Lemmy.World ToS and the murder of the UHC CEO
Lemmy.World ToS and the murder of the UHC CEO
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.
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Too late, I'm already out the door. You assume no one understands the nuances of hosting in a country without free speech laws as liberal as the US.
The truth is most people do. Your moderators' histrionic response was so obviously from a place of emotion, and can recall numerous times your mods have allowed speech that was similar but didn't act because they weren't personally offended.
I think you fail to understand that your audience is international. That you let your moderators power trip not from an abundance of caution but because it's more convenient for you.
I think you fail to understand that your audience is international.
I think you fail to understand that being international means that your American-centric views take a backseat for once in your life.
Being happy that a man responsible for the deaths of thousands is an "American Centric View" now.
And don't call yourself "world" if you cannot reasonably accommodate a wide rage of views. Call yourself "Dutch" and make your limitations clear.
You world sycophants want the benefits of being the authoritative instance without the responsibility.
Still waiting for a large generalist US-centric instance to emerge
If the last criteria is defederation from hexbear.net, then there is strong hope for Discuss.Online. Though I don't know if they would want to host a political community that would involve such controversial topics. They probably would be welcoming to like an AskUSA one.
They just did
Woah.
Ofc it won't stop alts from leaking through - nothing can stop that - but in fighting against spam, every little bit helps.
Will you now be using it as your primary instance recommendation on Reddit? There is perhaps literally nothing better for that, so this is fantastic news that may help even the non-USA parts of the Fediverse by allowing the bringing in of more users who will feel safer to talk than they would have before, due to harassment for having a USA centrist (which let's be real translates into a global and especially from the EU perspective, right-leaning) viewpoint. Comics, memes, hardware, woodworking or more techie Maker stuff and so many other hobbies, I hope to see more discussions about them all, with this helping people on Reddit to now be less resistant to joining.
🎉🥳💐🎇
primary instance recommendation
I just did: https://feddit.org/post/5497724/3543560
I'm on dbzer0 which is federated with hexbear and I honestly haven't noticed anything bad from there. I always heard horor stories about it before I signed up here but it has actually been remarkably tame. I mean, they're obviously leftist but I've seen far far worse tankie shit from just lemmy.ml.
!meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works , a few of the HB threads are wild
To be fair, if you cherry pick threads then you can find some pretty wild stuff on .world too. People also like to cherry pick stuff for things like "sjw fail" videos all the time as well and those things aren't indicative of the whole community.
They can be fun to talk with. They can also be extremely harassing, though tbf more for people who don't know what !ChapoTrapHouse@hexbear.net is all about - i.e. who have not read its sidebar text. And yet, many apps (like Voyager, and the basic mobile browser web UI) do not show that? Like porn, it's mainly only bad if you stumble upon it unawares - e.g. while at work - and would have to opt-out of it. Which, if Lemmy was that way, then many people would have to simply cease checking Lemmy while at work on those devices.
Many of the users on lemmy.ml who are seen harassing people the most outside of the actual Hexbear communities are self-admittedly alts of Hexbear accounts. Consent means nothing to them, apparently, so when hexbear.net was defederated from Lemmy.World a year ago, they simply shifted over to an account that wasn't blocked. Like an incel who will never cease telling you what a "nice man" he is, they simply WILL NOT stop.
Which is all the more sad considering how many legitimately nice conversations go on daily inside of the many other Hexbear communities. But those conversations aren't why Lemmy.World and so many other instances chose to defederate from them. In the post whose link I sent earlier are a bunch of other links where each instance makes its own determination and offers links to exact posts and comments that they felt justified their decision to defederate, if you want to read through some examples. Tbf many have since been deleted by their creators, though that should tell you something right there, about the transparency and integrity of Hexbear users who when blamed don't always retort with the truth so much as do whatever they hope will work so as to be able to dunk on people (and thus when caught, lie, even the instance admins, to other instance admins even!?!?!? which I also put a link to that event as well in that post).
TLDR: I get it, it is not literally every single comment, user, and/or community that does it, but it is there, if you spend more time looking. There are exact links there if you want help finding them.
Look through this list and sort by monthly active users (MAU): https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy
The server location info doesn't seem 100% accurate, but it should still help. I would suggest either the instance I use, lemmy.sdf.org (run by an American, technology-oriented non-profit org), or perhaps lemmy.zip, which also looks good - I started looking into it but haven't fully vetted it yet.
By the way, I don't think that being in a larger instance has much benefit, by the way. In fact, I tried one of the larger ones and found that it suffered performance-wise, so I went back. You can get pretty much everything from every other Lemmy instance, especially one that doesn't block and is not blocked by other instances (lemmy.sdf.org also applies here).
Edit: lemmy.zip seems to be subject to the laws of the UK, according to their code of conduct.
https://legal.lemmy.zip/docs/terms_of_service/
The website and the agreement will be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the United Kingdom and the European Union.
https://discuss.online/ is US based and just defederated hexbear
By the way, I don’t think that being in a larger instance has much benefit, by the way.
Content accessibility can be an issue due to the way instances only fetch remote communities if a local user is subscribed. Also, having a larger userbase usually means that the instance has been around long enough to show some good track record for the instance
Thanks, I edited the post and noted that lemmy.zip was UK-based after I originally posted.
https://discuss.online/ is US based and just defederated hexbear
That's a negative for me. I don't want anyone blocking instances on my behalf unless those instances are doing blatantly illegal stuff.
Content accessibility can be an issue due to the way instances only fetch remote communities if a local user is subscribed. Also, having a larger userbase usually means that the instance has been around long enough to show some good track record for the instance
Yeah, that's true. I did use some of the great Lemmy community directory sites to find some communities that weren't already subscribed from my instance. I understand that better community discoverability is planned for upcoming Lemmy versions.
That’s a negative for me. I don’t want anyone blocking instances on my behalf unless those instances are doing blatantly illegal stuff.
In that case, there's https://lemmy.today/ . Their blocklist is empty, and they're from Oregon.
We prefer to recommend https://discuss.online/ for new joiners, so that they don't have to stumble upon hexbear from their very first minutes on the platform. For more advanced users, it's a different story.
I still prefer lemmy.sdf.org. They also have an empty blocklist (from what I can tell - the version of Lemmy they're on I don't think splits it off into a separate tab), they're also from Oregon from what I recall, have 2.5x more monthly active users than lemmy.today, and they're a non-profit that's larger than and longer than only their Lemmy instance.
Again, I don't get the hexbear issue. I wish someone could explain to me what the problem actually is.
I just noted lemmy.sdf.org is still on 0.19.3, any reason not to update to at least 0.19.5?
For hexbear:
I was wondering the same thing about why they hadn't upgraded, and after a little searching, I found out that there have been some bugs introduced that have not yet been completely resolved by 0.19.7. Supposedly 0.19.8 will fix them, so I'm hoping that that's why they haven't upgraded yet. If that's why they haven't upgraded yet, I appreciate the focus on stability.
Thanks for the links. Unfortunately, they did not answer my questions. The first link is a string of complaints without evidence. I didn't read the entire thread but read many of the top posts. The second one is the same thing. A lot of complaints of nothing. I still have the impression that people complain about hexbear because it challenges their beliefs. What I'm really trying to understand is what's so egregious about hexbear that would make it necessary to protect people new to Lemmy and entire major instances from them. If you could link me to specific comments with evidence and explanations of patterns, it might help me understand.
Alright, let's see if those help
- https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/1550606
- https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/2151434
- https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/3229409
For the 0.19.3, 0.19.5 has been around for a while, and is very stable. 0.19.7 and 0.19.8 do indeed have a few bugs, but 0.19.5 was solid. SDF is among the last to not have updated
It's an American story, effecting 100's of millions of Americans directly. So no, not this this time. See a therapist to work out all this reflexive anti Americaism
It's an American story, effecting 100's of millions of Americans directly.
And it's not an American server. So live with it. You're not entitled to do whatever you want in whatever space you want just because you're American and have feelings about something.
Then like I said, don't call yourself world and continue to promote yourself as the authoritative instance. This instance is the the default for all the mobile apps.
This instance is the the default for all the mobile apps.
Voyager just switched its default to lemm.ee in v2.20.0 last week.
Good news!
The USDefaultism is already strong back in reddit, but sadly it seems to be worse on Lemmy. Tired of seeing folks from US acting like they're the main characters, kinda puts me off using this platform
!asklemmy@lemmy.world added a rule to remove US politics questions. That was a welcome change
Some of the mods have always been on top of removing posts promoting / glorifying violence against others. Other mods have not. This is a hodgepodge mix of unpaid volunteers, helping on a platform that has very very rudimentary administrative/ moderation tools with very poor systems of notifications and reporting.
If you think the are opportunities for things to run smoother, I would recommend helping out or evangelizing for more people to help out if you’re too busy.
Simply being mad at the admins doesn’t help - especially when they’re trying navigate nuance and a janky platform with good intent.
Nice of you to not give a shit about the potential for other people to get into legal trouble so you can get angry on the internet. Enjoy your new instance.
Name a single instance that has had legal trouble
How would I know? And why do you think other people should risk it on your behalf even if it hasn't happened yet? You have to follow the laws of the country your server is in or you put yourself at risk. That's just how the world works.
Neither you, nor I, nor anyone else who isn't actually paying for and maintaining the .world server should be telling them that they should risk themselves for us. That is really not our call.
It’s a thing that isn’t happening. There is no reason to focus on it.
Again, it is not your call or my call or anyone else's call about who should put themselves at legal risk, especially when Lemmy is just people fucking around on the internet. "It hasn't happened before" is not going to convince someone who is already not willing to take that risk to go ahead and take it. For one thing, there's always a first time when it comes to a law.
You’re never going to stop us from celebrating the death of a murderer. And by doing so, you side with the insurance companies. You sound like a pig in plain clothes.
Good thing I'm not trying to stop you from doing that. And even if I was, there are how many hundreds or even thousands of other places on the internet where you could do that? So why are you so concerned about one specific Fediverse server?
Because it’s one of the biggest. Why do you care that people talk about it? Talking isn’t a crime. Can we celebrate hitler’s death? If so, then you’re picking sides with corporations, and you’re just a shill
I care that people think that the people who run Lemmy.world should be put at legal risk so that they can celebrate vigilantism on one specific server out of many Fediverse servers, one of countless places on the Internet where you can express your opinion.
Because it's super entitlement. I realize that's as American as apple pie, but at least realize you're doing it.
Nobody wants to be the first.
As a side-note, based on the amount of hate speech some instances still allow, it seems like there isn't really any threat to this kind of discourse online on a platform that small.
You mean .world? I don't think it's your call or my call or anyone else's call when it comes to whether or not other people should risk legal trouble for the benefit of internet bitching.
No, not LW. I was thinking about instances where hate speech and call to violence against entire countries have been posted.
!meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works for people interested.
Which new instance have you chosen?
Just use them all
That's one way to do it!
It’s important to have a few thousand accounts lined up on various servers so that when mods ban you for calling for the death of murdering corporations, you can’t just be silenced by a bunch of cops pretending to be people.
cops pretending to be people
Lmao
You're missing the LW, SJW and Lemmy.ca ones!
You assume no one understands the nuances of hosting in a country without free speech laws as liberal as the US.
Or they may just don't care. I've seen countless of people who not just justify the murder, but also think it should be an inspiration for what should be happen. How people can't wait to see rich people get murdered. How this should be the new norm and how to fix the system. Which I find extra funny when the same country just elected a person of the same making as the guy who got shot (and now people try to claim that everyone's on board with justifying the murder, including maggats).
Over half of America didn't vote as they see that both democrats and republicans take money from the rich and use it to make the middle class disappear. If it was easier to vote and we got rid of first past the pole, more people would vote. But alas both sides want first past the post as it keeps them in power. So only small minority that did vote did this, and most of America didn't want either side. But what you gonna do when both sides don't want you to live. Yes one side is extremely worse, but it is hard to see that when prices go up and your family might die due to higher ups not caring about the help.
No, I'm sorry, but this is straight up Russian disinformation and non voters are even dumber than those voting for Trump, since they automatically enable the bad actors, which is how you end up with despots like Putin btw who pushes for this exact kind of "both sides are the same" & "you can't trust either side / truth" type bullshit. Voting starts not at the presidential level, but at the local one. You can vote everyone in & out, and if there's truly no candidate to your liking (even though you should AT THE VERY LEAST vote for the lesser evil in any case) go into politics yourself. In a democracy, the voters are the ones who are responsible for making changes. But of course, if you elect people like Trump (not just Trump himself), then yes, you end up with a broken system that gets more and more dismantled - until it is gone and you truly don't need to bother voting anymore. And that's the point where you're at now, thanks to people's wrong vote, or lack of a vote. Both cases are responsible for this, dooming not just the US, but the rest of the world, thanks to Trumps (anti) climate policies.
Don't underestimate the amount of disinformation propaganda pushing even in such a small platform as here, potentially by people radicalized elsewhere but have now decided to bring it here. Not everyone is a bot (nobody here that I know of even, I'm just bringing up the infamous phrase), yet not everyone may be fully cognizant of the reasons behind their own beliefs either.
