Modlog visible here: https://lemmy.world/modlog/2
Or on !fediverse@lemmy.world
I have no stake in this argument (centralization on both lemmy.ml and lemmy.world is detrimental in my opinion), but I found it kind of ironic.
Not sure if this is the best place to post it, but didn’t know of any “neutral” fediverse communities, so I guess this one works.
Edit: the thread itself: https://lemmy.world/post/16211417
Some examples of removals/bans: https://reddthat.com/post/20718767/11186767
“We should platform misinformation so we can present both sides”
Fucking what.
Apologia for the USSR’s cooperation with the literal fucking Nazis is next level, and that’s the example that jumps out for you?
Disclaimer: I am by no mean expert on the matter.
Some threads I found on the matter on the regretted /r/AskHistorians
My point was that posting those kind of links in reply to comments that are suspected to be propaganda could counter their argumentation without having to silence them.
Platforming lies is platforming lies. “But someone further down in the thread refuted it!” doesn’t really matter when the entire fucking point of this kind of misinformation is “Repeat a lie loud enough and often enough and people will believe it’s true”. It’s no more worthy of staying on to show ‘both sides’ than contrasting vaccination with fucking anti-vaxxers.
I see.
On the other side, banning people is encouraging them to create their own echo chambers (lemmy.ml being obviously one from the recent instance bans). I guess different communities will have different stance on moderation strategies, which is the way the Fediverse is supposed to operate.
People need to be free to be how they like. e.g., if a mod is forced to have to read constant Russian (or Chinese, or Israeli, or American, or UK or whatever) propaganda with horribly offensive active disinformation, then likely they will quit being mods. I’m not saying they are holding their efforts hostage to their preferences - but I’m not not saying that either (it is factually accurate if unnecessarily adversarially phrased), just saying that it’s the normal default of the world and we would do better to bow to natural principles than to wish and hope that things were not that way.
It is really, REALLY hard to find common middle ground - and sometimes it cannot be done. Echo chambers are a natural result of how people with opposing viewpoints choose not to tolerate one another.
Intolerance is uniquely important, bc being intolerant to intolerance is not the same as generalized intolerance!!! In fact, the opposite is true: anyplace that is even somewhat vaguely neutral towards intolerant behaviors, in general, will quickly become intolerant overall. Imagine a room with screaming toddlers - those who scream loudest get noticed, and the behavior spirals forward feeding off of the other behaviors to become more pronounced, not less so. A space quiet enough to be heard is not normal. Entropy must be fought against if order is desired. There is a balance somewhere between letting toddlers do nothing at all fun, vs. letting them do whatever crosses their minds at any given moment, thus inflicting their tendencies upon others nearby.
Take Chapotraphouse for instance: I would not dream in a million years of trying to shut that place down. Maybe I should? But I don’t. That said, neither do I want to go there, and the Fediverse would be a much more welcoming place overall if it would warn people about what goes on inside of it. If they are willing to be fair-minded, they could even contribute towards writing up the content text of such a warning? They should not be solely in charge of that endeavor, ideally, yet neither do I see any legitimate reason to lock them out of such a process?
I don’t know how the Fediverse expects to survive when we mix together the equivalent of 4chan and Wikipedia, but don’t label any of it, and then try to get people to come and enjoy their time here. Especially with it being so confusing - e.g. was a comment removed by a community mod or an instance admin? (fortunately v0.19.4 looks to entirely solve that latter one, yay dev efforts on that one - they really do so much for us all, for free!:-D)
Note I am not advocating for a common middle ground here - I do not believe such exists (e.g. if someone wants to make fun of me, but I don’t want that, why would we presume a “middle ground solution” should be the default?). I am rather advocating for labeling things what they are. Imagine going to a website to watch videos, but some videos are porn and your friends are all prudes, or moreover let’s even imagine some are nonconsensual pedophilia - will you send them there? Sending people to Chapotraphouse, or a place that federates with it - crucially: without labeling it - is like that.
Some places on the Fediverse are like porn - they are (/ may be?) fine to exist, but are considered offensive enough to need to be labeled, if we want to reach out to a more common audience (of e.g. non-Arch-Linux users:-). And then yeah, label Lemmy.World as likely to remove content that goes against Western standards? (Except you picked bad examples imho, being community mods rather than instance admins) And do similarly for Lemmy.ml as well - again, hopefully with their own participation in writing up that label?
No. What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Asking mods to debunk it if they want to remove it is absurd. It takes more effort to debunk something than the effort it takes to spread lies, so your “neutral” suggestions are basically saying you want tankie propaganda to take over. Bots would just keep posting more and more propaganda and the mods would fall further and further behind.
I think this illustrates the core problem very well. Attacking the character of the poster, and their motivations, rather than the content itself. Is very problematic for open discourse. And that’s probably fine at the comment counter comment level. But when we are talking about banning people the bar should be higher than ad hominem
You want to explain to me how historical misinformation is just an ‘ad hominem’?
Like, at the fucking core, that is objectionable content.
I don’t particularly care to debate world war II politics, but I think there is enough data there to have a discussion, rather than questioning somebody’s character for even bringing it up. I don’t actually care about community level moderation decisions, I only care about instance level bans.
Banning somebody from an instance for referring to historical events, seems questionable for a cornerstone Lemmy instance to do. And that is a valid discussion to have here.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov–Ribbentrop_Pact
Yet here you are. Funny way of not particularly caring.
Oh, cool, as long as it’s Just Asking Questions™ it’s okay. Next up, we’ll do “Was Hitler REALLY a BAD guy?” and “Did the Holocaust REALLY kill millions of people?”
“Referring to historical events”
By calling the Soviet invasion of Poland ‘bloodless’ and accusing the Poles of being the REAL Nazis, who the Soviets had to invade to defeat fascism?
Yeah, that’s not ‘referring to historical events’, that’s ‘referring to pure fucking fantasy and passing it off as historical fact’.
It’s curious how many times I run into defenders of people like this who insist that they have no skin in the game but still bend over backwards to accommodate the most horrendous views. I must just not be enlightened enough to understand.
Again I’m not going to debate world war II.
The severe issue at hand is banning somebody from an instance, an instance which runs about 30% of all Lemmy traffic, because of a ad hominem attack against their character for having what looks to be a legitimate perhaps misguided discussion in a news community.
But your entire point rests on the idea that these posters engaging in atrocity denial is ‘just a disagreement’ that should be tolerated. So pretty clearly you are debating WW2, otherwise you wouldn’t be defending their right to “Just Ask Questions” about Soviet massacres of the Polish people.
Jesus fucking Christ. Correctly identifying and banning someone for spreading misinformation is ‘a ad hominem attack’, and genocide denial is just ‘legitimate perhaps misguided discussion’.
What a fucking world.
By your logic should we ban all the Zionists in Lemmy.world denying all the dead Palestinians and calling them Hamas. Because there’s a lot. The point is, these things become extremely subjective.
EDIT: Just saw that some people said the invasion of Poland was bloodless. Those kinds of comments do sound like straight up misinformation, though, so it’s not all subjective lol.
I wouldn’t object.
Mr. Jesus,
Removing somebody from a community, is fine and the prerogative of the community moderators. Removing somebody from lemmyworld at the instance, has a massive chilling effect on the entire lemmeverse. These are things that should have different scope, and different magnitude requirements.
If you think somebody was being disingenuous in your community, removing them from the community fine I support you, I don’t agree with you, but the fact that you can do that is a legitimate moderation tool available to you. And I think that’s correct.
Removing that person from all communities, for what looks like genuine level engagement, I think is a bridge too far, and harms all of Lemmy.
First, the person was only given a community ban, and not even a permanent ban.
Second, people absolutely should feel that spreading genocide denialism isn’t kosher on any legitimate instance. If it was an instance ban, I’d be in support of it, in the same way I would support someone playing debatelord games about the fucking Holocaust should get the boot. It doesn’t matter even if they do ‘genuinely’ believe in their genocide denialism, it is not and should not be welcome in any civilized space.