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.
Pretty sure I agree with the gist of this, and it’s welcome. My corner is small anyway, with not a lot of trolls and troublemakers, and I hope I’m already in line with this policy.
Well, unless I’m one of the mods who’ll “receive an immediate notice with a link to this new policy.”
This is a hard one to enforce but it should result in a much more pleasant experience overall. I think we have something great on Lemmy and decisions like this set us apart from places like reddit.
I couldn’t care less about flat earthers. It’s the lack of moderation of hate speech that prompted me to leave Meta products. When the speech is specifically designed to harm others it’s a huge difference from just harming themselves and their willing peers. Allowing spreading that LGBTQ+ people are mentally ill or that Autistic people need to be fixed rather than accepted, or that all immigrants are bad people, those things are not just bad science (though that’s part of it). They are designed to have those people ostracized or murdered. That is not “respectful disagreement”. That is pure hate-speech, even if the person saying it truly believes it. It is detrimental to the community and if that is allowed here like on Meta now, I’ll happily leave as a proud LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent person among other things that current “political discourse” (i.e. acceptable hate) is being allowed to spread.
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/ could be a good fit for you
Our original ToS hasn’t gone anywhere and will still be enforced. Hate speech is not respectful. None of this means discrimination or hate speech is okay.
- Attacks on people or groups
Before using the website, remember you will be interacting with actual, real people and communities. Lemmy.World is not a place for you to attack other people or groups of people. Just because you disagree with someone doesn’t give you the right to harass them. Discuss ideas and be critical of principles. Show the respect you desire to receive.
The problem other than the fact that the timing is suspect as other social media is moving as quickly as possible to allow hate speech under the guise of free speech, is that the language uses seems to imply that moderators must cater to moderating only things that are hateful or attacks by all users. Problem is that many on the far right don’t consider the things I mentioned or most other hate speech to be disrespectful. They don’t consider those people to be worthy of respect or human at all. They are “followers of the devil” or whatever excuse they have told themselves to justify their hate.
So saying that hate speech is not respectful only works if all parties consider it hate speech. But all of these things are now excluded from what Meta considers hate speech (they do still ban hate speech in general, just are more specific now about what that is). For example, they just consider LGBTQ+ people being mentally ill to be a fact or at least setting up for debate. They even provide examples of what they consider to be “opinion” and thus “free speech” and not “hate speech” like calling trans and non-binary people “it” or calling women “household objects” to dehumanize them is considered not hate speech by them.
So, either you need to specifically call out all the things you consider hate speech that far right people do not, or you need to allow moderators to do their job as members of society that understand what is hate and what is not. It’s never black and white.
Or we could just be subjective and use our judgement when it comes to those things. The timing with the Meta thing was truly, truly unfortunate. This was completely unrelated and just happened to look similar. Of course we’ve never had professional fact checkers here.
Or we could just be subjective and use our judgement when it comes to those things.
How is that opinion compatible with forcing community mods to validate & allow misinformation and trolling?
If you’re going to say speech saying a person is mentally ill because they are LGBTQ+ or that a woman are “household property” needs to be evaluated subjectively and these changes are saying that moderators should not make subjective determinations and should err on the side of assuming they are OK, then you are saying that these things are not hate speech and thus not covered by the hate speech policy. And with moderation of X and Meta now saying these things are not hate speech, it seems even more likely that moderators will need to leave these things in place due to this policy. And in that case I’ll be leaving as I don’t wish to be the target of anti-LGBTQ+, anti-autism, or any other hate speech that is now allowed on X and Meta and will likely have to be allowed here as some group considers them not hate speech.
That’s an awful lot of ifs and assumptions. Especially when I’ve often said the opposite (just not in every comment).
I understand the parallels with the Meta thing, which is truly unfortunate. More bad timing than anything else. We didn’t replace professional fact checkers. We weren’t doing this to allow hate speech. We’re not Facebook or Reddit.
But if this policy goes into effect. You are saying it’s all subjective and thus the hate speech policy only applies if you or a server level admin say it’s hate speech. You’re asking moderators not to moderate if there’s any question about whether it is OK or not. And a large number of people now believe it’s OK which is why X and Meta have these policies, so to me and likely to many moderators here, you’re saying exactly as Meta just said, don’t moderate these things as hate speech. Remember, Meta also still has an anti-hate speech policy, it’s just that these subjects are no longer considered hate speech by enough of their users that they don’t allow moderation of it. You’re asking for the exact same thing, you just haven’t called out the specifics, you’re leaving it “subjective”. And with moderation, abstaining from action is the exact same as acceptance.
Please do ban anyone who trolls with the “mental illness” thing. I’m sorry that wasn’t clear.
Hello,
Any idea when the new announcement will be made, following the edit?
It isn’t necessarily ‘pure hate speech’ and shutting off the discussion is what is leading you to come to this conclusion. If a pill were developed that allowed someone diagnosed with autism to live more like the general public without a lifetime of current therapies, and no side-effects why is me suggesting they consider this option ‘pure hate’? Can you see how one-sided your stance is?
Because most are saying that my existence is a disease to be cured and not simply a different way of existing. It’s like telling a black person that drug should be developed to bleach their skin so they can live more like the general public without a lifetime of prejudices. Autism only requires therapy to force us to act differently than our brains tell us to act. Not because oír normal way of acting is somehow self-destructive, but because it breaks social norms and makes others uncomfortable. The “cure” is fir other people to accept us as we are, just like the “cure” for being black is to accept them not change them.
Because most are saying that
So, not ‘pure hate’. There’s some impurities in there apparently.
There are more issues with autism than ‘it breaks social norms’ and seeking treatments for the condition is looking to improve lives, not being hateful.
I didn’t say treatment wasn’t good. I said it wasnt something to cure. Just like black people might seek counseling for how to deal with the inequalities, autistic people need treatment to deal with the issues that society causes for them. I’m saying anything that’s saying Autism is something to be “cured” is hate speech. You’re saying that Autistic people like me should exist as we are, but change to fit society, just like saying a black person should change their skin color to fit in better. Autism is not a disease regardless of what companiea like Autism Speaks try to push. It is simply a different way of thinking.
So yes, is you’re one of the people specifically saying that Autism shouldn’t exist and needs to be cured that is pure hate speech. It you’re saying it requires treatment, then it depends on the specifics and thus my use of the word “most”. So it saying it needs a cure should be moderated as hate speech. But if no hate speech is being moderated to allow thing that aren’t hate speech that doesn’t make sense. If you understand what is and what isnt hate speech, then it’s easy to moderate bad from less obviously good or bad. It’s not a thin line.
Autism is more than just social difficulties. There are repetitive behavioural problems that can be downright harmful to the individual if particularly severe. To me it sounds like you are or know someone with autism that isn’t particularly severe and are pretty comfortable with it. That’s great, but what about those suffering from the disorder that aren’t responding to treatment as well to the point their communication deficits are causing problems with their education and future prospects? What do you say to those whom a cure could vastly improve their life? I have a hard time understanding how treatment is ‘good’ but cure is ‘hate’. Wanting a cure to be available isn’t the same as expecting it be mandatory.
I think the issue is you are assuming some level of judgment or condescension because of the condition and that is not the case. A person with autism is a person and absolutely be treated as such.
Hey, checking your conversation here, I’m sorry you have to constantly defend your existence because the mods here aren’t doing their job of creating a safe space. You may want to check hexbear, their harsher moderation would have definitely not allowed this chain of comments to happen
Is this a piefed thing I’m too Lemmy to understand?
I don’t understand what you’re trying to say or why. I’m generally not clicking random youtube videos.
Innuendo Studios has several fantastic videos - I dare say just about the main thing I even highly care about on YouTube these days, even though there are so very few of them. The Alt Right Playbook in particular is a wonderful series. This latest one seems so very highly related to the subject matter of this post, where extremists bury reasonable people behind an avalanche of false statements, each one of which must be rebutted properly, despite how the statements themselves did not have such care and attention put into them.
Side-note: I love how PieFed and Tesseract both provide YouTube previews to help decide whether to click or not - speaking for myself it helps me decide!:-)
Anyway, I’m sure you know all about the subject matter, but the language used in this linked video (or just search for Alt-Right Playbook and choose the latest one) I thought might be particularly helpful to have watched in drafting the next response of this announcement. The flat earth bit especially is off-putting to people bc it conjures up the vaccine disinformation issue that genuinely cost people’s literal, actual lives. Though I didn’t take from the announcement that this has suddenly become a place where such dis/misinformation was “welcomed”, and yet people reacted as if that is what it was saying… so I hoped the video would help bridge that gap between what was intended to be conveyed vs. was managed to be received by some, who seem to just be so very scared and anxious about so many things beyond
theirour control these days.I’ll take a look. And yeah, the intention was the opposite, to poke pinholes into those crazy, reality-denying philosophies.
Great! Not an easy task indeed, though oh so necessary…:-)
Hello,
Any idea when the new announcement will be made?
once it’s ready.
this post didn’t follow our usual process for announcements/changes and lately there have been several other events that required a lot of our attention as well.
we’d love to have posted an update on this topic a week ago already but we haven’t finished that within the team yet.
Thank you for your reply!
We’re going to allow some “flat earth” comments. We’re going to force some moderators to accept some “flat earth” comments.
In general I would agree, but if the community moderators decides to set some ground truths (aka an echo chamber), I don’t think the admins should be involved.
Allowing these posts and comment despite these agreed upon ground truths (ex: the earth is round, vaccine works, eating animals is unethical, etc) is only going to generate noise by having to refute these again and again instead of fostering productive discussions.
I say let the communities handle their own affairs, and the admins should only intervene in severe cases.
One issue there is technical limitations: PieFed (a Lemmy alternative) and some apps will show the sidebar of a community, but some others bury it behind several clicks in long-ass (>5 items) menu structures.
Then again, what should the expectation even be for someone who comes in via All without ever having posted to the community before.
Ultimately imho the community belongs to the userbase that enjoys using it, so if they don’t want to see something, then they should not be forced to have to.
When you have everyone who agrees on something, having one person disagree is noise. That’s the point. To have a diversity of opinion without punishment, within “in-groups”. Ops post seems like it’s some sort of appeals process if someone is “generating noise” (disagreeing) in good faith, they have a recourse. And op does state that a history of bad faith can be punished, or just obvious trolling. My worry is that this is a “foot in the door” for future admin overreach.
Classic .world admins showing their constant incompetence
nice
FlyingSquid is known to violate this on /c/world
How? Genuinely curious. Their name is everywhere and I often see them discuss with people who disagree with them.
hes the best dont believe the disinformation about him a reliable source tells me he is NOT a zionist
I think Reddit is dysfunctional because people are dysfunctional. My hope is to be able to address that by improving people’s health & function via the gut microbiome.
wat
There’s a citation there. You didn’t want to click it and learn something new?
EDIT: Interesting. The majority of people on lemmy are anti-learning…
deleted by creator
I posted this in another thread but I also wanted to say it here so it’s more likely one of you will see it. I get the intention behind this, and I think it’s well intentioned, but it’s also definitely the wrong way to go about things. By lumping opposing viewpoints and misinformation together, all you end up doing is implying that having a difference in opinion on something more subjective is tantamount to spreading a proven lie, and lending credence to misinformation. A common tactic used to try and spread the influence of hate or misinformation is to present it as a “different opinion” and ask people to debate it. Doing so leads to others coming across the misinfo seeing responses that discuss it, and even if most of those are attempting to argue against it, it makes it seem like something that is a debatable opinion instead of an objective falsehood. Someone posting links to sources that show how being trans isn’t mental health issue for the 1000th time wont convince anyone that they’re wrong for believing so, but it will add another example of people arguing about an idea, making those without an opinion see the ideas as both equally worthy of consideration. Forcing moderators to engage in debate is the exact scenario people who post this sort of disguised hate would love.
Even if the person posting it genuinely believes the statement to be true, there are studies that show presenting someone with sources that refute something they hold as fact doesn’t get them to change their mind.
If the thread in question is actually subjective, then preventing moderators from removing just because they disagree is great. The goal of preventing overmodedation of dissenting opinions is extremely important. You cannot do so by equating them with blatent lies and hate though, as that will run counter to both goals this policy has in mind. Blurring the line between them like this will just make misinformation harder to spot, and disagreements easier to mistake as falsehoods.
A common tactic used to try and spread the influence of hate or misinformation is to present it as a “different opinion” and ask people to debate it.
Very good point
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?
If that would work they wouldn’t have those opinions to begin with, they always think they have a unique smarter interpretation of the truth and facts and largely enjoy arguing about their alternative facts so they can feel superior more than they care about the shape of the earth for how much it’ll affect their lives
You’re trying cut back on echo chambers and power tripping mods. I like this, but I wonder how this going to play out.
A zero tolerance policy against zero tolerance policies against intolerance and mis/dis/malinformation? The explanation was a bit figurative language heavy.
yeah I don’t really follow. Would be better if they gave a direct example of it.
I assume !usauthoritarianism@lemmy.world banning people who disagree with the mod, and that vegan one banning actual vegans for being “fake” are what’s being talked about, but I’m not sure.
Some clarification would be nice.
A restaurant that serves animal products is flexitarian not vegan. Definitions should not be watered down. Anyone who advocates for the use of animal products contradicts the definition of veganism:
“Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.”
Lamenting the fact that a formerly-vegan-only restaurant adding a small number of meat products in a desperate attempt to stay open, and failing, is not something that should get one banned from vegan spaces. Nor is suggesting that, in your opinion, it would be a good thing for all restaurants to have a couple of vegan options on the menu. You don’t need to argue about or change the definition of veganism to see that. rbn and gaael did not deserve to be treated in the abusive way the mods of that community treated them.
That attempt did not work. It’s like saying slaves should work in a business to save it.
I don’t have a personal opinion one way or the other as to the right answer here.
The only thing I do know is that the mods of that community were being fucking pricks by shutting down extremely respectful conversation among their own community. That’s indisputable.
The sidebar says that people should understand what veganism is before commenting and that pushing carnism is a bannable offense. This is why we have the community !debate_a_vegan@lemmy.world for these kinds of discussions.
This post you’re talking about is the majority dunking on the minority. Eating meat is not a neutral position between carnism and veganism.
It’s quite obvious to me that you haven’t actually seen the comments that were removed in the LW vegan thread. Go back to the top of this thread and read them before continuing to respond. But in short:
Eating meat is not a neutral position between carnism and veganism.
The people in question were not eating meat. They were talking about restaurants’ varied offerings. A vegan does not stop being vegan because they go to a restaurant that also serves meat, so long as they themselves order a vegan meal.
Brigading
Oh hey, it’s the coward that post inflammatory shit and bans anyone who disagrees with them even if even toned. Shocked you have a problem with this policy. Shocked.
I feel bad for you
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.
then do something about @max55@lemm.ee
Communities should not be overly moderated
You should have stopped at that.
Pretty much the only comments/posts which should be removed are these posted by bots, these outright illegal, these supporting nazism (in all it’s iterations, including bashing racial/sexual minorities and migrants) and supporting genocide.
