Hi everyone,
We are writing to address a recent incident of harassment that occurred within our community.
We are disturbed to learn that someone experienced harassment after stepping down from their volunteer position, we ask anyone doing this to stop immediately. This serves as a stark reminder that we do not tolerate any form of harassment.
We believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every individual, and it is our responsibility to ensure that everyone feels respected within our community.
If you witness or experience harassment, we urge you to contact us immediately. Your voice matters, and together, we can make a difference. We are here to support you and address any concerns or incidents that may arise.
Lionir, posted with the agreement of the Beehaw admins
Greetings… I’m just hearing about Lemmy and find it cool. I have a question regarding harassment - and ironically, it’s one reason why I’ve come here from Reddit. Let me explain…
I’m the mod of the most popular subreddit critical of cryptocurrency. Obviously crypto is a popular and controversial subject. Our community is focused on exposing the fraud and the scams in the technology. But those who are running such operations really don’t want our community to exist, so they’ve been repeatedly reporting us to Reddit for “harassment” - basically if they make absurd claims about returns or get hacked and we find it amusing - they consider that “harassment” and now they’ve sanctioned our community. But we’ve actually not been told we violated any specific harassment policy – just that some people complained.
So we’re wondering where we can go where speaking truth to power isn’t so dangerous? Anybody can file a complaint, but when the complaint is hollow, still being punished is bad. How would Behaw handle something of this nature?
EDIT: btw, my apologies if this thread may pertain to a specific incident of harassment… I thought maybe it was a general thing - if bringing up something related but different is inappropriate, let me know and I’ll delete my comments. But I am hoping to talk about both sides of the “harassment” issue. There’s legit harassment and then there’s also fabricated harassment.
A news article exposing illegal, illicit, or otherwise not nice behavior will not be removed just because someone doesn’t like it. That is not harassment.
Apparently if you call attention to someone else’s post and comment in any way that the original user feels is unflattering, that could be considered “harassment” by Reddit admins.
Basically if someone promotes a crypto scheme, and we say it’s a ponzi (and are prepared to back it up with evidence), that’s “harassment” and we get sanctioned.
We are not Reddit nor do we intend to be.
Thank goodness!
Everybody says that. Google said, “We won’t be evil.”
When Twitter started to go downhill, I left for Mastodon. I went into one of the larger communities that was focused on artists and engineers and creatives and had all these glorious rules about “respect.” I suddenly found my account crippled. With no notice. I had not violated any rules. What happened was the admin of the server was into cryptocurrency, saw that I was skeptical of crypto, and disabled my account and refused to do anything about it. This is a problem I’ve run into with Federated systems.
There’ll probably be an instance you can call home, with an admin who will not discriminate. You can even host one yourself, at home, if you want to.
What would be your suggestion to hold us accountable to our ethos?
We understand the skepticism and hold a similar viewpoint towards a lot of what’s on the internet. We’re explicitly not inviting capital to avoid making any tradeoffs or compromising the vision which capitalistic endeavors cannot by their very nature, do. But ultimately we also recognize that we’re asking for a certain level of trust from our users - if you have suggestions on how to build or solidify that trust we’d love to hear it.
But we’ve actually not been told we violated any specific harassment policy – just that some people complained.
So, what’s the problem? Are the Reddit admins demanding something of you?
They imposed a restriction that now disallows anybody in the sub to reference ANY content on any other subreddit. This has made it difficult for us to use citations as evidence when discussing things - we’ve amassed a nice library of articles and references we use that now we’re prohibited from referencing. It’s a rather draconian restriction that was done with no notice. Probably a sign of things to come.
So, the Reddit admins are in on the crypto scam now? 😬
They’ve been for awhile. They have their own NFTs too.
not cool at all. most of us are here for a better, more positive environment.
Thank you for your swift and decisive action on the matter. This kind of diligence will be essential during Lemmy’s rapid growth. <3 you all for the good work you do here
Well, that’s deeply disappointing 😞 I know there will always be bad actors, but I’m glad to see it being addressed early.
Have there been any consideration of linking the “What is Beehaw?” and “Beehaw is a Community” posts in the sign-up form? Maybe add a question asking them something about the instance’s philosophy? I know those posts are in the sidebar, but I wonder if having it as part of the signup form will help put it front and center for those joining that Beehaw isn’t just another link aggregator like Reddit? That bad behaviour tolerated on Reddit won’t be tolerated here.
Seriously? Someone harassed that poor fellow who stepped down? That’s awful. I read the story and it was bitter enough already, and now someone’s gone and made it even worse.
