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, 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.
Why not just migrate to another instance? Have you forgotten that we are in the fediverse? This is a good opportunity to move communities to other instances.
It’s not that easy for some of us. I’m using the voyager app on iOS. Otherwise I have no idea or technical knowledge to get on Lemmy. I don’t know how to change instances and keep what I’ve subscribed to
If you go to the settings (on the website, not in an app) there’s an import/export settings on that page. Save your settings to a file. Then, create an account on a new instance and import that file. Note that you will get subs and blocklist and all that, but your comment history will not follow you.
I don’t use the website. I wouldn’t even know where to go. That’s the problem with Lemmy and the fediverse. I’m not some tech pleeb. I could figure it out, I’m sure, but it’s not where I can just open an opp therefore it’s not something I will do and Lemmy will never supplant Reddit because of that
Lemmy will never supplant Reddit because of that
There’s a lot to unpack here.
You don’t need to change the instance of your account to subscribe to any (with the exception of defederated communitys’ instances) community. You simply need to subscribe to the unpopular opinion community in, for example, lemm.ee instead of the one in lemmy.world. You should’ve figured this out by now, with some communities having a
@<instance>at the end in their names.That’s not how the app works and shows things. That seems more like desktop stuff which is not something to do. I can already subscribe to anything I want, I just don’t know what I can write since I’ve randomly been banned or muted without comment and I understand it’s because of the bullshit moderators I’m on. Someone had to tell me I was on world and now I see it by going to my settings. Otherwise everything looks like and works like Reddit in the app
I explained that in another comment: https://lemmy.world/comment/14408131
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.
Is having a site-wide policy controlling who gets to “respectfully disagree” not a control of speech?
Rhink before typibg please. Ur objectivly wrong.
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It doesnt control who gets to respectfully disagree it grants everyone that liberty (u included)
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Its not a control of speach its a control of moderators ability to control speach
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Delete it? I can barely read it.
Gotta love of grammar, Nazi, for always contributing something substantive to any communication.
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.
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.
If I setup 100 fake accounts to downvote every content in a community, how is the mod supposed to react?
That’s not what I’m talking about.
Damn calling em out on their own community. Thats almost as funny as it is bold.
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.
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.
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.
True the admin should’ve used a different example
Niiice
I was waiting for something like this to happen. I’m not surprised it happened to world, mainly because it ended up as default.
Just unlock it already, no one gives a shit about your drama with the admins. If you can’t deal with it, move to another instance.
!unpopular@hilariouschaos.com Guess I’ll switch to here. Better a dead community than one held hostage by some power mod.
Better a dead community than one held hostage by some power mod.
Ironically, that’s probably unpopular
nice job OP genuinely appreciate your expression of discontent and it seems like it might be successful too
Yeah I decided to move off of lemmy.world recently. Seems like they’ve been making a lot of bad decisions.
Enjoy SJW!
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.
They’ve made some… curious decisions in the past which diminish my faith in their ability to navigate this one.
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
@admiralpatrick@lemmy.world , seems like the LW admins changed their decision: https://lemmy.world/post/24135976
There will be a new announcement soon to clarify.
That’s good news (hopefully). Thanks!
Will keep an eye out, but community is remaining locked until the clarifications are published and deemed acceptable.
Sounds good!
They’re literally just asking mods to wield their power like a surgical scalpel and not a cudgel and actually do more than see a triggering keyword or phrase and instantly dropping the ban hammer based on a knee-jerk reaction.
Someone who is misinformed saying something that is incorrect doesn’t mean they should be banned for spreading misinformation. There has to be intent behind it.
Someone saying they wish so and so would drop dead shouldn’t instantly warrant a ban for “inviting violence” if it’s not an actual, credible, serious call for organized violence.
I don’t really expect that shit to change, regardless. Most people who create a community, volunteer to moderate or even administrate a whole ass server, do so because they want to set the rules and run things their way.
