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.
What happended to “Don’t feed the trolls”? I thought it’s shared expirience that giving attention to trolls like that only gives them motivation to keep on going. Ignoring them is the only way to stop them from spamming.
Well I suppose it’s a good thing .world isn’t the entirety of lemmy.
It is particularly egregious that they decided the flat earth thing was the example they were going to run with. We don’t need to refute it every time a dunce brings it up and it’s nobody’s job to attempt educating the willfully ignorant. If the counter opinion is a thoroughly dead horse that’s been beaten into paste, we collectively expect that to get downvoted and or moderated if it’s actively harmful.
As somebody running a cryptography forum elsewhere, if I was forced to accept lies that endanger people I’d rather shut down the forum instead.
I can imagine lots of other moderators in science and medical forums would hold the same opinion.
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.
Holy shit this is such a bad policy lol. World is known for being too aggressive at deleting a lot of content they really shouldn’t be deleting, but this policy really doesn’t seem like it will improve that. The issue is most of the time if they want something removed they do so and then add a policy after to justify it, meaning that regardless of this rule people can’t “advocate for violence”, but they will be able to post misinformation and hate speech since apparently “LGBTQ people are mentally ill” hasn’t been debunked enough elsewhere and a random comment chain in Lemmy is where it needs to be done. Never mind the actual harm those sorts of statements cause to individuals and the community at large.
All I can see this doing is any actual types of that get wrongly overly censored will still do so since the world admins believe they are justified in doing so, while other provably false information will be required to stay up since the admins believe the mods aren’t justified in removing it.
This policy seems to only apply to actual misinformation too, not just subjective debates. So if there’s a comment thread about whether violence is justified in protest would likely have one side removed, while I guess someone arguing that every trans person is a pedophile would be forced to stay up and be debated. Its like the exact opposite of how moderation should work lol.
Oh also something I just realized, they basically want to force mods to debate misinformation, which is literally a tatic used to spread disinformation in the first place. By getting people to debunk a ridiculous claim it lends credence to the idea as something worth discussing and also spreads it to more people. I feel like the intentions behind this are noble, but it’s been proven that presenting evidence doesn’t really get people to change their opinion all that often. The whole thing is super misguided.
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 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.
Move the community to a different Instance?
It’s an option, sure. But (at this point anyway) it’s more about making a statement and trying to bring visibility to the horrible side effects of this new policy.
I’m not trying to burn bridges, lol, merely shine a light and hope the LW Team sees it.
I think the policy is too heavy-handed. Forget who’s right and wrong, keeping a discussion topical to the post is really helpful to help the community grow.
On a more practical level, enforcing this at the admin level is going to require a lot more oversight and work from the administrators.
It definitely does not seem like a well thought out solution for sure.
If u move instances can i take over this one. Allow people who want to see decenting opinions to choose or do u not believe people should be given that choice?
Why don’t you create your own community if you care so much about giving people a choice?
Cos this one already has a bunch of followers.
Why wait? Make your own community right now and moderate it how you like
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”)
If u legitimately support an idea but not an implementation then you would have proposed an alternative implementation that you belive is better.
U failed to do this and thus i am lead to believe you dont actually support the idea u just want to kill it so u can maintain your authoritarian rule. Forcing everyone to bend to ur protest is a perfect example of ur need for absolute unchecked power.
I dare u to delete this comment.
If u legitimately support an idea but not an implementation then you would have proposed an alternative implementation that you belive is better.
This is dumb. It’s possible to see the issues with something and point it out independently of having a better suggestion. It’s like if you had a bad dish at a restaurant but you couldn’t criticise it because you couldn’t provide a recommendation to make it better.
If u cant point out what is wrong and thus how to improve it then u dont deserve an opinion.
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
I’ll leave the speculation as to whether Musk dropped LW a big check as an exercise to the reader.
And u call the right wingers the conspiracy theorists. Musk could not give 2 fucks about lemmy.
The lw admins have realised to compete as a platform in the marketplace if ideas u cannot censor ideas. Musk made the first move meta has been forces to follow as so is lemmy.
Why are u so concerned that u can be held accountable for any authoritarian censorship u may partake in?
Also i dare u to delete this comment.
Delete it? I can barely read it.
Gotta love of grammar, Nazi, for always contributing something substantive to any communication.
So you (self-admittedly maining on another instance (in reality the admin of that instance)) are locking an entire community on LW in protest of their admin policy on their instance? That’s bold, to put it mildly. You instance-ban users for downvoting, so it makes sense you find this change personally unreasonable.
Myself? I don’t think the new change is a great idea, but I prefer it to short-fuse blanket bannings like that.
Yep, sure do! But only on my own instance in accordance with our polices; communities I moderate elsewhere are modded according to those instances’ rules and TOS.
If someone does nothing but give out downvotes (the upvotes-given to downvotes-given ratio threshold for the automated ban is quite generous), then they’re contributing nothing but negativity and shitting on things for everyone else. If everything here displeases them so much, they can and should go somewhere else.
I stand by (and have reviewed) every automated “Mass downvoting” ban my automod has issued.
Yep, sure do! But only on my own instance in accordance with our polices; communities I moderate elsewhere are modded according to those instances’ rules and TOS.
Your soft-banning of anyone fully participating in this community on LW belies that claim.
the upvotes-given to downvotes-given ratio threshold for the automated ban is quite generous
“Generous” downvote banning. Now that’s an oxymoron.
Damn calling em out on their own community. Thats almost as funny as it is bold.
