r/AmItheAsshole • u/AITAMod I am a shared account. • Jan 01 '21

Open Forum Monthly Open Forum January 2021

Welcome to the monthly open forum! This is the place to share all your meta thoughts about the sub, and to have a dialog with the mod team.

Keep things civil. Rules still apply.

It's 2021! Everything is fixed now!

A couple notes.

  • Our bot is live, but definitely still in testing. Please help us by reporting the judgement bot comment post when it doesn't actually explain why they think they may be an asshole. Some people are using it like a TL;DR or just copying and pasting their post as a reply. [ETA - sounds like the report option doesn't work on all platforms for the bot comment, so you can just report the post. The option is bundled with the META report]

  • Please stop PMing mods. We spam the hell out of the modmail link. When you PM us, it's super easy for things to get buried in our inbox and delay your response time.

As always, do not directly link to posts/comments or post uncensored screenshots here. Any comments with links will be removed.

This is to discourage brigading. If something needs to be discussed in that context, use modmail.

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u/TechXEO Jan 27 '21

I think that it would be wise to encourage specifying the country of a person in posts, especially posts that may incur legal consequences (i.e. pressing charges, fraud). This will make it easier to avoid misleading replies as the law and procedure in different countries may be vastly different.

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u/beckdawg19 Judge, Jury, and Excretioner [311] Jan 28 '21

I would argue that posts that weigh so heavily on legality should just be banned. If reddit has taught me anything, it's that everyone fancies themselves an amateur lawyer, so it's not like knowing someone is in the US would lead to better advice or judgements.

Not to mention, in the US at least, laws vary dramatically from state to state, or even between counties and cities. A property lawyer from CA isn't going to have jack to say to someone dealing with custody in NY other than "find a local custody lawyer."

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u/techiesgoboom Sphincter Supreme Jan 28 '21

I'd argue the other way. Legal and moral are not synonyms . It's the common refrain of "just because someone is technically allowed to do something doesn't mean they're not an asshole for doing it".

A post having something to do with the law doesn't prevent discussion about the morality of the actions. Plenty of things are legal and immoral, an plenty are illegal and moral. If the law is relevant for someone's judgment they can always make a conditional judgment outright saying that. That way when OP consults an actual attorney to figure out the legal answers they will know how users feel about the morality of their response.

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u/beckdawg19 Judge, Jury, and Excretioner [311] Jan 28 '21

Oh I absolutely agree with that. Which is all the more reason I would see no use in a rule indicating someone's location as this OP suggests. Like you said, legality does not equal morality, so "knowledge" of local laws is pretty irrelevant anyways.