2023-09-10 rebolt document
| Status | Waiting for |
|---|---|
| Closed |
This article mainly exists to provide our commitments going forwards based on the feedback of this and the Qyint document.
Post-mortem
- In this case, the other party effectively refused to act in good faith so I’m not going to attempt to continue correcting their mistakes with the document.
- All non-standard communication on our end was removed as it was unprofessional and ultimately did not lead to any positive change before of the aforementioned issue. This included two Rentry posts and one thread on GitHub under insert’s personal blog (the conversation didn’t belong there in the first place).
- However, no limitation has been imposed on who can send in an inquiry.
Commitments that have already been kept:
- You can now go through an official inquiry channel to escalate issues regarding Revolt’s policy or team members.
- We have introduced a more stringent team conduct policy. Conversations have been had with team members who would have been in violation of this policy if it were enacted earlier.
- We’ve introduced more precise policies for moderating users on both our platform servers and as a whole on the platform. Ban reasons are now more consistently communicated for suspensions and bans. (we adapt the same system as for strikes)
Commitments we’re still working on:
- We are creating a new revision of the Acceptable Usage Policy. We should have provided a definition of and explicitly disallowed certain behaviours such as hate speech and spreading misinformation when this was first created, but as they say, the next best opportunity is now. The draft will probably be re-written in a much more precise format too to make sure users are definitely in the loop on what is and isn’t allowed.
- Hash uploaded files and maintain a hash ban list for removed content.
Some potential commitments:
- Whether off-platform behaviour should be considered when dealing with certain types of reports has not been fully discussed yet, this is open for comment on this issue.
A clarifying note:
- It appears to me that ‘free speech’ and ‘hate speech’ is not uniformly defined.
- Screenshots may have circulated that implied that Revolt did not promise ‘free speech’. This specifically referred to the U.S. 1st Amendment freedom of speech, which does not restrict hate speech. We do not allow hate speech on our platform and in that sense we are not a ‘free speech’ platform. However, we do not intend to censor individuals.
- We define hate speech as any form of expression that attacks, promotes harm, or promotes hatred against other people based on certain protected characteristics. Characteristics may include: age, race, disability, gender, etc.