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Expressing concerns about moderation policy on lemmy.ml

This was originally posted to lemmy.pineapplemachine.com: https://lemmy.pineapplemachine.com/post/5781

It has also been posted to lemmy.ca: https://lemmy.ca/post/591991

Lemmy is federated and decentralized and that means that we can all coexist regardless of our differing political opinions. I think it's important to preface this by saying that I am not offended by or concerned with anyone's politics, and I'm certainly not here to argue with anyone about them.

My concern is that users are being banned and content is being removed on lemmy.ml citing a rule that is not publicly stated anywhere that I have seen.

Moderators of lemmy.ml are removing posts and comments which are critical of the Chinese government and are banning their authors.

This came to my attention because of how lemmy user bans are federated just like everything else, and I was confused about why my instance had logged a lemmy.ml user ban citing "orientalism" as the reason for the ban.

Screenshot of my own instance's modlog, as viewed by an admin

I noticed that the banned user had recently commented on a post in !worldnews@lemmy.ml that had been removed with the reason "Orientalist article".

Screenshot of banned user's history on lemmy.ml

Screenshot of lemmy.ml modlog

Here's the article that was removed, titled "China may face succession crisis". It was published by axios.com, which mediabiasfactcheck describes as having "a slight to moderate liberal bias" and gives its second-highest ranking for factual reporting. The article writes unfavorably of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

https://www.axios.com/2023/06/06/china-may-face-succession-crisis

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/axios/

I had not remembered seeing anything in lemmy.ml's rules that would suggest that "orientalism"—meaning, as I understand it, the depiction or discussion of Asian cultures by people in Western ones—was against the rules. So I checked, and I found that there was not. Not on the instance's front page, and not in !worldnews@lemmy.ml.

Screenshot of instance rules for lemmy.ml

Screenshot of community rules for !worldnews@lemmy.ml

There is a stated rule against xenophobia, but I think that xenophobia is not widely understood to include Westerners writing critically of the actions of an Asian government.

This is where I went from confused to concerned.

Lemmy instances have public moderation logs, which I think is a very positive thing about the platform. So I looked more closely at lemmy.ml's moderation log.

Please note that moderation logs are also federated. It's hard to be 100% sure which instance a mod action is actually associated with, looking at these logs. The previously mentioned user ban and post removal were, I think, definitely actions taken by lemmy.ml moderators. My own instance's mod log identifies the banning moderator as a lemmy.ml admin, and the removed post was submitted to a lemmy.ml community. I've done my best to verify that all of the following removals were really done by lemmy.ml moderators, but I can't be absolutely certain. Please forgive me if any of them were actually made on other instances that do have an explicitly stated rule against orientalism.

Removed Comment Ah yes. Being against China's racist genocide is racist. China, the imperialist ethno-state, is clearly innocent. by @CrimsonOnoscopy@beehaw.org reason: Orientalism

Screenshot of lemmy.ml modlog

Removed Comment Lol. Thinking some countries have better governments than others is supremacist? Whatever, dude. By the way. If there are any countries with decent governments, I don't know of them. But like. If there were decent countries, they wouldn't behave like China. by @balerion@beehaw.org reason: Orientalism

Screenshot of lemmy.ml modlog

These following moderator actions did not specifically cite orientalism, but did not seem to be breaking any of the instance's or community's explicitly stated rules.

Banned @0x815@feddit.de reason: Only makes anti russia and anti china, crosspostst from reddit. 2nd temp ban expires: 9d ago

Screenshot of lemmy.ml modlog

Removed Comment Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Tibet are all Colonies of China, which it treats as Colonial Territories, by - Forcibly destroying the local culture. Forcefully extracting to harm of the locals. Genocide, abuse, kidnapping, rape. But there is no point in engaging to you. You are a liar. You know you are. When you deny genocides, you put yourself on the same side as the fascists and reactionaries of the past. by @CrimsonOnoscopy@beehaw.org reason: Rule 1 and 2

Screenshot of lemmy.ml modlog

I have no affection for the Chinese government and I do not call myself a communist. I would not enforce a rule against orientalism on my own instance. But I think that lemmy.ml's moderators are entitled to enforce whatever rules they please. It's only that, as the largest single lemmy instance so far, I believe that they have an obligation to disclose these rules, and an obligation to not ban users or remove content for failing to follow unobvious and unstated rules.

I'd like to raise some awareness about this, and I'd like to openly ask the moderators of lemmy.ml to state the rules that they intend to enforce clearly and explicitly.

I will be very clear and state it again: I am not asking for anyone to change their opinions or to not enforce a rule that they believe in. That is the great thing about lemmy, that we can coexist in this federated community even when we don't share the same opinions. What I am asking is for lemmy.ml's rules to be clearly stated, because I think it does not reflect well on the broader community if the predominant instance moderates its users and content according to rules that are not being explicitly disclosed.

219 comments

  • Locking this thread as the discussion isnt going anywhere productive. If you dont like the moderation in !worldnews@lemmy.ml, you can subscribe to a different one or create your own.

    • Locking this thread as the discussion isnt going anywhere productive. If you dont like the moderation in !worldnews@lemmy.ml, you can subscribe to a different one or create your own.

      I have not complained about the moderation in !worldnews@lemmy.ml. I am not asking that there be any change in moderation. I feel that I was very careful in making this clear, in the post.

      What I have asked is that the moderation policy be stated more clearly and openly. I believe that it is in everyone's interest that people coming to lemmy.ml understand the rules that they are expected to follow.

  • That's alarming behavior, and it's coming from the core Lemmy developers. I had hoped they would keep it confined to LemmyGrad, but I'm not feeling so confident in that any more.

    • The only thing alarming thing here is the sheer amount of racism and orientalism spewing out of beehaw in this thread.

      • I fail to see racism and orientalism present in this thread. What I do see are people linking to lists of human rights violations committed by the CCP, people complaining that unequivocally pro-CCP messaging is disingenuous, and people upset that a ban reason was not adequately explained.

        I'm a card-carrying communist who sees a lot wrong with China's handling of political dissidents and ethnic minorities. From what I'm seeing about lenny.ml, it seems like milquetoast criticisms are being met with bans and censorship, and I see prominent users defending this practice citing "imperialistic anti-China propaganda" as being the reason why the uninitiated doesn't blindly praise the CCP. This belief is rooted in some fact - American media tends to portray eastern countries in a harshly negative light - but I hardly think that means that all criticism is made in bad faith.

        I'm reminded of unequivocally capitalist sites banning mentions of communism and critiques of capitalism, and I believe that this trend does nothing besides foster the echo chambers that I, at least, have been trying to escape from.

  • Hey, look, my comment was removed.

    Want to bet that the prior comment calling me a fascist and (weirdly) monarchist (which, ??) for being critical of the Chinese State is still there?

  • "orientalism"—meaning, as I understand it, the depiction or discussion of Asian cultures by people in Western ones

    That's not what is meant here.

    Since the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism in 1978, much academic discourse has begun to use the term "Orientalism" to refer to a general patronizing Western attitude towards Middle Eastern, Asian, and North African societies.

    So this would fall under the "no bigotry" rule.

    • This is the case, yes. Orientalism is the condescending and patronizing attitude (think rudyard kipling) many westerners (especially those from the US, who have been pumped full of sinophobia non-stop since the trade war began) towards other peoples they view as inferior. Anything from a Middle-eastern, Chinese, Indian, or Russian source is seen as illegitimate, evil, sinister, "authoritarian", whereas anything from a western source is seen as cultured, measured, dignified, etc. Its 100% an instance of breaking rule 1: no bigotry, and alienates most of the people on the planet.

      Side point, but I was watching a documentary from 2011 (I think inside job? about the 2008 financial crisis), before the trade war began, and its night and day. Not a single negative thing said about the PRC, and this was just a few years ago.

      • whereas anything from a western source is seen as cultured, measured, dignified, etc.

        No leftist has ever believed that, and it is a bad faith argument.

  • Poor ban reason is absolutely a major issue, and unfortunately not a new one.

    While some of those posts actually do deserve bans under existing rules, even those are very poorly done.

    The last example correctly cites a clear violation of "[Global] Rule 2" in the deletion, albeit confusingly not mentioning Global and a flimsy citation of Rule 1, and also gives a justified and appropriate 1d ban for [global] Rule 2. But even so, this is confusing when there are global rules and community rules. So staff should make an effort to mention whether the rule they enforced was global.

    Another example [EDIT- see reply from CriticalResist8] of a justified but poorly given ban was this recent one. It's a clear global rule 2 violation, but the reason "not nice" comes off as if no rule was broken, they just didn't like the post. Ideally, it would be something like "Global Rule 2: Disrespectful"

    Unfortunately it's hard to know who is responsible due to the username redactions in the modlog by default (is it an individual rogue moderator, or accepted staff policy?) and therefore harder to resolve. Tagging @dessalines@lemmy.ml and @nutomic@lemmy.ml, because this is a systematic issue that potentially affects the global staff, with significant negative impacts.

    While I know there may be more pressing development issues, I think it would be excellent to add to the roadmap a feature for instance staff and community staff to write a list of rules, and have them as selectable options in the ban reason/length form. This will incentivize staff to give descriptive, valid and more consistent bans and deletions, which don't give the impression of arbitrary and personal deletions.

    • While some of those posts actually do deserve bans under existing rules, even those are very poorly done.

      Those posts / comments were reported and removed for orientalism, which is breaking rule #1. If you would have left those posts stay on your instance, that's fine! We're not demanding that you moderate according to our standards.

      • Well, I think (since it's a common offense and not one a typical newcomer will understand as 'racism' or 'bigotry' in typical western discourse) I think it would be helpful to add the word "orientalism", maybe even with a link to an explanation, in the rules.

        While it may be obvious to us, I think it's reasonably expected that a new reddit-refugee wouldn't understand that. It would prevent avoidable drama, lowering mod workload.

        My objection isn't the actual decision to take those posts down, it's that the ban message leaves a typical user guessing and the rules can make it more clear to newcomers what not to do.

    • I believe the log entry you shared comes from a beehaw moderator, as the comment was made on one of their communities and I know they sometimes remove comments or ban people with this reason.

      The moderation log is shared across all federated instances. I.e. since Lemmy.ml federates with beehaw, they both contain each other's entries. It's a bit confusing and I'm not sure why this feature was added, it didn't use to work like that lol. But it wasn't a removal done by the lemmy.ml team.

  • Good on you for trying to find a solution in a very respectful and diplomatic manner so that everyone can gain something from this :)

    I would be curious to know if the admins responsible are the actual lemmy devs or someone else administering the lemmy.ml instance.

    I remember first browsing lemmy without an account on jebora and being a little bit scared by some of the content that was showing up. Which is why I ended up making an account on beehaw.

    • They are the devs, based on reddit posts when the project was first getting started.

      • And you can see the main developer's comments in this same thread defending these actions.

      • The two founding devs run the lemmy.ml instance, along with other global admins recruited to assist in moderation. Unfortunately the modlog doesn't show which staff perform an action, so it could even be the community's own mods, or other admin/s.

        [edit: a user has informed me that the modlog can show staff, it's just not a clear process]

  • My two cents of opinion:

    I feel like the part (the flagship instance, lemmy.ml) and the whole (this "chunk" of the Fediverse - including lemmy.ml, lemmygrad.ml, beehaw.org, lemmy.one, and so many more) should have different names. Because what's happening is that people invite each other "to Lemmy" (the whole), people hit "lemmy" (the part) and that creates some conflict. It's simply a matter of clarity.

    Regarding lemmy.ml itself, and its rules: the logical consequences of a rule might be obvious for someone who's better informed, but not for someone less informed. As such, perhaps "orientalism" should be explicitly listed as an example of rule #1. It would further discourage those people to come to lemmy.ml, and instead join or build other instances; thus reducing overall moderation work for the admins, and I feel like this would be rather quick to implement.

219 comments