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.

  • Allonzee@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    I don’t even believe in the death penalty for most murderers.

    But when your murder count would make any serial killer that did it with their bare hands instead of an email in all of history blush, with the cold calculation of a sociopath, there’s really nothing more to say.

    That doesn’t even feel like murder, that feels like an ongoing mass slaughter.

    I can empathize with murders of passion, even misguided, ignorant hatred as that was usually something impressed into them, and can relate to the very human secondary emotion of anger even if felt in ignorance, but murders of “Well if I murder these thousands of people on this newly discovered loophole, I can increase quarterly profits by 2.4%! Score!” then it becomes impossible. It’s like trying to empathize with a computer devoid of any humanity.

    • TheBananaKing@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      There’s also the point that he was continuing to kill thousands of people, on an ongoing basis.

      Vigilante justice for someone who killed in the past, bad.

      Someone taking down a killer mid-rampage? Hero.

      • Allonzee@lemmy.world
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        14 days ago

        In a perfect world he would be institutionalized, not murdered.

        But society would need to correctly see the insatiably, sociopathically greedy as severely mentally ill and a harm to others, which they are, and not role models, which they are considered in this broken culture.

        With our culture as it is, people like him are a threat that can’t be otherwise contained, because they’re of use to the economy that works against most of us.

      • TunaCowboy@lemmy.world
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        14 days ago

        Some people are better off dead, I just don’t trust the state to make that decision. If things were normal I wouldn’t trust a vigilante either, but I think it’s fair to say these are extraordinary times. There are mountains of evidence against all these c suite psychopaths, and if the justice system is just going to keep carving out exceptions for them - well then they’re doing it to themselves.

      • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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        13 days ago

        The problem is, “owning it” would mean saying something like “I support the death penalty, but only for billionaires and cops who break the law,” which would get my comment removed and possibly get me banned