rage.love / tech.lgbt correspondence 7-10 sept 2023

From: notification@rage.love
To: mods@tech.lgbt
Subject: Harassing reports from tech.lgbt user(s)
Date: September 07, 2023 00:51 UTC

Hi,

This is the Rage.Love admin, L.J.

We have received a series of reports against me from one or more of your users, which by itself is not a problem.

When there is a report against my account I simply delegate to the other moderators and leave it to their judgment.

This particular series of reports, however, consists of long harassing rants and crosses a boundary that should not be crossed by talking about my child.

It is clearly a fact-free harangue of my actions rather than the raising of valid community safety concerns.

I have therefore added "reject reports" to our existing limit of tech.lgbt so the reporting function cannot be used as a vector of harassment.

I am writing to ask whether you have taken or will be taking action against the reporting account(s) for using reports as a means to violate Section 4 of your Code of Conduct against harassment.

If you are taking action rage.love can start accepting reports from tech.lgbt again, since I had hoped to preserve our existing connections when I limited rather than suspended tech.lgbt, and accepting reports is an important part of that connection.

With regards,

Rage.Love Admin (L.J.)

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From: mods@tech.lgbt
Date: September 08, 2023 09:19 UTC

Hello L.J., this is the tech.lgbt mod team.

We appreciate you bringing this up to us, and apologize for not reaching out to you when we resolved this series of reports.

We agree that the reports were very out of line, and clearly crossed the line of harassment.

We agree that our member misused the report feature in those reports, and we did not act on their reports. We did contact our member directly to let them know that it was harassment, personal attacks, and is not what the report feature is for. They replied confirming that they understand that they were in the wrong, and that they would not send reports like this in the future.

We chose not to suspend the member, as they didn't have any previously recorded strikes prior to this one that we'd noted for them, and we will be looking at any reports involving them more critically.

tech.lgbt moderation team

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From: notification@rage.love
Date: September 10, 2023 12:48 UTC

Hello!

Thank you for talking to your member and letting them know this was not okay. I believe in second chances and personal change, and hope they are actually sorry and not in a "sorry I got caught" kind of way. Since this person is still a member of your instance, though, I will keep the report block in place for now and warn other instances.

With regards,

Rage.Love admin (L.J.)

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From: notification@rage.love
Date: September 10, 2023 13:17 UTC

Also a follow-up question, if I may: Was the reporting user in fact [REDACTED], as self-identified in the report? I would like to confirm they correctly identified themself and were not framing [REDACTED] before making a public post about the user.

No need to identify who it was if it wasn't [REDACTED], but if he did voluntarily identify himself in the report there should be no harm in confirming it so others can be warned about them. If you won't confirm either way because you wish to protect the user, I will respect that and post without identifying [REDACTED].

L.J.

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From: mods@tech.lgbt
Date: September 10, 2023 14:07 UTC

Thank you for letting us know that you plan to keep the report block. If you change your mind in the future, we would appreciate you letting us know, for ongoing moderation purposes.

We can confirm that the member who sent you the report is [REDACTED].

That said, while we understand that the harassing report was negative and negatively affected you, we worry about the additional issues that targeted harassment will bring. We cannot stop you from making a public call-out post, but we don't wish to continue the harassment cycle.

tech.lgbt moderation team

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From: notification@rage.love
Date: September 10, 2023 19:02 UTC

Hello,

Thank you for the confirmation. We have already suspended this user from rage.love as a precaution and it's useful to know it's the right account.

My wanting to make a fediblack post about [REDACTED] is not because he affected me negatively or to get him harassed. I've pretty much laughed off the incident after the initial disbelief anyone would go that far, and I mostly think he's kind of pathetic.

Nevertheless, [REDACTED]'s behavior is of the type that can make people feel extremely unsafe, especially people who post about their children, and by keeping this behavior under wraps people who interact with them do so without full consent and information. I know I'd feel extremely gross if I learned someone I was interacting with had acted like that toward someone else.

Since you are reluctant for a post to be made about [REDACTED], however, I will consider the information to be given  to us only for internal purposes and will redact his account information while describing your moderation and disclosure decisions.

It's not that I necessarily consider yours a bad decision, since it has its upsides for rehabilitation and preventing harassment of [REDACTED] by others. My reasoning is that the people who interact with your instance and trust in your moderation decisions should know what your policy is, as some of them (by no means all) may disagree.

With regards,

L.J. for Rage.Love