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.
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.