Neutrality

[Changaco]

One way the Mangopay crisis might have been avoided is if usage of Liberapay had been restricted to a specific set of non-problematic users, like Gratipay 2.0 was. This thread is to discuss whether Liberapay's neutrality principle (enshrined in article 10 of the bylaws) should be preserved as-is, or reworded, or abandoned completely. The current wording is:

The service is open to all, the organization only excludes a user if it has a legal or contractual obligation to do so.

(I'm not pushing for a change right now, I'm merely opening the discussion, partially as a "response" to liberapay/liberapay.com#1209.)

[bisqwit]

Personally I believe the current wording is fine. The reason for “legal” is obvious, and “contractual” covers the cases where a mandatory component / service, such as the payment processor, has additional restrictions. Anything else would be arbitrary and a slippery slope, although not unheard of in today’s world: It has become increasingly common that an Internet service has begun arbitrarily banning their users for what are essentially thoughtcrimes, such as having the wrong political opinion.

[trebmuh]

+1 for keeping the "neutrality" principle.

[Changaco]

Relevant opinion of a user (posted on Mastodon a month ago):

I don't know what kind of problematic users caused Mangopay to cut #Liberapay off. We can only guess.

I'll bet it wasn't free software developers of well known free software projects though, so if supporting free software development is Liberapay's goal, they made a mistake in choosing to be neutral.

(Perhaps they have a larger goal, that's fine, but that seems a reasonable goal for them to me.)

[aggsol]

There is more than FOSS, artists and authors are IMO also very welcome to Liberapay. Drawing political comics or writing erotic fantasy novels should not get you banned from Liberapay. I also vote +1 for the neutrality principle. For me the libera in Liberapay is more important than the pay.

[MartinDelille]

I think we should make a list of subject that we should ban like racism, negationist or stuff like https://liberapay.com/E*****D****** (closed)

[Changaco]

@bisqwit In theory you're right, the current wording prevents Liberapay from arbitrarily banning people, but in practice users get kicked out anyway, because payment processors aren't neutral, so Liberapay's neutrality is moot.

[Changaco]

One problem with the current version of article 10 is the word "obligation". It basically means that we can't ban anyone unless we're ordered to do so by a court or a payment processor.

In theory this is good as it provides the maximum level of protection to users, but in practice users aren't protected at all, because payment processors like Mangopay do make arbitrary decisions, including kicking out hundreds of people just because there have been a few "bad" ones in the past.

It might be better to loosen the neutrality principle a little so that we can exclude users if we deem them to be a significant risk.

[MartinDelille]

A terrible documentary about moderation (in french and german): https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/069881-000-A/les-nettoyeurs-du-web-the-cleaners/