Hello World,
following feedback we have received in the last few days, both from users and moderators, we are making some changes to clarify our ToS.
Before we get to the changes, we want to remind everyone that we are not a (US) free speech instance. We are not located in US, which means different laws apply. As written in our ToS, we’re primarily subject to Dutch, Finnish and German laws. Additionally, it is our discretion to further limit discussion that we don’t consider tolerable. There are plenty other websites out there hosted in US and promoting free speech on their platform. You should be aware that even free speech in US does not cover true threats of violence.
Having said that, we have seen a lot of comments removed referring to our ToS, which were not explicitly intended to be covered by our ToS. After discussion with some of our moderators we have determined there to be both an issue with the ambiguity of our ToS to some extent, but also lack of clarity on what we expect from our moderators.
We want to clarify that, when moderators believe certain parts of our ToS do not appropriately cover a specific situation, they are welcome to bring these issues up with our admin team for review, escalating the issue without taking action themselves when in doubt. We also allow for moderator discretion in a lot of cases, as we generally don’t review each individual report or moderator action unless they’re specifically brought to admin attention. This also means that content that may be permitted by ToS can at the same time be violating community rules and therefore result in moderator action. We have added a new section to our ToS to clarify what we expect from moderators.
We are generally aiming to avoid content organizing, glorifying or suggesting to harm people or animals, but we are limiting the scope of our ToS to build the minimum framework inside which we all can have discussions, leaving a broader area for moderators to decide what is and isn’t allowed in the communities they oversee. We trust the moderators judgement and in cases where we see a gross disagreement between moderatos and admins’ criteria we can have a conversation and reach an agreement, as in many cases the decision is case-specific and context matters.
We have previously asked moderators to remove content relating to jury nullification when this was suggested in context of murder or other violent crimes. Following a discussion in our team we want to clarify that we are no longer requesting moderators to remove content relating to jury nullification in the context of violent crimes when the crime in question already happened. We will still consider suggestions of jury nullification for crimes that have not (yet) happened as advocation for violence, which is violating our terms of service.
As always, if you stumble across content that appears to be violating our site or community rules, please use Lemmys report functionality. Especially when threads are very active, moderators will not be able to go through every single comment for review. Reporting content and providing accurate reasons for reports will help moderators deal with problematic content in a reasonable amount of time.
If Jury Nullification is legal and allowed, then frankly covering that exact thing up is an abomination and y’all should be utterly ashamed of yourselves. Since when is Lemmy in the habit of backing an establishment while not allowing people involved to know the full picture? Genuinely shameful and disgusting behavior.
Yeah, I’m not going to ever remove anything from my communities relating to that or to the violence against the CEO. There is no difference between Brian Thompson and any other mass murderer on the planet. Are you asking me to protect Hitler or Pol Pot as well from criticisim and glee over their death? No? Then I am sure as fuck not going to do it for this guy.
Jury nullification is a real thing, but it is often misunderstood … mostly because right-wing libertarians and sovereign-citizen kooks have spent decades pushing conspiracy theory about it.
It isn’t an affirmative right of individual citizens to get onto juries and individually block the enforcement of the law. An individual juror cannot nullify. Rather, jury nullification is a logical consequence of two important rules in our legal system:
Double jeopardy is in the US Constitution. Juror independence is inherited from English common law, where it was established in 1670 in an infamous case where a judge imprisoned and tortured jurors for not returning the verdict the judge wanted.
Because of these two principles, if a jury returns a “not-guilty” verdict, the defendant goes free; even if the verdict seems blatantly contrary to the facts and the law. Even if the jury is blatantly wrong, nobody in the system has any authority to do anything about it — not the judge, not the prosecutor, not the cops.
If you are summoned to be on a jury and you make it clear that you do not intend to judge the case on the facts and the law, you will be dismissed from the jury in voir dire. If you preach nullification to your fellow jurors, you might cause a mistrial: the defendant will not be freed; the court will just get a new jury, and the defendant will go back to jail in the meantime.
A mistrial does not free the defendant. A hung jury (refusing to come to a consensus) does not free the defendant. Only a not-guilty verdict frees the defendant.
I didn’t realize these clarifications - thanks for writing up this info!
Cool.
In what capacity does that apply to my protesting Lemmy.world’s frankly idiotic stance of blocking discussion of jury nullification?
Because what they seem to want to prevent is the active advocation or plan to nullify a jury for someone who plans to commit a crime. The problem is the way they worded it. They don’t want you or anyone to plan a violent crime together with likely jurors with the intent of getting the jury nullified on purpose so they can get away with it. But that means you can’t talk about what things might potentially be reason for jury nullification and I don’t think that’s the intent of the laws in their region or fair to users.
Either way, having the information in the above comment is important context for why someone might want to plan a crime and a jury nullification at the same time.
Gul Dukat did nothing wrong!
If you want a US based-instance
If you want a non US instance