I love that they have a 'don't be a dick' policy, it sounds like there's quite a few spaces returning to a set of simple rules to avoid people trying to skirt the rules and make places intolerable.
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
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It tough right? You get rules lawyers if they're complex and specific, but really general rules tend to get abused just as hard, often by the very people who help build a community. Funny enough social media platforms themselves have been a good example recently.
It sounds like their approach works for them though, so that's good.
The reason behind the rules might help with that. Don't be a dick and be nice are more about being respectful and understanding than following etiquette. From my point of view at least. The specific way you act is not a problem until it's related to another person.
What I mean is that the way people perceive you is the important part. If someone accuses you of being a dick and you disagree, don't defend your words, explain your attitude. At the same time, don't go around accusing people of beings dicks and try to see if it's not just miscommunication.
The letter of the law entitle people to not care for any harm they cause if it's in their rights. Then there are the people that realize pain is what the law tries to avoid and act to correct themselves without the need of being guilty.
Don’t be a dick and be nice are more about being respectful and understanding than following etiquette.
I personally know people that would argue etiquette is a form of kindness. They unironically think there's a connection between where the spoon goes and murder. This is of course not true, but the ability to transcend your own cultural context and look at humanity as a whole is surprisingly rare.
If we could all do that, then maybe specific rules would always be unnecessary. But again, that's not my lived experience.
really general rules tend to get abused just as hard, often by the very people who help build a community
I'm not sure I agree with this as a general statement. People are often wary of interpretable rules, because it invites personal bias, but strong systems to counter/offset such bias such as proper training and group decisions easily fix this.
That is very much not my lived experience, but I obviously can't transfer it to you. I guess I could make a parallel with the concept of "rule of law" in politics - countries that don't have it and leave interpretation of justice up to the authorities inevitably become really corrupt.
Yes but that's different from having a system which enshrines interpretability in their law tactfully. Some countries use panels of judges to deliver decisions and have law which is much more interpretable than places which are more letter of the law focused. You're talking about combining judicial and executive functions which has a whole different set of issues.
If we're debating, isn't the distinction a form of precision rulemaking? I've always thought of judicial vs. executive as a form of constitutional structure personally.
Yes but that’s different from having a system which enshrines interpretability in their law tactfully.
Assuming you mean inquisitorial systems (maybe you don't, please fill me in if I'm wrong), they still have pretty extensive laws. Just GDPR has 99 articles, for example.
This is a nonsensical argument. If I were running a website, I would also ban any account selling sex. The amount of legal exposure you'd face regarding human trafficking is too great. I'm not going to spend resources trying to sift through these accounts so some randos can profit, especially when accounts tied to trafficking would still be missed. I'm not pro-corporations, this just makes practical sense.
I agree with this. I don’t have a problem with porn, but allowing it on your platform instantiates one HELL of a burden on you.
Let them go to places dedicated to it, like PornHub. PH now has verification requirements, I believe, to protect people. I can’t be bothered to find the article right now, but in the last few weeks I recall reading something about a ton of child porn being traded on Facebook.
This is a really complicated situation. Yes, meta has created the leading platform for sex trafficking (Insta) and FB has similar problems.
However, that barely touches on the issues in play here. For one thing, the platforms have been far more effective at removing sex positive educators than they have at catching adult men using girl's Insta accounts to sell child porn. For another, a repeating pattern involves major platforms being built by sex workers and then the platforms trying to purge sex work later on (Tumblr, onlyfans). For a third, removing all sexual content from a social space in unhealthy, repressive, and weird, playing into misogynistic and religious social norms and pathologizing one of the fundamental aspects of being human. Pornhub has account verification, for instance, not because of actual concern about trafficking but because of Nicholas Kristoff's weird christianity-derived hatred of porn.
I understabd why beehaw prohibits sexual content given the legal environment we're in. But trying to remove sex from social spaces, especially online, is NOT a good or even neutral idea.
I disagree with your interpretation of the article. They aren't protesting policy that bends all sex related accounts. They are protesting inadequate and inaccurate enforcement of a policy that, in principal, allows for sex-positive education and bans pornography and trafficking. And the problem is that meta has done a way better job banning healthy and arguably necessary sex-positive education than jt has pursuing trafficking or child porn.
I'm also not sure why you bring up profit. The article does mention finances of one particular kink group, that isn't the point they were making. They were saying that meta's business model involves offering a public service - been online social space - and that the company arbitrarily violated their own terms of service by banning a bunch of people seemingly because those people belong to a group the company doesn't like (i.e. people with non-vanilla sexual interests).
Moderation is hard and the legal questions are complicated (and way beyond me), but I feel like your comment really dramatically oversimplifies and sort of misrepresents what's at issue here.
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