In Mastodon, we have the Covenant, which starts with:
“Active moderation against racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia
Users must have the confidence that they are joining a safe space, free from white supremacy, anti-semitism and transphobia of other platforms.”
I have not seen proposals yet for a similar baseline of rules for Kbin servers, generally. Have I missed one?
Spammers are already here, and I assume nazis and CP types will become known soon unless there is a broad moderation/anti-harassment consensus explicitly stated. I do not know where the kbin.social server is physically located, and which laws govern the content herein.
I think the server owner gets final say in all matters, but that the community here needs to drive this effort so that ernest can focus on the overall development roadmap.
How might we, as a community, come up with a code of conduct that builds a foundation to stave off rot for as long as possible?
Even the concept of such an agreement runs partially against the way the Fediverse is designed. Kbin is merely a piece of software that anyone can run on their own servers, so “top level rules” are the rules the instance owner sets for their own instance. The Fediverse is by design decentralized to limit this kind of thing.
An agreement like OP is describing is entirely limited to admins who collectively choose to defederate or block problematic instances, but it isn’t truly enforceable. The best thing you could do is maintain a site that lists instances that agree to a set of rules like this and actively enforces them.
Right, and it would have to be organized mostly outside the mechanics of the Fediverse: “We all agree to these standards, and further agree to defederate from instances that refuse to follow these standards.” Something like that.
That said, much of the Fediverse is still in its infancy. Being too aggressive with this kind of moderation could slow its adoption. Using @enfa’s suggestion, some people define racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia so broadly as to create a very limited list of acceptable speech. In the interests of keeping the Fediverse from becoming a left-wing echo chamber, I would only support limiting content on this basis if the types of unacceptable content are narrowly and specifically defined. There is, after all, value in tolerating speech that we disagree with and makes us uncomfortable, with certain limitations.
I think most admins are just going to be focusing on actual hate groups, not tone policing. Most people are generally going to be tolerant of mistakes and misconceptions. As for how it should be defined, I have some ideas; don’t use slurs or make derogatory statements against a group of people, don’t promote fascism or nazism, don’t spread conspiracy theories about certain groups of people, no excusing human rights abuses or denial of it where there is clear evidence. Some examples would be using the N word, saying all or most LGBT+ people are pedophiles or are accepting of it, excusing Putin’s behavior, Holocaust denial, and accusing Jewish people of having deadly space lasers. Regarding slurs, I support oppressed people reclaiming them, but general use of them needs to be restricted.
I would like to believe you. However, my experience from Reddit is that people love to “police tone”, and even the definition of a hate group has elements of tone policing in it (some groups, usually right-of-center politically, get labeled as “hate groups” even when they don’t promote or encourage violence).
I guess what I’m trying to say is that without a really explicit, specific definition of what isn’t allowed, moderators and admins will use it as an excuse to silence legitimate viewpoints they disagree with. We’ll end up with r/politics all over again (a subreddit notorious for blatantly removing content favoring the political right and banning users for posting such content).
How would you define hate?
An emotion of intense revulsion. Hate speech? Excessively vulgar or violent language directed toward a person or group because of an integral or inalterable component of their identity, such as their skin color, ethnicity, religion, or inalterable physical characteristics.
Many people have a watered-down standard for defining “hate”. In my opinion, it’s a strong word to be reserved for more extreme circumstances. “Hate” and “hate speech” are most often found in invective by left-leaning people against right-leaning people. Accepting a watered-down definition of hate and hate speech promotes left-leaning echo chambers and disenfranchises right-leaning users, prompting them to flee to more extreme online forums.
EDIT: After a bit more thought, I realized that hate and hate speech are mostly besides the point for me when it comes to content moderation. People should be friendly and courteous in any group I moderate, period. I don’t care about the morality of their speech as long as it’s courteous and friendly.
The thing is, I do. If someone advocates for limiting my rights because of something I can’t change, I don’t care how nice their tone is, they are still a bigot.
Yeah, they’re definitely a bigot–from a certain perspective. But when you boil it down, bigotry goes both ways. It’s value-system-agnostic. By outright banning all bigotry based on your value system, you’re not really banning bigotry. You’re banning any value systems other than your own. By not tolerating their polite bigotry, you aren’t going to change their mind. You’re going to alienate them and drive them to more extreme corners of the Internet where they will most likely be radicalized while creating a feel-good echo chamber of your own.
This essay on The Atlantic summarizes my views quite eloquently: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/12/conservatism-without-bigotry/544128/
In short, I believe that polite bigotry should be tolerated in order to prevent the formation of echo chambers and to avoid enticing people to seek more extreme online communities to participate in.