cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/67952523
This is the first big step in the process to develop comprehensive guidelines for the Fedecan non-profit and the various platforms.
While this will mostly involve converting tacit knowledge and experience into an explicit written form, we expect that this process will inevitably bring up some points of disagreement on the best way to deal with different issues. We ask everyone participating in these discussions to please contribute constructively and in good faith. We encourage you to bring up any concerns or issues you have with the proposed structure and drafted guidelines, so that we can work together to fix them early on. However, in order to keep a productive environment for those discussions, we will be pruning any comment chains that devolve into personal attacks, slap fights, etc.
To help ground your feedback, consider these thought experiments when evaluating a potential guideline:
- Veil of ignorance: Would it still feel fair to you if you switched places with someone else on the platform (ex. a new user, a moderator, an admin, a member of a vulnerable group, etc.)?
- Equal Applicability: These rules will be enforced uniformly on everyone. A poorly written rule that helps “your side” today, can easily harm “your side” in the future as circumstances change.
The full guidelines, including governance details like the annual review cycle, can be found on the website: https://fedecan.ca/en/guidelines/
We plan to structure the guidelines as follows:
Tier 1: Fedecan Rules
Internal Conduct
These rules apply to Fedecan team members (directors, officers, admins, and anyone with elevated access). They set expectations for how team members should act.
Universal Rules
These are the baseline rules that apply to every user on every Fedecan platform. They cover the things that are prohibited by Canadian law (threats, hate speech, CSAM, non-consensual intimate imagery) as well as universal policy rules (privacy/doxxing, harassment, fraud, content that could cause harm, labelling of sensitive content, etc.).
Tier 2: Platform-Specific
Each platform has different functionality and norms, so this is where we can be more specific with the rules. The threadiverse platforms (lemmy.ca, piefed.ca, sh.itjust.works) share similar rules around community creation, moderation, vote manipulation, and content labelling. Pixelfed has its own rules tailored to its platform.
Tier 3: Community-Level Rule Templates
These are optional templates that communities can link to, or use as a starting point for their own rules. The idea is that moderators can point users to a clearly written explanation of why a rule exists, and any relevant exceptions, rather than trying to fit everything into the sidebar. Additionally, if many communities are enforcing a particular rule in the same way, then users will have an easier time understanding and following them.
The post title standards template has been drafted, and we plan to add more as the need arises. I have a few others that are in the works, but they have some overlap with the other sections, so I thought that it would be better to let people discuss first.
Question about naming and shaming businesses.
How will that work? If a business or an individual tied to a business does something awful, is naming and shaming that business or individual fair game or would it be considered doxxing?
For example, not long ago I saw a post about some gym owner wearing a Nazi SS shirt. The post was naming and asking people to cancel their membership to this guy’s gym.
Another example was some guy who was recorded on video at a restaurant throwing all his garbage on the floor and clearing his table after eating by swiping everything to the floor. Generally just being a disgusting human being.
Someone found out who he was and that he owned a business, and of course everyone began to call him out on his social media accounts, as well as giving his business a poor rating and so on.
Would that type of thing be allowed?
I suggest we not allow it, and I think the proposed Rule 5 covers that case. Seeking vigilante justice on the internet is a dangerous game. It is much too easy to misidentify someone, or to act on inaccurate information. There are plenty of documented cases out there of innocent people coming to harm. Two high-profile examples come to mind:
A university professor wrongly identified as a participant at a white supremacist rally (the article includes other examples, too): https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40935419
The Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, where a bunch of innocent people were wrongly accused and faced harassment: https://www.scu.edu/ethics/focus-areas/internet-ethics/resources/social-media-and-the-boston-marathon-bombing/
I agree when it’s at the level of internet gossip, but if a reputable news source picks it up or it’s something the business itself is verifiably bragging about it should be fair game. Last month a bakery had a sign in their window and were doing a “nuclear family” discount and the local subreddit was calling to boycott the homophobic place. And yeah they were bragging about their bigotry on Facebook and local news picked up the story. At some point I think it’s valid to allow metaphorical pitchforks.
No? How is a nuclear family discount inherently offensive enough to be worth getting out pitchforks out over? I don’t agree that being bigots is enough either. They are backwards, lots of people are backwards, and harassing them probably won’t yield any constructive outcomes. So if they aren’t actively harming others, then what are you going to achieve here.
As a broader question, who gets to be the arbiter of acceptable harassment?