DRAFT piefed.social content policy / terms of service

No [...] self-promotion without permission

Does this include posting original content like art and blog posts? Seems a bit too wide.

Genocide denial or minimization, such as denying or justifying atrocities in Gaza, Xinjiang, Ukraine, or elsewhere.

Love it.

Don’t post anything that could cause legal trouble for PieFed, piefed.social or the people involved.

This should maybe specify which jurisdiction PieFed is under to make it more transparant. Rule 3 could itself cause legal trouble in some countries.

I like it this way, and I think it covers the common scenarios. One thing I sometimes like to do is add a positive paragraph next to all the rules and limitations. Not just write what is disallowed, but what the place strives for and what it wants to be like.

I’m a rule nerd and will nerd out a bit. When I modded a national subreddit we wanted to make rules more or less what your are aiming for here so allow me to share some experience.

I’ll post machine translated version of what we came up with and some rationale behind it.

§ 2b. Praise or incitement to violence

The ban includes any kind of incitement to or praise of violence or suicide, death wishes, threats, and promotion of totalitarian ideologies. Content about animal abuse will be treated in a similar manner. Encouraging others to harm themselves and denying the medical consensus on COVID-19 and vaccination are also prohibited.

We opted to not keep misinformation or nazi ban as a separate point because you don’t want to become an arbiter of truth on all things science or political ideology. Limit the scope to things where people can really harm themselves.

§ 2c. Hate speech

Do not post content that incites, supports or justifies hatred or contempt against marginalised or vulnerable groups. These groups may be based on skin color, religious belief or lack thereof, national or ethnic origin, immigration status, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, pregnancy or disability. They also include victims of violence, accidents and their families. While the rule protects the above groups, it does not protect those who display hatred or who try to hide their hatred in bad faith by claiming discrimination.

This is lifted near verbatim from Reddit content policy. It makes clear that prejudice based on inborn traits is forbidden but there needs to be a component where that trait makes you vulnerable to harassment, otherwise you’ll get religious people claiming they need to be protected. You’ll love last sentence when dealing with trolls too.

§ 2d. Limitation of promotion and spam

We allow promotion from regular and active members of our community, which does not exceed 10% of activity on _. We also consider the posting of surveys for research papers as promotion. Spamming, kickstarters and other solicitation are prohibited entirely.

Don’t distinguish between promo and self-promo because on the internet nobody knows you’re a dog.

§ 2e. Sharing personal information

Do not post personal information - names of non-public persons, phone numbers, private addresses, even if they are publicly available (e.g., Facebook and Twitter screenshots). If you want to post such a screen shot, effectively remove this information from it. Witch hunts using personal information is strictly prohibited.

You really need outright doxxing ban and what constitutes personal info might be controversial. We wanted to avoid witch hunts of any kind and that did that.

Just leaving a comment to show my appreciation. Reading this reassured that I have joined the right instance. Big thanks!

You have a gap between point 5. and 6.

The self-promotion may invite drama. Just today Rimu posted that Piefed is really taking off, along with graphs to prove it, and a link to piefed.social. How would this, technically, not violate this rule; not be self-promotion? Rimu is the lead developer of Piefed. It's his website in the post. Seems to fit. If he posted this as a comment on another site, should they delete the comment?

And where's the line then? Is FOSS software OK because it's free, but software that charges for extra features is not OK? Or is all software OK if not a corporation, or is Signal OK because they are a non-profit corporation? What about Proton and Tuta mail? Would they violate this policy is they told someone who was concerned about privacy in Gmail to check out their products, or is that valid information in the discussion?

I'd leave it out, and I'd take it on a case by case basis and should I decide that I don't like it, which is my right as the one who pays the bill, I'd call it a violation of the advertising policy and be done with it.

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Stating political stances, I think, is inviting fights with the Admin and worse, calls for defederation of the site by people who will misread the intent after putting it through their political lens, and it will somehow become that piefed.social is or isn't a Zionist site, that is or isn't anti-Israel, and is or isn't anti-Semitic, and so on. It doesn't matter what the truth is. The accusations will come, and others with similar lenses will latch on to it.

Wouldn't it have been better for Lemmy if the tanky developers just never publicly said anything political?

I get reports constantly on Mastodon where the same person who has accused people of being anti-Semitic is being accused of being anti-Semitic simultaneously because they are all experts on Zionism and middle Eastern history and politics, and they are all angry. I keep my views to myself (except for my hatred for Trump and his enablers because I want my country back).

No matter how clearly you state it, people will apply your words to their agendas and it will get ugly. I recommend you don't go there.

I think most of this is fine but I have a few issues and questions.

• No self-promotion without permission is too strict and too broad imo. I think this should be left up to individual communities
• What does genocide denial or minimization mean and what does it apply to? If someone comes in talking about white genocide in South Africa are we supposed to entertain that? Are we not allowed to laugh at them? What happens if someone comes in and says there are/were atrocities and human rights violations in places like Gaza or Xinjiang but that it's not a genocide?
• "Support for regimes or ideologies that suppress basic human rights". What does this mean? Basically every major country suppresses basic human rights to some degree. And what are ideologies that suppress basic human rights? If we're talking about ideologies whose followers have suppressed basic human rights then that's basically all of them. I think major clarification is needed here.
• Regarding violence and threats, specifically political violence. This basically means that people cannot talk positively about actions such as the recent Ukrainian drone strikes of military targets in Russia. Some clarification here would be nice because this basically means that a lot of news communities would have a very hard time here.
• Joking about violence I kind of agree with but at the same time people will joke about beating up political figures like Trump or Putin or Netanyahu. Would that not be allowed?

Thanks

All seems reasonable to me.

The only point I might quibble with is "Support for regimes or ideologies that suppress basic human rights.", as pretty much all regimes and many ideologies suppress basic human rights to some extent. It is good that the suppression of basic human rights itself is called out and condemned and not supported but it would be reasonable to support the good things that regimes do in countries like China, USA, Russia and many, maybe all others, support the good aspects of capitalism, socialism, religions, etc. Perhaps you had in mind more extreme regimes and ideologies. Drawing lines is always challenging. No clearer alternative comes to mind immediately. I would be most supportive of prohibiting support for regimes and ideologies where the suppression of basic human rights is a predominant or at least very significant aspect of what they do or promote. But I can't think how to express that clearly in a few words. It wouldn't put my off as-is as, ultimately, moderation is at the discretion of the admins anyway.

I know it is theoretically covered by something else but I think it's worth to add that no antisemitic content is allowed.

I also understand that on persons anti genocide is another persons antisemitism in some countries like Germany nowadays, but I would just follow the textbook definition strictly and distinguish between Israel as a national state and the Jewish people on the other side. (Similar to like we distinguish between the CPP and the Chinese people.)