Hello World,
following feedback we have received in the last few days, both from users and moderators, we are making some changes to clarify our ToS.
Before we get to the changes, we want to remind everyone that we are not a (US) free speech instance. We are not located in US, which means different laws apply. As written in our ToS, we’re primarily subject to Dutch, Finnish and German laws. Additionally, it is our discretion to further limit discussion that we don’t consider tolerable. There are plenty other websites out there hosted in US and promoting free speech on their platform. You should be aware that even free speech in US does not cover true threats of violence.
Having said that, we have seen a lot of comments removed referring to our ToS, which were not explicitly intended to be covered by our ToS. After discussion with some of our moderators we have determined there to be both an issue with the ambiguity of our ToS to some extent, but also lack of clarity on what we expect from our moderators.
We want to clarify that, when moderators believe certain parts of our ToS do not appropriately cover a specific situation, they are welcome to bring these issues up with our admin team for review, escalating the issue without taking action themselves when in doubt. We also allow for moderator discretion in a lot of cases, as we generally don’t review each individual report or moderator action unless they’re specifically brought to admin attention. This also means that content that may be permitted by ToS can at the same time be violating community rules and therefore result in moderator action. We have added a new section to our ToS to clarify what we expect from moderators.
We are generally aiming to avoid content organizing, glorifying or suggesting to harm people or animals, but we are limiting the scope of our ToS to build the minimum framework inside which we all can have discussions, leaving a broader area for moderators to decide what is and isn’t allowed in the communities they oversee. We trust the moderators judgement and in cases where we see a gross disagreement between moderatos and admins’ criteria we can have a conversation and reach an agreement, as in many cases the decision is case-specific and context matters.
We have previously asked moderators to remove content relating to jury nullification when this was suggested in context of murder or other violent crimes. Following a discussion in our team we want to clarify that we are no longer requesting moderators to remove content relating to jury nullification in the context of violent crimes when the crime in question already happened. We will still consider suggestions of jury nullification for crimes that have not (yet) happened as advocation for violence, which is violating our terms of service.
As always, if you stumble across content that appears to be violating our site or community rules, please use Lemmys report functionality. Especially when threads are very active, moderators will not be able to go through every single comment for review. Reporting content and providing accurate reasons for reports will help moderators deal with problematic content in a reasonable amount of time.
Over half of America didn’t vote as they see that both democrats and republicans take money from the rich and use it to make the middle class disappear. If it was easier to vote and we got rid of first past the pole, more people would vote. But alas both sides want first past the post as it keeps them in power. So only small minority that did vote did this, and most of America didn’t want either side. But what you gonna do when both sides don’t want you to live. Yes one side is extremely worse, but it is hard to see that when prices go up and your family might die due to higher ups not caring about the help.
No, I’m sorry, but this is straight up Russian disinformation and non voters are even dumber than those voting for Trump, since they automatically enable the bad actors, which is how you end up with despots like Putin btw who pushes for this exact kind of “both sides are the same” & “you can’t trust either side / truth” type bullshit. Voting starts not at the presidential level, but at the local one. You can vote everyone in & out, and if there’s truly no candidate to your liking (even though you should AT THE VERY LEAST vote for the lesser evil in any case) go into politics yourself. In a democracy, the voters are the ones who are responsible for making changes. But of course, if you elect people like Trump (not just Trump himself), then yes, you end up with a broken system that gets more and more dismantled - until it is gone and you truly don’t need to bother voting anymore. And that’s the point where you’re at now, thanks to people’s wrong vote, or lack of a vote. Both cases are responsible for this, dooming not just the US, but the rest of the world, thanks to Trumps (anti) climate policies.