@louis The "no hates peach" and
"no harassment" clauses are a bit too ambiguous.
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We address that in some detail in the bylaws, though perhaps it could use better explanation.
Harassment is when you continually contact someone who has made it known they dont want to be contacted. It also includes creating alts to circumbvent bans.
Hate speech is also fairly explicitly defined in more detail.
That said if youd like to suggest some additional verbiage to make it more specific the bylaws are open for anyone right now to make suggestions, so just suggest an improved wording.
@louis@emacs.ch
@freemo @louis Glad that you replied. The circumventing bans is completely reasonable, but you already have that listed separately to the harassment.
Mastodon has plenty of tools that we can use to block content that we don't want to see, so having a policy against harassment, is kind of pointless. If there is someone that I don't want to interact with anymore, I can block them, and it doesn't need to be done on the instance level. As a moderator I've seen way too many times people claim harassment as a way to just shut down an opinion they don't like.
Now circumventing the personal blocking tools in mastodon is surely a good reason to ban someone.
@freemo @louis This I feel is much worse "No "hate speech", speech that nefariously expresses a form of prejudice or threatens a people of a protected characteristic (such as age, disability, ethnicity, gender, pregnancy, religion, sex or sexuality - unpopular opinions voiced respectfully is fine)." How do you determine that something is nefarious? What is a protected characteristic? How can we have any conversation about these things if the conversation is already shut down because of "hate speech". How do you decide what is a threat? If we are talking about violence, that is already mentioned in another point and is forbidden, rightly so, regardless of the target.
Again feel free to suggest a better wording if you want, these rules are up for debate and modification so just jump in and suggest better wording
@louis@emacs.ch
@freemo @louis While I appreciate what you are trying to do here, I think one of the beauties of the "fediverse" is that instances are self moderating. And there is no central authority deciding what is allowed and what isn't.
I think what you are trying to do is a bit of premature optimization. I think that small instances are the best way to go and keep mastodon safe and friendly organically.
@yisraeldov @freemo @louis@emacs.ch Rather than being premature optimization, this is late in coming. You might not be aware of this, but in the absence of a central authority, self-moderating instances have joined together to build domain blocklists that are shared widely and based on nothing more than the say-so of one or two people.
While mastodon does have plenty of tools we can use to block content that we don't want to see, many instance admins choose to really aggressively block entire instances without any due process or evidence or opportunity for counter-evidence. I've seen QOTO described as having "no moderation at all," something I know to be factually false. I've seen entire instances blocked because of the actions of one non-admin user, which is the right of any server admin, but doesn't bode well for federation. I've seen entire instances blocked *not* because of something anyone said or did, but because the instances were insufficiently aggressive in promising to seek out and block other bad instances. It's mind-boggling, and scary for anyone thinking about running an instance of their own.
Primarily at this point, the UFoI is about a guarantee of due process, which is currently lacking in the fediverse. It might not cause the super-aggressive blockers to change their approach, but it will at least guarantee that smaller instances won't be completely isolated from everyone on the whim of someone at a big server having a grumpy day.
If mastodon were as safe and friendly as you say it is, the UFoI wouldn't exist, and the hashtag for BlackMastodon wouldn't be filled with people saying that they're seeing worse treatment on Mastodon than the bird site. I'm glad your personal experience has been positive, but that is not the case for everyone.
Ok, so if the point is to give transparency to the moderation processes of all instances, that is something I can get behind. At the same time I don't think it is something our instance could join. For example, we don't allow NSFW at all, not even behind a CW, and won't federate with servers where that is their whole purpose.
Secondly I don't think that we can "agree to enforce the Code of Ethics in its moderation practices." Because of the reasons that I pointed out in my previous post. I think it is too much too ask for us (moderators on our instance) to try to judge nuanced terms like "hate speech."
The first point is easily addressed by simply silencing any servers that post MSFW, you are free to silence, just not defederate. But that would have to be a compromise on your part youd be willing to make.
As for hate speech.. yea if you allow hate speech or otherwise have no provisions in your rules against hate speech as we define it, then it wouldnt be compatible.
@pwinn @louis@emacs.ch
@pwinn
Oh we seems like I misunderstood the point.
@freemo @louis