Expressing concerns about moderation policy on lemmy.ml
Expressing concerns about moderation policy on lemmy.ml
This was originally posted to lemmy.pineapplemachine.com: https://lemmy.pineapplemachine.com/post/5781
Lemmy is federated and decentralized and that means that we can all coexist regardless of our differing political opinions. I think it's important to preface this by saying that I am not offended by or concerned with anyone's politics, and I'm certainly not here to argue with anyone about them.
My concern is that users are being banned and content is being removed on lemmy.ml citing a rule that is not publicly stated anywhere that I have seen.
Moderators of lemmy.ml are removing posts and comments which are critical of the Chinese government and are banning their authors.
This came to my attention because of how lemmy user bans are federated just like everything else, and I was confused about why my instance had logged a lemmy.ml user ban citing "orientalism" as the reason for the ban.
Screenshot of my own instance's modlog, as viewed by an admin
I noticed that the banned user had recently commented on a post in [email protected] that had been removed with the reason "Orientalist article".
Screenshot of banned user's history on lemmy.ml
Here's the article that was removed, titled "China may face succession crisis". It was published by axios.com, which mediabiasfactcheck describes as having "a slight to moderate liberal bias" and gives its second-highest ranking for factual reporting. The article writes unfavorably of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
https://www.axios.com/2023/06/06/china-may-face-succession-crisis
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/axios/
I had not remembered seeing anything in lemmy.ml's rules that would suggest that "orientalism"—meaning, as I understand it, the depiction or discussion of Asian cultures by people in Western ones—was against the rules. So I checked, and I found that there was not. Not on the instance's front page, and not in [email protected].
Screenshot of instance rules for lemmy.ml
Screenshot of community rules for [email protected]
![Screenshot of community rules for [email protected]](https://lemmy.pineapplemachine.com/pictrs/image/9a5a8a2d-cfac-4658-8ef5-77a885079756.png){kind=link}
There is a stated rule against xenophobia, but I think that xenophobia is not widely understood to include Westerners writing critically of the actions of an Asian government.
This is where I went from confused to concerned.
Lemmy instances have public moderation logs, which I think is a very positive thing about the platform. So I looked more closely at lemmy.ml's moderation log.
Please note that moderation logs are also federated. It's hard to be 100% sure which instance a mod action is actually associated with, looking at these logs. The previously mentioned user ban and post removal were, I think, definitely actions taken by lemmy.ml moderators. My own instance's mod log identifies the banning moderator as a lemmy.ml admin, and the removed post was submitted to a lemmy.ml community. I've done my best to verify that all of the following removals were really done by lemmy.ml moderators, but I can't be absolutely certain. Please forgive me if any of them were actually made on other instances that do have an explicitly stated rule against orientalism.
Removed Comment Ah yes. Being against China's racist genocide is racist. China, the imperialist ethno-state, is clearly innocent. by @[email protected] reason: Orientalism
Removed Comment Lol. Thinking some countries have better governments than others is supremacist? Whatever, dude. By the way. If there are any countries with decent governments, I don't know of them. But like. If there were decent countries, they wouldn't behave like China. by @[email protected] reason: Orientalism
These following moderator actions did not specifically cite orientalism, but did not seem to be breaking any of the instance's or community's explicitly stated rules.
Banned @[email protected] reason: Only makes anti russia and anti china, crosspostst from reddit. 2nd temp ban expires: 9d ago
Removed Comment Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Tibet are all Colonies of China, which it treats as Colonial Territories, by - Forcibly destroying the local culture. Forcefully extracting to harm of the locals. Genocide, abuse, kidnapping, rape. But there is no point in engaging to you. You are a liar. You know you are. When you deny genocides, you put yourself on the same side as the fascists and reactionaries of the past. by @[email protected] reason: Rule 1 and 2
I have no affection for the Chinese government and I do not call myself a communist. I would not enforce a rule against orientalism on my own instance. But I think that lemmy.ml's moderators are entitled to enforce whatever rules they please. It's only that, as the largest single lemmy instance so far, I believe that they have an obligation to disclose these rules, and an obligation to not ban users or remove content for failing to follow unobvious and unstated rules.
I'd like to raise some awareness about this, and I'd like to openly ask the moderators of lemmy.ml to state the rules that they intend to enforce clearly and explicitly.
I will be very clear and state it again: I am not asking for anyone to change their opinions or to not enforce a rule that they believe in. That is the great thing about lemmy, that we can coexist in this federated community even when we don't share the same opinions. What I am asking is for lemmy.ml's rules to be clearly stated, because I think it does not reflect well on the broader community if the predominant instance moderates its users and content according to rules that are not being explicitly disclosed.
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Welcome to Lemmy pained smirk
It is against moderation rule 2 as stated here: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/code_of_conduct.html
- Remarks that moderators find inappropriate, whether listed in the code of conduct or not, are also not allowed.
Besides agreeing to this moderation decision or not (I don't on the face value, but Lemmy has seen many trolls making similar seemingly okey comments just to later double down with outright racism), you will never get clear rules on moderation. It's always a bit of best effort guess by moderators and the rules are better left somewhat ambiguous because of that.
If you try to clearly state all rules, you will just end up with a huge wall of text that no-one reads other than some trolls that try to intentionally walk up right to the border of that is "legal" and test your patience as a moderator.
That's a lot like the reasonable person standard, where the "reasonable person" is the lemmy.ml moderator, isn't it?
So what pineapple is pointing out, then, is that the lemmy.ml Overton window is (1) undocumented, (2) not an Overton window most people live and breath with.
Put another way, newcomers (and existing users who were blissfully unaware) would do well to be aware of that what they consider "safe" content will get you banned from lemmy.ml, but there's no indication of that in the rules.
Saying there's a catchall moderation policy to avoid having a wall of text doesn't address that. Not even a little bit.
I didn't make the lemmy.ml rules/CoC. I merely pointed out the fact that they do exist and are enforced according to what they say.
You and me might disagree with the decisions made based on them, but making them more precise is not a solution to the problem.
IMHO at this point it is moot discussing this, just don't use the lemmy.ml (or worse lemmygrad.ml) instance if possible.
That's fair, but it's less a matter of disagreeing (people disagree all the time) and more a matter of knowing what to expect. With lemmygrad, you know what to expect. It's very, very obvious what they're all about.
With lemmy.ml, you might not expect that moderation. The only way you could find out about it is by breaking an unwritten rule or by finding it in the modlogs. I'm not suggesting that violates some kind of contract, but I am suggesting (1) it's bad moderation, (2) it's worth knowing about.
it’s less a matter of disagreeing (people disagree all the time) and more a matter of knowing what to expect.
I think this is really what it boils down to. It’s not that the lemmy.ml admins should be forced to moderate in a way that they don’t agree with. Rather, users, especially new users, should be aware of the rules surrounding their moderation policies.
Lemmy.ml is the most likely starting place for new users. The critique by pineapple serves as a PSA to new members that they need to be aware that in a federated system each instance has its own rules and moderation policies. Users information to make informed decisions about the instances and communities that they want to partake in.
I agree that ambiguous rules are necessary, but common sense should be enough to figure out most of it. [email protected]'s opinion on China isn't really advertised (unlike [email protected]'s)
If you try to clearly state all rules, you will just end up with a huge wall of text that no-one reads other than some trolls that try to intentionally walk up right to the border of that is “legal” and test your patience as a moderator.
There was a clearly stated reason for these removals, but it is a reason that does not appear either in lemmy.ml's rules list nor on the page that you listed.
There were additional moderator actions citing the same "orientalism" reason that occurred while I was writing the post:
It is my opinion that this is a significant rule to leave unstated.
I agree - and for better or worse, lemmy.ml is likely to be many users first experience with lemmy. As a new user myself, I subbed to a bunch of communities on lemmy.ml because it's what I interpreted as being the 'core' of lemmy. Ambiguous rules - especially ones resulting in bans for discussing articles from high quality news sources - is problematic and likely to turn some people off. This is particularly an issue when lemmy is building towards critical mass.
One of the principal complaints about reddit is power tripping mods - and it's distressing to see that seemingly built into the DNA of lemmy.
The flip side of course is that this has sort of opened my eyes to the power of lemmy and the fediverse.
What about "Remarks that moderators find inappropriate" is not clear? :p
What about “Remarks that moderators find inappropriate” is not clear? :p
Do you honestly have to ask? Most people will not interpret this as including orientalism.
What is the purpose of having rules if you do not communicate to people the rules that they are expected to follow?
Look, I don't agree with many things the Lemmy moderators do, but clearly they find "orientalism" inappropriate, so the rule clearly applies.
There’s no point in acting surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now. … What do you mean you’ve never been to Alpha Centauri? Oh, for heaven’s sake, mankind, it’s only four light years away, you know. I’m sorry, but if you can’t be bothered to take an interest in local affairs, that’s your own lookout. Energize the demolition beams.
perfect response. Criticism of the Chinese government is not the same thing as orientalism.
This seems to be a really common mistake some people make. Like when Pelosi tried to punish Ilhan Omar in the US House of Representatives for "antisemitism" when Ilhan was critical of the Israeli government. I can't tell if these people genuinely can't differentiate between racism and criticism of national governments or if this is a sinister misuse of racism to censor opinions they disagree with. My inclinations are towards the latter unfortunately.
Given that many people who make this mistake are often not from the demographic that is presumably being harmed(meaning that it isn't from a position of personal emotional harm), I'm inclined to believe that its an attempt to stifle the opponent by seemingly gaining the moral high ground.
I don't think there is an expectation that the rules from https://join-lemmy.org apply to every instance. That's just the software's "Join our kind" page.
Now lemmy.ml is a bit of a special case given that it's run by the dev's. However I wouldn't expect lemmy.ca to be beholden to any code of conduct. After all lemmygrad.ml is very not welcoming.
The question was about moderation decisions on lemmy.ml for those the CoC I linked very much applies.
