It’s almost exactly what we’re discussing.
I mean, if people want a rule like “mods will not give out any personal info unless there is an extreme, imminent life-or-death situation like a mass shooting about to go down” I think that seems reasonable.
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When will this community approval take place?
There’s nothing stopping mods as general users of the forum from acting on whatever they want to act on but when we start working on the moderation rules I have to assume that there will be rules on when and how IPs and emails can be used.
I agree, and they should be protected in almost all situations, with the exceptions being cases of imminent life-or-death threats to others.
This is roughly where I stand. I think Cuse’s point of view is reasonable if explicitly constrained to a very narrow set of circumstances. For example, I would include explicit and credible threats of suicide to fall under the category of “extreme, imminent life-or-death situations”. I believe that mods on 2+2 acted on suicide threats at least once, and I don’t remember any fallout over that.
Cuse, do you have any forum/website examples with a broader “mods can release your personal information when they view it appropriate” rule that you want to emulate?
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Personally, I would never call the cops on anybody on the internet, and that may be an ethical failing, but I couldn’t do it. If I’m in place where somebody is calling for mass shootings, if it’s twitter I’d report it, but otherwise I’m in the wrong place. That’s a small but non trivial part of the reason I want somewhat more conservative rules about posts with egregious violence; I don’t want a mod or a poster read some shit and have to wonder. Now that could be a bad reason too but I’m glad we’re talking about it. That said, if a mod sees the most imminent of imminent threats and exercises judgment, that seems ok to me.
I don’t want to pre-litigate whatever antifa is up to, but my sense of the community is that nearly everyone is already fine with milkshakes and Nazi punching. If violence escalates, the conversations/standards may become strained. I am definitely not looking forward to year 5 of the dotard Presidency when some guy in Portland farts on a cop and antifa is declared a terrorist organization.
Yes, we are definitely having two over-lapping conversations here (and I apologize once again to Trolly).
The conversation that I am participating in concerns whether we want to have a de-facto policy that any mod can use their own personal judgment to provide IP and email information on a poster based upon the contents of someone’s post.
There are many obvious reasons why I think that is a bad idea (as a policy):
- Alerting law enforcement and providing IP/email info is typically not the role of a mod in an internet forum
- People may not trust the personal judgment of all mods (now and in the future) in this matter
- Privacy concerns of posters (Big Brother, etc.)
- Possibility of really bad outcomes (swatting, law enforcement does bad things to poster or others, etc.)
I am sure that there are other reasons opposing this idea as well.
I’m genuinely torn and could be persuaded here. You favor deleting posts/banning somebody making imminent threats? What about threats of self harm?
I don’t have any specific examples, I’m just speaking from my own point of view on what we should do and who we should strive to be on each of these topics. On this one I would just say private info should only be turned over:
If served a warrant
Or
In attempting to protect others from an imminent threat to human life, in which case the information should be turned over to the relevant law enforcement authority at the discretion of the moderator.
I also even suggested that any mod who does this should either be automatically removed or automatically put up for a recall vote. It’s a very serious judgement to make and should not be taken lightly, but we absolutely should trust our mods on this.
I vote present, good points on both sides
Ok… I think we have to let our mods make a judgement call in specific instances but we should define those conditions in advance. Mods should not turn any info over in any situation in which there is not an imminent threat. If waiting for a warrant doesn’t risk innocent lives, we should wait.
While it’s not typically a mod responsibility, our power structure is such that it probably should be a responsibility/power of mods and admins. My attitude is that if anyone with the power to do something about it sees that type of threat, they should act quickly regardless of whether it’s a mod or admin. We don’t have a full-time 24/7 paid staff monitoring this site.
As for personal judgement in these matters, that’s why we should narrowly define them. Also the ones who are likely to run afoul of privacy concerns here are the types who would likely just violate the rule anyway. I’ll just step down if I do not agree with the rule rather than ever end up in that position.
As for the possibilities of bad outcomes, that exists on both ends of the spectrum once a threat like we’re discussing is made.
I agree the rule should not compel them. But it should be understood that the community agrees that they are within their rights to do so in certain situations, and not in others.
I never announce my shoot ups on Amazon though.
I just had another thought (oh no).
This de-facto policy would essentially vitiate the idea of community moderation/moderators. No offense to any current or future mods, but I would not want any mod (who could in theory be any member via community moderators) to have this “ability” baked into the rules.
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[quote=“jalfrezi, post:78, topic:536, full:true”]I never announce my shoot ups on Amazon though.
[/quote]
Alexa knows all your secrets, bro.
Ok so my judgement on these (and thus what I would support) would be:
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Not turning info over without a warrant, unless they said they were going to do it while the agent was in the car. Otherwise I would delete the post, ban the user (perhaps temp perhaps perma depending on whether it was a first instance and such), and if the threat was only for property damage I would leave it be. A car catching fire is not an imminent threat to life.
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I’d encourage them to report where this armed neo-nazi fugitive is to the authorities, but if all they disclosed was a knowledge of it, they’ve made no threats and pose no threat to anyone’s life. Possible moderation depending on exactly what they said. If they posted this person’s location, I would probably report that to the authorities (hopefully prevent harm while getting a bad guy arrested), but I would not turn over any email or IP info without a warrant (the poster poses no imminent threat). I’d also moderate the post and issue a warning/ban for posting the person’s exact location if it happened. Again any potential ban depends on whether it’s a repeat offender, etc.
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Again, if they’re talking about trying to damage property and free detainees, I’m not turning info over without a warrant and I’m not going to report this to authorities as described. I’ll likely moderate it and warn them that they may be endangering their own life and that they shouldn’t post about crimes.
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I’m telling them to get a warrant.
Also in some of these cases I would be encouraging us to go to the ACLU or whatever to fight the warrant.
Seconded?
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I’ve missed a lot of this. Pretty sure I should just like every Gregorio post.
Hard no on calling the police pretty much ever as official policy, but if ever, only when there’s a really credible immediate and deadly threat.
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Yes.
Yeah, I think it should be just flat out against policy for mods or admins to share user personal info with anyone for any reason. If someone is about to kill someone else or commit suicide and they think they must violate policy to call for help, then they should have to explicitly violate that policy.
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