Stack Exchange staff will actively remove links to a legal fund campaign from user profiles, posts, and comments, as well as community ads surrounding Monica's situation and reinstatement. Why?
[This post was originally posted by Juan M but ownership was changed with a post-disassociation tool so that the accepted answer would be pinned to the top.]
This has taken a legal turn and we want to be as transparent as we can. Under guidance from our legal team, we are not able to respond to anything regarding Monica's situation. We will not be answering any questions or comments about that going forward.
Starting today, also under direction from our legal team, we will be removing the "community-voted ads" not related to the subject of the site. This is not an appropriate use of the free ad space donated to communities to serve their topic space.
We know this is going to be received with mixed results, and we wish we had better news but we cannot elaborate further or respond to this situation anymore. We sincerely hope you understand.
I acknowledge that it is a bit of weird situation for you to have your very site used as a platform for protest and advertizing legal measures against your very own company. As a private company you're as much entitled to remove these links as you're entitled to summarily remove moderators for every and no reason whatsoever.
However, at least stand by it being a vested interest against these links and please don't sell it as a purely legal decision that is trying to avoid conflict of interest. Nor should the last few months remotely give you any credibility to sell this as advocating for more on-topic advertizements either (like, wut?).
Let's face it, if these protests or ads were any other causes, especially causes Stack Exchange supports, you wouldn't remotely think about removing them, off-topic or not. It's your site, but don't pretend you're serving anyone else but your company with this.
Removing links from "community" users' profiles that point to a "community" user's fund raiser is ethically repugnant.
This level of heavy-handed censorship, in order to prevent "community" members from being able to effectively support one another, is the grossest intentional effort to destroy the social contract, trust and relationship with an online community that I have ever witnessed.
Stack-specific ads are one thing. They imply a direct endorsement from The Company.
User profiles, which have been considered effectively sacrosanct as long as they do not contain vitriol or confidential information, are another. They are the only place we get to put Who We Are As People, and not merely What We (Want To) Know.
If Stack Exchange chooses to remove profile links to Monica Cellio's fundraiser for legal fees and donation to LGBTQI+ services, they will be crossing a line that they can not come back from.
If you want a community, treat us like one. otherwise we're not a community, we're just end users.
If the threat or enforcement of censoring user's profiles is not rescinded, the message is clear:
Additionally, this may not even be legal, despite coming from lawyers. See: What gives SE the right to modify user profiles without indicating change?
It might be easier to hire new management than to get a new community of volunteers.
Just to be clear, this advice was from the same legal team which told you that you could coolly change the licensing on our content and then just not talk about it, right? And the same folks who told you it's chill to make serious allegations of bigotry against a user to the press? Or are there people who specialize in breaking of copyright law, people who specialize in privacy violations, and presumably more people who specialize in screwing up in court?
In all seriousness, I get that you never had any obligation to host campaigns to sue your own management on your platform. There's no free speech violation when a private company simply takes the mic away from someone they don't like or someone who's saying something they don't like. But there's something about the tone and context which really makes you seem like the bad guy.
My answer is going to be a deconstruction of, or a rebuttal to, @JuanM's answer.
we want to be as transparent as we can.
No, you don't; or at least - you don't act like it. If you wanted to be transparent, you would state how you believe Monica Cellio violated the CoC, or retract that claim and reinstate her. @Mehrdad asked the CTO this question directly, with over 1300 MSE users joining him.
Also, you've begun making fundamental changes to the network unilaterally and suddenly, like the doubling of question upvote reputation - so you're being opaque about your decision-making processes.
Under guidance from our legal team,
That is an unacceptable excuse. You decide how you run this network, not your legal team.
we are not able to respond to anything regarding Monica's situation.
You are able to, you are choosing not to. And that is apparently because if you do answer questions from the community, truthfully, your ability to fend off Monica's legal action might diminish. Well, tough cookies, you owe us answers. Also - you shouldn't be arguing this case in the first place; rather, you should just reinstate Monica and compensate her, and the legal case will go away.
By the way - doing that will not even impact your overall direction and policy, which many of us disapprove of. The fact that you're choosing not to do so can be one of: stuborness; internal organizational disharmony; or perceived benefit from going all the way on it. I wonder which one it is.
We will not be answering any questions or comments about that going forward.
Monica is just the sacrificial lamb. It's not really about Monica, it's about the way you (= SE Inc.) manage the SE network. You're not talking to us about that either.
Starting today, also under direction from our legal team, we will be removing the "community-voted ads" not related to the subject of the site.
You're making it sound as though it's those strict lawyers forcing your hand, and not a voluntary action on your part. I believe that's not true. But - you know what? Why don't you show us those directions from your legal team? Show us a copy of the exchange in which they told you must not answer users' questions.
This is not an appropriate use of the free ad space donated to communities to serve their topic space. To date, we've been very hands-off with the ads served through this program, but removing off-topic protests and other such commentary is necessary and appropriate, even if it wasn't about Stack Exchange.
I thought you said you were removing those ads because of your legal team...?
We know this is going to be received with mixed results, and we wish we had better news but we cannot elaborate further or respond to this situation anymore.
Of course you can elaborate further. You're doubling-down on your stance, because otherwise, the egg on your face would show very visibly.
We sincerely hope you understand.
Unfortunately, we do understand. The question is, do you (i.e. SE Inc.) understand that you're putting this entire network in danger by your repressive attitude towards the community of users (not to mention the future of your company)?
... and the disingenuous posts on your (SE Inc.) part in recent weeks are not helping, either.
It all reads rather naive it does... although in kind of a good way, to me. It's a tiny, tiny degree better (and more human) than staying entirely mum. We'd all be a LOT more angry if they just started pruning links without comment.
Stack Exchange staff will actively remove links to a legal fund campaign from user profiles
While I understand Stack Overflow Inc. is not obliged to host content which might cause damage to said Stack Overflow Inc., you should know that there is a semi-official guideline posted by a former employee about allowed content in profile pages:
- Generally speaking, your "about me" is just that—what you want to share with the world, and we try to allow users a good bit of freedom there.
- However, in the rare cases where what's there is likely to be truly offensive to large groups of seemingly reasonable people, we may not allow it.
Since said links cannot be deemed 'truly offensive', it would be good to explicitly add this exception to that answer.
For SE's sake, I just hope no-one gets the idea of, say, googling for the name of one particular ex-moderator, possibly with words like "defamation" or "fundraiser" included.
A good response to this action might be to double your contribution. You can find Monica's page by searching Google or looking on Twitter or Reddit.
Note that SE could solve this issue easily and inexpensively, even at this point, so contributions do not damage SE. They do show them that you're serious, though.
This is a monumentally bad idea with a chilling effect on community involvement. Community Ads I'm on the fence about, but removing links from users' profiles?
That's a bridge too far.
So your legal team advised to shut up (what you did anyway).
What did your Public Relation team say?
This announcement is what tipped me into donating. I know I'm being totally manipulated -- my "you can't tell me what to do" self is being activated, but I'm good with that.
Seriously, I thought the Question Point Value thing was just going to try to make the Monica Issue fade away in a surge of new questions, but this Announcement/Question (Announcetion?) is totally Streisand Effect in action.
From the link above:
The Streisand Effect is fostered by what is called psychological reactance. It is a retaliatory behavior that people resort to in response to an action that threatens their behavioral freedom.
...
Another example is the indignance of individuals who have sniffed the presence of a snippet of information that is being hidden from them on purpose. It spurs a heightened motivation to find out what the secret is and propagate it in their milieu.
Also see the Tabletop Games 2nd entry here (in real life examples) for something that appears very similar to the SE issue: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StreisandEffect
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/words-were-watching-streisand-effect-barbra
I'm posting this from my alternate account, simply because I don't want this to be seen as anything approaching official - which I risk from posting from my main account: Journeyman Geek♦. This is me talking as a long time user and someone who really wishes that folks would think about resolving this rather than legal or professional short term CYA.
Practically speaking, from my experience in the past few weeks - I suspect it's literally going to be impossible to actually properly handle this. There's going to be certainly folks trying to stick it to the 'man'; there's going to be clever workarounds. I saw the leak come up 4 times. And that was something a lot of folks actually felt hurt us more than it helped.
At some point of time, the company is likely going to spend more time (and person-hour-dollars) trying to contain the fallout than what it would have had to spend taking a more considered, compassionate approach.
It's worth remembering, in the face of toxicity, that it's good folks who suffer and leave. Trolls find this their native environment. A few folks stay cause they care, but there's a lot more of them than us.
If your legal team is muzzling folks cause there's a prospect of a quick and relatively amiable solution, maybe it's fine. It's been several months of community breaking dramatic event after another.
So practically - short of chaining the CM team to their desks and poking them with pointy sticks (which is something the company has explicitly promised not to do) - in the current climate, I don't see how the staff can keep up if folks start posting links to this with intent. It's going to be a monumental drain on resources over a uncertain period of time, and it's certainly going to cause bad press.
At this point, I don't even seem sure if there's a strategy in place short of running around throwing buckets of what could be water or petrol but no one really checked on fires.
which is something the company has explicitly promised not to do times are a changin'
Commented
Nov 15, 2019 at 1:19
You are hiding behind your legal team and let them take the blame, but obviously, the people who created this entire mess weren't the lawyers.
(Disclaimer: don't get me wrong, I dislike lawyers 😉, but hypocrites even more)
I said we were going to step back and re-evaluate how we deliver feedback, how we can improve content quality, and how we can reduce friction between people.. they're doing the opposite (see the friction part) as we speak
Commented
Nov 15, 2019 at 9:19
I just read this morning:
an exciting start to working hand in hand with the community to build a better Stack Overflow.
(last sentence of the questions-weight-blog)
Lately, more and more again this month, it feels like "building a better Stack Overflow" actually means:
SE Inc. burning down the old place to the ground, to then tell us how they will build something new, that "the community" is then free to fill with content and moderation efforts tightly aligned to the CoC and whatever other rule SE Inc. intends to put in place.
And no, I have not forgotten that it is actually still possible to work hand in hand, see here for example. But methinks: other people have forgotten how "working hand in hand" is supposed to work.
Finally: your lawyers do what lawyers do.
But inadvertently that leads to further escalation. But you didn't get there by chance. You actually had plenty of chances to fix this without the need for lawyers doing the lawyer thing!
You're doubling down on not listening to the community in favor of supposedly helping the community.
Of all the actions you've taken to force the community to change, this is the one that's going to take a toll on your resources.
The list goes on. You better get ready for a guerrilla war against the very same community that helped you grow, because the problem is not magically going to disappear and people are going to take action.
If your goal going forward from this is to limit the ability of monica to fight back by curtailing donations to her, you may have already failed.
At least you got me to seriously consider donating again, even though I already did.
And none of this was necessary in the least. You could have come clean, you could even have publicly elaborated if you genuinely, in your heart of hearts believe that you made the right decision. Stand by your actions and own your words, none of this weasel-worded ducking and weaving we've been seeing for the past 2 months.
You know this won't work, you all know the Streisand effect. In trying to bury this situation, you blow it up sky high. This didn't need to go past week two, you made it with your inaction. And then you left your community managers, moderators and users to deal with the fallout while you absconded from view.
You hurt the people you set out to protect, made this place a much more dangerous one for them. And for what? Back patting? There are a million ways this could have been handled better, and you had a hundred outs to take them, even after the series of massive blunders. There was a long row of olive branches you kept not taking.
This continued course of action is a catastrophic failure in management and vision in my opinion, and saddening to see from a company administering a community I care deeply about.
My use of "you" in this piece is intended to address Sr. Management and the decision makers in the company Stack Exchange, not the community managers who probably had no say or were overruled in all of this insanity.
My guess is that SE's management isn't really thinking things through and/or properly listening to the CMs, yet again.
Maintaining an open platform while trying to prevent something that a substantial minority of the engaged user base wants to do is going to be difficult and require significant work from the already over-stretched CM team. Plus the campaign will get another publicity/funding boost just from this.
The best legal advice balances legal risk against other issues like reputational risk, practicality, business risk etc. It doesn't sound like that's happening here, either with the decision to clam up after defaming Monica, or this latest action.
EDIT: Cesar M's comment clarifies that there won't be a bulk exercise to find and remove these links, they'll just be removed if employees happen to find them in normal use of the site. That sort of makes sense in that it means SE aren't knowingly supporting the campaign, even if there may be plenty of the links they haven't seen.
On the upside this post did prod me into actually getting around to donating to Monica's GoFundMe campaign.
My donation might not be much but it's a direct result of what's written here. Anyone who feels the same as I do can simply do a Google search for "stop stack overflow defaming its users" and click on the Go Fund Me page (should be the top result), but if that doesn't bring it up then you can try searching for "monica cellio gofundme" instead.
What about questions/ answers / comments and especially user names that endorse justice and participating in M****'s fundraiser but don't contain any link?
I mean, nobody needs a link to find the crowdfunding campaign. Any search engine will do.
Did you discuss this and what are your conclusions on this?
I must say: I find it worrying that I do actually think SE might engage in such action and censorship even if it means that you will drive away your community even further.
Perhaps it's time to take a financial "turn". How about contacting SO advertisers and asking if they're really wanting to support a company that is behaving like a school-yard bully..?
It looks like links are also being removed from posts,
https://meta.stackexchange.com/posts/336981/revisions
which goes beyond even what this post originally stated.
Does SE consider links to that GoFundMe Spam?
Is the matter so urgent it has to be done in a couple of hours? If not, I don't know how many links to the fundraiser there are on Meta (or elsewhere), but please consider not mass-editing them out. I understand the action will be taken, but if it has to be, please keep in line with the usual guidelines about mass-editing (don't push other content too far down, etc).
Also, on posts which have available revision history (unlike profile pages), will the links be edited out or redacted? As this question is not about the events themselves but the advice of legal team, I hope it's one you're allowed to answer.
The announcement said, that “staff will actively remove links”, but it doesn’t say that users are not allowed to create such links. There are no references to any existing FAQ, CoC or other rules.
It means that users (including elected moderators) can continue to create the relevant links and even revert staff moderator changes without risk of penalties.
What a waste of staff moderators time instead of doing something more useful!
The community needs more clarity into what exactly is going to be removed and if there are any marks against the people that have those links. There are other answers that ask about usernames, questions, answers, and comments, but it's crucial to know if this is attempting to hide the situation from public view or are you just trying to remove the shortcut to donate.
It's an interesting stance, but a very obvious and logical one. Nobody wants to be the platform to support their "competition." Although, it is a bit telling that there may be some fear that this situation does have legal merit and isn't a frivolous suit.
I think the part that is most sad is that this entire issue sounds like it could be been resolved without all this mess by just accepting fault and coming to an agreement between both parties. Instead, being stubborn leads to both sides having to drain money into legal council and waste time to see who's right. Assuming there's no turning back, there's absolutely no way that the company would reinstate her. All that means is that the community loses whether she wins or loses. That sucks. Seriously.
This is the final fig leaf. The train has been tipping off the rails in slow motion and has finally started to pile in. These removals are SE's demonstration that they are committed to doing the wrong thing no matter what. Regardless of whether or not Monica is able to compel a retraction and mitigation of the harm done to her, SE has shown that SOMETHING is more important to them than ethical behavior. I believe it to be one or more egos in management, but perhaps this is an intentional bid for increased traffic.
Hanlon's razor tells us that we shouldn't discount incompetence when we first suspect malice. But with over a month at their disposal before (in Juan M's words) it "took a legal turn" it seems reasonable to at least consider that this was SE's desired outcome.
With that in mind, we must remember that while supporting the efforts to mitigate the defamation against Monica we must also deny benefit to SE as much as possible. To me, this means moving to promote the funding page exclusively (no linking to SE answers for context) on all other user-submitted platforms - Twitter, Reddit, Slashdot, Medium.com, Wikipedia, anywhere I can since with these removals it can no longer be confined to actions within SE.
We know this is going to be received with mixed results, and we wish we had better news but we cannot elaborate further or respond to this situation anymore. We sincerely hope you understand.
Yeah. Just. No.
"Mixed results?" Really? What on Earth made you think that any of us will like this move? Fine, you didn't think that we'll be happy about this. Then why would you try to say that there will be a mixed reception? There's really no need to make that kind of comment; it just makes you look bad.
And no, we don't understand. We understand that you aren't doing anything illegal by removing these links. You have a moral and logical obligation to not anger the community, but it is technically your site so fine, whatever. But we don't understand your insistence upon digging a hole for yourself and making things come to this stage in the first place.
