@Matthew Slater said:

Wouldn't you agree that claims for vaccine efficacy were criminally exaggerated in the early days and hence siding with the skeptics was/is quite a reasonable course of action?

That's not an assertion that we are in the early days now. He was describing an opinion about what was the early days (i.e. the very beginning of vaccine availability in late 2020 and early 2021).

I happen to not agree with the ironically exaggerated language of "criminally exaggerated". The public messaging around covid was indeed exaggerated, flip-flopping, problematic, hypocritical… and the best views I found were from people like Zeynep Tufekci. The hyperbole of "criminal" to describe the tragedy of incompetent public messaging seems unhelpful though.

Anyway, the key point IMO is that the co-op should not take a hard-line position on discussions of vaccines but should take some sort of hard-line position on use of triggering and provocative language around identified sore-spots.

We could still make a democratic decision that vaccine-skepticism is too much of a landmine and so we simply ban it as a topic despite acknowledging that doing so is an unfortunately blunt decision. I would personally prefer that we mark certain topics like vaccine-skepticism as "sensitive" and require extra care such as that all mention of identified sensitive topics get specific CW's and hashtags and avoid provocative language.

In short: there are all sorts of policies and tools that fit different levels between unhealthy tolerance (i.e. allowing harms to the community, such as turning away lots of people) and zero-tolerance.

I believe reactions like yours and Doug's are typical and are representative of the harms caused by allowing problem posts to keep going. The top priority IMO is to take immediate action to make sure people like you and Doug (and so many silent others) feel welcome and reassured enough to stick around.

Making sense of how fair it is to judge Matthew as a right-wing troll has to come later (and ideally wouldn't be asserted like this if we can cut off initial tensions sooner, so you don't feel exasperated). The story in my mind is that defensive frustrated people are more quick to judge and that supposed trolls also dig in defensively when threatened, labeled, and targeted as the problem (ironically escalating the conflict in their defensiveness). Incidentally, I have no reason myself (in what little I've seen) to think anyone on any side of this is here in bad-faith. I don't believe that can be effectively discussed at all while people are "hot" with immediate reactions, feeling constricted and defensive. If someone really is persistently toxic, we will still see that when we are calm and reflective.

We need ways to cut off the immediate conflicts in order to then deescalate and figure out later what to do when we're more relaxed. We need ways to temporarily block things while expressing to everyone that it's about addressing the immediate tensions and that we have a due process to help everyone willing to work on being constructive and accommodating co-op members.

I called this discussion in hope of tightening up the moderation guidelines and I have been dismissed, by name, for the first time in my life I might add, as shilling disinformation, as anti-woke, and a right wing troll.

Let me remind you, I haven't abused or insulted anyone here. I've listened and been polite at all times. Yesterday on the site somebody accused me of 'spreading misinformation' and then blocked me. IRL that's called slander, and talking behind someone's back.

There's nothing more I can do here. It feels the worst parts of pre-Musk twitter, with a veneer of cooperative righteousness, which I find ugly. So this is goodbye. A troll leaving of his own accord. Right.

Thanks, Aaron, I think this is helpful. I also hope people will cool down, take time away if needed, and then think about how we can help improve our moderation and, more importantly, the relationship-building that builds trust and patience.

I truly hope that social.coop does not turn into a place where someone's ideas of political correctness and scientific correctness beat out actual science and respectful political discussion. We have twitter for that.

We so badly need social spaces where the harms of capitalism don't basically control the discourse. It looks from where I sit that a lot of the US mainstream media is under substantial control by capital in the US, and this is true in many other countries too. So for example I don't consider the sources on the list at https://realityteam.org/factflood/ of "the most reliable national news sites" very comforting. In journalism, as well as in public health, we have some crazy mix of non-bought people in all positions trying to do the right thing and provide useful information, vs. people in positions of supposed public trust who will lie to beef up their stock portfolio, politicians who will lie to satisfy their biggest donors, people who have to lie to keep their job, etc.

I also think we need to allow people to develop informed opinions and decisions; and raise our levels of critical thinking ability, in safe spaces. I find the level of "I am right and I will protect people from you and protect you from other people" making an appearance above to be somewhat scary in the way that our society's control of "truth" is scary now. In the way that the McCarthy era in the 1950's in the US was scary.

I'm not an expert in moderation. And it is a thorny issue. But as of now, having read through the relevant conversations of the last days, I would agree with the position that moderation should address speech that is directly aimed at hurting people in some way, or inciting hurt, or even just mean and disrespectful. I don't think we want to, or even can given the resources and level of governance it would take, moderate for what is actually science, especially when presented respectfully with links to studies. It's a moving target by its nature (the scientific method), it is co-opted in so many ways, and more information is good.

Also, fortunately, people can follow, mute, block who they want. That seems to me like a perfectly OK way for people to manage their social networks.

To emphasize, this is my 2 cents as a person who does not have moderation experience, and does not often run into disrespect because my networks are small and I spend less time on social media than anyone I know. I could be wrong about some of the above, but I don't think I'm wrong about the danger that "I will control what (respectfully delivered) content you can hear" presents in this stage of capitalism.

Hi @Matthew Slater can you confirm whether you are a currently social coop member? Your mastodon profile page says you have left the coop and I couldn't find you among the contributors on Open Collective

I have no other knowledge, but maybe that's because he quit? As he posted here 50min before your question

Ah thanks, I missed that comment.

Hi folks, look, we here on social.coop have been buffeted by a couple of big waves. First, Covid, with all the trauma (lives lost, physical damage), anxiety, fear, confusion, overwork, etc. that comes with it. I would be a liar if I didn't say that three years of constant concern hasn't taken a toll on me. Not to mention the mental labor of sorting out my understanding and response to changing information and policy in a highly charged atmosphere. And the toll of physical isolation.

Second, the recent influx of former/continuing Twitter users, who often bring with them a culture of anger, defensiveness, contempt, provocation-outrage, etc. (along with some great content and insights!) The first wave of Twitter users in 2018, and the reactions of existing members, nearly destroyed SC, but ultimately led us to make crucial improvements and build a better culture.

Moreover, we have grown rapidly -- this influx is much bigger -- and are finding our existing protocols and organization practices tested. Changes are needed, but I think our current Code of Conduct and Conflict Resolution Guidelines are both "good enough for now" and "safe enough to use." The immediate challenge we face is what to do when members refuse to follow the guidelines (e.g., by escalating) and reject the efforts of community working group ops team members to encourage good behavior and facilitate conflict resolution.

So far, our experience on the CWG ops team has been that people are usually willing to engage with us and take steps to resolve conflicts, even when they think we are wrong, for example by using content warnings or editing a post. People routinely post about controversial subjects and others decide if and how to respond, including by muting/blocking, if they wish. But, in the case of Covid vaccine related content, this hasn't been the case. That's why we on the ops team are looking for additional approaches and guidance. To that end we opened this discussion, knowing that there was a risk of further conflict and loss of members. I think there is a lot of useful content in this thread.

Soon, in the next couple of months, we need to hold elections for the CWG ops team, so maybe it would be good to have some live sessions to introduce the work involved and help new people come in. We have encouraged people to join our meetings to see how what we do and how we do it.

I'm looking for suggestions for trainng/learning materials on moderation, de-escalation, conflict resolution, etc. I admit to being in over my head on these topics but I want to contribute to and support the community.

There would be so much to say on multiple levels - I just wish everyone all the support and care they need beyond this little forum to process the emotional stress such confrontations can individually cause.

@Matt: "The immediate challenge we face is what to do when members refuse to follow the guidelines (e.g., by escalating) and reject the efforts of community working group ops team members to encourage good behavior and facilitate conflict resolution."

From my POV and recent experience you are doing enough to offer discussion about problematic toots. Right now you are going public with some of your routines, and that is an important second step.

Usually there is one moderator in charge for a specific case and handles the communication, while consulting their peers if needed. As far as I know, the conflicting user is confronted with an ad-hoc group decision at a certain point of escalation and more drastic one-sided measures are taken. After that policing operation the reprimanded user has an option to appeal (never encountered this on either side of the show), there will be a revision and a final decision. So far so good.

Since you are an elected member of the democratic legitimated moderation team and there is a code of conduct which was self imposed by the coop members in their current version, you have the mandate to interprete and enforce the rules to the best of your knowledge.

Mistakes might be made, a learning process takes place, possibly there could be efforts to make this more transparent to faciliate public control and the development of merit and trust.

So, what to do if a member does not cooperate? I am a Newbie, and I was not aware of the scope of the contract I was entering. This changed very quickly and we had our handshake. I was corrected, and I changed my course - to something better I was used to elsewhere.

If a member does not cooperate, you will explain the consequences, and if this does not help, you are going to boot them. That is the burden of your office. The reactions of the witnesses may be mixed, you are facing consequences yourself by no later than the next elections. So you will try to do your best, if not anyway out of principle.

If this discussion here works out as intended, you will not have a handful of factions beating each other up, but a consensus born out of compromise.

To discuss Covid is a quagmire. There is less light than we wish for, hopefully we will know better in some years. But now we are in the midst of it, albeit this is not the topic at hand.

I understand you need more appropriate directives for your work.

Can we agree to add something like:

Inacceptable: false claims, abuse of scientific sources, etc.

Discouraged: pretence to belong with established disourse communities

Encouraged: adhering to the standards of academic writing in case you are presenting, interpreting or questioning scientific topics.

Mind you, I do not attribute any of this to preceding toots, it is just about what we ask of a toot to qualify. I suggest to keep it on that level, even if some review takes place here.

This might alleviate discussions about toots and your work in the future - which seems urgently necessary to me.

Edit: I will refrain from posting for the rest of the week. Thanks for your patience.

For what it's worth, we have tried to give them every benefit of the doubt (long past what was due, IMO). They don't have to agree with everything in the social.coop code of conduct, or the spirit in which we enforce it, but these two have repeatedly argued with the moderators, refused to make changes, re-posted things we've deleted that other users have reported, etc.

When we say "use a content warning on this type of post please", the answer is to either appeal it to the community or just say "I disagree, but yah, sure, for the sake of the community who didn't like it I'll start doing that". Attacking the moderators, refusing to follow up, or just re-posting it, etc. is a problem.

I'd also like to caution us all in this thread a bit: let's not feed the trolls and turn this into arguing over whether COVID Is real or not; the point isn't whether the thing you were moderated for is correct or not, and that's going to make this discussion less useful. While I personally think we should simply ban posting anti-vax stuff, that is not the problem here. The problem is how they responded to the community and, after escalation, the moderators asking them to stop.

Hi @Scott McGerik, thanks for raising this question. I'm not aware of any trainings, unfortunately. A few folks in our research lab, which specializes in working with communities on moderation questions, has been brainstorming whether to co-design with communities a "summer school" of short weekly session that are accessible to folks who want to do or already do this work, even as volunteers. Would be interested to hear more about the demand for it (outside of this thread would be best I think).

Because the goal of the thread is to propose updates to the code of conduct, it would be very helpful if someone from the community working group could clarify which problems they are trying to solve with the update. Apparently one problem is users ignoring content moderation actions, but it's not obvious how the guidance in this piece would mitigate an enforcement problem. It also sounds like there are other challenges that content moderators are grappling with, but normal users do not necessarily know what those are. With more complete information, we could provide more relevant feedback.

[edited from a similar post I made on Matrix] I want to apologize for some of my confusion and overly-long replies here. I think I now better see some of the issues.

The key point: the CoC does not have anything adequate in it to address disinformation. I am wary about how it could possibly be done, but we have to have some capacity to defer to the CoC in removing harmful disinformation.

I have been overly focused on conflict-resolution (and too compulsive in my unsuccessful efforts to help resolve immediate tensions). I still think conflict-resolution and various intermediate forms of moderation are essential and that we clearly have some missing processes and norms for those. That does not in any way reduce the need to update the CoC. We need both.

The link in the initial post here was all about conflict-resolution and healthy communication, so I focused on that, thinking that was the topic. But the covid-debate clearly brings up the need to support some sort of CoC around disinformation. How can figure out some CoC wording that supports the CWG in moderating such things without being too blunt and too deferential to whatever the dominant mainstream view of topics happens to be?

I think some of the current information/disinformation controversies, including those that MatSlats and Jem Bendell have been involved in, are lose-lose arguments. For example, vax vs anti-vax. The official maintstream views of these topics have lost credibility with many people, because the official sources, including the US government, have lost credibility. And many of the "alternative" sources are unreliable, too.

So if the moderators allow these topics, they could take over the space, and drown out all other topics, because many of the arguers are passionate about their opinions, often on both sides of the issue.

So I think it might help to create an alternative channel for such arguments. I don't know exactly how that would be done, might need to be a centralized Mastodon site where moderators can redirect such topics.

Alternatively, the moderators could offer an easy way to filter out aguments about such topics. Like, I would immediately filter out vaccination, vax, and anti-vax.

This is an alternative to banning the people. Both MatSlats and Jem Bendell do good work and provide very useful info on other topics and I follow both of them and do not want to see them banned.

This is also a separate conversation that's worth having, but I'd also like to stress that they're redirecting the conversation this way and we shouldn't allow it to be redirected. The problem with these two users in particular isn't just that they posted content that the moderators think is harmful and should not be allowed on the instance, it's the way they responded to us reaching out to discuss it (by ignoring what we told them and re-posting things we'd removed, hurling abuse at us and other users, etc.) Even if we accepted for the sake of argument that their content was okay, we still need a good framework for moderation and some sort of consequences for creating an unwelcoming space for other members of the co-op.

EDIT: to clarify, because I think I confused myself when writing that, what I'm saying is that they violated the CoC as it stands today and continue to do so with their aggressive behavior, regardless of the specific content.

@Sam Whited thanks for the quick response. So your comment is about behavior about moderator decisions, not the topics themselves. But...

they posted content that the moderators think is harmful and should not be allowed on the instance

...was that anti-vax stuff? (Just to see if I am understanding the situation...)

That's correct; I just want to make sure that we don't get too deep down the rabbit hole of litigating whether vaccines are real or not when the real problem that needs to be addressed in the CoC is how moderators deal with bad behavior. Although, this was not actually the thread I thought it was (oops!) so maybe both are worth discussing.

@Sam Whited and all: I think a framework for moderation needs to have a graduated range of methods for dealing with controversies, from polite requests not to do that, to allowing people to easily filter out stuff that they don't want to clog their timelines, to deleting posts, to banning people.

And also methods for people to appeal moderator decisions.

Indeed. My first step when someone reports something like this (for users on our server, users on other servers I generally just skip to a limit or a ban depending on how bad the content is, and of course if the content is extremely harmful I might skip ahead a step or two depending on what it is) is to to first ask the reporter if they're comfortable discussing it with the person that was reported, if not I delete the posts in question, then reach out to the user and inform them that this was potentially a CoC violation and ask them not to do it again. Normally, that's enough. However if a user gets aggressive, or continues posting the same stuff, I think limiting their account is a good idea (existing followers can still interact and you can search for that user and find them, but they don't show up in the timelines of others and their posts don't show up in search results unless you're searching for that particular post, eg. by typing in its URL).

If the posts are extremely harmful a provisional limit (or a ban if we don't even think the people following them will want to see the stuff they're now posting) that lasts until the moderation team can discuss it is probably the way to go. If it's an outright ban from the co-op that we think is the only solution, I assume we'd have to bring that up with the broader membership for a vote.

At any time the user could of course go on Loomio, post in our group to discuss it with the all the moderators, or even bring it to the attention of the full community who can probably override us if we overstep.

Thanks @Sam Whited this comment is really helpful to me - understanding now the goal of this thread is frameworks/policies for the individuals' behavior in response to the Mastodon moderation action. I was thinking of "moderation" only the the sense of Mastodon post moderation.

Do you think a CoC addition about respecting CWG decisions would help? For example, under "3. Encouraged Behaviour. I will..." add:

• Honor the decisions of the elected CWG and use the CWG election process as the means to address and resolve disagreements on moderation policies

"So I think it might help to create an alternative channel for such arguments. I don't know exactly how that would be done, might need to be a centralized Mastodon site where moderators can redirect such topics."

Maybe Bob's notion of offering pathways to alternative channels for various topics and participants is what Sam referred to, in part, as a topic for a separate conversation. To me, the concept of the fediverse suggests that everyone can find a place to have meaningful exchanges with others who share similar interests without hijacking the entire community. If this makes sense, then how to get topics and the people who want to talk about them into places where they can do so safely would be an interesting question to pursue.

That seems sane to me (maybe with a mention that they can always bring it up with the community if we've overreached).

That being said, while I don't think it hurts to add more examples of things that we think are bad behavior, I also think we need to avoid falling into the trap that the trolls set of "well it's not explicitly laid out in the CoC therefore what I did wasn't a problem and you can't do anything about it". Just because the CoC doesn't mention a specific behavior doesn't mean we can't enforce the general spirit of the CoC.

That being said, while I don't think it hurts to add more examples of things that we think are bad behavior, I also think we need to avoid falling into the trap that the trolls set of "well it's not explicitly laid out in the CoC therefore what I did wasn't a problem and you can't do anything about it". Just because the CoC doesn't mention a specific behavior doesn't mean we can't enforce the general spirit of the CoC.

Very much agree - CWG should be empowered to remove content that is, in their judgment, harmful to the community (whether that be by chasing off members, risking defederation, or other measures). In a way that's covered by 4.5 "[I will not] Make offensive, harmful, or abusive comments or insults, particularly in relation to diverse traits (as referenced in our values above)," but I'd wholeheartedly support the addition of distinct bullet point on the topic.

I would also support some moderation guidelines about what is and is not suitable content for social.coop, which was originally created for social conversations about cooperatives.

For example, I would support ruling out some kinds of topics that are just argument-bait, like vax and anti-vax. Or any other topics that have nothing to do with cooperatives but become timeline hogs.

For example, I might enjoy mocking certain politicians but do not need to toot about it in social.coop.

The weakness of a non-zero sum outlook for interacting with others is that it doesn't work when dealing with a zero-sum person. So, if someone posts obvious disinformation, and we do nothing, we may think we're being enlightened, but we're actually approving of very destructive content spreading through our service. People should be offered more for reporting disinformation than a talk about conflict resolution (especially when it's been tried and failed) and a tall glass of "shut up."

My stance is that there are verifiable, reliable sources of information and only disinformation itself calls this into question. In fact, the purpose of disinformation is to call reality into question to make it easier to spread lies. So I post again a link that I like to use when investigating sources:

https://realityteam.org/resources/credible-sources/

I propose that we alter the CoC to include a simple procedure that does not waste time. If a post includes a known conspiracy theory it should have an immediate mark of sensitive. Same with something that can be debunked at a place like Snopes or FactCheck. If the person won't delete or modify, keeps reposting deleted things, etc, then suspend them. There may be cases where a lesser freeze/limit are appropriate, but probably not.

if someone posts obvious disinformation, and we do nothing

Well, doing nothing is not something I support or have advocated for in the slightest. Do note that a conflict-resolution process is not nothing and it doesn't help to attack it as such. Also, I have said all along that conflict-resolution should start after immediate harms are stopped. So, temporary blocking or hiding of some sort is often necessary in order to deal with emerging issues as a prerequisite to doing any conflict-resolution.

I propose that we alter the CoC…[snip]… If a post includes a known conspiracy theory it should have an immediate mark of sensitive. Same with something that can be debunked at a place like Snopes or FactCheck. If the person won't delete or modify, keeps reposting deleted things, etc, then suspend them. There may be cases where a lesser freeze/limit are appropriate, but probably not.

With my tiny edits, I fully support this proposal.

I would maybe more generically say that suspension would be appropriate for any form of not cooperating with the CWG and the process. Though I would hope that there is a healthy appeal process to have some check that the CWG is being fair and diligent. Any appeal process must be set up to not just be costly and abused.

I do not believe that social.coop was "originally created for social conversations about cooperatives". From https://wiki.social.coop/home.html: "Social.coop was founded in 2017 in the wake of the BuyTwitter campaign. Since then, we have worked toward the goal of placing ever more or our online social lives under good cooperative governance."

Since its inception, social.coop has attracted folks interested in the cooperative space, and during the last couple of community strategy discussions there has been explicit interest in fostering more collaboration and communication about cooperativism, but that still does not make social.coop a space solely for conversations about cooperativism.

If non-coop content became discouraged on social.coop, I would probably shut down my account, as I rarely post about coop stuff (I think cat pictures are probably the bulk of my contributions to the timeline).

Agreed. I did not join social.coop because it is about discussing cooperatives. I joined because I am interested in participitating in and operating in an environment of cooperative governance.

I don't mean that conflict resolution is not valid or workable, just that in some cases, it's not going to work. If someone told me that a post of mine offended them, I'd be open to altering it or deleting it if they seemed sincere.

That's a good addition or correction to what I wrote above.

I wrote

social.coop, which was originally created for social conversations about cooperatives.

which @Ana Ulin and @Scott McGerik and maybe some other people say was wrong. They are correct, I was wrong. What's the best way to erase the false impression? I don't see a way to edit my original post. So best I see to do is add corrective comments.

No big deal, it's a simple misunderstanding that has been corrected :)

Your post is sufficient! Thank you.

In a way, it was a good way to clarify what social.coop is about.

Stupid fat fingers. Gonna write this off line and then post it.

Until your post, I had not heard of consciousness raising. A search on the internet revealed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_raising on Wikipedia. 

Echoing @Ana Ulin and @Scott McGerik that I joined to participate in "the goal of placing ever more or our online social lives under good cooperative governance." Truly appreciate the quality of communication here (in Loomio), and very much value and am grateful to all of you who consistently keep up and re-cultivate the spirit of collaboration.

As members of a co-operative, we each have one vote and a duty of care to exercise that vote. Beyond the CoC, regulating individual behaviour is a collective responsibility. We each are our own authority and different from other individuals, what is offensive to one person is mildly irritating to another. When a reader of a post to social.coop finds the post to be offensive or affronting or otherwise violating the CoC then the first thing for the reader to do is to Mute the author. If the author becomes obnoxious then the next step for the offended person is to Block the author.

In this way, the membership of the co-operative quietly exercises its voting power against undesirable behaviour, without immediately involving the CWG. Ultimately, the community will sequester obnoxious behaviour by its collective voting power through the sanctions of Mute and Block.

When the number of Mutes and Blocks against an author rises to an appropriate level, the CWG can then intervene to banish the obnoxious author or instance, without getting involved in an argument about what’s good or bad.

So, perhaps the CoC needs language that says community members must actively engage in moderation by first Muting or later Blocking posts they find offensive.

I agree about collective responsibility. I strongly disagree about muting and blocking as the recommended defaults. They are options people should feel free to use, but they do not help anyone learn, do not resolve any misunderstandings…

What you're suggesting easily looks like a poster not even knowing they were being misunderstood or offending anyone until the CWG comes along and tells them they are on the verge of being kicked out of the co-op. This is dysfunctional and goes against everything that restorative justice and co-op principles stand for.

We need resolution mechanisms that include some place for assumptions of good faith, for people to know that people are reacting negatively, to get feedback, to learn…

Also, we need mechanisms where harmful posts can be muted more quickly for everyone. It is not okay for me to see some hateful post and then just mute/block for myself and leave it to everyone else to have to see the harmful post. The first people who see a harmful post should have a way to reduce the entire co-op's exposure as quickly as possible. Then restorative process focusing on learning could be done afterwards. And people joining the co-op should understand this so they aren't shocked or scared, so they know that if they get moderated in some way it doesn't mean their co-op standing is threatened. Any public debate about problem posts is liable to cause more defensiveness and escalate things. We should be stronger in our pro-active moderation and hiding of problem posts and more gracious and patient with resolution and learning.

https://wiki-dev.social.coop/Conflict_resolution_guide tries to go in a healthy direction.

In short: YES, the enforcement mechanism and the co-op onboarding process needs to make it clear that we are all responsible for responding to problems. Our response options should include ways to more quickly hide problems from everyone and should emphasize restorative resolutions after that. Just adding up blocks and mutes on the way to bans is not restorative at all.

Thank you, that's something I hadn't considered.

There is something in @Andrew Shead's idea about metrics regarding who gets Muted or Blocked, and as well with @Aaron Wolf 's point that no one should be suddenly surprised or shocked by a CWG message about posting content or behavior. "Harmful" is tricky since that's very much defined by the "receiver" - what hurts me may not hurt you. But I'm not in support of a blanket "mainstream consensus" as @Nic Wistreich suggested - there's much that is presumably common sense or mainstream that is in desperate need of challenge and change. Patterns of communicative behaviors that seek understanding and perspective are preferable to those that seek to rile folks up, yet sarcasm and dark humor are tools in service of necessary change, too. Is there a way (or need) to better describe the characteristics of patterns of posting that could be described in the CWG? Too much in the weeds?

While it's good to try to be as clear as possible, there's a limit to what can be accomplished with formal rules, especially when dealing with malicious people who go to great lengths to subvert the intent of formal rules. I think we should rely on the moderation team acting on its best judgment of the intent of the membership in general, under the supervision of the membership in general.

This statement is too vague and needs to talk about categories of harm. Also, people who have been kicked off social.coop, or have left before being pushed, should no longer have Loomio access IMHO.

In response to @Alex Rodriguez helpful points and questions: I did not want to mean "comply" as that gives me a sense of unidirectional orders. My suggestion of "cooperate" means to be in constructive communication, hearing what the CWG is saying, responding, making agreements, and so on. Examples of not cooperating would be ignoring, responding with defensive aggression such as denial or sarcasm, making a public stink, reposting flagged content, and so on.

As I am not on the CWG, I'm not quite on top of the current process. I imagine their process will continue evolving and improving and getting better documented over time. Whatever the status, the co-op has elected them to do the work within the bounds of the agreed policies. So, whatever their process, that's what it refers to. If their process has problems, that's a separate issue to fix outside of the CoC. I did/do have some worries about worst case scenarios where the process has problems, and for that I really want to see a solid appeal process. I just don't think that's a blocker to updating the CoC for now.

As to "guidance", I was imagining that the CWG might make specific suggestions in their communication with people. Cooperating with guidance I imagine as hearing it and telling the CWG whether the person agrees or has concerns, and if they don't agree, they discuss that with the CWG to get to agreement rather than disregard the suggestions. "Guidance" is different than process because process would be the steps they take in communicating (such as keeping things private, being patient in waiting for replies, etc.), removing posts, adjusting privileges or similar.

Note that I carefully wrote "my role" in a conduct complaint because I imagine this cooperate-with-CWG line to apply to everyone, including the people complaining or people who are tangential. For example, even if I was only part of an argument where someone else's post was reported by a third person, I still have responsibility to cooperate if the CWG asks for my involvement or input in resolving the issue.

If having clarified this, anyone disagrees or has questions or suggestions for editing the proposal, please share your thoughts.

@Nathan Schneider The purpose of adding "resolving" to the heading was to make it logical that the items below include more than reporting. Do you have a suggestion for better heading? I think it's important for the CoC to not be limited to the stages of normal behavior (before there's any concerns or conflicts) and reporting. Member conduct includes what happens after something is reported. The CoC doesn't currently say anything about post-report conduct. I suggested "resolving" to be in the heading (again, it's just a title describing what the section is about) as a term for the post-report stage of things.

I removed "fully" from "fully cooperate" because I agree it sounded too absolutist. I agree 100% with the concern about what to do if someone disagrees with CWG. I think removing "fully" really does help, though appeals process is still needed. Is removing "fully" enough for now though? Or you really think we need to get an appeals process nailed down as a prerequisite? Do we really want to say that until we have a clear appeals process we do not expect members to necessarily cooperate with CWG?

To be blunt, I'm imagining that if the CWG actually abuses their role or something, that it's okay for people to speak up about this in violation of the CoC. Just like in civil disobedience, if the law is wrong or breaks down, people might escalate to breaking the law as part of protesting. There are real-world ways for people to bring the community's attention to unjust behavior by the CWG even if that requires violating the CoC. The community can probably tell the difference between someone whistleblowing on really unfair CWG behavior and someone just being belligerent and uncooperative.

All in all, I don't think we need to block helpful CoC updates by requiring we finish setting out the appeal process first, though we do need to get such a process. In practice, I expect the CWG will include being open to hearing constrictive feedback and concerns as part of the process. As long as the communication is in private channels with the CWG and the members involved, I trust the CWG to hear the members' concerns if they have a problem with CWG decisions and guidance. I also trust the CWG to come to the overall membership (as they did here) when they feel the need for extra support and perspectives to keep a healthy restorative approach to their work.

I look forward to your further thoughts. I greatly appreciate your concerns.

@Andrew Shead I appreciate the intent here, but I think you're missing a very important dynamic that Social Coop is one community in a federation of communities. If we were to all mute & block a toxic user on our instance, but allowed that user to continue their behavior towards users on other instances, we would very quickly, and justly, find our entire community ostracized and defederated

Hi Aaron, thank you for what you're doing. I think maybe it might be useful to phrase "cooperate with their process,and guidelines" in a more specific way

Thanks, do you have any suggestions or any other thoughts that might prompt me or others to find a superior phrasing? Are you willing to consider whether the proposal is still a positive, worthwhile step even if we do not come up with ideal phrasing yet?

I like the way you explained the concept: "constructive communication, hearing what the CWG is saying, responding, making agreements".

Hmm yeah. So maybe more specifically spelled out like this:

"If the Community Working Group (CWG) contacts me about my role in any conduct complaint, I will cooperate with their process and guidance, communicating respectfully and working with them to make clear agreements for resolving the situation."

What do you think? Any suggested improvements?

I considered adding wording about refraining from other actions around the issue during the resolution process, however, I think that can be part of the CWG process rather than put into the CoC. So, the CWG themselves can state, as appropriate, that they want someone to put other actions on hold… I think that concern might vary from case to case.

This is a pretty tricky one to nail down. I'd be interested to see a list of claims that would violate the proposed policy. I'm also curious to know how irony would be treated under this policy.

This is as much a test as a proposal. I think as a group, we really don't want to have even the appearance of authoritarian-style censorship. Disinformation is not usually about whatever topic it pretends to have an opinion about, it's about calling into question every verifiable source of information. I posted in mastodon about this, but it bears repeating.

To believe the moon landing was faked, for example, can seem cute, but in order to believe that, you have to stop trusting the government, medical and academic authorities, and generally recognized news sources. Specifically, antivax claims have actually been used to incite violence.

At the same time, how do we disallow fraud, quack remedies, and political disinformation but leave things like spirituality alone. If someone posts about Jesus or astral projection or tarot reading, they should probably slip through. It's not clear that a political comment should inherently be against the rules, either.

I think the blog post linked to at the very top of this thread (https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/discourse.html) is very thought-provoking, but if I understand it correctly, it's about how people engage in discourse, not about the content of that discourse.

I feel generally okay about establishing behavior norms for how to engage, e.g. no harassment, not trying to force people into conversation after they've indicated they want to disengage, no "sea-lioning."

I have a harder time thinking of clear policies with regard to the information content. Certainly there are kinds of ideas that feel inappropriate to push, but I have a much harder time figuring out how you can formulate general rules about what kinds of content is or isn't acceptable, and so I'm generally reluctant to "go there."

Repost for reference:

I'll post this again:

https://realityteam.org/resources/credible-sources/

I'd say if someone argues that the World Heath Organization is wrong, and they provide a link to "Bob" on facebook, it's reasonable to go with the WHO.

Not yet sure, I see some issues, but tend to agree in general. I think some things could pass tagged as fictional or not testified, if the sources are weak. It depends on the framework. When there is an appeal procedure, performed by a democratically legitimated supervising body (not the ops-team) transparent by published transcript or minutes, we can delegate the case-to-case discussion there and more or less call it a day.

I don't think the CoC can possibly have adequate wording that clarifies what counts as disinformation. I think the essential thing is to transparently say to the community effectively: "we do consider the question of whether something seems to be disinformation when moderating", and we can describe something about how moderators are to make such judgments.

What if we simply say something to the effect of:

• We don't want disinformation, we see it as harmful

• It's extremely hard to nail down what counts as disinfo once it gets fuzzy

• Here's a list of topics we have already voted on and decided to count as disinfo

And we develop such a list via actually encountering specific issues. So, we don't curate a perfect list, we basically say, "these came up ever and we came to the conclusion that they will be barred here"

Maybe nobody ever says vaccines include microchips and so it doesn't come up. Maybe someone starts pushing that, so it goes through moderation process, and the co-op confirms "yes, we agree that's disinfo" so it goes on the list. And maybe we require a supermajority vote?

I just think while there's so many pitfalls in this topic, but we shouldn't throw up our hands and deny having disinfo as a valid reason to report a post. So, the minimum could acknowledge disinfo as a type of thing that is reportable even as we also acknowledge that drawing the line is hard.

A number of people have suggested inclusion of language about intention to deceive. If we were to go in that direction, how would we distinguish between someone whose intention is to deceive vs. someone who has themselves been deceived and is posting sincerely?

Some further thoughts. The discussion has made it clear that there is disinformation and there is disinformation.... we don't all mean the same thing.

Your Ukraine example is a great one @Nic Wistreich . From what I've read, I have understood for a long time what you became aware of 2 weeks ago, as well as the historical context since 2014 and before. My worst fear in all of this is that information to support that kind of view is blocked from social.coop only because the predominate mainstream presentation is the opposite. Or that someone saying that partially since delta and for the most part since omicron, vaccines haven't prevented transmission, with studies to back it up, will be automatically blocked as anti-vax. Not that anti-vax views should be automatically blocked either, if there is science behind the viewpoint and it is presented honestly.

On the other hand, on @Doug Belshaw 's chart above, some of those categories seem like possibly realistic ways to identify actual intentional disinformation (as opposed to the kind that the powers that be have just declared as disinformation for their purposes). Like I don't support allowing pictures of Palestinian children presented as Ukranian children, which has been exposed in mainstream media. I'd be curious to hear from the moderators if that kind of thing has been encountered.

So, while I have some doubts that this can be done, if there are ways we can challenge clear disinformation techniques (various kinds of manipulation of data), without discouraging views honestly held by a minority, and if it *is* really a problem, then that is worth considering. And encouraging adding /sarc or content warnings or whatever to clarify satire seems like a reasonable idea.

Context... I come from a left anti-capitalist perspective, which does inform my trust or lack thereof of certain sources, for what it's worth.

And... I'm a white older female, for whatever that's worth. The old part might be worth something. :)

Instead of trying to formulate an all-encompassing prohibition, we could treat disinformation case-by-case as we do for the defederation of instances. There is a wiki page that lists Suspended and Muted instances, when and why: https://wiki-dev.social.coop/Defederation_of_instances: Similarly, we could maintain a wiki page that lists community-agreed disinformation with links to the relevant discussions on Loomio and final community vote. As a community, we decide what constitutes disinformation with a traceable record of the decision making process. Doing it this way allows us to revoke a particular decision when new information changes our collective mind. This process should give us maximum flexibility of engagement with disinformation, and assist the CWG in its work.

Is that list of defederated instances updated regularly?

It looks like no-one from the CWG has weighed in on the disinfo policy vote - could y'all tell us if this would be helpful to you? I'd gladly change my vote if so

@Matt Noyes @emi do @Mica Fisher @Sam Whited @Eduardo Mercovich

@adamgreenfield I don't know. If not then it should be kept current. Also, that link is to the proposed new wiki, currently in development.

[ETA4: comment edited to remove no-longer-relevant references to deleted content]

Quite a few other Fedi instances have no problem dealing with misinformation without needing to have a novel-length Loomio discussion or a precise policy outlining every possible edge case.

This is why I like Ana's responses, they usually cut to the heart of the matter.

I love this post so much.

I've had some pretty strong feelings about this conversation. Like others, I think @Lynn Foster has been hitting the nail on the head. I feel like I could throw my support behind any moderation policy she supports.

I also have a question. When I mentioned this thread to my spouse, he asked whether something had happened to prompt this conversation on social.coop. And I realized I have no idea. Is there a specific reason why the lack of a disinformation policy is being brought up at this time?

I was a moderator on another Mastodon instance. I resigned, and switched to social.coop, because the site admin and most of the other moderators thought the idea of discussing moderation policies was laughable. I wanted to be on a Mastodon instance that actually took democratic discussion of policy seriously, and that's what social.coop appears to be doing.

@Dynamic as I understand it, the originating point for the current discussion was this post: https://www.loomio.com/d/zT7jiGxI/moderation-of-fake-news

@nicw For what it's worth, Nic, I liked your posts and I was referring to liking Ana's comment that we may not need a gigantic novel to discuss all this, which my proposal has caused us to write.

@Nic Wistreich I can see how my original comment was more strongly worded than I had intended. I apologize for that. This ongoing neverending discussion about "framework for moderation" has me more than a little bit hurt/angry and disappointed, and I clumsily pointed those feelings at your comment. Sorry.

@Ana Ulin thanks for saying that - and sorry too for complicating things with the delete, and now making this thread even longer!

Thanks for the context. I never would have guessed, although I guess (knowing how riled up people get about vaccines) that I probably should have.

Based on the description provided, this is actually exactly the kind of content that I *don't* want to see banned from our forum. I support vaccines and I think they are great, but I also think it's really important for people to be able to have these conversations. I have no idea what the quality of the vax-skeptic posts were, so my opinion is based on how they were described in the thread you link to. My impression from what was presented is that author was not forcing their views on people nor intentionally trying to convince people of things that they themselves did not believe (i.e. I am seeing no evidence of intention to deceive).

Assuming that those are the case, I strongly want there to continue to be mixed spaces where people can hash out these kinds of fraught issues without it turning into an abusive free-for-all. I would feel good about social.coop being (or continuing to be?) a place like that.

Hmm... reference to this thread going on forever did prompt me to scroll way up to where @Will Murphy dissected some of the writings from the person in question (the irony is not lost on me), and I'm now less inclined to believe that this Jem Bendell person is acting in good faith.

I could see myself supporting a policy based on the "gotcha" argument structures. I feel much less comfortable with a policy on posts supporting particular beliefs, even wrong ones.

Quite a few other Fedi instances have no problem dealing with misinformation

Thanks Ana, that's a good point. Do you have any specific information about Fedi instances you think handle this well? We could avoid reinventing the wheel by just looking at the best examples already out there.

Please, anyone, share links to examples of mis/disinformation policies we could consider drawing from, especially if they are already shown to be effective and in use in the Fediverse so we can observe them in practice.

as I understand it, the originating point for the current discussion was this post: https://www.loomio.com/d/zT7jiGxI/moderation-of-fake-news

Thank you! I could have asked more bluntly, but I asked several times in different contexts about what I was missing to understand what happened. This is the first time in this long thread that I've seen any link to that topic, and I never saw it before. I wonder how much this whole "framework" topic was confusing because the context wasn't clear at the top of it.

Quick note to everyone about some contention and misunderstandings that have come up here. Thank you to those who worked to find resolution and to recognize in the end the good-faith of one another and to own our reactivity (which is normal and not the same as bad-faith).

Please note that this is why I and others wrote https://wiki-dev.social.coop/Conflict_resolution_guide the way we did. The guide emphasizes using direct-messages and getting facilitation assistance. The more we can avoid public back-and-forth and public accusations of bad faith or other uncharitable interpretations, the more we can keep focused on topics at hand. When we're upset, it's too easy to imagine bad-faith in others, and replying to others while we're upset consistently goes worse than if we own our feelings and follow best-practices for healthy communication.

Please use the conflict-resolution guide, and if you don't like something about it, help us improve it. (And yes, I need to eat my projections and model this myself, I'm still working on the same challenges — cooperation can be hard, and yet it's worth the work in the end).

I think the conflict resolution process is the best tool in our toolbox, but it is largely unused. When it has been used, it has been really helpful, both to ops team members and to members in a conflict. We should definitely hold some intro sessions on it for new and existing members.

It's obvious I have some opinions on disinformation. I've tried not to post too much today so I could get an idea of what people thought. Some people asked questions that I'd like to address.

Why did I mention intent? It's in the definition:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation

I don't think this means the poster always knowingly spreads a lie, but the information itself isn't spontaneous, it's created by someone to deceive. It's a weapon.

@adamgreenfield asked: And who’s to say what an “unreliable or unknown” source is?

Do we really have to talk about Fox being an unreliable source?

As for unknown sources, the fact is, anyone, anywhere in the world, can create a website, or a youtube channel, or a facebook group, and post pretty much anything there, within certain limits. I could make a page arguing that the Moon is made of green cheese. There's also state actors:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-inside-russian-troll-house

@lynnfoster said: 2) It requires way too much original research, and even expertise, to discover actual facts these days.

I don't think this is true. We don't have to be astrophysicists to believe the Earth is round, or become doctors to trust in a vaccine. Sites like nasa.gov or cdc.gov are credible and can answer questions quickly. People who deny this are either drinking the Kool Aid, or pouring it.

>[from @Michael Potter ] Sites like nasa.gov or cdc.gov are credible and can answer questions quickly. People who deny this are either drinking the Kool Aid, or pouring it.

I wish that were true. I used to trust the CDC, now no longer do, which I'm sad about. For example, they were back and forth on masks, and weren't clear on mask quality. Another one, they didn't recognize that covid is spread by aerosols for a long time after the science was clear (a year?), and still don't emphasize it properly so that people understand the importance of ventilation. We won't ever know how many lives that cost. I've read a lot of original studies to figure out my own covid response, and the CDC was frequently wrong or behind. And was several times criticised strongly by people like University of Minnesota epidemiologist Michael Osterholm (who has been on the president's advisory group) for being wrong, it's not just unqualified people like me. I've also read about some of the financial conflicts of interest involved, which exist, whether or not people acted on them. There's so much more, this is the tip of the iceberg.

P.S. I'm not personally anti-vax. But think a respectful discussion is good, in fact critical. The above, and other comments recommending trusting mainstream media for our disinformation decisions, is exactly the reason.

Somewhat unexpectedly chiming in to support Lynn’s comments here. Even the most trustworthy of state institutions can be compromised or subverted, and their credibility in the past does not guarantee their reliability in inimical hands. This is one reason why I dislike policies that specify some sources as prima facie credible.

The discussion got a bit overwhelming and noisy now, a lot of opinions, not a lot of discussion, and hard to get perspective I think. It feels to me like a crowded room of people shouting over each other.

I do notice by looking in the sidebar on the right that the middle proposal is almost all green, and the other two are majority red, so maybe the middle green proposal is good enough to go forward with.

That emphasised that the main issue wasn't about trying to decide what is or isn't misinformation (spicy topic), but focusing on co-operating with our lovely moderator team (people seem broadly to approve of this).

To my mind, it would be nice to know if the moderator team is sufficiently supported to do their work, maybe they need more people, money, guidance? Or maybe there are things outside of the scope that they can handle?

I personally, would be happy to leave this one to the moderator team (aka the CWG)...

As it's grown, increasingly I have the sense of social.coop not so much as a coherent community, but a co-operative service provider of a mastodon instance. It feels too big to have a real discussion (which to me is mostly about listening, and less about talking). I don't know who you all are, and I don't really have a way to find out.

The working groups, on the other hand, I think can achieve that coherence... a much smaller set of people with some longer term bond and committent.. it's that I put my faith in more than the public town square style we have here.

I have the sense now of my comment here being written on a piece of the paper, which I'll now launch into the wind, to go where it goes :)

@lynnfoster I got feedback that my post was snarky, and on re-reading, I agree and I apologize. To rephrase non-snarkily.

I'm not a fan of blind trust in any authority, and the CDC isn't a monolithic authority, but part of a broader scientific and medical consensus. It's that consensus that I generally trust.

Your paragraph on the CDC seemed like a challenge to "do my own research," the results of which I can guarantee no one on this thread wants to hear. Also, I don't feel the need to refute any of that in order to trust in science.

I don’t believe that last characterization (“something we heard on the internet”) is at all fair to any of us in this conversation, Michael. While I am unyieldingly pro-vaccination, and in general an advocate of robust public health measures, the issues at the CDC are a matter of public record.

Based upon the following from Ana:

"Quite a few other Fedi instances have no problem dealing with misinformation without needing to have a novel-length Loomio discussion or a precise policy outlining every possible edge case."

I have the feeling that we could handle mis/dis-information by letting the CWG do its work, with appropriate levels of transparency. If necessary, we could have a Loomio diiscussion.

My read is that this thread has about burnt itself out (and yes, that we should defer to CWG), but for me it's raised some questions about the process we use for developing Loomio proposals, and I started a thread about my questions here: https://www.loomio.com/d/vzhQxDHA/how-we-use-proposals

(Please also let me know if I've done anything incorrectly in either the technical or social aspects of setting up and making people aware of a Loomio thread for the group.)

I'm not sure if I've helped or hindered the CWG with this proposal, but my proposal hasn't demonstrated broad approval as it is. We could either refine the language, or I could hit the button to close early.

I've opposed using the word "harmful" because I'm sure a clearly authoritarian regime, like Iran's leadership, could use such a broad definition to justify their terrible actions against protestors. Also the other proposal suggesting harmful as the key word isn't doing well.

Billy's comments touch on what I had in mind with the initial language. Some conspiracy theories are true, which is why I said "debunked," to make a distinction for things that have not failed fact checks. Snowden was not debunked because, unlike many conspiracy theorists, he provided copies of the proof to respected journalists.

Religion and spirituality are not the sort of information that can be effectively fact-checked and are outside of the purview of science. I'm not sure of the best way to describe information that we definitely don't want to censor.

Hi Michael I'd like to ask you to reconsider your comment drawing a comparison between the 5 individuals and members of our community who serve as the elected CWG and the government of Iran.

I really didn't intend to compare the CWG to Iran, and I've edited to clarify that.

A number of people really do not like the mention of specific case types. What about the following edit:

CUT OUT: This includes demonstrably false claims, debunked conspiracy theories, or references to unreliable or unknown sources.

This would leave the final language as follows. I added a blurb on intent.

I propose that we add the following bullet point under Section 5 of the CoC, where it says "I will not post, threaten to post, nor share from this instance or external sources:"

Disinformation, meaning false information which is intended to mislead. This may not reflect the intent of the poster.

Thank you to everyone who has put so much time, thought and energy to forwarding this discussion. It has been interesting and challenging to navigate the increase in diversity and volume of moderation issues that the Ops Team has been handling.

Many members of the Ops Team have not been actively participating in this discussion but we are all incredibly grateful to have been able to take a back seat and to see such respectful and thoughtful debate happening. Though it might be frustrating, I think these types of processes in which we all are able to speak to our various lived experiences is rare. We will not always agree with one another but I love that we are all striving to live with one another.

I've just announced the passed proposal on the instance. @Aaron Wolf, please go ahead and amend the Code of Conduct on the wiki!

updated at https://wiki-dev.social.coop/Code_of_conduct so it will be merged whenever that dev version of wiki gets linked in better.