this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2023
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Lemmy.World Announcements

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founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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We've made some changes today, and we'd like to announce that our Code of Conduct is no longer in effect.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.

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[–] [email protected] 235 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 179 points 1 year ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (13 children)
[–] [email protected] 117 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Votes on lemmy are inherently public, due to how federation works.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (9 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 103 points 1 year ago (59 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 77 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (15 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 68 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 73 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'd like to see rules for moderators, for instance they cannot ban users based on participation in other groups

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 year ago (17 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"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.

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (23 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago (8 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

Ultimately it's just "we're gonna act like how reddit admins act".

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (3 children)

You really expect me, your average idiot, to read a legal document to learn the rules and abide by them?

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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. 🍻

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Thank you! But funny you bring this up..

Because that's exactly what we are working on. Community Management and Engagement Management teams are being formed. Community managers will be checking up on moderation and are about keeping communities healthy. Community Engagement team will be responsible to help provide content, putting community's in the spotlight and more.

Formation of these teams is ongoing, if anyone reads this and is interested contact me or @[email protected]

Anyway, more on that in a different thread soon!

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I assume the privacy policy is under construction?

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

In miscellaneous:

In this event, the laws applicable to us, which were mentioned in Section 12

Which section is this referring to exactly?
Not on the same page?

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