Rule #0 Policy Refinement Feedback Thread

@Background Pony #F329  
Oh, I didn’t see that. Sorry!

@Background Pony #FF20
 
This is the last point I’ll make on this particular subject since I’ve tried to state my position a few times now. This answer goes to both your point and the other guy who was talking about “subversion of expectation” things being funny - the example I gave before would still fit that bill. You would never expect someone to walk up to you in the middle of the street and pull out a gun and blow your head off. It’s totally unexpected. You might expect them to say hello or wave, or even just pass you by without a word. Someone could similarly call that funny, even if it is extreme and despicable. They could call it “shock humor” or “black humor.” I support the idea of the staff trying to have something that they can reasonably deliberate over. Such a vague concept couldn’t be reasonably deliberated by people with many different views. That’s my point.

@Background Pony #F329  

 
If you really need to reply to someone, it should be mainly with a good counterargument to redirect things back to the first post as the topic.

Since it’s out of our hands anyway I guess it doesn’t matter what’s posted. But I’ll just say that different people will find different things offensive and that the magic of the filter system allows people to chose for themselves what that is, and what they don’t want to see.

@Background Pony #25FA  
This is actually relevant, so mods please don’t delete this reply outright.
 
In your example, someone is getting hurt/killed in real life, and real life murder is illegal. In my example, this picture is hurting no one in real life, nor is it a call to violence in real life (for reasons I explained in my previous post (the one you linked)), and lastly there’s nothing illegal about this picture.
 
That is why this picture should be allowed, but someone shooting me in the street is not.

I want to call out @Wintergleam ‘s post, because I think they really hit the nail on the head here. We should be looking at the potential impact of, and the messaging contained in, a given image, not whether or not they match some kind of bar of “uses the wrong words” or “contains a gas chamber” or “contains a Nazi pony”.
 
I’ve heard mention of ‘authorial intent’ in this thread. I don’t think that’s a good metric. If I draw a caricature of a greedy person with a big nose being called a ‘globalist’, it doesn’t matter whether I’m intending to invoke Jewish stereotypes – it’s what I’m doing. Maybe it was an innocent mistake, maybe it wasn’t, but the result perpetuates the stereotype and emboldens prejudiced people. Saying “maybe I didn’t know” shouldn’t be a defense for not taking down the image.
 
This is also why the ‘shock humor’ argument is, in my opinion, a bad one, too. If something’s getting you to laugh at an absurd situation with Pinkie and a Nazi pony dabbing in front of a griffon being gassed because it’s weird and unexpected, it doesn’t matter to me whether the intent of the artist was to make a funny thing, or to actually minimize Nazism. The actual impact of the image, on some people, will be to ever so slightly disassociate gas chambers from the actual murder of millions of people, and associate it with ‘lulz’. The impact of the image is to normalize and make fun of a horrifying historical event.
 
Perhaps we should look at this in terms of the ‘Overton Window’. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s the idea that there’s a ‘window’ of ‘acceptable’ views in society that changes over time, and the way the window shifts is to expose people to ideas outside of this. Shifting of the Overton window can be a good thing or a bad thing.
 
These kinds of images can have the direct impact of, for some people and ever so slightly, shifting the Overton window towards acceptance of Nazism. They are a perfect vehicle for doing this – they’re ‘just a joke’, but they portray and perpetuate the views that they meme around in a not-unsympathetic light.
 
And I want to touch on one last thing, too – symbolism, and cryptofascism. A lot of people are looking at that “Pinkie and Aryanne gassing Gilda” picture and thinking “oh, okay, it’s because Pinkie had a bad experience with Gilda.” While I think that’s a reasonable connection to make, I think I’m starting to recognize a connection with griffons in Nazi art. In the show, griffons are portrayed as greedy and obsessed with money. Tt seems that some (not all) folks drawing art related to Nazis are therefore using griffons as a stand-in for Jewish folks, using the same stereotype described earlier. If site staff want to take this situation seriously, I think it’s important to account for tropes like this in the assessment of a given image.

Also, for your next iteration of the proposal, I would suggest including a more diversified sample of images. Both politically and thematically. Nazi-themed images are easy to sample from, but they are far from the only things that would be affected by this rule.

Are staff keeping artist history and intent in mind when judging pictures, btw? And will they in the future?

@Filiecs  
In hindsight, we should’ve included some non-Nazi stuff in the 2nd and 3rd polls to help, but one thing to realize is these are some of the more extreme images here to begin with, which is where the problem really is; I’ll try and hunt down some problematic images that aren’t Nazi-related but similar to what was voted to be Rule #0 when it comes to a finalized wording.
 
@Datte-Before-Dawn  
No, image on its own. For most things, it’s been found best to treat images as islands unto themselves; it would be pretty problematic to delete stuff just because the artist has drawn bad stuff in the past. Intent is also really wishy-washy, compared to just looking at the practical result.

@Princess Luna  
There is a post of Aryanne getting rapped by Russian soviet Diamond Dogs. May be what you are looking for. may be already removed. that was years ago.

I really feel like the polls need a lot more deliberation behind them. While the results of poll #1 I can understand the reasoning in - that is, pictures with no merit behind them besides attacking a group of people are rule #0, while the pictures which were jokes or ponifications are not. That’s clear. But I can’t understand the results of poll #2.
 
Image #3 in poll 2 is a prime example of extremely unclear decisionmaking. Why did it get 83% votes? The image itself does not target or demean any group of people. Unless I don’t understand some kind of allegory that ugly Rarity represents I think the picture got such overwhelmingly bad reactions just because it’s… ugly? The picture itself I do not believe breaches rule 0 in any way no matter how much I re-read the rule, unless you’re planning to update the rule to flat out ban all descriptions of the holocaust, but seeing as other depictions are under 50% that can’t be the case.
 
I think if the new rules are to be understandable and a solid stone everyone can lean on when deciding whether an image should be allowed or not just having polls like this with no clear debate and explanations about people’s answers we need a different solution. As it is the results are contradictory.

@PwnyPony  
I remember it, and I don’t think it’s really that relevant; Rule #0 stuff here is about prejudice and such, not just people being raped, so I don’t see how that image is involved.
 
@Yumenmita  
That is a fair criticism of it, that it might be a stretch to say Rarity represents Jews. It might deserve reevaluation after we’ve got the policy mostly finalized.

@Princess Luna
 
so would it still count if the diamond dogs wore nazi uniforms instead and raping some other mare?

@Yumenmita
 

 
I think that it’s actually clear there.
 
They won’t allow just blatant holocaust depictions to stay, because there’s no real value in them, aside from showing off what Nazi did, not to mention showing off in a very proud way there in that particular picture in question.
 
But they can allow the clear jokes/parodies/satire depictions of it, as long as it’s not just a simple demonstration of Nazi’s actions with no other value behind the art.  
For example, they can allow the 4th picture of the 2nd poll, that’s under “Not Rule #0”.

@rainbowdash42  

 
People have been arguing for weeks about this very subject, and the tl;dr is there’s genuinely no proof that images on Derpibooru have caused any of that. Like genuinely none. What’s really annoying though is I can’t go any deeper into this reply because it’ll get deleted for being off topic, while your post will stay up.

@rainbowdash42  

 

 
You state these things as fact, but the problem is that this is not scientifically supported that these images support the normalization of the ideas they represent. I believe that if that is to be used as an argument for censorship, it needs to be backed by scientific research.
 
Current research solidly shows that violent videogames do not make people more violent.  
There is no evidence that exposure to online extremist material leads to someone developing extremist views.  
There is also some research that shows that very overt disparaging humor (think historical minstrel shows) may have some effect on increasing someone’s prejudicial attitudes, but also that openly censoring these views can potentially lead to a ‘rebound effect’ that results in peoples prejudices being reinforced even more.
 
Those are the closest analogies we have that I am aware of that have a scientific basis.  
If someone wants the sources I can provide them.

@PwnyPony  
Hope not, I loved that pic

@Background Pony #A89C  
Hmm, if the mare appeared to represent a Jewish person or similar, then I think it might run into Rule #0 territory, but I’m not sure.
 
@Datte-Before-Dawn  
It’s still up.

@Yumenmita  
I think it’s because the artist just took an image from something else and added a pony to it. It’s also in theme with the other images they voted against in that it’s showing someone in a gas chamber being killed in a serious way.

@Datte-Before-Dawn  
Seems to still be up.

@Princess Luna  
@Background Pony #A89C  
This is an interesting point. What if it was Aryanne raping a Griffon? Would that be axed?