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What is questionable or illegal? You may argue it is full-body nudity, depictions of erections, exposed female genitals or breasts... but then someone will pro

by buro9 11y ago

What is questionable or illegal? You may argue it is full-body nudity, depictions of erections, exposed female genitals or breasts... but then someone will produce some art that everyone accepts really is art and shouldn't be censored, or a photo of breast-feeding. And so you make an exception as you do not wish to censor. Then what differentiates the porn from the art? Is it simply the context of where it appears... a porn site or a gallery? What is the context of your site? I'm arguing here that everything is subjective when it's not obviously illegal (against the letter of a law). Law itself struggles with these definitions and tends to rely on the concept of what a jury or judge "reasonably" determines to be against some wording of a law. The underlying key question in determining a moderation policy is whether you, the site owner, wishes to take on the decision making for those subjective cases. And, in doing so, whether you wish to accept the liability that comes with it. Simply: Are you willing to be liable for the content posted by third parties? If yes, then you need to have the equivalent of editorial processes, clear definitions you can communicate to users, declared processes for handling breaches of those definitions (and repeated breaches). If no, then you can have the equivalent of "mere conduit" or "safe harbor". Anything you're unaware of you can't be liable for, and once you're made aware you need to handle it with whatever declared process you have. Reddit and others were the latter. And the latter works fine until you start moving towards advertising and those paying for advertising start to say "You cannot show our brand next to this (or that) type of content". Suddenly you need to know what content is where and your ability to deny knowledge of what is on the site is reduced and you have been pushed down the path, and probably taken the first steps, towards a more editorial process. Trying to encapsulate processes in a set of rules, as you've done in the Ask HN, will fail if the rules themselves are against the nature of the site. The nature of a site that survives on advertising is that the processes and user terms and conditions need to create content acceptable and favourable to advertisers. For most of what you've outlined above, I've had lawyers create terms and conditions for sites I run that does encapsulate a distributed and hands-off moderation policy that complies with European law. You can see those docs over here: https://github.com/microcosm-cc/legal https://github.com/microcosm-cc/legal

c_prompt 11y ago
Thanks for making the T&Cs you created available. Did your attorneys make them specific to an individual country/locale or did they make them generic enough to afford/enhance protection globally? I'm referring to the latter and specifically content as it relates to (potential) illegality. If a site wants to censor or prevent certain content based on their own, personal standards and goals, that's the moral right of the owners. I'm interested in the situations where governments will use force to impose their will (regardless of the personal choices). I'm also interested in the "once you're made aware you need to handle it with whatever declared process you have." Perhaps it differs by locale and, if so, then it would be beneficial for those of us who run sites to start compiling legal agreements into a github repository like you did to help alternative sites become aware of the local legal nuances (especially if the user base is global like reddit or voat). I'm also interested in your comment about advertising - if a community (owner or mods) got to determine which ads (if any) were shown in their community (i.e., the site owners didn't get revenues from ads), would that be supportive of certain site-wide policies? And, again, just to clarify - I'm interested specifically in overriding, all-encompassing site-wide polices, not community-specific policies.
- buro9 11y ago
  We aimed at UK and EU law as we felt it to be tighter than US law on a lot of these fronts, and yet combined both the ideas of Safe Harbor and DMCA (within the EU eCommerce Directive - "mere conduit"). At the same time, European law put much stricter requirements on personal data restrictions, and the right of people to access and delete their personally identifiable information. The user agreements should be good for most Western countries, but definitely are good for all EU countries. It would have been a very expensive and futile exercise to try and make the agreements good for all countries, I'm not sure anyone tries this, better still to declare which legal domain you will operate in and constrain your terms and operations to those. The site and services we offer, are much akin to Reddit and subreddits... it's a shared platform that hosts distinct communities, and within those communities sub-communities. i.e. https://www.lfgss.com https://www.lfgss.com is one of almost 300 sites on 1 instance of the platform (other instances exist and are run by other people), and within LFGSS there are several sub-communities with their own moderators, moderation policies, etc. The user agreements we produced dealt with the platform relationship with the admins of a site, and the moderators of forums on a site, and then went on to deal with the minimum required standard for users of a site on the platform. We actually don't stray into finer details of how a specific sub-community may moderate, we simply lay down the minimum standard that all admins and moderators must adhere to. As to the "moral right of the owners"... sure, you can exercise that, but you'll find that removing some content will create a liability of it's own in some legal domains. I would advise people stick to the letter of the law, anything else likely creates liability for the moderators or site owners. On advertising, any site that tries to be of general appeal and also make enough revenue from advertising will need to control the content that appears on the site. Niche sites can avoid this, but the advertising potential is much reduced as a result. If a community received revenue, it would very quickly learn that it can either choose to make more revenue at the cost of adopting content policies, or of making a pittance and having freedom of expression within the content (though still avoiding illegal content). As to whether there is some overriding and all-encompassing policy... a universal policy for internet sites. No, there is not. The requirements of the user agreements and site policies is determined by the business model or activities of the sites and their users. A subtle change in how a site or community operates could lead to a significant difference in the legal documents that would protect it... this is why there is a warning on my policies that anyone using them should have them reviewed by a lawyer, they are fit for purpose for my sites, but may be the death knell of your sites.

by buro9 11y ago

c_prompt 11y ago

Thanks for making the T&Cs you created available. Did your attorneys make them specific to an individual country/locale or did they make them generic enough to afford/enhance protection globally? I'm referring to the latter and specifically content as it relates to (potential) illegality. If a site wants to censor or prevent certain content based on their own, personal standards and goals, that's the moral right of the owners. I'm interested in the situations where governments will use force to impose their will (regardless of the personal choices). I'm also interested in the "once you're made aware you need to handle it with whatever declared process you have." Perhaps it differs by locale and, if so, then it would be beneficial for those of us who run sites to start compiling legal agreements into a github repository like you did to help alternative sites become aware of the local legal nuances (especially if the user base is global like reddit or voat). I'm also interested in your comment about advertising - if a community (owner or mods) got to determine which ads (if any) were shown in their community (i.e., the site owners didn't get revenues from ads), would that be supportive of certain site-wide policies? And, again, just to clarify - I'm interested specifically in overriding, all-encompassing site-wide polices, not community-specific policies.

buro9 11y ago
We aimed at UK and EU law as we felt it to be tighter than US law on a lot of these fronts, and yet combined both the ideas of Safe Harbor and DMCA (within the EU eCommerce Directive - "mere conduit"). At the same time, European law put much stricter requirements on personal data restrictions, and the right of people to access and delete their personally identifiable information. The user agreements should be good for most Western countries, but definitely are good for all EU countries. It would have been a very expensive and futile exercise to try and make the agreements good for all countries, I'm not sure anyone tries this, better still to declare which legal domain you will operate in and constrain your terms and operations to those. The site and services we offer, are much akin to Reddit and subreddits... it's a shared platform that hosts distinct communities, and within those communities sub-communities. i.e. https://www.lfgss.com https://www.lfgss.com is one of almost 300 sites on 1 instance of the platform (other instances exist and are run by other people), and within LFGSS there are several sub-communities with their own moderators, moderation policies, etc. The user agreements we produced dealt with the platform relationship with the admins of a site, and the moderators of forums on a site, and then went on to deal with the minimum required standard for users of a site on the platform. We actually don't stray into finer details of how a specific sub-community may moderate, we simply lay down the minimum standard that all admins and moderators must adhere to. As to the "moral right of the owners"... sure, you can exercise that, but you'll find that removing some content will create a liability of it's own in some legal domains. I would advise people stick to the letter of the law, anything else likely creates liability for the moderators or site owners. On advertising, any site that tries to be of general appeal and also make enough revenue from advertising will need to control the content that appears on the site. Niche sites can avoid this, but the advertising potential is much reduced as a result. If a community received revenue, it would very quickly learn that it can either choose to make more revenue at the cost of adopting content policies, or of making a pittance and having freedom of expression within the content (though still avoiding illegal content). As to whether there is some overriding and all-encompassing policy... a universal policy for internet sites. No, there is not. The requirements of the user agreements and site policies is determined by the business model or activities of the sites and their users. A subtle change in how a site or community operates could lead to a significant difference in the legal documents that would protect it... this is why there is a warning on my policies that anyone using them should have them reviewed by a lawyer, they are fit for purpose for my sites, but may be the death knell of your sites.