Hello World,

following feedback we have received in the last few days, both from users and moderators, we are making some changes to clarify our ToS.

Before we get to the changes, we want to remind everyone that we are not a (US) free speech instance. We are not located in US, which means different laws apply. As written in our ToS, we’re primarily subject to Dutch, Finnish and German laws. Additionally, it is our discretion to further limit discussion that we don’t consider tolerable. There are plenty other websites out there hosted in US and promoting free speech on their platform. You should be aware that even free speech in US does not cover true threats of violence.

Having said that, we have seen a lot of comments removed referring to our ToS, which were not explicitly intended to be covered by our ToS. After discussion with some of our moderators we have determined there to be both an issue with the ambiguity of our ToS to some extent, but also lack of clarity on what we expect from our moderators.

We want to clarify that, when moderators believe certain parts of our ToS do not appropriately cover a specific situation, they are welcome to bring these issues up with our admin team for review, escalating the issue without taking action themselves when in doubt. We also allow for moderator discretion in a lot of cases, as we generally don’t review each individual report or moderator action unless they’re specifically brought to admin attention. This also means that content that may be permitted by ToS can at the same time be violating community rules and therefore result in moderator action. We have added a new section to our ToS to clarify what we expect from moderators.

We are generally aiming to avoid content organizing, glorifying or suggesting to harm people or animals, but we are limiting the scope of our ToS to build the minimum framework inside which we all can have discussions, leaving a broader area for moderators to decide what is and isn’t allowed in the communities they oversee. We trust the moderators judgement and in cases where we see a gross disagreement between moderatos and admins’ criteria we can have a conversation and reach an agreement, as in many cases the decision is case-specific and context matters.

We have previously asked moderators to remove content relating to jury nullification when this was suggested in context of murder or other violent crimes. Following a discussion in our team we want to clarify that we are no longer requesting moderators to remove content relating to jury nullification in the context of violent crimes when the crime in question already happened. We will still consider suggestions of jury nullification for crimes that have not (yet) happened as advocation for violence, which is violating our terms of service.

As always, if you stumble across content that appears to be violating our site or community rules, please use Lemmys report functionality. Especially when threads are very active, moderators will not be able to go through every single comment for review. Reporting content and providing accurate reasons for reports will help moderators deal with problematic content in a reasonable amount of time.

  • MrKaplan@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    5 days ago

    many communities would be happy to have more mods. many of these cases come from the lack of people volunteering to moderate a community. this is already being considered when people are promoted as moderators in communities by our admin or community team if a community doesn’t have active moderators. we already try to find people that aren’t already moderating as many communities in those cases.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      5 days ago

      I 100% get it.

      I mod one sub because it was vacant and someone asked me, and another because I was going to post there but it was vacant so I requested it.

      We 100% need more people to step up.

      But even if those subs just opened the door, the same ones will still be above everyone in the chain.

      Especially with communities where the top couple mods gave up on their account and it’s a zombie. Someone could be 3rd or 4th and defacto head mod.

      Just a suggestion though, it would have prevented the appearance in this situation from being “lemmy.world’s official stance” because one person misunderstood something.

      Misunderstandings are going to happen, it’s unavoidable. If you want a way to mitigate the damage, it’s limit how much reach each person has. Pruning is a natural part of growth, and any mod that gets their feelings hurt about it…

      Well, that’s the type of person we would be doing this to protect against. Someone who lets their feelings get in the way of moderation.