Moderation Philosophy - On Content Removal
docs.beehaw.org
Hey all,
Moderation philosophy posts started out as an exercise by myself to put down some of my thoughts on running communities that I'd learned over the years. As they continued I started to more heavily involve the other admins in the writing and brainstorming. This most recent post involved a lot of moderator voices as well, which is super exciting! This is a community, and we want the voices at all levels to represent the community and how it's run.
This is probably the first of several posts on moderation philosophy, how we make decisions, and an exercise to bring additional transparency to how we operate.
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I read this as modspeak for “ideally, those posts wouldn’t be up, but because it’s usually intolerant people we’ll file the calls for violence towards these groups as just minority frustration that shouldn’t be tone policed.” Am I correct in my interpretation?
There’s annoying insults and there’s normalizing violence and dehumanization of the Other. I’m going to be disgusted with myself if I ever dehumanize even the worst person out of frustration. Have to remember that no, they’ve not monsters, they’ve made a series of bad choices that any of us could have chosen to make, we could all be “monsters” if we choose wrong enough. They’re not some odd other species of being that we could never ever fall into being.
Kick them off the platform, figure out how to make acts of bigotry illegal, but I don’t believe in violence unless it’s protecting yourself or others. And what I see looks much less like a preemptive strike to protect yourself/others and more like “whee, acceptable target, it’s punching time baby!”
I'm not sure I completely follow what you're saying or asking, could you reword if you still have questions for me?
You’re posting that in reply to someone’s question about whether content about mugshots of awful criminals, about Nazi punching, and pedophile execution is acceptable, and their concern about whether it’s okay to dehumanize and wish harm on these people.
I am interpreting your reply as a diplomatically-worded and unclear way to say “Ideally, this kind of content would be unacceptable, but in practice we will let it fly because it’s just minority frustration at people being awful and telling them to stop would be tone policing.” I am also autistic and would like to know if my interpretation is correct, because my disability has gotten in the way of me interpreting people correctly before.
The rest of my reply to you was not a question but me stating my own views for context. I’ll try to explain it again, sorry for any confusion.
I also heavily disagree with allowing that sort of content. Dehumanization leads down dangerous roads, such as believing you could never ever be like your enemy, because after all, they’re not human. It leads to violation of rights because hey, they hurt someone too, let’s make them feel the pain 3x worse as punishment! Allowing calls to violence just seems very bad to me too.
I hold the view that that content should not be allowed while also believing that Nazi content and “it’s just freedom of speech” justifications for Nazi content should be removed and the Nazi should be banned. I do not support them or their views at all, but I do support not allowing any calls to violence or dehumanization, even if the person you want to dehumanize is really really bad. I also perceive the recent Nazi-punching content to be less about violence for the sake of protecting others and more about having an acceptable target to dehumanize.
I don't think it's fair to characterize it as simply frustration. These people are at serious risk of harm and death by some of the individuals who have passed or may even have friends or important figures in their lives who were directly harmed or even worse killed by intolerant people's actions. I personally see no issues in them celebrating the fact that a person who caused harm and violence on the world is now unable to do so and that the world is a safer place with them gone.
Like any comment there's going to be an axis of acceptability that it falls upon. A short comment simply celebrating this with words like 'nice' or 'lol' is very different from a one page manifesto of insults. There's also just the general vibe of a thread- too much negativity and short one-liners which don't promote discussion aren't particularly helpful for the website either, so moderators may step in and lock the post or remove comments if it's inspiring people to act negative towards each other.
For what it's worth I'm also a heavily nonviolent person. I would rather die than inflict harm on just about anyone, simply because I do not wish to live with that burden. I'm not one to call for violence on anyone, but I understand that the world doesn't exist in black and white and minority individuals need space to vent emotions, including anger, in a healthy manner. I think that it's fair and necessary and good to be intolerant towards intolerant individuals and what that means from person to person is going to be different. I'll probably never punch a nazi for the reasons above, but I'm not going to take that away from anyone else.
Do you have any recommendations for a space like Beehaw that’s free of that kind of content? I suppose I’m oversensitive. I wouldn’t tolerate a Nazi on an instance but I also really really really do not like celebrating violence. It’s not celebrating “they can’t cause harm anymore,” it’s celebrating the act of punching. Taking an army against the Nazis stopped them from committing more atrocities on a large scale, this is fine. Never heard of punching individual Nazis stopping any of them from just plotting out how to hurt more people and get back at the person who punched them.
For me acceptable intolerance is deplatforming, making it illegal, taking away their megaphone and not letting them play ball, not “violence is GREAT against the intolerant group and we’ll celebrate it” instead of “violence is a necessary evil we sometimes have to take out to stop intolerant people for making it worse for us.” Not violating basic human rights. Even “nice” and “lol” when someone fucking dies is not something I can really get behind. I get why people have the feelings, I really do, but I don’t want to see it and I have to figure out how to curate my experience to easily avoid that given that a lot of online safe spaces for minorities actually don’t curate that out. What to do when you’re a minority that needs to not have “but freedom of speech” when people post slurs, but also needs to not have “lol” when someone dies…
I suppose I should have spoken more carefully because I fully understand the actual threat the rise of neo-Nazis can pose, especially given the anti-LGBTQ+ laws actually being enacted in the modern day. “Minority frustration” was probably reductive though I did not intend to be—I think I grabbed it from several posts on the topic of “are people allowed their vent spaces” and I need a better way to express that I understand the dangers while also managing to convey my point. I understand people need their vent spaces. I want to find a space safe from the vents.
Blocking a lot of the news subs should be pretty helpful, but I’m still curious if you know of any spaces that don’t tolerate bigotry but also don’t make room for these type of posts.
We're probably one of the most highly moderated spaces on federated software. I am not aware of any spaces that are more moderated. I would encourage you to take your mental health seriously and if you need a more sanitized space to seek it out or work with a professional to see if there are coping strategies that can help you when you encounter this kind of behavior as it's openly and extremely present in the world at large.
So in nice, diplomatic words, you’re saying “toughen up buttercup, find therapy, because everyone has a hated group and you’ll have to accept ‘lol’ at deaths of the hated group and other nasty things you and everyone were taught not to say as kids, and everyone other than you thinks it’s actively acceptable instead of even mildly distasteful and something they might want to avoid online.” Did I process that right?
I don’t come across people saying this stuff in real life. It seems to be a purely online phenomenon, at least in my tiny little corner of the world.
I don't think it's a negative or undesirable trait to be considerate of others or to admonish violence. In fact, I have nothing but praise for this mindset and I wish that more individuals were compassionate and cared about the lives of others above all else.
I only meant to recognize that we do not live in such a world and because of such there are trade-offs that we deal with. In my personal life I find myself drawn towards individuals of a softer demeanor - while I know many militant queers, I don't spend a lot of time around them because I don't particularly enjoy even the thought of violence. This is me curating my space and finding the spaces which represent my wants and needs.
I'm not passing judgment on you for wanting to do the same and I wish you the best of luck. I'm just trying to help you understand that this may not be the space for you and I'm not sure where such a space exists online. The only reason that I mentioned mental health is that I have experienced what sounds like a very different world from what you have experienced. The world I have experienced is sometimes cold and uncaring and hateful and violent. I have seen individuals struggle with this reality without the appropriate tools to manage their mental health and I do not wish the same for you.
Thank you very much for clarifying your intent! I appreciate it.
Fully aware of the harsh reality of the world, was just hoping I could find a lovely online escape and was disappointed to find what I thought was an escape is more 3/4 of one. At least the bigotry is gone (not even bigots getting dunked on by the general population but still existing on far too many posts, they’re just not there at all which is very nice), the bigotry-free but still not-nice comments consisting purely of “KYS” are gone, the “HAHAHAHAHA you actually believe that” condescension is gone, which is a lot better than I can say for most spaces and I thank you for that.
I'm a strong proponent of punching Nazis, and I hadn't thought about it until now, but I'm also supportive of any and all positive responses to a Nazi being punched, including "lol".
Glad to peacefully coexist with you on this platform though. Not trying to fire up that debate, but glad to lend perspective if it's of any interest or use.
Hello! I assume that because you replied so far down here, you’ve read the entire exchange between the mod and I.
I usually do a decent job of curating my online experience to avoid seeing upsetting things, but at least at that time Beehaw was doing something where, once you login, your feed still shows the exact same thing as before login, regardless of whether you set your default view to Subscribed and regardless of what you have blocked. So I ended up seeing content that made me mad and I typed out a reply on it. I had this in mind when I commented on this Moderation Philosophy post, and was pretty sure the commenter who started this specific thread was also referring to that same post.
I fully understand there’s a decent chance people have had to face more than just seeing nasty things online from Nazis, and have personally seen them try to do harm in real life. You may live in an area where they may no longer be outnumbered and unpopular. Depending on your demographics, they might pose an existential threat to you. And of course if you have any interest in living, you must deal with the threat.
I’m curious about your perspective, but I also worry that I’m just going to set myself off when I read your reply. I am very much thinking of the lyric “you’re not good, you’re not bad, you’re just… nice” from Into the Woods and it’s probably an appropriate prediction of what I’ll have an honest emotional reaction to and what I’ll just coldly process. Both homophobic slurs and “lol [person doing hatecrimes] died good riddance” comments make me upset. I know I’m probably supposed to allow for space for the latter, but I frankly can’t handle it too well. I don’t think, in an ideal world, I should have to be able to handle that well, but I live in the real world and not an ideal world. Fact is, I have a hard time with not-nice behavior, from what I gather the good thing may be to let it fly sometimes so people can vent justified anger, and I am not good at doing that at all. So I try to cordon it off from my view so people can do that in peace and I don’t have to see it. So when I want to learn about your perspective… I think you can see the conflict of interest here. I want to learn about your perspective, I also want to not set myself off with something I know I don’t handle well.
I think I was drawn to comment because your preferences are an extreme version of what most people prefer (basically avoiding conflict?). You also seem to know yourself better and explain where you're coming from better than most people.
So there's a practical question that has value, of how you're doing the work to help win these ideological wars, or if you're strictly trying to be a bystander. Your answers probably have a lot more relevance to strict bystanders than mine.
On Nazi punching, I was just raised working class, where punching is one of the ways we communicate. Celebrating the misfortune of someone that deserves it is also completely normal. So I'd chalk a lot of the mismatch up to culture rather than right or wrong.
A little bit more confounding, a lot of the habits and culture of the professional class, managerial class, owning class, ruling class, etc. are offensive to me. You've probably seen how that goes. But particularly silence in the face of unjust violence can often be extremely violent.
Should probably mention people have brought up to me that I’m apparently confrontational. I don’t do violence but I do speak up when something’s wrong. And I’m always willing to say the quiet parts out loud, which might make some people uncomfortable. (This is necessary in general life because half the time I can’t pick up on the quiet parts that most people would infer because of my autism, and need to have it confirmed whether I’m picking up on it correctly or if I’m off base.) I don’t think I’m any more conflict avoidant in general than the next person, just specifically violence-averse.
Is punching actually a way the working class communicates and something they like, or just something from your particular circle? I’m very wary of validating stereotypes of “ew, the nasty, brutish, gross and violent workers,” so I’m a little hesitant to take your word for it and accept that into my worldview, especially given how I see violence as extremely bad and a necessary evil. It also doesn’t match my own experience with working-class people, but it might also be colored by me being a woman and “never hit a girl” (I benefit from that but honestly, just extend that rule to everyone please unless they actually commit physical violence against you first?). Also, I’d imagine working class people recognize hitting people the wrong way can kill or permanently disable the target for life, some injuries will last and bother them for life, getting in a fight means you can get hit like that too, and they don’t have the greatest access to healthcare to mitigate any of these effects.
I’ve never ever liked to point at someone suffering and say “they deserve it.” At least for me personally, I know myself and that I’m going to slippery slope from cases where most people say they deserve it to “they were mean to me once online, they totally deserve their house burning down.” I do not care how popular it is to rejoice in the suffering of people you think deserve it, I hate it. I might not care as much about the suffering of someone people don’t like, but actively rejoicing in others’ suffering is something I find very very uncomfortable. Just because it is normal doesn’t make it okay to me. A lot of things are normal, like people getting a lot more health problems when they’re old, and I’m not okay with them.
I also don’t know everybody’s personal story and don’t want to start accepting myself as a good judge of who deserves misfortune. I don’t see all parts of your life. I see a very small fraction. I could have caught you on the worst day of your life and be judging you for that. Humans are subject to fundamental attribution error, where they overestimate the influence of circumstances and not personal traits in their own lives, but overestimate personal traits and underestimate circumstances for strangers. I don’t feel like making this judgment and piling abuse on a relative innocent who acted like a jerk a bit, because all I saw was the jerk behavior so of course that must be representative of who they are every day of their life. I’m not perfect. Who am I to judge, who am I to decide it’s time to hand out punishment and I should deliver it? Why do I get to make peoples’ lives more miserable? What makes me somehow more worthy than others, better than others, qualified to pass down judgment from on high and how do I know that I’m actually better?
I agree that silence in the face of violence is unacceptable. I understand that in some cases, people force you into a corner and violence is your only option if you don’t want to submit to their abuse. I’m just really not great personally with seeing violent action being taken, and since seeing that thread I think a lot of people are very quick to jump to violence when it’s not necessary because of the entire “you made me suffer, now suffer back” thing I despise. Just take away their ability to hurt others and help those they hurt. That’s all I want.
Just realized you may be asking about what I specifically do to help others if I don’t use violence. There’s still calling out bigots without punching them, supporting their victims, donating money to organizations that help vulnerable people, boycotting organizations that support or are directly built off of harming vulnerable people (there are way too many and no ethical consumption under capitalism so just focus on some of the worst offenders for now, like Nestle), and normalizing things that are currently different from the norm (like mental health issues and not being straight) and talking about them openly instead of treating them as something shameful to hide. I’m also not perfect and do not everything I could possibly do. I could volunteer at such organizations, attend protests, etc.