.
- [Bob] Alice dis is ableism!
Should there also be entries to cover … a million other specific labels
Is there significant and active discrimination happening to those “millions” of other specific labels where people show up dead on the news in the majority of countries and that exhibit targeted hatred online? Can you point out a single example for a ginger or a blonde killed because of the color of their hair?
singling out Transphobia a form of predjudice
No, that’s very disingenuous and sounds like rhetoric someone would use to exclude the explicit mention of transphobia from the rules. What you’re doing could be considered semantic manipulation.
Nobody is saying transphobia specifically needs to be called out*.
It is more just actually calling out discrimination. I ANAL (and am not a lawyer) but general catch alls like “No discrimination based on the grounds of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, age, or religion”. Transphobia comes under a mix of gender and sexuality.
But also: When you are dealing with a TOS, you get a lawyer involved (which is another clear issue with this but…) rather than going by what some dude on the internet vaguely recalls of some documentation they read a few months back.
*: Although, there is an argument that hatred toward the trans community has reached the point that it is worth a call out
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No problem. 👍
