Edit 2025-01-13: LW has indicated they will be clarifying these rules soon. In the mean time, the community will remain locked until those are updated and deemed acceptable.
So the LW Team put out an announcement on new, site-wide moderation policy (see post link). I’ve defended, to many a downvote, pretty much every major decision they’ve made, but I absolutely cannot defend this one. In short, mods are expected to counter pretty much every batshit claim rather than mod it as misinformation, trolling, attack on groups, etc.
My rebuttal (using my main account) to the announcement: https://dubvee.org/comment/3541322
We’re going to allow some “flat earth” comments. We’re going to force some moderators to accept some “flat earth” comments. The point of this is that you should be able to counter those comments with words, and not need moderation/admin tools to do so.
(emphases mine)
Me: What if, to use the recent example from Meta, someone comes into a LGBT+ community and says they think being gay is a mental illness and /or link some quack study? Is that an attack on a group or is it “respectful dissent”?
LW: A lot of attacks like that are common and worth refuting once in awhile anyway. It can be valuable to show the response on occasion
I understand what they’re trying to address here (highly encourage you to read the linked post), but the way they’re going about it is heavy handed and reeks of “both sides”-ing every community, removing agency from the community moderators who work like hell to keep these spaces safe and civil, and opening the floodgates for misinformation and “civil” hate speech. How this new policy fits with their Terms of Service is completely lost to me.
I’ll leave the speculation as to whether Musk dropped LW a big check as an exercise to the reader.
For now, this community is going dark in protest and I encourage other communities who may disagree with this new policy to join. Again, I understand the problem that is trying to be addressed, but this new policy, as-written, is not the way to do it.
“Communities should not be overly moderated in order to enforce a specific narrative. Respectful disagreement should be allowed in a smaller proportion to the established narrative.”
It looks extremely reasonable to be honest
Am I missing something or is this policy change to combat the tankie mods who are just banning left and right for anything that doesn’t match the tankie narrative?
As I understand it, yes, that is the intent of the policy. However, as-written and presumably as it is to be enforced for all mods LW-wide, it has wide-reaching implications with worse side-effects.
Basically, the proper tool is a scalpel and they brought out a machete.
Fair enough. I hear where you’re coming from. Is there an alternative that stops the little fiefdoms that you have in mind?
Genuine, open question because I do feel like something has to be done about the ban happy gang.
My stance has always been keep the server/instance rules generic / non-micromanaging and let the communities do what they do (so long as they’re in compliance with the generic server rules). That’s pretty much been LW’s stance until yesterday.
Re: fiefdoms
Many times I’ve seen new communities spring up as alternatives and people slowly (sometimes rapidly) moved over organically. That’s one of the big benefits to the Fediverse. My experience has been that, letting the Fediverse do what it does, the problems will generally sort themselves out as bad mods/instances are identified and avoided with alternatives springing up to fill the gap.
Hell yeah! I’m with you on this one. Maybe I should start intentionally brigading communities and start spewing fascist bullshit just so they can see how dumb this rule is
I’m with you in spirit, but I can’t and won’t endorse that kind of behavior (not even saying that to cover my ass; I’m truly against it).
However, should that occur organically (and it will), feel free to shine a “I told you so” spotlight onto it.
Admirable admiralpatrick
But @GrammarPolice@lemmy.world you already do that.
Why are you on my ass bro?
Brother*
Ain’t no way you just correct bro to ‘brother’
Yeah I decided to move off of lemmy.world recently. Seems like they’ve been making a lot of bad decisions.
Your opinion seems valid. I’d be fine with leaving a flat earth post up, locked, with a comment that OP has turd brains.
The “different sides” argument is a fallacy. If 100 geologists say the planet is round, and one geologist says it’s flat, both sides don’t deserve equal amounts of space to discuss it.
I get where you’re coming from. I’m curious to see how all this plays out.
A user in one of my communities raised this salient point:
https://lemmy.world/comment/14406565
I will say, if Musk dropped a check, I never saw it. :)
That’s basically the long-form of how I feel about it. Honestly, I was having a hard time staying composed while I responded to the announcement thread; I was livid and absolutely shaking.
Can’t see the comment. “Server Error”.
From @TheBananaKing@lemmy.world
Look, I respect the intent, but as someone who’s been on forums since the freaking 90s, I can say with confidence that that’s a toxic meltdown waiting to happen.
You need at least two bitter jaded cybersec experts and at least one game theory person on your team to stand a chance with this kind of thing.
Can you provide supporting documents that disprove :nasty insinuation about you:? Of course not. Do you want to have to keep being required to? No.
Can people provide supporting documents disproving :nasty insinuation about :demographic::? Also no. And they don’t want to have to keep being required to.
So there’s the constant tide of exhaustion of people being constantly undermined and dehumanised, and being forced to either respond to yet another argument that :demographic: don’t really count as people, or to just let it ride and try to ignore it. And then the wreckers use it as rage-bait to get people angry to the point of getting banned, and others walk off in disgust, more trolls smell blood in the water and the whole thing spirals.
It’s the damn nazi-bar problem: even ‘just a few’ nazis smirking in the corner create a hostile and unpleasant environment that other people don’t want to be in. And so they drive the good posters off, reducing the opposition - and within a depressingly short time, you’ve got yourself an alt-right shithole full of trolls and sociopaths that just love being able to exert that kind of power.
I’ve seen it approximately three bajillion times so far, and god dammit why won’t you youngins learn.
Yes, powermods and power-tripping mods are a problem. But the approach to it you’ve chosen was gamed out and defeated in detail probably before you were even alive.
And oh god, if you try to parse a rule about what categories of opinions and statements are covered by this, the rules lawyers are going to clown-shibari the entire damn site.
The only two rules I’ve ever seen be effective over time are:
- Don’t make us ban you
- Don’t make us de-mod you
and probably hard-cap the number of communities one person can mod.
Have other stuff on top of that, but they’re load-bearing and non-optional.
And I get that the site is trying to be a neutral platform that’s insulated from the content, but honestly I don’t think that’s feasible. Sometimes you need to just throw people out of your bar regardless of the exact phrasing of the terms and conditions, and that means picking a side.
Also can we have a better markdown parser that doesn’t turn angle brackets into failed html markup sometime please
TLDR;
- LW policy perspective --> I agree on balance
- LW enforcing it on all LW communities --> I disagree as it is not necessary, but it’s their instance, so…
- Fediverse strength --> Move your community to another instance. I’ll susbscribe if you do.
I can see both sides.
On the one hand, history is replete with popular opinions that were later shown to be incorrect. One of the reasons I chose to move to Lemmy was the inherent resistance of the fediverse to the enforcement of a particular narrative, and the inherent potential for respectful discussion and debate. As long as people remain respectful, my inclination is to leave up content that I disagree with. Please note, it has to be respectful, not merely polite.
On the other hand, there’s no shortage of evidence that deliberate misinformation remains a threat in online communities. This is why we implemented no astroturfing and no sealioning rules in the larger community I help mod.
Holding these two competing thoughts, I think that points of view that run (edit: contrary) to the current scientific understanding should not be removed provided that the quantity is limited, it’s respectful and it’s not-harmful. But that’s just my perspective, and how we handle it in the communities I mod. The beauty of the fediverse is that I also have no problems with someone setting up a competing community that takes a much less tolerant perspective and has a rule that participation is conditional on agreement to certain perspectives.
I’m mostly with you, though with a much more strict stance against allowing misinformation/conspiracy/etc. On that:
The beauty of the fediverse is that I also have no problems with someone setting up a competing community that takes a much less tolerant perspective and has a rule that participation is conditional on agreement to certain perspectives.
That’s what this new moderation policy abolishes: That competing community is now apparently required to platform misinformation, propaganda, et al while also being more or less required to spend time refuting every claim lest it stand unchallenged. As I said in the announcement post, it’s holding the doors open and saying “no, after you” to gish-galloping the mods and platforming every crackpot conspiracy, propaganda, “civil” hate speech, etc so long as they’re civil and not spamming it.
Yeah, the Fediverse allows for “just moving to another instance” but for the largest Lemmy instance to force a “both sides” stance on its entirety is a slap in the face.
Vote manipulation is common in Lemmy. While the actor described in that post has changed tactics (and that post barely scratched the surface), they certainly did not stop. All they need to do is boost the misinformation and downvote the rebuttals when previously, the misinformation would just be correctly modded.
though with a much more strict stance against allowing misinformation/conspiracy/etc
Facts are sacred and freedom of speech is not a freedom to lie.
I am all for moderating outright lies. I am strongly against mods removing views they disagree with under the pretence of “trolling” or other made up reason.
Tl;dr
But: Yes, we need more respectful dissent.
There are so many people who no longer talk to people who think differently. I don’t know whether it’s cowardice or whether they’ve simply never learned to do so, or for whatever reason.
Yes, we need more
respectfuldissent.This. Too many mods don’t understand their role and mistake it with being a censor. While I don’t think I have seen it in this particular sub (or at least I don’t remember seeing it) , I have definitely seen it in the others.
We need more dissent in general, and of course it should be respectful, whereever possible.
(i did not mean to say that our existing dissent should become more respectful)
Yeah, no. I disagree with the “respectful” part. I am finding it as an attempt to further americanise the discussion.
If after debating a guy for a few posts I can see that he either doesn’t understand what he is talking about or, more often, he is pretending not to understand, I will call him a fucking idiot. Adults should be able to take it.
further americanise the discussion
What is that?
I guess neither of us are any kind of American.
he either doesn’t understand what he is talking about or, more often, he is pretending not to understand, I will call him a fucking idiot.
You should not do that. It’s cheap and you are devaluing your part of the discussion.
Adults should be able to take it.
If it were real life, you would occasionally earn yourself a fistful of attitude readjustment 😉
What is that?
I guess neither of us are any kind of American.
This is the way I see it as I often see “ohh, that was rude, be nice” from Americans (not necessarily just here).
You should not do that. It’s cheap and you are devaluing your part of the discussion
I disagree. It is factual and helps to put things in the relevant proportion.
If it were real life, you would occasionally earn yourself a fistful of attitude readjustment
I am doing the same in the real life, although I found out people are much less willing to pretend they don’t understand the argument when it is verbal so it doesn’t happen often. I have never been into a fight since my teenage years.
I never said I was against the goal they were trying to achieve, just the means by which they’re using to achieve it.
I never said I was against the goal
From the parts of your lengthy texts that I understood, I got the strong impression that you are against (and not much else than “against”)
