Moderation is one of those things people don’t really notice when it is working.
Well. A few do. Usually when they start hurling slurs around and find out that their post got removed. Or if the account has a history of bad behaviour that they’ve been politely asked to leave.
For everyone else, things just feel a little more chill.
And people absolutely notice when moderation is not working. Usually because they are being harassed, harangued, abused, targeted, or browbeaten by trolls.
Not chill.
A lot of people have told us they came to Gander because they want something calmer. More respectful. Less driven by outrage. A place where conversation can still be lively, political, funny, heartfelt, and human without turning into the Hagersville Tire Fire.
So far so good. It’s really a place where the trolls don’t shine.
The reason? We’re not here to moderate topics, or opinions. Our moderation approach centres behaviour and how we communicate our thoughts and ideas, rather than their thoughts and ideas themselves.
In short: disagreement is welcome. Abuse is not.
No TL;DR this time folks. This is something we hope you read in full.
Setting the Foundation
Our moderation approach is informed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
(Here’s a link to our Community Guidelines for reference)
Mercifully, that does not mean every moderation decision requires a constitutional law seminar.
It means we are guided by a Canadian understanding of expression, rights, responsibilities, and reasonable limits.
People should be able to share ideas, disagree, debate, criticize, joke, and challenge each other.
Though despite what some would have you believe, freedom of expression is not a free pass for abuse.
We also draw from Canadian values and norms, journalistic ethics, trust and safety best practices, principles of Truth and Reconciliation, and expert input (we love expert input).
Smarter people have worked on a lot of these challenges for longer than we have. Wherever we could we informed this work by looking at tested Canadian institutions and Canadian norms:
- The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
- Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) Ethics Guidelines, CWA Canada Media Union Code and others
- Research and publications created by the Canadian Human Rights Commission
- The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada 94 Calls to Action
- Various academic and ethics standards from Canadian universities (Educational, Documentary, Scientific or Artistic exemptions and too many others to list here)
The goal is to make Gander a social network you actually feel good about opening.
A healthy community can handle disagreement. It can’t thrive when harassment, hate, threats, impersonation, exploitation, or harmful misinformation stifle participation.
Piecing Together a Cultural Mosaic
Canada is a country shaped by a wide range of cultures, languages, identities, and lived experiences. Gander should reflect that reality.
Our Community Guidelines are designed to welcome this diversity while rejecting behaviour and content that targets people because of who they are.
This includes protections against harassment and hate speech directed at cultural, religious, or linguistic groups, including Indigenous communities.
Gander also explicitly prohibits the denial of historical harms, including the history and legacy of residential schools.
At the same time, we want to encourage civil discourse across political views, cultural perspectives, and lived experiences. Disagreement is part of healthy conversation. The goal is to ensure those conversations remain respectful and constructive.
Practical moderation, practically
Gander uses a mix of proactive software, community reports, and human review.
Here is the gist of it:
When something is posted, automated systems may flag content that appears to break the rules. In the clearest cases, such as explicit pornography or child sexual abuse material, content can be removed automatically. This gets them off the platform quickly before they can cause harm.
Those are the obvious cases. For more complex cases, a human review process kicks in.
A moderator looks at the post, the context, the account history, and the relevant guideline. They document the reason for any action taken, so decisions can be reviewed if needed. If a decision is especially nuanced, more people on the Gander team may weigh in.
Depending on the situation, we can:
- remove a post
- add a label or context
- warn an account
- suspend or remove an account
- Or just contact the poster and say “hiya, did you know this is misinformation?”
No doubt, moderation is about taking down content down that needs to come down. It is also about knowing when not to.
And when it’s appropriate, we’re pretty keen on calling folks in. Believe it or not, this actually works not every guideline breach is done maliciously.
Nuance, context, and EDSA exemptions
Some content is sensitive, but still important.
That is where EDSA exemptions (aka Educational, Documentary, Scientific, and Artistic content) come in.
We allow certain material when it has clear value in one of those contexts, even if similar content would normally be restricted or removed.
For example, a post about childbirth, medical care, war reporting, historical documentation, protest coverage, public safety, or art may be difficult to see. But it may also help people understand something real and important.
Buuuut that does not mean anything goes.
EDSA content still has to follow the guidelines. It cannot be shared to shock, harass, exploit, sexualize, threaten, or dehumanize people. It cannot include illegal content, child sexual abuse material, explicit pornography*, or content that creates serious safety risks.
(*Until we have NSFW filters and sensitivity screens in for permissible adult content)
This is one of the many reasons moderation can’t only be automated.
A system can detect nudity, violence, or graphic imagery. But it can’t understand whether the content is medical, journalistic, educational, artistic, exploitative, or harmful.
Sometimes this means having very real policy conversations about whether, ontologically speaking, a voodoo doll is satire, art, harassment, or a credible threat.
Platform governance is glamorous like that.
The answer, shockingly, is that we need to take context into account when making these decisions.
EDSA exemptions help us avoid two bad outcomes: removing important content just because it is difficult, and leaving harmful content up just because someone claims it has value.
The aim is balance: clear boundaries, with room for context. Safety, without flattening every tough topic into a binary yes or no.
Hate speech, harassment, and hard conversations
Gander is built for a broad Canadian community. That means different languages, identities, histories, beliefs, politics, and lived experiences.
We want Gander to reflect that.
We also know healthy communities need clear rules.
Gander is not here to police what people think.
Your opinions are your own.
But how those opinions are conveyed is something we pay attention to.
People can debate politics. They can criticize public figures. They can challenge ideas. They can be sharp, funny, skeptical, or frustrated. They don’t even have to be nice… necessarily.
But if the point of your post is to intimidate, dehumanize, abuse, or make someone feel unsafe because of who they are, then yeah. That post is coming down.
Gander does not allow content that attacks people because of who they are, including race, religion, ethnicity, culture, language, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, or Indigenous identity.
We take a clear stance against slurs, targeted harassment, threats, exclusionary rhetoric, and denial of historical harms, including the history and legacy of residential schools.
Put plainly: you are not being moderated because we dislike your opinion.
You are being moderated because of your behaviour. If you don’t like someone that’s fine. But we won’t tolerate overt, thinly veiled, or even allusions to threats or violence.
Sorry, not sorry. At all.
Misinformation and public harm
Gander takes a harm-based approach to misinformation.
That means we pay close attention on false or misleading content that could cause real-world harm.
This includes false claims about medical treatments or public health emergencies, misinformation that could create threats to public safety, misleading content about elections or civic processes, synthetic media shared to deceive, and impersonation of people, companies, brands, or public institutions.
We are not here to tell people what to think. We have enough thinking of our own to do.
We are here to protect the integrity of the space so people can make better decisions with better context.
That also means recognizing the difference between misinformation and satire, parody, opinion, cultural critique, and honest mistakes.
It ain’t easy. Nor is it perfect. The internet is a wild wild place. And there’s a LOT of misinfo to evaluate. But that’s our obligation to the community here.
Calling people in
Sometimes we take posts down. Sometimes things are extreme enough that we have to boot an account.
But not every moderation moment is quite so dramatic.
Sometimes people break a rule because they are trying to cause harm. Sometimes they are spamming, harassing, misleading people on purpose, or using the platform in bad faith.
When that happens, we act.
But sometimes people make mistakes. We make mistakes too.
Maybe someone shared something outdated. Maybe they misunderstand a source. Perhaps they post something without realizing the context. Or they repeat a claim that sounds true but is not.
That does not always mean they are malicious.
There is a difference between being wrong and acting in bad faith.
When it makes sense, the approach is to call people in before we shut people down. That might mean adding a label, giving context, sending a warning, or explaining which guideline applies.
Someone even thanked us recently for flagging misinformation they had shared. They didn’t mean to mislead anyone. They appreciated the correction.
That is the kind of community we want to facilitate.
One where people can learn. Where corrections are possible. Where being wrong does not automatically make someone a villain.
Of course, this has limits.
If someone is threatening people, targeting them with hate, spreading harmful misinformation on purpose, impersonating others, or repeatedly ignoring the rules, we are not going to treat that like an innocent misunderstanding.
But when a good-faith correction can solve the problem, that is usually better than dropping the hammer.
Moderation isn’t strictly about enforcement. Sometimes it’s guidance, connection, and open dialogue.
What community members can do
Good moderation is part of the culture and tone on Gander.
People guide Gander by choosing how they engage, what they report, and when they step away from a conversation that is going nowhere good.
You can help by:
- reporting posts that appear to break the rules
- muting or blocking people you do not want to hear from
- disengaging when a conversation turns unproductive
- giving people the benefit of the doubt when something is unclear
- helping set the tone you want to see
Software, systems, and processes are all part of the puzzle. In the end though, moderation is about people and how we choose to conduct ourselves.
This is ongoing work
Moderation is never done.
As Gander grows, we will keep refining our guidelines, tools, reporting flows, review process, appeals process, and enforcement standards. We’ll also make sure we report on this stuff in clear and accessible ways.
We will make mistakes. We will learn. We will improve.
That is part of building a community with care.
Gander should be a place where people feel safe enough to participate, free enough to express themselves, and respected enough to come back.
That’s what we mean by Peace, Order, and Good Platform Governance.
Not flashy. Not perfect.
But practical, principled, and worth doing well.
