Community Call - 6th of August: Moderation & Mediation versus Censorship & Tone Policing - keeping people safe from ALL kinds

[MariaEuler]

Join us this time on August the 6th 6 PM Brussel time for a community call with amazing edgeryder community member and founder of Darcy @JollyOrc (Christian Buggedei)

This time we will dive into the topic on how to talk and moderate online including difficult topics such as censorship or tone policing.

“Moderation & Mediation versus Censorship & Tone Policing - keeping people safe from ALL kinds”.

@JollyOrc created a glossary we to get a taste and a start into the discussion that could be used as a jump-off point:

managing communications - an attempted glossary

Let us talk about how we keep our online spaces useable. Let us talk about moderation, mediation, censorship, and tone policing. There are probably also other techniques, but for now, talking about these four should suffice. And it is important to talk about them, because all of this is constantly happening online, for various reasons, and sometimes they get mixed, and sometimes one slowly descends into another. Wherever people communicate with each other, they usually set up a few rules and m…

This topic is very relevant to us here at Edgeryders, many of our members as well as anyone working within the context of building a healthy Next Generation Internet.

We are looking forward to hearing your perspectives and ideas and discuss what is and could be possible or need to be taken in consideration.

Let’s communicate well!

FOLLOW THIS LINK to Join the Zoom Meeting

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[alberto]

“Tone policing”

[JollyOrc]

@alberto: It might sound funny, but there’s nothing funny about it. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_policing to get a quick intro.

[alberto]

I did not mean to be dismissive! But I am not a native speaker of English, and through my ears, it sounds excessive force-ey. I cannot help picturing big guys with truncheons snarling “don’t use that tone with me!”.

[JollyOrc]

And that is exactly part of the problem: Who sets the standard for “this is allowed”, how do we ensure that miscommunications or different cultural backgrounds, different framings, and so on don’t harm anyone.

Also: Are victims of systemic oppression (yes, this is an overly formal phrasing, but please bear with me) really expected to walk on eggshells around everyone on the off chance that the one who is using language their oppressors use is actually not one of them - most internet forums don’t really come with a background check included?

(I’m not a native english speaker myself, and hoo boy make I odd gaffes at times. Also, racism in Germany has slightly different markers and power dynamics than for example in the US. And a lot of the dynamics there don’t really make sense to me at first glance.)

I’m not saying that we should all self-police our speech all the time, and I don’t think that Edgeryders particularly needs extensive policies, this is a fine and polite community, but if one is in charge of keeping a large-scale platform safe for everyone, these are things one should keep in mind.

[inge]

When the mass shootings in the US happened this weekend, my thought immediately: 8chan. And I think the platform will be an interesting case-study for our call. This piece on NYT nails it in my opinion:

8chan, Megaphone for Gunmen, Has Gone Dark. ‘Shut the Site Down,’ Says Its...

[johncoate]

I will be hosting this conversation and I very much look forward to it. We’re going to be talking about moderation, community standards and what that even means in a global setting, hate speech, when “tone policing” veers into censorship, the influence of the ad based business model, and how much control a user or individual can and should have over their own online environment. Along with whatever else comes up in the conversation of course. See you there!.

[inge]

I was def planning to attend this, but I am not feeling well and I’ll have to miss it. Very sad about it @JollyOrc! But looking forward to listening to it later…