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Moderation + support on this instance
(lemmy.nz)
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this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2023
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You might want to have a chat with some of the people who have been running smaller Mastodon servers (in NZ and elsewhere).
One of the big problems on Mastodon over the last few months has been people from certain marginalised groups not feeling welcome, because they receive a torrent of hate speech as soon as they arrive. I've mostly heard this said by Black American communities, but I imagine it's happening for others too.
I think this is an inherent problem with the kind of approach you're suggesting (i.e. let people say what they want, so long as they're not breaking any laws, and let debate/downvoting sort it out). It's all very well for people who are not marginalised, or can otherwise withstand abuse due to their position in society dealing with that kind of activity. But for people who are going to be a target, it basically means they can't participate.
Another thing to think about is the old adage "if you let one nazi drink in your bar, you now have a nazi bar". Once certain extremists realise they can participate on a server like this (i.e. one not set up specifically to cater to them) you will find there is a huge influx. In their minds, being allowed on a general server is a gold mine.. they can spout hatred, not have it deleted, and potentially recruit new people. I know Reddit is far from perfect, but before they banned some of the big Trump subs, it was way worse.
Just to be clear, not saying there should be extremely heavy handed moderation, but I think the laissez faire approach you are suggesting is not likely to work long term. It might be pretty quiet here now, but Lemmy is already growing rapidly, so I don't think it will be for long. Better to have something in place to deal with those kinds of problems before you need it. (Just my opinion anyway).
In my head, it works the opposite. If you have a list of things people can't do, they will wiggle their way around them to still be an asshole. If your rules aren't explicit then they can't be the "actually" guy.
If you just delete any posts saying hateful things, then you get marginalised people trying to participate, they get notifications saying someone has replied with something hurtful, then it gets removed and they just have to accept there are not nice people in the community. Worse, people may turn to DMs.
On the other hand, if someone says something hurtful, and 20 others reply explaining why it wasn't a nice thing to say, then they get to see that the view is not widely held but hidden, and instead most people do not hold that view.
As an example, in one of our first posts here, the OP used a derogatory term in a common colloquial way, someone replied with a link explaining why it was a problem, then the OP apologised and edited their post.
This is how I hope for things to work. In practice, many people will double down or be trolling, and we don't have to stand for that. But with my naivety I'd like there to be a chance for redemption.