See crosspost(s) for more discussion:
This is the first big step in the process to develop comprehensive guidelines for the Fedecan non-profit and the various platforms.
While this will mostly involve converting tacit knowledge and experience into an explicit written form, we expect that this process will inevitably bring up some points of disagreement on the best way to deal with different issues. We ask everyone participating in these discussions to please contribute constructively and in good faith. We encourage you to bring up any concerns or issues you have with the proposed structure and drafted guidelines, so that we can work together to fix them early on. However, in order to keep a productive environment for those discussions, we will be pruning any comment chains that devolve into personal attacks, slap fights, etc.
To help ground your feedback, consider these thought experiments when evaluating a potential guideline:
- Veil of ignorance: Would it still feel fair to you if you switched places with someone else on the platform (ex. a new user, a moderator, an admin, a member of a vulnerable group, etc.)?
- Equal Applicability: These rules will be enforced uniformly on everyone. A poorly written rule that helps "your side" today, can easily harm "your side" in the future as circumstances change.
The full guidelines, including governance details like the annual review cycle, can be found on the website: https://fedecan.ca/en/guidelines/
We plan to structure the guidelines as follows:
Tier 1: Fedecan Rules
Internal Conduct
These rules apply to Fedecan team members (directors, officers, admins, and anyone with elevated access). They set expectations for how team members should act.
Universal Rules
These are the baseline rules that apply to every user on every Fedecan platform. They cover the things that are prohibited by Canadian law (threats, hate speech, CSAM, non-consensual intimate imagery) as well as universal policy rules (privacy/doxxing, harassment, fraud, content that could cause harm, labelling of sensitive content, etc.).
Tier 2: Platform-Specific
Each platform has different functionality and norms, so this is where we can be more specific with the rules. The threadiverse platforms (lemmy.ca, piefed.ca, sh.itjust.works) share similar rules around community creation, moderation, vote manipulation, and content labelling. Pixelfed has its own rules tailored to its platform.
Tier 3: Community-Level Rule Templates
These are optional templates that communities can link to, or use as a starting point for their own rules. The idea is that moderators can point users to a clearly written explanation of why a rule exists, and any relevant exceptions, rather than trying to fit everything into the sidebar. Additionally, if many communities are enforcing a particular rule in the same way, then users will have an easier time understanding and following them.
The post title standards template has been drafted, and we plan to add more as the need arises. I have a few others that are in the works, but they have some overlap with the other sections, so I thought that it would be better to let people discuss first.
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After reviewing the universal rules, I have two main concerns.
The first is the reliance on Canadian law. I understand that these instances are subject to Canadian law, which makes sense, but I would rather there be explicit rules or values written down, with the preference toward those rules over Canadian law, as laws can change. For example, what would happen if Canada has a MAGA-style wave and removes LGBTQ people from its list of protected classes? I imagine that we would still want to protect such people. Or, perhaps more likely, Canada strengthens its ties with China and regulates certain criticism of China as a result. Canada could also enact laws similar to those of the UK, which classified support of Palestine Action as support for terrorism and outlawed such speech. In summary, I want to make sure that these Lemmy instances protect marginalized groups while also allowing for free discussion and criticism of foreign nations and political groups, regardless of the current sway of Canadian politics and laws.
The second is a more concrete example which reveals an inherent contradiction between universal rules 1 (Violence and Threats) and 2 (Hate and Discrimination). There are currently multiple real-world examples of political groups using bogus victim-hood narratives, astro-turfing, whataboutism, and other means of misinformation to deny or downplay human rights abuses, including genocide. While I am glad to see a rule about misinformation, certain interpretations of universal rules 1 and 2 could shield bad actors from necessary criticism. In other words, should we tolerate the intolerant? Is it OK to say we should punch Nazis? What if I claimed Israel was committing a genocide in Gaza - a fact that many Canadian politicians are unwilling to admit themselves? What about the humans rights abuses in the USA and China? Would it be OK to use these Lemmy instances to stage opposition to such abuses, including sabotage of the encroaching surveillance state? The answers to these questions may seem obvious to some, but I would rather have explicit rules in place than kick the can down the road.
I think this might be a matter of better explaining how our guidelines relate to Canadian laws, rather than needing adjustments to the guidelines themselves. This draft is actually already doing some of what you've described. We meet the specific thresholds that Canadian law sets, and then set our bar high enough to account for the areas that the law isn't covering properly.
In the first example:
This shouldn't affect our guidelines when it comes to Tier 1 Rule 2, which we wrote as follows:
https://fedecan.ca/en/guidelines/1-universal-rules#rule-2-hate-and-discrimination
So even if a group of people was no longer listed as an identifiable group, our rules would still protect them since they are a group that a reasonable person could recognize as being a target of hatred.
The second example is more complicated. This is something that the instances located in the UK and elsewhere are currently dealing with. We are subject to Canadian laws, and while we will definitely advocate for laws that make sense and protect users online, we will have a limited capacity to outright refuse to follow a law after it gets passed. This is something that everyone will need to advocate for BEFORE something becomes a law.
For the second paragraph of the comment, there are some points where we will need to get advice from legal professionals before we decide anything explicitly. Without having talked to the rest of the team yet, I can share my thoughts on a few of these:
Under rule 1, we say that "This is based on whether a reasonable person would interpret the statement as a serious expression of intent to cause harm". So if a reasonable person would see the comment as hyperbole and political speech about opposing violent ideologies, then that wouldn't be against the guidelines. Meanwhile, if it was a direct call to organize to assault someone, then that would be against the guidelines.
For the next few points:
Yes
That depends on what this refers to. Again, we're not going to outright refuse to follow the law, or else we will simply get shut down and the volunteer team members will face legal consequences.
Nothing should change because presumably principle 2 covers them.