this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2022
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Relaxed section for discussion and debate that doesn't fit anywhere else. Whether it's advice, how your week is going, a link that's at the back of your mind, or something like that, it can likely go here.


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hey I am a genious I will simply make a social space (or social media website) without any rules. So everybody can do whatever they want.

Someone spamming horse porn everywhere

okay maybe let's have some rules, like no spamming or illegal stuff.

People keep posting my little pony content or gore to unrelated sub forums

Hmm let's just make a full CoC that basically only permits the kind of right-wing thought that we like.

End result is a shithole that nobody likes using, since right-wingers don't even like their own people.

genius

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[–] Gaywallet@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago

It's not just libertarians, it's extremists in any direction, really. Rules are about a sense of stability and safety in a community. This leads to two kinds of ideologies, both of which are often at play on some level.

The first ideology and in my opinion the most important one is an ideology which sets rules designed to protect the members of the community based on ideas which are shared across the entire community (or close enough to the entire community). Ideas like "don't kill people for no reason" are pretty universally human, protect human communities pretty well, and in general are not controversial. Other ideas such as protections for minority groups within a community may garner a bit more controversy from some, depending on how ostracized the minority groups are and how they contribute (or damage) the community. On the internet this manifests with rules which are pretty universally accepted such as no posting of child pornography

The second ideology is one of setting rules via populism or trending towards the average opinion. There are both good and bad rules which sit in this category and a lot of it depends on how the rule is framed or what it is intending to do. Rules which enforce social norms, such as "girls must wear dresses", tend to do a lot more harm than rules which might aim to protect well-accepted ideas which face some controversy but are not quite at the level of universal acceptance such as "gays and interracial couples can marry". These kind of rules on the internet typically resemble "free speech is protected" on the permissive end and "transphobia is not allowed" on the protective end.

However, as you mentioned, rules are not just what is explicitly written and codified. Rules are also reflective of how the community treats people. You don't need to have a law which says "no black people" in a rural community in America with deep-seated racist issues - this kind of behavior is simply reinforced by the peers in a community when they condone or condemn behavior they witness, by the conversations they have, and how they act around people from within and outside the community who push back against these unwritten rules. The core principle of Beehaw is formed around providing a framework which is designed to support the latter, with a focus on curating a community which represents a particular set of ideals designed to be protective and supportive, as it's a kind of community we haven't seen often online and a community which we wished to participate in.