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.

  • @inv3r510n
    9•3 days ago

    I’m gonna have to switch instances because of all the terrible shit the US does, free speech is the one thing we truly get right.

    And I just want to let you know what free speech is when it comes to violence:

    • yelling fire in a crowded theatre when there is none: not protected

    • celebrating the death of a CEO who deserved it: protected (the deserved it is irrelevant to speech, but fuck that guy)

    • saying you wish other unnamed CEOs will be killed next: protected unless there’s evidence of planning and ability to carry out murdering a specific CEO

    • saying you wish a specific famous person be killed, such as Elon musk: grey area, depends on if there’s evidence of planning and ability to carry out. Public figures are a higher bar to reach than the lay people.

    • saying you wish to kill your neighbor John who’s not famous: not protected regardless of planning or ability, it’s assault

    • saying you want to kill any person and having evidence of planning and a method to do so: not protected

    • saying you wish for a whole group to die: protected if there’s no evidence of planning and ability to carry it out. One could theoretically march around with signs that say death to fags and that’s totally legal. Example: Westboro Baptist Church picketing funerals with signs such as that.

    Edit: also jury nullification is not violence. You’re going with the assumption that the assassin is guilty of a crime. Is it really a crime to murder a mass social murderer? Clearly us Americans aren’t too bent out of shape that this CEO is now resting in piss.

    Edit 2: would it be murder to kill Hitler after he started gassing Jews? Is it not because Hitler had an ideology that Jews were subhuman and to be exterminated? What’s different about this CEO? Sure he didn’t target specific groups like Hitler did. But his ideology is money above all, and he didn’t care how many lives he took to make that money. Why is this any different? This is the industrialization of death. This is a genocide against undesirables. Hitler killed disabled people (and LGBTQ) first before moving onto the Jews. Most of America is just numbers on a spreadsheet and when we become too expensive and cut into profits too much we become socially murdered. It’s not a crime when the rich do it to us (for profit!!!) but it’s a crime when we fight back? You Europeans are clueless!

    • @Docus
      12•3 days ago

      I read your post with some interest, and was going to respond with a European view on free speech. Until I got to your last line, ‘you Europeans are clueless’. No point arguing with you then. Take your freedoms to another instance and enjoy the echo chamber.

      • @inv3r510n
        1•3 days ago

        The europeans defending this asshole with bUt ItS mUrDeR are fucking clueless and lucky enough to not live in America where such actions are completely fair game and well deserved.

    • @[email protected]English
      11•3 days ago

      Before you go too deep, the mod responsible apologized, the ToS were amended, and this is all being discussed out in the open. The 24 hours mutings are already rescinded, and no new bans are said to be planned as a result of discussing the topic moving forward (as you said, unless it looks to be planning something in the future, which is just a whole other thing entirely). i.e. in the face of this huge event the admins PANICKED, but ultimately everything is already calming down and returning to a semblance of normalcy - and that whole process took less than half a week! This is nothing at all like spez’s take-it-or-leave-it Reddit.

      That said, it’s good to take advantage of decentralization anyway, and yes the anarchy instance (that you mentioned below) looks awesome (I enjoy much content hosted on it and greatly respect its admin and their overall contributions to us all here:-) and I think you will be happy there. If this event caused you to question your priorities and what you hope to see moving forward into the future, then that’s a good thing to increase your future happiness level:-). Though I wanted to point out that in that case it’s less “Lemmy.World = bad” and more that you are finding a better fit for your needs. LW is what it is, and it’s not Reddit, even if it is not anarchy either. I for one find it absolutely fantastic that both can exist on the Fediverse side by side together, enriching all of us, each according to our own needs and desires:-).

    • Carighan Maconar
      8•3 days ago

      See, and this is why other countries have different laws, because the last part in particular is not protected in most countries.

      • @inv3r510n
        1•3 days ago

        It’s not why they have other laws.* We just have vastly different cultural beliefs of what’s important to us. We have positive and negative freedom - for example, we are free to practice whatever religion we want no matter how ridiculous (flying spaghetti monster anyone?) and we are free from religion, as in the state can’t establish it.

        I bring up religion because it’s in the same amendment as free speech, but more importantly from a historical sense, for what it’s worth Europe had centuries of brutal warfare between Catholics and Protestants (which as a non Christian is just crazy to me, y’all believe in almost the same things in general) and our founding puritans were getting persecuted in England for their beliefs. So freedom of thought was the most important thing they sought leaving England to come here, and it’s why it’s our first amendment in our bill of rights.

        *germany with its Holocaust history is an exception. If I went marching around with a sign that says death to Jews I’d be thrown in prison for some time.

        • @HowManyNimons
          -3•3 days ago

          Blah blah blah. Do you have any opinions that don’t come from Texan schoolbooks?

          • @inv3r510n
            1•3 days ago

            I’ve only been to Texas once, at a layover between flights.

      • @inv3r510n
        5•3 days ago

        Thanks I’ll keep those in mind. I’m probably gonna end up at dbzero because it’s anarchist and I’m tired of dealing with dumbass liberal apologists and dumbass MLs who glorify authoritarianism so long as it goes with their ideological beliefs.

    • @HowManyNimons
      1•3 days ago

      Come for the lecture on free speech, don’t bother staying because why would you?

      I do not agree that the American system of free speech is the best. I might defend my opinion if I am invited to do so, but it’s very boring (viz) and I wouldn’t want to sit through my own explanation.