we are not a (US) free speech instance

Thank you for reminding this. Some people always think that Lemmy.world is US-based or managed, while this is clearly not the case.

I think this is a good time to remind everyone that the strength of federated social media (and a big reason why we're all here) is that no private company or country's laws can have total control over the fediverse.

Everyone who runs an instance is going to have a different risk-tolerance for legal issues however, and I can't fault anyone for making a judgment call that they feel best protects the server and their users. I don't know anything about Dutch or Finnish laws, but I've seen many recent articles about people arrested in Germany for their social media posts that were considered hateful or violent (which is frankly a culture shock to me as an American), so I can see why some of the posts on Lemmy in the past week would be concerning.

In my interactions with the .World admins, I've seen nothing but people trying to run an instance in the most fair and neutral way they can, and I personally trust them to make the hard calls when they come up. That being said, if you're frustrated with the legal concerns of a host's country or have had a run-in with a mod that upset you, it only strengthens the fediverse if you spread out or create similar communities elsewhere.

Jury nullification should not be a banned topic. It's perfectly legal and is the only direct way citizens can object to interpretations of the law. The very fact that the courts and government don't want people to know of it is a testament to its effectiveness in cases where the public will opposes the government in matters of law. Particularly when public opinion differs drastically from a strict interpretation of the law, but most especially when citizens find a law, its often limited proponents, or its execution to be objectionable, unconscionable, cruel, or unwilling to take circumstances into consideration. It's crucial for us to all understand our limited power over the government, especially when it's acting in an oppressive manner, violating human rights, ignoring the principle of justice in favor of a literal interpretation, or is otherwise objectionable by the majority of citizens as opposed to the minority of lawmakers.

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.

?? So, discussing jury nullification by itself, or suggesting ‘crimes that have not yet happened’ - itself is not a violation (i.e. someone should disturb the peace) but suggesting that “someone should disturb the peace and everyone on the jury, should they be prosecuted, should advocate for jury nullification” is a violation of the ToS?

I’m not understanding that part.

This shit is exhausting and incoherent to read. Also, jury nullification is in no way, shape or form ‘advocating for violence’.

Woah, I get not allowing advocating for violence, but restricting people from discussing the topic of jury nullification is pretty messed up regardless of how you feel about the killing.

People in the US have justifiable revulsion to its rapacious healthcare system leading to outright un-aliving of a large segment of the population. One might argue that it's a silent genocide of the underprivileged. This incident has highlighted that sentiment in a way that may effect real change and in a way his untimely demise may lead to positive health outcomes. Suppressing the expression of that anger could have the opposite outcome.

I can understand (though not agree) with banning clear advocation for violence of CEOs, but the "I haven't had a reason to smile this much in a while" message that got the user banned was too far.

We will still consider suggestions of jury nullification for crimes that have not (yet) happened as advocation for violence

I see jury nullification as similar to self defense, just at a larger scale. I take this message as "You're not allowed to talk about defending yourself for future occasions, only ones that have already happened."
I guess talking about owning a gun for self defense can be seen as "advocating for violence" but that's a narrow minded view, where nullification is only used when the ethics are on the greater good, like thousands of deaths vs the one.

Anyone who wants The Adjuster to be imprisoned is supporting violence against him. Imprisonment is a violent act. Drag thinks the Lemmy.world admins should make sure to remove any comments advocating imprisonment.

Broseph, I can't have sympathy. The income inequality won't let me. People aren't cheering the unaliving necessarily, but the fact that one of these people actually answered for their crimes, in whatever form that took. Because courts weren't gonna make him.

1. 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.

2. 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.

Really? Jury nullification???

Glad I didn't join your instance because that is fucking insane.

Translation: move instances

Its a good idea to give them competitors anyways.

Hmm, maybe a change of scenery is needed. .this place is getting stupid. I haven't seen a single comment actually advocating for violence, mostly just people who aren't sad that this happened. Your mods have also demonstrated a lack of impartial judgemental in the past, and it's starting to show.

I think diversifying mods is a good idea.

The one who "misinterpreted" the rules is a mod of pretty much all the main subs on world.

There's a handful of accounts like that. And they hold way too much sway on the instance as a whole. It's what got reddit in trouble. Mods would add each other as mods in other subs, and it ended up with a whole bunch of super mods with way more influence then they should have had. Especially since that mainly happens when mods agree on things.

Make a limit, even 10 which feels huge would be better than nothing.

Otherwise a handful of people can chase away the entire userbase. Because when a big news story breaks, they control almost all the serious discussions. Which is what happened here. And it'll happen again if things dont change.

Is your opinion that advocating for jury nullification would constitute some violation of Dutch, Finnish or German law based on legal advice?

Delay deny depose :3

My takeaway? It seems like the admins tried making it a banned topic, but the pushback was so great that they eventually said "Ok, ok, murder is bad. Going forward, no murder.....but just this once."

7 paragraphs of water. Did you want to convey your point or just to write something?

Lame. Jury nullification is good and necessary in this case. Saving people's lives shouldn't get you punished, regardless of your motives.

At what point is supporting the prosecution of this assassin advocating for violence? The social murder done by the CEO is so many orders of magnitude greater, and the state will do violence to the killer to defend the industry's right to do social violence.

Nobody was having this conversation when people rightly cheered the deposing of Assad. Guess what? That involved violence, a lot of it. That was state-backed violence too though, so I guess we're all just fine with it.

The state calls its own violence "law" and that of the people "crime".

I guess lemmy.world is happy to just go along with whatever the state wants. It's just insulting that you pretend it's about "violence" and you expect people to believe you.

Personally my big takeaway from the comments here is that either many people think administrating a large internet platform is a joke and happens on its own and you don't find 10+ legal notices in the PO box every week, or that - and I've read about this before - reading comprehension in the english-speaking world has fallen dramatically in recent years and people are genuinely unable to read paragraphs of text of non-trivial content and/or shifting subjects within same sentences, something you learn around 6th grade in school but sadly rarely need after school in modern times.

This seems like a double standard: Should any defense of the US healthcare system also be banned because it barbarically leads patients to die waiting for care in an intentional way?

Wow I wasn't even planning to leave but this nonsense just convinced me. Thanks!

I don't even believe in the death penalty for most murderers.

But when your murder count would make any serial killer that did it with their bare hands instead of an email in all of history blush, with the cold calculation of a sociopath, there's really nothing more to say.

That doesn't even feel like murder, that feels like an ongoing mass slaughter.

I can empathize with murders of passion, even misguided, ignorant hatred as that was usually something impressed into them, and can relate to the very human secondary emotion of anger even if felt in ignorance, but murders of "Well if I murder these thousands of people on this newly discovered loophole, I can increase quarterly profits by 2.4%! Score!" then it becomes impossible. It's like trying to empathize with a computer devoid of any humanity.

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.

This is the Central Scrutinizer / It is my responsibility to enforce all the laws / That haven't been passed yet. / It is also my responsibility to alert each and every one of you / To the potential consequences / Of various ordinary everyday activities / You might be performing which could eventually lead to / The death penalty - or affect your parents' credit rating. / Our criminal institutions are full of little creeps like you / Who do wrong things…

Goodbye, LW, parts of this have been nice but this is where I draw the line. The administration has been clear as mud on this subject with very subjective justification for the nullification of reasonable discourse. I'm going to keep my account for a brief amount of time but I fully intend to delete it in the next week. This is the last thing I'm commenting, upvoting, etc. All of my engagement ceases now beyond this comment.