Loomio
Mon 20 Aug 2018 9:57PM

Core principles

AR Antoine-Frédéric Raquin Public Seen by 55

IMO, democracy will always be a politically-oriented tool, not a proof of legitimacy. Democracy can only be legitimate because it's efficient.

For example, my students union is called a "students representative org" by our State, but we're a students defense org and by status, we can retroactively override any vote, no matter as fundamental it is, if we agree that it would weaken us as a students defense organization.

What are the social.coop core principles? Is it just to run a Mastodon instance as efficiently as we can? Or can we reach a consensus on the Internet, a political vision, whatever?

For instance, if 200 Nazis came on this Loomio, could the sysadmins (and ultimately the VPS owner) quietly purge them from the instance and cancel anything harming our core principles?

I propose to vote (1) if we agree on the idea of such core principles, and (2) said principles, ideally built together through a dedicated thread here of various synchronous media.

Also, feel free to suggest any style improvement for this opening post.

AR

Antoine-Frédéric Raquin Mon 20 Aug 2018 10:13PM

Oh no, I invited everyone, so sorry, I just wanted to highlight pandarou

AW

Aaron Wolf Mon 20 Aug 2018 10:19PM

As part of the Code of Conduct, we've emphasized that our core principles are the ICA principles and values:

https://www.ica.coop/en/whats-co-op/co-operative-identity-values-principles

We are furthermore writing a Code of Conduct that discriminates against any views that go against those principles along with an extra emphasis on celebrating diversity. So, Nazis who express their Nazi hostilities will be themselves violating the CoC and subject to limitations or blocking accordingly.

Anyway, this is all happening, we're close to a draft we'll be sharing with everyone, it's largely done. And you can join the Community Working Group if you want to participate in this. https://www.loomio.org/g/0uqIXEbc/social-coop-community-working-group

AW

Aaron Weiss Tue 28 Aug 2018 12:27AM

What about Nazis who don't express these ideas on social.coop, but do so in other places? What about Nazis who do so secretly (e.g. pseudonymously and off-site) but whose behavior is later tied to their public identity (i.e. the one on social.coop)?

It seems to me like there are very interesting value questions that go beyond the ICA principles and values (even though my own personal interpretation of said values certainly implies answers to questions like the two I've just asked).

AW

Aaron Wolf Tue 28 Aug 2018 4:37AM

There's no doubt that Nazi views violate the ICA principles and values.

The question of how to deal with people revealed to be secret Nazis or not-so-secret Nazis but who follow our rules here is an important concern.

We could decide that we only focus on behavior connected (tangentially at least) to social.coop. But we probably do want to ban people outright if they are bad enough.

For someone who espouses anti-democracy views elsewhere as a general political philosophy, we probably don't want outright banning if they don't post those ideas here… I think.

I don't know the answers here, but I start with being clear about what we do and don't tolerate in terms of postings and actions here (ICA principles apply etc). When we move on to making it whole judgments about individuals (and not their specific actions here), it's certainly harder. I think the bar needs to be pretty high before we go to that extreme, but I'd support such bans in the most extreme cases.

AR

Antoine-Frédéric Raquin Mon 20 Aug 2018 10:39PM

Thanks for the answer!

It wasn't so much about a CoC, but maybe we should do one thing at a time.

MB

Manuela Bosch Tue 21 Aug 2018 6:43AM

@proton I am very interested in work around values. I think it's important to not only "copy" values, but develop a deeper understanding on what they mean for us, what principles we draw from them, how we live them. And I also think, the ICA values are good enough for now, are in good parts practiced/embodied in social.coop and it's good to get the CoCs operational before we invest into a bigger community project. Maybe consider joining the Community Working Group, if you did not yet.