As a note, someone should probably promote this community to [email protected] and [email protected]. One of the mods would probably make the most sense
this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2024
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AskUSA
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Community for asking and answering any question related to the life, the people or anything related to the USA. Politics is inescapable, but please keep things that are overtly political to other communities such as:
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- Be nice or gtfo
- Overtly political discussions belong elsewhere
- Follow the rules of discuss.online
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If you're still looking for someone to take ownership, I'd be up for trying it out. I've only modded low-traffic communities until now, but I'm willing to try it out and find a new owner if it's too much for me
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congratulations, you are now a mod:-) You won't be able to view mod reports though (until ~0.20 of the Lemmy software, as Nutomic put it onto the roadmap for that version) unless you create an account on this instance. If you want to do that - I highly recommend it - you'll need to make a comment or post, then click the 3 ellipses and add yourself as a mod, or reply to me here with the new account and I'm happy to do it. We should also figure out how to communicate - I mentioned here that we could create a Matrix (I just created an account on element.io) room somewhere? (but haven't done so yet)
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the 2 admins of Discuss.Online have since clarified on this post, especially this comment that the more extreme types of stuff that Blaze was asking for - like whether it is allowed to say that UE healthcare CEOs should be killed (morally speaking) - are explicitly not allowed on this instance. I get that there's a need to talk about and vent this kind of emotional processing, but that cannot happen here, entirely separately from whether it should be allowed anywhere or my own desire to avoid too much stress in my life:-). So if you likewise were wanting that, we could look into migrating the community elsewhere? But I think it would be problematic no matter where it is located, and I think there's a LOT of value to having an AskUSA that doesn't delve into such controversial topic material? So with the help of you and the 2 other mods, I wouldn't mind staying in that case, b/c we've have sufficient support to handle anything that came our way, so long as we continued to uphold the rules of Discuss.Online to keep things friendly (if no longer necessarily always remaining light-hearted). BTW I initially thought about creating an AskUSA on midwest.social, but completely aside from the controversy surrounding the main admin there (which regardless of your thoughts on the subject, would lower the traffic as some people have apparently decided to boycott that instance), the name of it being "midwest" makes it more regional, as opposed to Discuss.Online's being much more open to so many more people (including outside the USA, but more relevantly here also including everyone from any particular region inside of it). Although then it will have to avoid such topics as whether or not it is okay for people to laud the CEO's murder. But do feel free to let me know any thoughts you may have, if you want to create another community or for us all to help mod this one, or whatever?
Thanks, created @[email protected] as well
👋
Nice!
Excellent! And added. We'll figure the rest out as we go:-).
Tesseract doesn't make you jump through these hoops to manage the mod team, just sayin' 😛
But like I said in the other thread, I'd just want to be an "extra set of eyes" on the community rather than leading it. I've barely had time to grow the communities I wanted to, and spend most of my time here in TenForward or working on Tess.
I can help with the grow
Awesome. You've got a knack for that for sure. The new LOTR memes community seems to be taking off.
Tesseract is so good 👌
Damn - every single thing I hear about it is so cool. And in fact I did think about whether you would want to host some kind of AskUSA/CasualUSA there (and then to offer my help modding it - like you, not wanting to be the head but to donate a bit of time if it would help), but figured (1) if you had wanted to then you would have initiated such by now, with all of the people talking about such, and (2) then I saw your statement that "While we're not quite ready to throw open the doors (we're still configured as a regional instance)...", and wanted to respect that.
Speaking of regional there is also an [email protected], which despite seeming to be mostly dead (the last post was 4 months ago and the one before that was 8 months ago), is likewise not quite the same as a truly, fully national community. Not that any of this is bad ofc - there are communities across the Fediverse for specific regions, states, provinces, even cities, and likewise for specific show series (hehe Star Trek:-P), individual games, etc. as well as entire genres and sub-genres of such. Though there does seem a need for a truly, fully USA-wide community as well, if only to help attract good content creator-type people (e.g. comic artists) from Reddit or the failing X over to here, who may be part of a region that is not yet served.
So Discuss.Online can help there - like dubvee.org it even lacks the name "Lemmy" that can conjure up thoughts of the tankie origins of the software (a saga that many Redditors are familiar with - I at first strongly hesitated to join it myself, though then went with Kbin back when that was a thing:-D), and is a fully general instance, not only for the USA but it is based here. And to help promote the instance it also helps to have such a community here:-).
Though there does seem a need for a truly, fully USA-wide community as well,
Yeah. There was a thread earlier today about a new LOTR meme community and in the comments there, some concerning things were brought to light about midwest (where the main LOTR memes community lives), so I'm happy to see an alternative elsewhere.
So Discuss.Online can help there - like dubvee.org it even lacks the name "Lemmy" that can conjure up thoughts of the tankie origins of the software (a saga that many Redditors are familiar with - I at first strongly hesitated to join it myself, though
Yeah, plus it doesn't add extra load to LW; there's often significant federation delay to many instances. I do have a Discuss Online account, but I already switch back and forth to my LW account to mod other communities, so it makes more sense to use that one, though I can easily switch between all 3 if the DO one would be the preferred one to use.
Heh, my home instance is closer to Beehaw than LW or DO since we're a lot heavier moderated and some of the more extreme takes / users are kept in check (like Beehaw, I'm going for a chill / safe vibe rather than being more general purpose, "as long as it's not illegal" free-for-all). Not throwing shade at either, just different goals is all. So, I don't really mod with my "home" account since there's just too many blind spots.
The admin of Midwest.Social has been known for a long while now to be that way - though unlike the big 3, it's not full-on tankie b/c it seems so far to merely be the admin but most of the users are not that way? Still, after the big 3, it's the #1 instance I am aware of that comes the closest to being tankie, as you can see from peeking at its content.
I think using your LW account should be fine? Or perhaps we should add both your dubvee.org and LW accounts, for convenience? Mostly I'm waiting to see if a second mod would join, then I could add them, tell them to add you, and then you'd be good to go. Or if nobody does, then I could just add you directly and immediately - allthough if I do that, and subsequently someone joins the team, then you would become the new "head mod", needing for you to be removed, then go through the procedure above in order for you to be merely a mod but not at the top. Gaaah, hijinks needing to be jumped through here!?!:-P
I wasn't really familiar with Beehaw for most of my time on the Fediverse, but now that I do I kinda like it - and yet don't (or at least am not entirely sure) at the same time, b/c I saw for instance people advocating for actual murder there, right after Donald Trump won the election, which seems not entirely within the spirit of what they are aiming for? Or perhaps it somehow is (blowing off steam maybe?) and I simply don't get their odd rules for what is or is not allowed? In any case, I've never had any issues conversing with anyone from there, or commenting in any of their communities, which is a rare thing to be able to say on the Fediverse, so they seem very non-toxic as a whole, and that I love!:-D
And yes, I worried exactly about your blind spots - in fact I was going to ask about them - as well as those of my own. Although regarding the latter, Lemmy's instance-level blocks are so ineffectual that they shouldn't matter - e.g. I have such a block for lemmy.ml, yet am able to see those comments in the community and respond to them, and receive notifications from them too. But I don't know about your own true defederation with ML: I would love for DO to have defederated from ML as well, but as long as that has not happened yet... we don't want them to be able to post/comment but for mods to not be able to see that content. Which for a LW account definitely will not be an issue. But I don't know if you would be able to see those from dubvee.org? Anyway you definitely know a lot more about modding, in general and especially using Tesseract, than I!:-)
I think using your LW account should be fine?
Remote accounts don't get the reports
Damn. I've seen things like The_Picard_Maneuver moderating TenForward from both LW and STW, but that must be purely a "convenience" thing. You have enough alts and Fedi-knowledge that I believe that if there was a way to receive those, that you of all people would know:-).
So I guess at least one top mod needs to have a DO account then, while other mods can help curate but they'd be doing it entirely without being able to view the reports?
FYI: I just added my DO account to the team so I have a local account for seeing reports (which apparently don't federate). I'll just switch between all 3 to check in.
Edit: I did that from LW, but it either hasn't yet federated to DO or it got lost in federation. I'll give it a while to catch up on its own, but may need to have you do it "locally"
Thanks !
You might/probably need to make a comment or post within this community first before that can happen. Your last/only comment from that account was from 17 days though. Make a comment reply from that account here, and then we can add it to the mod list as well (I'll make sure to do it - unless you tell me to wait to see if you are capable of doing so remotely, as a test?).
Here ya go
And within a minute, you are added as mod:-).
Awesome. If you want (I tried, and can't since that one is a "higher mod" than this one), you can un-mod my LW account. Since there's sometimes significant federation delay from LW, prob better to not be tempted to issue mod actions from there.
Sorry for the back/forth on that. I was under the impression that the cross-instance moderation had improved in recent versions.
Done! If you ever want it readded (and need help with that I guess) let me know and I'm happy to.
No worries - I had similar thoughts about the cross instance federation of reports, perhaps bc people seemed to be complaining about it less than the past, but probably people simply got tired of saying it all the time:-D. Or more likely it seems to be that modding itself is so problematic in general that it is merely one of the many bad things about doing that activity.:-( I guess I'll find out!:-)
Correct!
Yeah, Midwest doesn't seem too bad overall. I wasn't aware of the admin's stances on things until recently, though. I'm not considering defederating or blocking them or anything like that, though the stance on calling for violence and doxxing has caused me some policy problems.
I think using your LW account should be fine? Or perhaps we should add both your dubvee.org and LW accounts
Probably just the LW one would be fine. I already switch back and forth regularly to mod a couple communities on LW anyway.
then go through the procedure above in order for you to be merely a mod but not at the top
I made that a lot easier to handle in Tesseract through the mod team management panel, but the one thing I'm not clear on is if only admins can transfer the community or if the "top mod" can as well (I think both, but don't hold me to that). There's also a Lemmy bug where "top mod" can do things that admins even can't (which i need to submit an issue for, but I forget the exact circumstances to trigger it, and it's annoying to recover from lol).
Beehaw for most of my time on the Fediverse, but now that I do I kinda like it - and yet don't (or at least am not entirely sure) at the same time, b/c I saw for instance people advocating for actual murder there
Yeah, I'm not sure. I squash that kind of rhetoric pretty quickly locally (regardless of who it's directed at). I do know they mod heavily, but there definitely seems to be some lag (I don't think they have community mods; the admin team is also the mod team for all their communities). I don't think I ever checked back on some of the stuff I reported to see how it was handled.
But I don't know if you would be able to see those from dubvee.org?
No, I would have to federate with an instance to see content from there, even if it's relayed through a third instance (DO in this case).
I don't block any users on my LW account, and Tesseract has some safeguards in place so that if you block an instance the content from that instance still shows up in communities you're a moderator of (e.g. I did block .ml on my LW account, and I typically don't see any content from its users except in the communities I moderate there).
I’m not considering defederating or blocking them or anything like that
Oh I had not thought that far ahead - well, wrt your instance anyway - so those were just my own thoughts along parallel lines:-).
There’s also a Lemmy bug where “top mod” can do things that admins even can’t
It would actually make sense if a top mod could transfer ownership whereas an admin could not, presuming there was also a way to revoke a top mod position. I have seen admins join a community as a mod then leave it (e.g. https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&actionType=ModAddCommunity&modId=5903942 like BuyItForLife), so presumably that could be what is happening there, where they become top mod themselves then transfer in that capacity rather than as mod.
I do know they [Beehaw] mod heavily, but there definitely seems to be some lag
Hrm that could explain it. I don't see the post anymore that I would have thought would have done it - https://beehaw.org/post/17149294, with title "Donald Trump Has Not Won a Majority of the Votes Cast for President" - so despite the many tens of upvotes in it that I saw... well, indeed these are tumultous times.
No, I would have to federate with an instance to see content from there, even if it’s relayed through a third instance
That is what I feared - so the defederation lists must match exactly, for this type of cross-instance modding, or else what you do not know can very much hurt the users in the gaps in-between them. Assuming that cross-instance modding works at all, which according to Blaze it might not.
We may need to do still more hijinks but we can see how it shakes out?!:-)
Probably just the LW one would be fine. I already switch back and forth regularly to mod a couple communities on LW anyway.
Remote accounts don't get the reports
Ah, yeah, I think I knew that (or realized it anecdotally) though wasn't aware there was an actual bug for it . I just switch between my two accounts to check throughout the day which works around that, but those communities are all on LW.
I guess I could just switch between all 3 and use my DO one for this (no big deal since I can have multiple profiles).
That would be great!
No, but I'll volunteer as a mod.
To confirm: no you don't want to be a mod in a community that allows for more serious discussions (like whether jury nullifications are ethical), or just no you don't want to be the owner / sole mod? If the latter, note that @[email protected] has also volunteered to help:-D, so in this case would you be okay to be the "top mod" and then him listed after you?
I was saying that I don't want to be the admin for that community, but I'll volunteer to help moderate it, so the latter.
@[email protected] Awesome! I added you as a mod. Apparently, as Blaze mentioned, you won't be able to view actual "reports" though, from your Lemmy.World (LW) instance. Do you want to create an account on this Discuss.Online (DO) instance so that you can view those? If so, please reply here from that account and one of us can then add it to the mod list. If not, you could still help by being able to do moderator actions, but e.g. if someone replied to an older post and it violated the rules then your attention would not be brought to it. It's entirely your call but I advise making a DO account b/c it's easy, a web browser can be bookmarked to DO even if you normally use an app to access Lemmy with your main LW account, and you can quickly check in ~5s I think if there are no reports to view (I've never seen such a report but probably actually reading them would take longer), which is perhaps likely to be the case on most days? (and if not then that is all the more reason to have access to those reports!)
It looks like Nutomic wants to add cross-instance moderator reporting to the Lemmy sourcecode, but not until ~0.20 so sometime next year rather than "soon".
@[email protected] @[email protected] How do we want to communicate about mod matters? If it helps, I just joined Matrix (@openstars:matrix.org, although I'm not certain that I linked my account there to mine here - I don't see any indicators to that?) - should we use that, like we could create a room, or are there existing rooms we should be joining? (now also @[email protected]) I've never modded anything here on Lemmy before so any advice is welcomed here about what people tend to do - like what they find works best?
should we use that, like we could create a room, or are there existing rooms we should be joining?
You can create a room, usually I have one per community I mod.
Thanks for the advice on best practices!:-)
Has a matrix room been created? If not, I can create one
EDIT: Just created one and sent invites to the mods I could find a matrix account for
Perfection!
@[email protected] are you able to join that Matrix chat group? I signed up using the Element app fwiw (not that it matters to connect - any Matrix one will do - but just in case you needed a recommendation for choice of app:-).
Hey man, sorry you went through all that work for nothing, but I don't want to create another account. I was willing to help moderate on a casual basis, but I don't want to have to switch between accounts on a daily basis and that sort of stuff. I already moderate a couple communities on this account, so I can't just dump this account. Sorry.
It's your choice, but note that you are welcome to remain as a mod either way, even with just your Lemmy.World account. As you say on a casual basis, you just won't get access to the reports that would help alert you to trouble spots identified already by people browsing the community. We now have 3 other mods all with Discuss.Online accounts so we're good, but could always use you chipping in when we haven't yet, again if you still wanted.
Matrix is a whole separate thing - it's like Discord. It too, like Lemmy, is entirely Free & Open Source Software, and the accounts and usage and everything is also free. It offers a "group"/channel style of communication rather than Lemmy's basis of topical "threads", which we all love but for the purpose of discussing mod activities the group method really is better. I just got it yesterday, and immediately I was able to access it both from a webpage and I downloaded an Android app (Element) as well. I like it! If you want, you could create a Matrix account, and optionally tie it into your Lemmy one by adding it to your Settings -> Matrix user, which adds a new button to Send Secure Message to your account Profile I believe. I don't see that button for myself for whatever reason, but supposedly Matrix and Lemmy go together very well.
In any case, nobody is asking you to give up your Lemmy.World account - I agree that would be far too much hassle! 😂 Let us know what you want to do here? Casual mod + talk with us on Matrix, just the former, or nothing anymore?
I can be a casual mod, although idk how much value that will provide for your community without reports. I typically just check reports every couple of days for the other communities I moderate, go through the whole list, then go about my life.
Hold tight - we are juggling the mod list around...
Edit: and, done!:-)
What does that mean for me?
Thank you for volunteering!
I could be very wrong here, but I get the feeling that you are kinda chaffing about the restrictions that Germany is imposing upon LW, and wishing to go outside of those bounds, but aren't quite realizing the enormous extent that the EU protects people's privacy.
Here in the USA, we have far fewer rights, and we know it. First, be aware that when bad-faith people use bad-faith words to that effect, they are lying (in bad-faith:-D): it's "for your protection tho", and "for your convenience" (bull shit!). And as we continue the slide into fascism, I fully expect people to end up in literal and actual and irl jail as a result of what they said. "Freedom of speech" is just mere words - probably within a minute of me hitting send on this, these very words as well as yours will get sucked into a government-funded datacenter that records and analyzes just about literally all words on the internet, hoping to stop "terrorism" or whatever (which it probably does help, but what will happen when the new administration finds out that this capability already exists - to what ends will they put this "weapon" that lies solely within their hands to use, as they see fit, "for our protection" and all that?).
"Freedom of speech" is what a toddler cites as their defense after they've run up and punched you in the face. Never mind how one has little to nothing to do with the other - it's words that they've heard spoken elsewhere, by people acting as bullies, and it halfway worked for those other people (or at least it took YEARS for e.g. the Alex Jones situation to go through the courts), so perhaps worth trying out for themselves as well?
I agree with lazyguru and to expand upon their words: what you seem to be wanting - ACTUAL freedom of speech - is something that I feel like exists far more in various EU nations (granted, perhaps a bit less in Germany now, or if not now then like the USA, expected to change more towards that direction in the near future as a result of the election results?) than the USA. We talk about it here, like a LOT, but the actual reality of making it work has happened elsewhere. Also, things change over time and at the dawn of the internet, the web really was a different place, where places like 4chan (sorry to keep using that extremist example, fwiw here I don't mean to imply that what you want is a toxic hellscape, but rather I'm trying to highlight its focus on being a purely "free speech" platform) were allowed to exist - but this is a different world now, and especially it will become a much more different one still in the near future.
So saying things like your hypothetical scenario presented in https://feddit.org/comment/3562325, that is pushing things to quite an extreme degree imho. Akin to hosting links to pirated or CSAM content even if not hosting such content directly, i.e. still something that could get DO in actual legal trouble, even if nobody were to go to jail for such (although realitistically, someone very well could, if they say it first and then they were to go out and do it?). I presume that you are wanting the more purist hypothetical form of argumentation, divorced from practical reality - but such does not exist, least of all in the United States (possibly, probably even, it might in the EU?).
And in any case - not that it matters b/c the DO admins have declared that such as your hypothetical example is not tolerable on this instance - I don't want to be anywhere near that kind of discussion, above and beyond issues of legality or morality. Tbh I am already uncomfortably weirded out and have had to halt / take a break from reading all the variety of posts seemingly everywhere on Lemmy as it is now - like I get that people are upset and they need a place to talk and even vent, but my own preferences are valid as well, and it's a bit much for me to handle, you know? Though I would not mind helping to mod (I'll give up the top mod spot if someone volunteers to receive it from me) a community that has a more "fun" focus:-).
I mostly wanted to point out that at this very moment, DO's only rules are the Lemmy Code of Conduct, which has been written by the Lemmy devs, and you know enough about Lemmy.ml to know what it allows.
The legal side of DO is limited to https://discuss.online/legal
discuss.online is operated by Jason Grim, LLC., and is hosted on servers operated in United States of America. All content on this server is expected to be legal in all of these jurisdictions
As we know, the legal framework of the USA allows free speech.
If we compare with lemmy.zip, for instance (https://legal.lemmy.zip/docs/terms_of_service/#our-governing-laws)
7.0: The website and the agreement will be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the United Kingdom and the European Union.
European laws are much stronger regarding hate speech, as several people have commented on the LW announce.
I am not advocating for DO to become a free speech instance.
I am suggesting to add rules, be it at the community or instance level, to prevent comments like the one I gave
So if people say “CEOs of private healthcare companies who cause the deaths of thousands of citizens for profit should face the same fate as the United Healthcare CEO”, is it acceptable or no? Real question, I don’t think it’s that clear from the rules.
I guess that does not solve the question of people wanting a place where they can talk about jury nullification of future crimes, but that's something they can solve on their own.
a community that has a more “fun” focus:-)
I can tell you with around 100% certainty that once that AskUSA will become popular enough, it will have at least one or two depressing topics per day.
Again IANAL, but the legal notice does not look airtight, at least to me at a <1 minute glance. e.g. it points to the GDPR for usage by children, somehow defining those as age 16? That's an EU provision, and in the USA "children" is generally considered to be up to age 18. So I very much get the sense that the admins of DO are very much not wanting to push the legal boundaries of anything at all - which is what they both literally said as well in the discussion (which jgrim unlocked btw, if you wanted to respond to him).
So then with that in mind, I am not sure what language would be "necessary", beyond what they have already said? Also yours was very much a hypothetical and delivered entirely in good faith so I would have thought it would be fine? The worry I suppose would lie in someone else perhaps saying identical words, but NOT be delivering in good faith. At which point by the rules of the instance it would need to be removed. I do agree that in an ideal world it could be clarified - you can tell from my writing style that I am very much a detail-oriented person:-) - but on the other hand, in such matters it always seems to be the case that the more that is written, the more that people will hyper-focus on the boundary conditions and ignore the spirit of what was written?
"discovery, fun, & sharing" is fairly general, but if someone gets their comments or post removed b/c they said that murder is good, will they really be all that shocked? Especially keeping in mind that said person is extremely likely to have felt whatever they feel regardless of what rule had been cited or why. And like, rule #2 is literally "Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here." - but would a healthcare CEO feel comfortable here? That's the thing about being liberal, when people say that EVERYONE should feel comfortable, that truly does mean EVERYONE - the exception (requiring intolerance to such) being those who break the rules (i.e. who are themselves intolerant of such). I may not like someone's creed, gender, race, able-bodiedness, sexual preference, or nationality (+ in this case choice of career path), but I am bound to at least act in a tolerant manner of them regardless.
Mind you, I feel like it is obvious (though perhaps it is not) that we can say that when a CEO does actions that lead to the deaths of people, that such actions are not okay? And should be punishable in the usual way, as in via a court of law where he is entitled to a jury of his peers, the same as every other citizen would be? "Innocent until proven guilty (beyond a shadow of a doubt)" But that is so extremely obvious that why would anyone even bother saying that? I guess emotional venting? But while "he (the CEO) should himself be on trial for murder!" seems totally fine to me, as your phrasing implied "he should receive vigilante justice!" is not, b/c the former is obvious (if less so that he would actually receive that penalty) whereas the latter is flagrantly illegal, by design. Yeah it's a dance isn't it, but the former doesn't land anyone in jail whereas the latter literally might, plus as a matter of conscience I would not want to encourage thoughts that could eventually lead to such a horrific outcome, as in the breakdown of all law & order in the USA society where anyone could be gunned down at any time for any reason, just b/c the shooter felt that they had no legal recourses to vent their frustrations, or more likely that they did but that they did not want to bother going through the arduous process of proving guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt in an expensive legal courtroom (or arbitration) setting.
To help handle depressing topics it would indeed help to have another mod - fortunately we now have 3 additional ones, and AP even has a DO account, though refuses to be the top (and yet we would need a top mod with a DO account as we said earlier?). I wouldn't mind handing over "ownership" to m_f, although at this point with clarification from the admins that the most extreme topics as you were asking about aren't allowable in any case - at least, not on DO (it would have to go to some other instance if you wanted such, like midwest.social or perhaps something in the EU would work better for that?) - I am also convinced that I won't be hindering any conversations that would be helpful to have, like non-light-hearted but otherwise non-DO-rule-violating ones. So I removed that from the sidebar text, and am happy to help out that other team, if they'll help pick up especially that kind of slack. We'll shuffle the order if need be, but as that's a pain and only AP has a DO account so far, I don't even see the need to bother with that. Or if m_f wants to migrate the community elsewhere I'm supportive of that too, but that's an ongoing conversation nowhere near finalized yet.
Anyway, you can respond now to the post in Discuss, if you want to suggest any particular language for jgrims to use? Though despite how the USA allows "free speech", DO itself is limiting that to be for "discovery, fun, & sharing" and to "Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here.", which seems to me (naively, not having researched this topic in the slightest!:-P) to be even more narrow than legal notices about "hate speech"?
(which jgrim unlocked btw, if you wanted to respond to him).