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@anderseknert

Hello Anders! I was going to DM you, but seeing as you have chosen this action, I am going to step in.

First things first: in my original message, I had wanted to thank you for your welcome to Europe message that you sent to me yesterday, since I had posted of that. In isolation, that message had seemed kind.

Now I need to reach out to you as head moderator. I saw the message you sent to my team and was originally going to just DM or email you, but now there's this.

A quick explanation about process:

Whenever we receive a report of potential misinformation we attempt to validate it and then as part of all reports we review the account being reported. This is to try to cover two bases: 1 ) is the report correct and/or actionable and 2 ) is the account problematic / what is the intent? Misinformation specifically requires one specific thing to be true: is it the intention of the post to mislead? Fact-checking and account review attempt to cover this basis. People post things they see and hear all the time, but may not intend to mislead. This is how people unintentionally spread misinformation that they were exposed to. In your case it was determined, as you have already posted, that the information appeared to be incorrect but that your account history gave us no reason to assume it was your intent to mislead. As a result the post was deleted and your account was not otherwise actioned.

The email from the moderation team tries to cover this succinctly. Choosing how to phrase such a message is a balance between concise and clear. Sometimes the balance isn't there, and that is easy for us to remedy if you choose to just let us know.

You have been on Hachyderm a long time. As far as I can see, you joined around the time my fiancée started the instance. In that time, I don't see any other history of reports or actions regarding your account. I cannot understand why you chose to make how you chose to phrase your Appeal, and now this post, the way you choose to handle your first interaction with us. You have in your frustration made a lot of incorrect statements about us and our process and in your thread seem to be willing to answer questions about information and processes that you do not have.

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@anderseknert

Moderation teams on most Fediverse instances are volunteers that are doing an unpaid labor of love to keep the community safe. In our covenant we promise to try to do so to the best of our ability and treat people with respect whether we made a mistake or not or whether they made a mistake or not. We believe in growth and paths back to community, and treating people poorly if and when they make a mistake does not serve this goal.

In light of your Appeal and this post, I have a request. Instead of just letting us know we missed something and asking us to reverse it, you have decided to speak down to myself and my team and make incorrect and harmful assumptions. None of this was candidly necessary, as I can tell you for a fact we would've just reversed the decision with the one link in the Appeal. Since you seem to want to be on the offensive with myself and my team, my request is that you find a situation where you do not feel the need to treat others this way. This can either be by somehow resolving this or by moving to an instance where you do not feel the need to do this as your first course of action, rather than after failed recourse.

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@quintessence Yes, you're right — I've been a happy user and sponsor of Hachyderm ever since I got here, and that's been true until last night.

To address your response — my first interaction with your admin team is not me authoring an appeal. My first interaction with your team is that team deleting a public post of mine. Everything that follows is from that point exactly, and trying to frame it as if the origin of the issue would somehow be how I didn't respect the rules of the appeal process I was provided is just not helpful for the discussion, however convenient it may be. Neither does how you in other replies insinuate that I went straight to post this here although my appeal was posted ~30 minutes after your team deleted my post, and me sleeping on the decision to post anything about what happened in order to give your team time to respond. 18 hours later, I gave up on waiting.

Like I already said in my post, I would have been more than happy to help your team address any concerns about the legitimacy of my lived experience in private had I been consulted in the first place. Your team chose not to do that, and instead deleted my post.

Which would *also* have been "fine" if it was followed by anything as simple as "hey, we fucked up, we're sorry". Instead, you now go to great lengths to try and discredit me as a person with claims like how I'm "on the offensive" despite your admin team deleting my post on the wrong grounds, or that I "speak down" to you and your team for defending my post as deleted by your team, how welcoming you to Europe seemed kind "in isolation" as if it's now been made clear to you what a terrible fucking person I am and there's no way I could have meant that.

Yeah, I'm sorry but I'm not going to play that game.

@anderseknert

I am not trying to discredit you.

I am trying to:

* Engage in productive discussion about process (which I'm happy to have)
* Answer questions in the thread since there is a lot of concern and fear based on the framing.

As I stated, I do appreciate that being moderated isn't a great time. It is also important to know that:

1 ) when filing an Appeal, the moderation team cannot respond directly to the Appeal. This is a limitation of the Mastodon moderation tools. We talk about it often on our main account, blog post, and in the Appeal doc on our site itself.
2 ) this means when we have an Appeal that requires additional dialog, we need to email the user.

The reason we try and set expectations around these is so that users don't look in the wrong place for contact from a mod team.

I will agree that your first interaction with the moderation team is a deleted post. And our response to that post is what you posted in the image. In addition, there is the full text of the Appeal you sent us, which we will not disclose without your consent (but can, if you feel it would help contribute to transparency). The way you phrased the Appeal is why I made the statement about speaking down to the team, though, for your reference if it helps. Basically: the entirety of this conversation, initial report to now, is our "first engagement" as it were.

I am not contesting any of that. The team and I are doing our best to now handle the series of posts, tags, DMs, reports, etc. that mean instead of the mod issue being 1:1 as it originated, it's become an umbrella to several others that need to be addressed with our attention and care. We're doing our best to meet everyone's needs in this matter.

@Alexandrad1 @anderseknert @quintessence If a user doesn’t have a history of posting misinformation, and they’re clearly active, a quick DM asking for a source after not finding it before taking action could have prevented a whole lot of drama.

The point of rules of play is to get players back on the field. It isn’t to interrupt the game continuously.

Moderation mistakes happen, and that’s fine. We are all more than grateful for the work being done to keep these platforms healthy.

@Alexandrad1 @anderseknert @quintessence Anders isn’t trying to “hand wring an apology” out of the mod.

He would have preferred the mods to be as reactive in reinstating his post after he appealed the decision as they were in removing it in the first place.

Now, it looks more like they didn’t believe his appeal, and now they have egg on face because he publicly showed the moderation mistake that they were going to stand by and uphold.

@teotwaki

Hello! Just going to chime in to say I see and hear you.

That said, there are things that aren't correct here. One of the things that we try to normalize on our instance is open dialogue. This is because we believe that people should be able to just ask for the things that they need, rather than feel like they need to write a thesis or get public opinion to have simple request for needs met.

We didn't not believe his Appeal, and I would like to point out that the text of his Appeal isn't shared in his post. This is fine! That said, you're making assumptions on what he did or did not disclose to us, and whether we would or would not have believed him.

As was mentioned elsewhere, an appeal with a "hey, in case you missed it source [[ link ]]" would have been more than adequate for a reversal.

The goal of moderation is not to exist in a state of conflict with people, not just on our own instances but in the broader Fediverse. There are a lot of horrible things happening in the world, and moderation teams doing their best to keep our communities safe and healthy is important to help people have places where they *don't* have to scream to be heard.

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@Alexandrad1 @anderseknert

@phodedor

As has been stated repeatedly elsewhere, the Appeal was approved some time ago and the post didn't restore as expected, so we're working on a manual override.

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@teotwaki @Alexandrad1 @anderseknert