Honestly there will always be controversy on the Web. It's hard to escape it.

@phillycodehound Of course. The issue at hand here is the insistence that external realities and identities can be safely ignored—on any axis.

@Gnagnao I respect your views, but they are not universal and I've been told the exact opposite by members of "minority groups."

Cool, then hear what strengthens your opinion and ignore the others.

Just like the people you think you're distancing yourself from.

@Gnagnao In fact, my position on CWs has flipped based on the aforementioned feedback. I don't think I'm ignoring anyone here.

Good. Then keep being open to feedback, and always ask the right questions to yourself when wagering against doing something or not.

@Gnagnao I'm trans and view CWs as a means to minimize trauma. I think people should CW for eye contact, food, violence, etc. That said, the way the "algorithm-less" fediverse handles posts with Content Warnings is to prevent them from showing up as trending. This certainly is censorship in that it's done by default by the overall system. You can (and should) be aware of this so you can compensate where necessary.

Also, a guy saying "I used to do something one way but changed to another way based on feedback from minority groups" isn't wrong. Criticizing the policing of how Content Warnings are used isn't claiming censorship, it's calling out bad and biased moderation.

@Gnagnao I get that it's difficult to look away from some things, but I don't support censoring important news and views because it's hard for people to avoid reading. I support dissemination of this information, and CWs prevent that. Using a CW to avoid trauma is effective in terms of avoiding "can't unsee" situations like photos that show alcohol as well as brief bits of text that mention deeply triggering things. It's not effective for that with long text posts, but it is effective for muting those posts.

@sillyCoelophysis @Gnagnao Really well said. This is about where I've arrived on CWs as well.

@sillyCoelophysis @Gnagnao CWs are helpful to prevent reliving trauma, but I'd also prefer people to not censor any words, so that my filters can catch them.

The problem with CWing political content comes back to the origin of this post: what isn't political? Or rather: me being alive is political, so using CW on political posts is a balancing act that I myself don't manage perfectly because ... yeah, what to CWand what not? Ir is a lot easier with eye contact, food, etc, but politics? That's not that easy...

@njsg Red flag from my moderation notes back in 2023: Admin reply to somebody who got forbidden to post in Irish: so. Leae. Then. FFS.

That person was a long-term member and mostly posted in English and only very occasionally in Irish. So, while posting in languages other than English is technically against their rules, they could have just let her be as long as there were no reports coming in.

Would you castigate another server for, e.g., only allowing posts in a particular language (mastodont.cat, "L'ús d'altres llengües diferents del català en la majoria dels tuts publicats, pot provocar un avís i fins i tot suspensió del compte si és repetitiu."), or users from a particular country? What about servers like androiddev.social ("Android devs only") or infosec.exchange ("for info/cyber security-minded people")?

Many Mastodon clients make managing multiple accounts straightforward, including reading a post from one account and then replying to it from another, depending on which facet of the user's identity is most relevant at the time.

Second:

> The power dynamic of online moderation requires that those entrusted with said power be of sufficient observable, upstanding character as to reassure users that the moderator will execute their duties judiciously and fairly.

While that would be nice, I think it's more important that the tools/interfaces exist to allow users, other moderators, and server admins to verify those duties are being executed "judiciously and fairly". This means things like a tamper-proof log of moderator actions (see, e.g., lobste.rs/moderations). This would also help people assess whether they want to join a server before they do so.

@nikclayton
I want to start this response by saying that broadly, the points you are making apply very well to a forum, or old-school messageboard. They do not apply particularly well to a social media platform—especially one made of interconnected nodes, with an expectation of reasonable engagement between those nodes.

Your starting point seems to be that users will only ever have an account on a single server. Why assume that?

I don't assume that, but let's debate in reality, where the vast majority of users do have a single account. Again, if Fosstodon were a forum, then these kinds of strictures would matter less. But if a Fedi instance pursues similar rules, users on that instance have diminished capacity to engage with the rest of the social network. This is counter to the purpose of the network. If Fosstodon wants to exist in a bubble outside the network, that is a choice they can make—and one they seem to have made inadvertently with this misstep, to a significant degree.

On the language point, Fosstodon actually did this as well until recently, forcefully requiring English-only posts. While I hear the arguments around moderation challenges in multiple languages, I find them fairly weak, especially in an age of passable machine translation. It's not perfect, but it can certainly assist with understanding posts in another language. And mistakes can be litigated. So again, I find those strictures incompatible with the notion of a proper global social network.

Regarding membership criteria (nationality, occupation), obviously any server can create the rules it wants for membership. Indeed, many are invite-only, as is their prerogative. That feels separate to me from the policing of conduct of members. Again, my premise is that engaging with the broader social network, and recognizing that a person's account can (should?) reflect their entire identity if they so choose, are non-negotiable features of a functioning social network. This is a reasonable point of disagreement, but I think that leaning on the side of server-specific behaviors and favoring multiple accounts reveals a preference for a forum model, not a social graph.

I agree that an auditable moderation log is invaluable. However you do not counter my claim that trust in a moderator's character matters, instead dismissing it as "that would be nice." I maintain it is not just nice, but critical. Communities are built on trust, and in this instance, we can see what happens when that trust is compromised. Going back to my example of someone committing violent assault outside a bar, what reasonable certainty do I have that they don't do so inside? That they've never done it before? Would that be sufficient for you, having witnessed them commit the same act outside?

> where the vast majority of users do have a single account.

That's not where the Fediverse is going (unless any of the Federated account proposals gain traction).

Right now for example it would be entirely reasonable for someone to have a Mastodon account, a Pixelfed account, maybe a Ghost account if they're blogging, a Loops account for hosting video. Etc.