How would you moderate this scenario?
I'm one of the moderators of a small / medium community. I've been doing it for around a year, with no prior experience at moderating or helping to foster an online community.
We have a section for jokes and humour, and somebody posted one of those "train dilemma" memes. It gave the choice of letting the train hit one of several groups of people. It was general enough to not name anyone specific. The options were similar to:
Let the train hit:
a) Nintendo developers
b) Sony developers
c) Microsoft developers
Fine. A bit crass, but hardly shocking.
A commenter then replied by stating they don't mind which, so long as x well known developer is shot.
Now that really threw me.
The moderation team have been divided over it, although not strongly so. We are all generally in favour of removing it. But we are concerned about over-stepping and of course the topic of free-speech has arisen.
As it came up with us, I'll also mention that there are no specific rules of the website, or this specific sub-community, to state such humour is disallowed.
Where is the line drawn with free-speech? We would certainly remove anything pro-fascism, racist, homophobic or grossly offensive, but we do have rules that cover those.
I'd be really keen to hear any views on how you would approach this and how you would justify your decision.
Sites usually have an "advocating for violence/death threats" type rule that this could fall under. When you're talking a specific person and a specific method of death, that's a little too far into edginess. If you don't have a "death threats/calls to violence" rule, it might be a good idea to make one.
Depending on how small this forum is, you can actually DM the individual saying you know his comment wasn't meant as a death threat but it just looks a little too close to one, even though it's a joke, so it has to be removed. Even if it wasn't a joke, people generally react better when you extend good faith towards them and act like you aren't judging them personally.
Bit of a side trail, but I've been so irritated lately how the "advocating for violence" rule has become applied so broadly on other sites that "punch a nazi" is treated the same way as "kill this specific guy". I have to remove that when I see it on reddit, even though I think it's overkill to remove what is more a political slogan than an actual plan of action.
It might seem like that until you realize that some people take things way too literally and also what people define as "being a nazi". While for most people it might a political slogan, some people take it actually seriously but aim it at the wrong people.
I feel like there's a big difference between speaking abstractly and talking specifics. Maybe my other issue is I feel 99% of the people saying this are wimps who have never been in a physical fight in their lives, so they're just wishing ill on their political enemies. It's pretty cringey but I rarely see a serious threat of violence behind it.
Context matters too. For example there's been a trend on reddit recently of posting memes about punching nazis and then people agree in the comments. I think that's fairly abstract.
There have been a lot of viral posts on reddit lately about a couple that went to a texas knife shop to have work done on a Hitler Youth knife. Saying those nazis need punched becomes specific, and also might fall under "being aimed at the wrong people" because someone could theoretically collect nazi memoribilia without agreeing with the ideology.
I do have to admit my bias here, because there are certain prominent neo nazis and neo fascists that I feel have earned and invite the hateful rhetoric against them. (Richard Spencer, his friend Stephen Miller, etc). I still enforce Reddit's rules when people post violent wishes for them but I also feel bad removing it.
In theory there is, in practice there is a huge area between the two where things aren't as clear-cut. To complicate it even more, where one begins and the other starts differs enormously between people. And to be frank, you made it to Godwin's Law in record time. Most of the cases you will encounter aren't about clear-cut Nazis to begin with, which you already gave one example of and there are many more.
I mean, considering you moderate on Reddit you must have been called a Nazi at least once.
Calls to violence to me are really simple, don't allow them. The way you act on them can be different depending on context. If you are fairly sure it is possibly just a meme, remove it and move on. If it is less clear, remove it and warn the user. Etc.
Hey now, it's not Godwin's law if the topic is online moderation of calls to violence! :p
My personal moderation ethos is "give the mods as little work as possible". And I don't see too many issues in terms of rhetoric of allowing "punch a nazi" stuff, like poisoning the well. Eternal september ensures no subreddit culture is taking hold anyway. It should not be against ToS because what court of law would consider it violent speech or harassment?
I feel like so much of my time is currently wasted because we have to flag these comments in automod, check for positive or false positive, and remove. The sort of highly moderated discussion forum (like tildes is) is not how I like to run things in my own subreddits. The lovely Mod Toolbox only does so much to cut the work down. I'm annoyed Reddit drew the line where they didn't need to, and I think it was more political pressure from Spez and the like rather than a liability issue.
Yes, I think this is a rule we should have. But then you've perfectly described how that rule is the often applied too stringently, or moderators are torn apart for not applying it perfectly and ridiculed for having used discretion.
Moderators are going to be criticized for any judgement call that infringes on someone's perceived right to expression. Rules have to be enforced and cases are not always clear cut. Trying to justify a moderation decision will only convince some of your audience regardless of how good the decision is.
I don't want to go too deep on this, and I'm about to get back to work, but I've seen some subreddits with a lot of "punch a nazi" rhetoric not getting removed and the commenters are very overt about exactly what they mean by their rhetoric. Admin handling of this rule seems as imbalanced as usual.
If one were to, say, quote lyrics, then it would be compliant with Reddit's rules on the subject and Admins couldn't pressure mods to take action. I'm sure there are playlists of "punch a nazi" to use as a reference.
I think it’s not helpful to have comments like punch a nazi either. Yes, nazis are widely reviled and in my opinion rightly so, but advocating violence is rarely helpful to convince these people otherwise, and encourages identity politics that divides people rather than treating people as real people.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying nazism or other similar ideologies should be tolerated, but people in general should be tolerated in good faith, and where they can’t exist in a community advocating violence even in a joking way isn’t helpful.
Just my thoughts, I’m sure plenty of people will disagree with me. I recommend reading non violent communication by Marshal Rosenberg if you think I’m crazy.
This is the attitude that has allowed Nazis to flourish recently. There is no good faith argument to be had with Nazis. The entire goal is to divide communities, because you don't want Nazis to be part of communities. Their philosophy is a death threat to anyone who is not them.
“Punch a Nazi” rhetoric is worthless for a reason neither you nor @Chiasmic mentioned. Namely, the most enthusiastic Nazi-punchers have extremely flexible definitions as to who counts as a Nazi.
Besides, in the modern world, it's the non-Nazi fash who have the numbers to be dangerous. They're the ones who should be bashed. Again, the most vocal fash-bashers have a habit of using an unrealistically expansive definition of fash.
I'm sorry, but the only people I hear make this argument are from conservatives who are trying to muddy the waters and cover themselves, and I do not believe there is any significant number of people being falsely accused of being a fascist and punched as a result. The opposite case is significantly more common. We do not need a pedantic argument about how modern Nazis aren't technically Nazis because the third reich ended. A fascist is a fascist at the end of the day.
I would argue this ^ attitude is what creates nazis, which in this context rapidly turns into an amorphous conglomerate ‘other’ group of opinions that one dislikes. It’s not about having good faith arguments about nazism or whatever else you find abhorrent and want to put in that bracket, it’s about understanding people do not conform to the identity labels another applies to them.
I don’t like identity politics. It makes people hate others based on externally assigned labels, and leads to more extreme group think positions. People are complex and often have different thoughts and feelings then you think!
Sure, there will be trolls especially on the internet, but in reality, people are complex living, breathing, feeling entities. Most people are not inherently bad people, and tolerating people in good faith means understanding they might not fit your mental model of them, and disagreeing on one thing does not you will disagree on all things. These connections allow us to empathise with others and win them over.
Like it or not, we are one global community and our actions vibrate the threads that connect us all. If you shut people out, they don’t go away, and their ideas don’t die out, they get together and fester.
Sorry if that comes across wrong, these are complex ideas and I don’t know or have the requisite sleep to formulate my thoughts properly. We may disagree on this, but I’m sure we will agree on other points :)
If someone disagrees with my right to exist, or one of my loved ones' right to exist, they are already not acting in good faith. You are treating these "disagreements" as a simple matter of subjective opinion, and ignoring the fact that Nazis actively want to exterminate large groups of people.
Tolerating Nazis is wrong, full stop. To tolerate Nazi viewpoints and treat them as equally valid as other viewpoints is to say that the extermination of all minorities is tolerable and a valid viewpoint. This is not "identity politics". Nazis do not become Nazis because Nazis were shunned.
A couple of points.
I can see from your context this is an area close to your heart. I’m not here saying fascism is anything other than abhorrent. Full stop, end of.
I am not saying to tolerate nazi viewpoints, but to instead acknowledge the person holding the view point is an actual person. How can you change another’s mind without that? Not everyone’s position is rational, and their minds can be changed, but not through hate. People can still connect on other points and provide a common ground to allow reconciliation. Just because fascism is abhorrent doesn’t change this fact when it comes to changing other peoples minds.
I would also suggest that there is imperfect overlap in the venn diagram between those you think are Nazis and those who wish to exterminate others. Most people are not murderers, And don’t actually want this, even if they seem like they do. They have cognitive dissonance because of group think. How will you identify those who can be changed if you will not ever engage with them as people rather than an entity?
You can be intolerant of ideas while still tolerating people. It’s hard, it’s easy to hate people and assume what they think based on prior experience. It’s a very human reaction. I just don’t think it’s helpful.
I would be interested to understand how you think fascist ideas can be effectively removed, because I don’t see separating communities and ostracising people as being very effective tbh. It just feeds ‘their’ group and echo chamber with anyone you perceive to be contaminated by a hint of fascism, and converts mostly non fascists to fascists.
Please explain this to me, because as far as I can tell, they're contradictory
Edit to add a second question: Do you think non-violent Nazis or non-violent fascists exist?
You can tolerate people without tolerating some of their beliefs. For example, I know people who are a bit racist. I don’t tolerate their racism, but most of that person is still good, and they still are good humans where you can agree on other matters. Don’t assume they are all bad because one aspect to that person is bad. No one is perfect, and no one will fully agree with another person. Find the good in people and the common ground and then you have the best chance of winning them over in any case. People don’t change from hate, they change from friendship and kindness (as cheesy as that sounds).
As for your second question, clearly yes. There are plenty of politicians who are not violent themselves but hold fascist ideas. Im sure to enforce those ideas if they get in power there would be threat of violence, but that is true of literally any political system: it is enforced through state sanctioned threats of violence and physical control over others. That’s what the police and jail are.
My grandfather fought against them. Punching a nazi is the bare minimum required.
I think a pretty clear indicator is if the person has 2-3 obviously nazi derived symbols they post or wear:
https://youtu.be/AVlTZmrj2Vg?si=mrMNZu9ZCG15QzTC
If you're running around with 2-3 of these (or derivations) on your person, you definitely deserve to be punched.
So did my grandparents.
To be clear, in a state of formal war against a formal nazi regime, things are different. But in this situation you have already condoned violence by being at war.
I still think violence is unhelpful when not at war or directly defending against others violence. Why do you think punching them will help? It will just reinforce their views of in versus out group. It might help you feel better, but it won’t change their mind or reduce their impact on the world.
Because as someone who was bullied for a significant portion of their life, sometimes you have to punch a person to make it stop.
The people who are supposed to help often don't.
I am not saying it should be the first thing a person does, but it shouldn't be overlooked as an option.
As a response to violence? Sure, I have no qualms about self defence.
But generally violence begets violence, and usually leads to escalation which leaves everyone worse off.
Ah yeah sorry, I didn't mean go running around punching people randomly.
It always amazes me that this is even up for debate. Calling for specific people to be murdered is always crossing a line as far as I am concerned. At the very least it is a removal of the comment in question and a warning towards the user that they crossed a line.
Does not apply here, it is your moderation policy. To grab one of my old moddy pastas I used to keep on hand when I was still a mod on reddit.
In case if you are worried about removing too much, it still is your moderation policy on your platform. On reddit free speech was often shouted hand in hand with "censorship" which I feel also applies here.
Fantastic response. Thank you.
I cannot believe I've not come across that XKCD before this, but it really hammers your point home.
You have really expressed something in your reply about free speech that resonates with my own feelings, but I've struggled to express properly.
I respectfully disagree. Calling for specific people to be killed is valid and warranted in extreme circumstances. Your "moderation" policy draws a red line that might end up protecting mass murderers from organized revolt.
Please see e.g. Operation Anthropoid for an example of a valid target.
Sorry, are we still talking about internet forum moderation here? How is your example even applicable in this context?
If* these extreme circumstances occur. Discussing these plans on a public forum is one of the best ways to get caught red-handed and then moderators removing it before others seeing it would do you a favor.
Are you really saying people of Ukraine are to say "Putin should be voted out" on your fora?
Oppressive regimes do not happen overnight. And the situation in this century is wildly different with everybody being online. Of course organizing would happen out of sight, but the general sentiment can be gauged.
We've had multiple revolutions happen because of unmoderated social media. Also couple genocides. But obviously even public fora can work and should be tuned to facilitate freedom from oppression.
And in my opinion there is little distinction between e.g. internet forum and a mastodon instance. This is defining the baseline, not forum topicality.
Obviously "this forum is not intended for you to plot revolutions or organize defense, such threads are off topic and will be removed" is fine.
It's also fine to ban all off-topic discussion on specialized fora. Nothing wrong with not allowing politics on a duy solar energy forum for instance.
You are shifting goal posts. Your initial example was about people plotting an actual assassination of someone.
Exactly, so you do understand the underlying point of my earlier comment.
Edit:
After thinking about it a bit more, I do believe you might have read my original comment in a very specific way. Possibly read it, but not entirely internalized what I am actually saying. I am not saying people should not be allowed to discuss any kind of negative sentiment online. What I am saying is that moderation of online communities is just that moderation and under normal circumstances I'd be hard-pressed to think of communities where calls for violence should be tolerated. Yes, there are some highly specific exception where this isn't the case. In a Ukrainian online community it makes more sense that people wish harm unto Putin. But those are the exception not the rule, the OP was talking about this in the context of video game developers.
Screw the free speech argument. You are not the US government. Free speech for a private entity is meaningless. I don’t just mean this in a legal sense. Free speech in a private space makes that space worse (except for a very particular subset of the population). I love tildes precisely because it does not have free speech.
Take a look at the nazi bar idea, and the paradox of tolerance. There are some people in this world that are genuinely good people in all ways. These are the people you want. But they don’t want to be in a place where bad things happen. Things that may seem small will drive those people away and make your platform worse.
That being said, I don’t think this is quite a first step towards a nazi bar. Even if you let the post stand, I don’t think it will be an issue that you can’t fix later. Just keep this in mind for future moderation decisions.
It’s subjective. Personally, not a big fan of implied death threats, or calls for death, so I’d support removing it.
I'm certainly not a fan either. But it seems to be contextual whether a community finds it acceptable.
I think there would be uproar if someone stated that David Attenborough should be hurt for any reason, but it seems to be very accepted when somebody calls for the killing of Vladimir Putin for example.
Well, tbh I would remove the latter as well. There’s plenty of other ways to express your displease with Mr. Putin.
"I won't wish a man dead, but I will read his obituary with pleasure."
I am a strong free speech advocate when it comes to discussion in the public sphere, specifically about contentious topics.
In my (multi-decade, I'm old) experience in online forums/BBSes, I've never, not once, seen a digital community stay healthy without moderation erring on the side of deleting contentious things. You don't have to be rude about it, and you can be kind to the person whose comment you are moderating, but if in doubt, remove. Civil discussion is very easy to disrupt, and needs constant care and feeding.
Slight aside- and I would include 'punch a nazi' type comments in what I'd moderate. Blanket, clear lines are the most easily accepted, and the easiest to enforce.
Well said, I want to add that moderation works best when it's swift and decisive. The longer you leave the post up for, the bigger the potential backlash when you remove it.
Any time you give space to "but but free speech!" you're really unintentionally giving space to trolls and their supporters.
One thing that forum goers sometimes lose sight of is that the stakes are low. Not having "punch a nazi" posts isn't taking away anything important or valuable. But if the conversation is allowed to be about free speech, now you're talking about human rights and suddenly the stakes are artificially high, and emotions with them.
If the tone of the comment doesn't fit the community's [intended] vibe and expectations of community members, then remove it on that basis (perhaps also if there are site rules to that effect).
If a response to the commenter is necessary, then I would say something like "Hey, we get the joke you're making, but it goes a little further in making a crass joke than the OP's. Escalating that rhetoric doesn't contribute to the joke, so if you'd like to edit your comment to go a little easier on things[/to tone things down slightly], that would be great. Something like "I hope X steps on a lego every morning for the rest of his life" would be fine. Thanks for understanding."
Well, how comfortable would you be with a commenter advocating for your murder?
I’m on the fence when it comes to public figures like politicians, but does a video game developer really even count as a “public figure”? They’re just some person.
I would be horrified. Sickened. Sad. It's hard to actually put into words how awful that would make me feel.
Not that I think this debunks your point, but for clarity, the individual mentioned is more than a developer, and are certainly what I'd consider as a well-known public figure. Think somebody like Todd Howard or Peter Molyneux.
That doesn't matter though, does it? If you do think it makes a difference can you try to articulate why?
No, but that's why I lead with the part you cut off of your quote:
I simply wished to provide additional context I'd missed in my original post.
A videogame developer who's well-known enough for this to happen in the first place would almost definitely count as a public figure under US law, but I don't really think that's the line here anyway. I do think these kinds of statements are less scary when directed towards public figures, but I think that has more to do with how actionable the threat seems. I think the bigger difference between this case and targeting OP directly is that OP is in the server, so it turns into at minimum bullying/harassing a member of the server. This isn't the case when saying the same thing about a prominent game developer.
If I were moderating a situation like this, especially if there wasn't already a rule against this type of statement or a pattern of bad behavior from one of the users involved, I'd probably make a message in the channel warning people to avoid making messages that can be construed as threats against real people. I'd try to word in a non-accusatory way, since this probably is just a joke, and try to make it seem like the objection is mostly worry that we'd get in trouble with Discord. Imo this makes it seem less like the mods are evil authority figures punishing them for a joke, and more like janitors trying to prevent the evil corporation from deleting our shared server. How effective this would be is of course up for debate, and probably depends on the general vibes of your server.
I'm not really approaching it from a legal perspective, but more like -- is this what they signed up for? If someone runs for office, I feel like they know what they are getting into right from the day they start campaigning for alderman or city dog catcher. If someone is getting into making video games... the inevitability of receiving death threats, casual or not, is not on a reasonable person's radar.
I think the principle difference between what you describe and this situation is that the developer in question isn't receiving any death threats (and is almost certainly totally unaware of the discussion in this server). I think there's a very large jump morally between privately joking about wanting someone dead and sending that individual death threats regardless of the individual's public figure status. The former can still be worth moderating out of a discord server, depending on the target and the vibes of the server, but it's definitely not equivalent to the latter imo.
This can be the point where you improve the community by stating that advocating for violence against actual persons is not allowed.
I would remove it, no question. Casually suggesting people should be shot isn't okay.
My opinion is that this kind of irony or non-literal discourse is lost on the internet. Very few intended readers will get the joke, the irony will be largely lost on everyone else. So I would remove it just because I don't think irony works in any kind of open or sufficiently large forum. Also, anything over 5 users is "large" enough for this purpose. The meme may also escape the confinement of the forum.
Read the Tildes docs on that. You may also read about the paradox of tolerance.
Since there's no rule against outright, maybe just a warning.
Not saying everything needs an explicit rule in order to judge or moderate a piece of content. But for these kinds of gray areas, that's where it might be worth dropping a warning, but then also having a conversation with the community. I do think communities should have some say in how they're run. Not the final say -- admins/mods are always the final arbiter -- but some say.
My experience with modding is in political subreddits. Which are just...horrendous at times, as one can imagine. But I've largely tried to stay away from tone policing. People say all sorts of things; especially in the heat of the moment. That doesn't mean they're actually going to do anything. Who here hasn't said to someone, maybe even a friend or a loved one, "I'm gonna kill you"? Usually a joke, but maybe sometimes out of annoyance or anger. I know my mom has said it that to my brother and I! But 99.9999% of the time, nothing happens.
Now if people start dogpiling on a comment like "I wish [politician] would die," and people start focusing in on that, start getting more explicit in how it should be done, yeah I'd probably lock that thread at the least, but probably also start deleting comments.
My thinking is that human interaction is better for community health than the "use of force"/deleting their post (maybe there's a better way to put that). I'd post a public reply as moderator saying that we'd like to avoid things like supporting violence against specific people.
Agreeing with the delete sentiment, but I’d probably replace it with a gif of a ref throwing a yellow flag or a yellow card, depending on the culture.
Fun way to just assert the power and declare “over the line”!
Delete unless the developer in question is a known fascist of consequence. Killing fascists / Nazis is known to be perfectly fine in the gaming community since at least the release of Wolfenstein 3D back in 1992. Judging by the fact that nobody bothered to make the game illegal (yet) I guess this stance is (still) widely accepted and probably healthy.
Is this a trick question?