A thing we (#medium) need to figure out is in what ways, if any, we need to adjust our existing moderation policy to fit in. I don't want to be defederated unnecessarily but it's hard to even define unnecessary.
I think our existing policies are pretty close to mainstream policies, i.e. mastodon.social
Also, our policies pre-date me joining the company and so I have my own personal learning curve here.
For example, looking at mastodon.social and starting at the top.
We do have a healthy sex & erotica community.
If we include them on me.dm, then one rule we could add is that they need to cw their posts?
Ok, we're adults. We know how to scroll past that if, for example, we are at work.
This, btw, is our current Rules as applied to Medium.com.
https://policy.medium.com/medium-rules-30e5502c4eb4
And this addendum for controversial, suspect and extreme content is pretty illuminating.
https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018182453-Controversial-Suspect-and-Extreme-Content
Remember, I'm on a learning curve too. So if someone complains directly to me about how these rules have been enforced against them, I generally do look into it.
The people I've looked into have fallen into two camps:
A) Swear that hating on trans people is done out of love.
B) Are anti vax and citing a news story on the website of their local TV news channel as conclusive evidence.
I'm sure we apply the other rules on a day to day basis, but I don't end up hearing about them.
More on figuring out moderation changes between medium.com and me.dm...
Yes to content warning on graphic and adult topics. We should make that a server rule because our main thing will be onboarding mastodon newbies. So the visibility of a rule will help teach a core concept here.
But what about more edge case warnings? Someone suggested on images of food out of sensitivity to people with eating disorders.
That's definitely outside of the level of sensitivity that we currently ask for on Medium.com.
It brings up two questions. One is whether this is a mainstream level of CW? Do most servers put CW on this?
Then two, there must be many other sensitive topics of similar severity and occurrence. What are they? What about lesser sensitivities?
Some of those questions read naive to me because in a lot of ways I am naive.
I think where they head though is to what degree are we responsible for what we put out into the fediverse and to what degree are we responsible for advertising who we are so that some parts of the fediverse can block what we put out?
I do get that being blocked at an instance level and at a user level is a feature here.
We should be blocked by people that don't want to see commercially run instances, by people that don't want to read self promoters (that is what defines the difference between an author and a diarist), etc.
But more than medium.com, a bad actor on me.dm has the potential to bring bad consequences to the other people on me.dm. That cooperative nature begs for tighter moderation.
Placeholder right now based on feedback is to say:
Required CW for adult and violent content. Recommended for trauma, addiction and phobia triggers.
Now another one someone brought up to me is the pro-Russia side of the Ukraine war. Literally they said we should ban it.
The current state of Medium.com is that the Ukraine side is very well represented and often trending. But I'm sure the Russian side exists.
I could imagine this coming up in other harder to police ways too. For example, I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that the One China concept is fairly mainstream in China.
Thoughts?
@coachtony I've found it interesting and valuable to read your public discussions and thinking on moderation policies for the #fediverse, so I wrote a quick report on it here, so that other people can also see it:
@coachtony really appreciate the thoughtfulness about community norms.
For the question on CWs, this is most often addressed person-to-person. I've never heard of anyone blaming an admin or suggesting blocking an instance over lack of CWs for certain topics (aside from sexual content, which you've already addressed)
@coachtony those authors would likely be blocked by many, but I don't see anyone coming for your head over it.
Generally, the consequence for missing CWs on your posts is:
1. People who need that specific CW will unfollow/block you
2. Your other followers won't boost your posts out of concern that they have followers of their own who need the CW (and thus would suffer #1 themselves)
Getting blocked at server level is more than “people that don’t want to see X”, it’s more complex than that. It’s more about server admins who do not want to see X and do not want to let others (others include everyone with their server addresses and other members of servers that federate with them) see X. The point here is blocking at server level propagates disruption of access to content down the chain of servers that federate with other servers.
This has implications for servers such as Medium as #Medium is NOT just another random server in the #Fediverse given its separate existence elsewhere on the #Web, so Medium on #Fediverse and #Medium on the web (call it ‘Mothership’) is expected to have a level of consonance to allow certain level of access to contents and policies. Each lives off the other and in the best of times respect the usage of each place where it operates.
For example, at this time, many people are exiting Twitter and setting up accounts on various #Fediverse servers such as #Mastodon sites, and if you traverse Mastodon accounts you will sense a tension between Twitter usage and content in #Fediverse. While it is a welcome sign to see Medium set up shop in #Mastodon, note that Medium allows only #Twitter integration with the ‘Mothership’ but users cannot log in to Medium with their #Fediverse credentials.
Besides, Medium IMHO should not blindly copy block lists as well. I hope you have these checks and balances in place @coachtony
@arinbasu1 Thank you.
Yeah, deeper integration coming.
What it looks like to us is that participation here is close but slightly more strict as compared to the "mothership."
Good, encouraging signs. Thank you for this.
While on this, one of the things that Medium on the web has done remarkably well, is long form content authoring that are “spawned” from specific lines and passages of another essay on Medium (highlights). So a highlight leads to a story in itself. That led Medium to be both a ‘blog’ and more than a blog.
The equivalent of that story leading and chaining to another story is ‘quote post’ in #Mastodon, which is a “no-no” for Mastodonians. A space to watch as to how these will be negotiated.
Excellently put @thomasknoll as different apps on the #Fediverse uses different terms for what #Mastodon calls “content warning”, in essence they are content wrappers. I believe Mastodon’s design model and it’s media strategy needs a careful and thorough academic analysis which as yet I haven’t seen. Some early papers such as quote posts are coming out (thanks to @hildabast ) but this is a space that needs careful consideration.
I've been using "content note" when blogging or posting on other social networks, as I like the neutrality of that phrase. "Content wrapper" works well here in that regard.
@coachtony The crux of the matter around CW is it's very dependent on the person. I'd be okay with less CWs if folks tagged their posts appropriately.
I like being able to filter based on that.
@coachtony A great example of a permissively moderated instance (woof.group) where in addition to the "Server Rules" a "Code of Conduct" provides a relatable explanation on CW, Sensitive Media flags, and other considerations to "In short: don't fuck this up."
My personal take on when to CW and Sensitive Media label? "When in doubt, flag CW/flag it!"
@coachtony here is what @Gargron, the creator of Mastodon, thinks about content warnings:
Yeah, there's are a lot of "just asking questions" and concern trolling when it comes to cis people discussing trans folks online, accompanied by cries of censorship when they are shown the door. Fortunately, my experience thus far on the Fediverse has been very trans-positive.
Tony Stubblebine
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