Hello World!

We’ve made some changes today, and we’d like to announce that our Code of Conduct is no longer in effect. We now have a new Terms of Service, in effect starting from today(October 19, 2023).

The “LAST REVISION DATE:” on the page also signifies when the page was last edited, and it is updated automatically. Details of specific edits may be viewed by following the “Page History” reference at the bottom of the page. All significant edits will also be announced to our users.

The new Terms of Service can be found at https://legal.lemmy.world/

In this post our community mods and users may express their questions, concerns, requests and issues regarding the Terms of Service, and content moderation in Lemmy.World. We hope to discuss and inform constructively and in good faith.

  • Leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    168·
    1 year ago

    There are very obviously groups of people who are targeted for violence, threats, harassment and abuse based solely on who they are. Ginger, blonde and black haired people don’t experience this.

    By making it explicit in a ToS or set of rules that attacking these groups of people is against the rules, the Admins could’ve made those users feel just a little bit safer and welcome on their server. Removing those explicit rules makes them, by contrast, feel unsafer and less welcome. That’s one of things .world admin team have achieved with this change.

    • Xilly@lemmy.worldEnglish
      93·
      1 year ago

      This is an understandable concern and was certainly not the intent to make users feel unsafe or less welcome. We are going to look at adding something to cover this.

      • Lvxferre
        3·
        1 year ago

        I’m not subscribed to lemmy.world but I got a proposal on a way to handle this. Here it is:

        5.0.1: Before and when using the website, remember you will be interacting with actual, real people and communities. You cannot use Lemmy.World to attack other groups of people, regardless of their sex, sexuality and gender, ethnicity and race, country of origin and residence, religious affiliation or lack of, etc. Every one of our users has a right to browse and interact with the website and all of its contents free of treatment such as harassment, bullying, violation of privacy or threats of violence.

        I believe that this should be enough to clarify to those most people that no, bigotry is not allowed in your instance.

        • Leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          I think that’s good but protecting religion is questionable to me. I’m not saying its OK to attack people based on their religion but religion isn’t a property of a person in the way their ethnicity or sexuality is, it’s merely an opinion someone holds. If your wording is adopted, it’d be nice to see the difference between attacking who someone is and an opinion someone holds made clear.

          Also needs to reference (dis)ability IMO.

          • Lvxferre
            2·
            1 year ago

            The groups listed as example (notice the “etc.”) are up to the admins, I’m suggesting mostly how to word it. It’s easy to include/exclude one if they so desire.

            That said, I do think that “religious affiliation or lack of” should be included. It might boil down to opinions + a bunch of epistemic statements, but it’s consistently a source of persecution.

            If your wording is adopted, it’d be nice to see the difference between attacking who someone is and an opinion someone holds made clear.

            Personally I believe that this is usually easy - you look at the target of the claim. For example:

            • “[religion] is full of bullshit” - probably attacking the opinions or epistemic claims, thus probably fine
            • “[religion] is full of arseholes” - unless contextualised otherwise, probably attacking the individuals there, thus probably not fine

            This is also up to the admins here though, not me.

            Also needs to reference (dis)ability IMO.

            I understand where you’re coming from with this, but note that complains about ableism, in social media, are often shielding abled people against criticism, not disabled people from prejudice. Stuff like:

            • [Alice] Bob! You’re being a moron. Don’t do this.
            • [Bob] Alice dis is ableism!