Moderation Guidelines

This page is specifically for Soupcan Community moderators to follow as their own stricter/more stringent set of rules, since they have more weight when it comes to making decisions for Soupcan markings, and it’s more important to have consistency among the moderation team. For this reason, a number of scenarios are listed below, categorized as ‘Major signals’, ‘Minor signals’, and ‘Investigate signals’.

• Major signals are signs that by themselves are enough to mark a user red with no further requirement.
• Minor signals that form a pattern (3 occurrences) are enough to mark a user red.
  • You can use the search feature to find other examples
• Investigative signals may help to give context to minor signals, in that any 3 occurrences of them count as one minor signal, or provide more certainty to your judgment.
• ‘Not reportable’ are things that may be construed as transphobic but should not be considered as such for reporting.

These rules are guidelines and human judgment is more important than following the exact guideline. This is just a way to set a base level of understanding. When reporting, include the tweet URL of the most egregious example, or multiple if there isn’t one that stands out specifically / explain briefly why if more context is needed.

Major signals

• Memes, graphics, or messages condoning trans suicide, genocide, or violence against trans people
• “Biotrans” / other 4chan psyops
• Harassing someone by misgendering (e.g. YWNBAW, etc.)
• Deadnaming someone on purpose
• Posting pre-transition pictures of someone without consent or with intent of harm
• Using slurs with intent of harm (some trans people use slurs, and that is not by itself cause for marking)
• Heavily supporting “LGB without TQ”, “protect women’s sports/spaces”, etc. narratives
  • Retweets and likes alone are not enough, support needs to come from their own words
• Spreading fearmongering such as collages of “trans” criminals, portraying a negative message about the entire trans demographic
• Asking explicitly to be added to the blocklist

Minor signals

• GC colors, emojis, flags, slogans such as “Adult Human Female” in name or bio
• Retweeting/liking transphobic content (each instance counts as one occurrence)
• Trans ignorance by itself isn’t transphobic:-
  • Espousing bioessentialism or a biological view of sex, or misgendering accidentally or without the intent of harm
  • Believing that being transgender is a mental illness
• Using hashtags like #TransWomenAreConMen #TeamTERF #KPSS #NoXYinXX, etc. (Each tweet containing any of these counts as one occurrence)
• Username contains TERF, XX/XY
• Indicating disgust, disdain or dislike of trans people as a whole

Investigative signals

• Following other red users (only counts once, not once per user)
• “Anti-woke”, XX/XY, “protecting children” (groomer narrative) etc., in bio
• Username or bio mentions radfem
• Asking questions like “What is a woman?” - investigate to see if this is sealioning or sincere

NOT reportable (unless covered by above, obviously)

• Arguing with a trans person or ally
• Insulting, disagreeing or being mean to a trans person
• Calling trans people or allies names

Exceptions

• Accounts dedicated to following/tracking transphobia
• News and other large aggregate accounts, unless they are systematically transphobic
  • Prefer reporting the journalist or writer of transphobic content instead
• Jokes can be excepted if they are received well by the trans community

Further notes

• Trans people and allies can also be transphobic, they are not held to a different standard

More to come WIP

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