There will be a new announcement soon to clarify.
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.
Humans are naturally inclined to believe a single narrative when they’re only presented with a single narrative. That’s the basis of how fiction works. You can’t tell someone a story if they’re questioning every paragraph. However, a well placed sentence questioning that narrative gives the reader the option to chose. They’re no longer in a story being told by one author, and they’re free to choose the narrative that makes sense to them, even if one narrative is being pushed much more heavily than the other.
Unfortunately, some malicious actors are hijacking this natural tendency to be invested in fiction, and they’re using it to create absurd, cult-like trends in non-fiction. They’re using this for various nefarious ends, to turn us against each other, to generate profit, and to affect politics both domestically and internationally.
In a fully anonymous social media platform, we can’t counter this fully. But we can prune some of the most egregious echo chambers.
We’re aware that this policy is going to be subjective. It won’t be popular in all instances. 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. One sentence that doesn’t jive with the overall narrative should be easily countered or ignored.
It’s harder to just dismiss that comment if it’s interrupting your fictional story that’s pretending to be real. “The moon is upside down in Australia” does a whole lot more damage to the flat earth argument than “Nobody has crossed the ice wall” does to the truth. The purpose of allowing both of these is to help everyone get a little closer to reality and avoid incubating extreme cult-like behavior online.
A user should be able to (respectfully, infrequently) post/comment about a study showing marijuana is a gateway drug to !marijuana without moderation tools being used to censor that content.
Of course this isn’t about marijuana. There’s a small handful of self-selected moderators who are very transparently looking to push their particular narrative. And they don’t want to allow discussion. They want to function as propaganda and an incubator. Our goal is to allow a few pinholes of light into the Truman show they wish to create. When those users’ pinholes are systematically shut down, we as admins can directly fix the issue.
We don’t expect this policy to be perfect. Admins are not aware of everything that happens on our instances and don’t expect to be. This is a tool that allows us to trim the most extreme of our communities and guide them to something more reasonable. This policy is the board that we point to when we see something obscene on !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com so that we can actually do something about it without being too authoritarian ourselves. We want to enable our users to counter the absolute BS, and be able to step in when self-selected moderators silence those reasonable people.
Some communities will receive an immediate notice with a link to this new policy. The most egregious communities will comply, or their moderators will be removed from those communities.
Moderators, if someone is responding to many root comments in every thread, that’s not “in a smaller proportion” and you’re free to do what you like about that. If their “counter” narrative posts are making up half of the posts to your community, you’re free to address that. If they’re belligerent or rude, of course you know what to do. If they’re just saying something you don’t like, respectfully, and they’re not spamming it, use your words instead of your moderation abilities.
Elon, Zuckerberg, whatever weirdos run Lemmy.world. The toadies are all lining up for Trump’s new world order, huh? Way to highlight the potential weak points of the fediverse when a server’s admins decide to jump on the big tech trend of forcing mods and users to accept disinformation cluttering their feed as if it’s equal to facts so long as it’s written politely. At least we know who’s the asshole at those companies. You sycophants are faceless.
This is my last post on this username. And I’ll never subscribe to another Lemmy.world community again. This server can no longer be trusted. At this point you people might as well just make spez an admin. Your administrative goals are in sync. Even your jargon like “respectful dissent™” is just a repackaging of Reddit’s “valuable discussion™“ excuse for allowing disinformation on their platform.
Wouldn’t this also do the opposite? prevent a sub like the_donald or lemmygrad from just banning everyone they don’t like? Did this place have professional fact checkers before?
You can ban the_donald for attacks on people or groups, same for lemmygrad. Having flat earthers in every community is a parallel matter.
Let’s say every community allows one lunatic post. It’s downvoted to hell and thoroughly refuted in the comments.
Every time someone tries to say the same thing again under a different post, the comment gets a reply “[lunatic opinion] was refuted under [lunatic post link] - you may comment there” and then the stray lunatic comment is removed. Only the reply stays to inform other lunatics. Other comments saying the same lunatic opinion again are removed, because the canonical reply linking the canonical lunatic post is already in the comments. All discussion about the lunatic opinion will be contained under the canonical lunatic post.
Would this work?
Straight up bullshit and a completely half-baked, ill-considered, ill-conceived idea. Completely disconnected from reality.
Please do not enshittify please do not enshittify please do not enshittify… Oh well too late
Just move to a better instance lol, wasn’t that the entire point of coming here? Lemmy.zip and Lemm.ee have been great.
Lemmy.zip is truly awesome
We’re going to allow some “flat earth” comments. We’re going to force some moderators to accept some “flat earth” comments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini's_law
So basically you’re saying people should be allowed to post blatant false information and everybody should try their best to tell them they’re wrong rather than doing the sensible thing of stopping false information spreading in the first place.
People who would post that stuff would never argue with good intentions and would often argue in bad faith. What you’re suggesting trolling should be allowed, moderators and community members need to waste their time engaging with controversial content nobody wants to see, and threads will have even more people fighting in them. Who decides when wrong info and propaganda posts are allowed to be removed? LW admins? You won’t be able to keep up and are guaranteed to incite distrust in your community either way.
I’m with reducing echo chambers and taking action on bad moderators that abuse their positions, but making the blanket statement that basically translates to “flat earthers are now welcome here whether you like it or not, get ready to see posts unironically arguing about why flat earth is right in your feed” surely can ring some bells on why this is a bad idea.
This is like the third time LW tried to be front-and-center in deciding how conversations should happen on Lemmy. You are the most popular Lemmy instance and most content is on your instance. This isn’t an experimental safe space instance to dictate how social media should work. Please understand that any weirdly aggressive stances you take affects everyone.
Do these “flat earth” opinions that we’re meant to treat with unearned respect include bigoted opinions? Because this is dangerously close to being a “don’t sass the nazis” policy.
No. The ToS still applies.
What a real Steve Huffman post. Really impressive.
Classic .world admins showing their constant incompetence
nice
they’re free to choose the narrative that makes sense to them, even if one narrative is being pushed much more heavily than the other.
This just translates to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean or “reversion to mediocrity”. Much like 🤬🤬🤬🤬it’s
/all, every time that mainstream spills into a community it ruins it and brings it closer to the mainstream.In biology, you may recognize some of these phenomena from biochemistry: osmosis and diffusion. The demand to disable the “semi-permeable membrane” ends the purpose of the compartment.
Either the invading posts/comments get removed or the influx of participants (including voting) has to be rationed somehow. Doing neither is not a discussion about narratives, it’s a mobbing. It’s the opposite of promoting discourse, as that setup heavily favors the “mainstream” narrative, the status quo.
I should mention that I’ve been a moderator of internet communities since before Web 2.0 and I find the moderation tools for Lemmy type platforms to be terrible. If the expectation is to not have practical moderation, but instead to separate into fedi-islands and block the problematic networks, well, that would be a very blunt way to get to the same goals. Instead of having moderators individually ban users, you have admins ban entire networks of users.
There is no getting away from the need for moderators. Musk proved that again since he took over Twitter. Zuckerberg is proving it again now. You’re not building a protopia by hampering moderation, you’re building a cyber-wasteland. Any success with that will be temporary, like a pump and dump: you get a period of growth and a honeymoon, and then the critical mass of assholes is achieved and they turn everything to shit, and then most users have to start searching for greener
pasturesfood forests to migrate to. Another term for that is unsustainable, it can’t last.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.
Rationality is much more complex than you think. The experience of the COVID-19 pandemic should’ve taught you that already, first hand. The simple model of persuasion by presenting reasonable arguments and evidence is wrong. There’s an entire field looking into cognitive biases that show how irrational humans are. How exactly do you plan to argue with people who believe in “alternative facts” and “post-truth”?
All I see in the article you posted is a lack of experience in dealing with bullshit, a lack of understanding of the viral or memetic nature of bullshit.
It’s harder to just dismiss that comment if it’s interrupting your fictional story that’s pretending to be real. “The moon is upside down in Australia” does a whole lot more damage to the flat earth argument than “Nobody has crossed the ice wall” does to the truth. The purpose of allowing both of these is to help everyone get a little closer to reality and avoid incubating extreme cult-like behavior online.
It’s disheartening that you haven’t learned yet that flateartherism is a variant of creationism, another religiously inspired pseudoscience.
Well said the majority will often want to oppress the minority.
The phrase “common sense” is flawed as the majority have been wrong about certain topics in the past like lobotomies being used to “correct problematic behaviour”.
I don’t have the time or desire to go around arguing with every tankie troll on the platform who says that the Ukraine war is the west’s fault or that the Holomodor or the Uyghur genocide or Tienamen Square massacre didn’t happen. They are too numerous and it accomplishes nothing.
I simply block them. Which leaves them to troll everyone else and spread more misinformation. Mods in communities should have every right to ban trolls as well, otherwise they will strangle said community and drive all sane people out.
I’m all for a good spirited conversation but that’s not what they want. They just want to drown out all conversation with their narrative.
Why not add subscribable block lists like Bluesky has? Then it would be easier to accept such a policy.
How about containing the trolls under one canonical troll post? See comment https://lemmy.world/comment/14443401
Okay, but one man’s lunatic is another man’s genius. Subscribable block lists allow you to tailor your blocking to the specific types of lunatics you dislike.
If the blocklist subscription isn’t part of Lemmy registration procedure, a new user will see tankies and leave.
I dunno, it seems to be working for Bluesky. But I agree, it should be part of the registration process or at least somewhere prominent in the UI so newbies know to do it. Probably with a primer and warning on what tankies are ;-).
Yep. Are the admins going to at least force mods on world to let me call them a tankie when they post tankie shit? Cause I got banned from a .world comm for exactly that.
Holomodor
Tienamen
At least learn to spell your Radio Free Europe/Asia propaganda before you try and position yourself as an educated person on it
I respectfully disagree with you being a tankie and an absolute shill for authoritarians and dictators.
Am I doing this right?
I respectfully disagree with you being a tankie
Well, don’t disagree with me being a tankie because I am a tankie.
You’re a shill for US imperialism by being against those who fought the hardest against it, and most if not all of your position on international policy falls in line with every guide point of the US Department of State. Using “tankie” as an insult you’re aligning yourself in the wrong side of the Korean war, in the wrong side of the Vietnam war, in the wrong side of the war in Afghanistan, in the wrong side of the invasion of Iraq… Am I doing this right?
What’s the difference between days and years? Putin said 3 year SMO right? To protect people in two specific regions? No wait it was to denazify Ukraine. No wait it was to prevent NATO expansion. No wait…
I don’t know why you assume I’m gonna defend Putin though? He’s a proto-fascist, I’m a communist, we don’t go well together you see? Why did you start doing whataboutism immediately?
Because putin is standing up to the evil US and their puppet NATO. Therefore he’s the best leader since Stalin.
Honestly it’s a safe bet tankies will defend Russia most of the time.
Putin is standing up to evil US and NATO, that doesn’t make him an angel, that’s not the only thing a communist cares about.
Again, who are you arguing against
I appreciate everything the .world admins do. As a mod of a community here, I also agree with the general concept of letting the community downvote posts that aren’t actually harmful in terms of hate/abuse. That being said, I think it would be wise to reformulate and reduce down this post to a straightforward announcement: what events precipitated this policy change, what are going to be permitted kinds of content, and what is not allowed. This post is just a kind of wandering philosophy right now.
That being said, I think it would be wise to reformulate and reduce down this post to a straightforward announcement:
Indeed. I know what they mean and why they arrived at this decision, and I agree with it, but I got bored half-way through.
Is there some context that could help clarify what’s led to this change?
Similarly, could you provide clearer examples, and how this is intended to fit into the existing Terms of Service/Rules? Despite the length of the post, the way in which it’s written leaves this change too ambiguous to be easily understood, which I think is evident both from the voting and commenting patterns.
In my opinion, my questions should have already been addressed in the post, and I think may have helped reception of this change (supposing at minimum it’s to curtail some abusive moderation practices).
“The moon is upside down in Australia”
Happy i migrated off of lemmy.world some months ago with the piracy mess.
Same here. While I appreciate the work LW sysadmins do, this kind of decision just seems questionable
“A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World While the Truth Is Putting On Its Shoes.”
This policy change will only reward bad actors. This sort of behavior needs to be stopped ASAP, simply correcting the record after the damage is done is not enough.
Have you seen the thread that brought this about? It was one group of vegans lamenting at a formerly vegan restaurant which added a small number of non-vegan options to try and attract enough customers not to close, and then closing regardless when that didn’t work. Then there was respectful debate as to whether it is better for every restaurant to have a small number of vegan options, or for one restaurant to be 100% vegan. The mods of that community shut the whole thing down, despite it being incredibly respectful, because to them any possible concession in any circumstances makes you a “fake vegan” and worthy of a ban.
This rule change could be problematic if applied in the wrong circumstances, but it’s being enacted for a very clear and beneficial purpose.
And? Go make a new community if you don’t like how one is run, don’t invite misinformation and trolls into all spaces because you don’t agree with how one mod runs their community.
so much drama stems from the vegan community it’s honestly hysterical. Textbook case of why vegans are memed on so hard
It sounds like you’re being trolled by the mods. Open a different vegan community, even if it’s small. Also, in almost every other instance, this rule change would be a bad thing.
Baby steps is not what veganism is about, that’s flexitarinism.
Your opinion on veganism does not justify the mods’ abuse of their power to silence other vegans.
You do not get to bend words to suit your beliefs. Every legitimate vegan community would ban anyone who falsely claims they’re vegan. It’s always an abuse of power every time vegans moderates their communities but not when carnivore grifters do it.
You do not get to bend words to suit your beliefs
But apparently you do? Almost nobody is a carnivore. They’re more rare than vegans by far. I think the word you were looking for was omnivore.
Anyway, the mods of the community you seem so desperate to defend were banning vegans. Vegans who were discussing what they sincerely think is best for them as vegans. I don’t understand how you can think that’s ok, regardless of how one chooses to define what vegan means.
But apparently you do?
Well yes because I dont eat/use animal products for ethical reasons. A carnist obviously knows the least about this subject.
You’re dismissing the definition from the vegan society because it allows you to participate in reductionism. Go hang out with the flexitarians, vegetarians and the plant-based if you want to engage in the kind of conversation.
There are so many people who claim to be “vegan” who consume honey or oysters or fish for crying out loud. No wonder why the general population is so confused on what being vegan actually means.
Not to mention all the bad actors who lie about “being vegan” or that they know “someone is vegan” to push false narratives about the community in an attempt to discredit the whole movement.
Ok, so (a) you don’t know how language works, and (b) you’re happy to be a complete hypocrite and insist people use your personal definition of vegan while using “carnivore” to refer to what is properly “omnivore”. Nice.
Anyway, an ethical vegan is no “more vegan” than a dietary vegan or an environmental vegan. If you want to have arguments amongst yourselves about who is “better”, go ahead. Just don’t try to do it by twisting the definition of the word itself.
This is why people shit on vegans.
For following proper definitions?
People hate vegans because they feel guilty about their actions.
Flexitarian: one whose normally meatless diet occasionally includes meat or fish.
Vegan: a person who follows the philosophy and way of living that excludes all forms of animal exploitation and cruelty for food, clothing or any other purpose.
This is why I’m going to block you for arguing in bad faith.
I’m not arguing? I’m not whoever you were talking to before.
People hate vegans because they’re pompous and irritating
Wrong, people do not like the status quo being challenged.
People in certain places in the world do not appreciate being told to stop beating or eating dogs. They think those animal advocates are “rude”.
