"While we believe in the concept of freedom of thought and freedom of expression, Libera.Chat does not operate on the basis of absolute freedom of speech". Ah I see: https://libera.chat/policies
I would feel way more confident if they defined all the terms used in this document e.g. "various forms of antisocial behaviour are forbidden", "discrimination", "any other behaviour meant to deliberately put upon a person harassment, alarm or distress".
The vagueness is rather alarming and distressing to me.
The problem with extremely well defined limits is that those who choose to be assholes will ride up to that line and push it constantly.
Then use the defense "the rules don't say I can't call you a butthead", so the rules get updated then they push some more and the cycle repeats.
With fuzzier boundaries if someone is being an ass you can kick them the first time. This does of course mean you need a decent set of moderators and an appeals process to prevent people power tripping.
In my experience those kind of clauses are more often used to silence wrongthink than to rid communities of people who are truly disruptive. You can count me out. The chilling effect is real.
I would feel way more confident if they defined all the terms used in this document e.g. "various forms of antisocial behaviour are forbidden", "discrimination", "any other behaviour meant to deliberately put upon a person harassment, alarm or distress".
The vagueness is rather alarming and distressing to me.