Ramping up our Moderation Service
Some of our keener users might have noticed that we’ve been ramping up our own moderation labeler over the last 6 months. We’ve been refining our label definitions, defining the scope of what we can cover, applying labels (775 reports resolved at time of writing), and having conversations internally about our standard operating procedures when it comes to moderation and enforcement of our Community Guidelines. What’s more, we’ll be working with Blacksky to further refine our moderation practices and adopt their Acorn platform for community moderation.
We’re excited to announce that we’re ready for more users to adopt our labeler, and we highly recommend all Northsky users subscribe and configure how labels behave according to your preferences. Adopting our labeler is optional, but the more users we have using it and sending in reports, the more we can fulfill our mission of making Northsky a safer and more enjoyable social media experience for 2SLGBTQIA+ and other marginalized people. Not a Northsky user yet? You can still subscribe to our labeler!
Our labeler covers various forms of bigotry and unacceptable behaviours that are outlined in our Community Guidelines and label definitions. It also covers content enforcement to keep us compliant with Canadian law while protecting our users from stumbling across particularly egregious or traumatizing content.
Anything not listed in our label definitions is currently “out of scope” for our moderation service. So, reports of AI content, spam/scam, and the like will likely be ignored unless it originates from a Northsky account. This is an issue of scale and expertise, as all our moderation at time of writing is done via the human labor of volunteers and label application is not automated. We may explore rules-based automation of labels in the future to help expand our coverage, but we acknowledge the harm that false positives can cause, so we would approach any endeavour with caution and discuss with the community before doing so.
What happens if one of your posts is labeled by Northsky? If you’re on our PDS, you’ll receive an email explaining why your content was labeled, what guideline was broken, and how to start an appeal or ask followup questions. We usually encourage users to take down posts voluntarily as a gesture of good faith and mutual understanding, however we also reserve the ability to take down posts originating from our PDS. We will always exercise this option when content violates Canadian law, as that puts the entire Northsky community at risk.
We do not have a “strike system,” and we do not believe this is the way forward for Northsky. As we’ve seen recently from Bluesky’s moderation, strike systems can be enforced arbitrarily, with multiple strikes being levied in a single incident and long or permanent bans being applied with no warning up front.
We will instead moderate in accordance with our Commitments to our Community and our practices of dialogue, restorative justice, and plain explanations. We believe this is the most pro-social way to build trust and safety in a community. If a Northsky user demonstrates a pattern of guideline violations and disinterest in participating in the restorative justice process, we will facilitate their exit from the PDS.
So, what can you do to keep our community vibrant and safe?
* prior volunteer applicants need not re-apply, we will reach out when we’re ready to add more members to the volunteer moderation team.
