Hey all,
In light of recent events concerning one of our communities (/c/vegan), we (as a team) have spent the last week working on how to address better some concerns that had arisen between the moderators of that community and the site admin team. We always strive to find a balance between the free expression of communities hosted here and protecting users from potentially harmful content.
We as a team try to stick to a general rule of respect and consideration for the physical and mental well-being of our users when drafting new rules and revising existing ones. Furthermore, we’ve done our best to try to codify these core beliefs into the additions to the ToS and a new by-laws section.
ToS Additions
That being said, we will be adding a new section to our “terms of service” concerning misinformation. While we do try to be as exact as reasonably able, we also understand that rules can be up to interpretation as well. This is a living document, and users are free to respectfully disagree. We as site admins will do our best to consider the recommendations of all users regarding potentially revising any rules.
Regarding misinformation, we’ve tried our best to capture these main ideas, which we believe are very reasonable:
- Users are encouraged to post information they believe is true and helpful.
- We recommend users conduct thorough research using reputable scientific sources.
- When in doubt, a policy of “Do No Harm”, based on the Hippocratic Oath, is a good compass on what is okay to post.
- Health-related information should ideally be from peer-reviewed, reproducible scientific studies.
- Single studies may be valid, but often provide inadequate sample sizes for health-related advice.
- Non-peer-reviewed studies by individuals are not considered safe for health matters.
We reserve the right to remove information that could cause imminent physical harm to any living being. This includes topics like conversion therapy, unhealthy diets, and dangerous medical procedures. Information that could result in imminent physical harm to property or other living beings may also be removed.
We know some folks who are free speech absolutists may disagree with this stance, but we need to look out for both the individuals who use this site and for the site itself.
By-laws Addition
We’ve also added a new by-laws section as well as a result of this incident. This new section is to better codify the course of action that should be taken by site and community moderators when resolving conflict on the site, and also how to deal with dormant communities.
This new section provides also provides a course of action for resolving conflict with site admin staff, should it arise. We want both the users and moderators here to feel like they have a voice that is heard, and essentially a contact point that they can feel safe going to, to “talk to the manager” type situation, more or less a new Lemmy.World HR department that we’ve created as a result of what has happened over the last week.
Please feel free to raise any questions in this thread. We encourage everyone to please take the time to read over these new additions detailing YOUR rights and how we hope to better protect everyone here.
https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/#80-misinformation
https://legal.lemmy.world/bylaws/
Sincerely,
FHF / LemmyWorld Operations Team
EDIT:
We will be releasing a separate post regarding the moderation incident in the next 24-48 hours, just getting final approval from the team.
This doesn’t sound like free speech is welcomed here.
Am I wrong?
This instance gave me many signs of this happening, where only what one group of people think MUST be followed, but this kind of cements that now.
Being the Fediverse, you are free to set up your own server and apply or not apply whatever restrictions you wish.
Will do!
And Lemmy’s Stormfront has been born.
You’re being a child about this that has never been told “no”.
There was explodingheads, and its users were furious that others didn’t federate with them.
Wtf are you rambling about
Go outside, get off the net weirdo
What happened to free speech!? Are you canceling me just because you don’t agree with what i say!? 😠
Define “free speech,” because contextually what you want sounds more like “speech without consequence” which is not the same thing, but rather a veil of plausible deniability in which to hide in, while being hateful.
How the hell do you know what I want?
Stop putting words into my mouth, and trying to gaslight me into being silent on mods here removing anything they want to at any time without repercussions.
Read: “contextually” and “sounds more like”
If you don’t like how you’re being called out then you should be introspective into why a generic statement made you so upset.
It’s not gaslighting when there’s a straight line of evidence.
To the wider world it looks like this: “Why do people think I don’t like dogs?! Just because I said I don’t like that you can’t kick dogs without getting a ticket nowadays! I didn’t kick any, I’m just saying!”
Who’s upset? The way I see it is you and others are the upset ones, because if you have to take the time out of your day to insinuate that others are horrible people just because they don’t see things the way you do, it means YOU’RE the ones with the issue.
(proof is in your above comment, again you try to gaslight saying there’s “evidence” when there’s nothing of the sort…lmao, it’s crazy how you all try the same tactics)
“how the hell do you know what I want?”
That’s an inherently aggressive statement.
It’s fine, but no reasonable person would think much differently.
Also, generalizing me with “you all” is a defensive catch-all to be dismissive of my point without actually making a stand for your own values.
It’s just a you-and-me conversation right now
If its just a you-and-them conversation why are you making appeals to popular opinion?
Do you believe having the popular opinion means its the right one?
No, I don’t believe the popular opinion is inherently the right one.
I’m not making appeals to popular opinion, my initial, and only, stance is that “free speech” is not the same as “consequence-free speech.”
Wdym? We added that rule extra for that NOT to be the case. As this adds protection for civil discussions on information the user thinks is useful.
Free speech means there wouldnt be any rules as free speech includes hate speech, racism etc… and we do not allow that here and any other instance would probably not meet your expectations of free speech too. Best you go to twitter if you want free speech.
Not what I’ve experienced here (and no, I didn’t say anything racist or hateful, check my posts).
We’ll see what this leads to, however