cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/24135976
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 [email protected] 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.
But you’re taking ‘don’t make us ban you’ off the table for the mods.
“Oh no, I’m not attacking trans people, I’m just saying that children deserve protection. Surely you’ll agree there’s no rule against that?”
Sealioning. JAQing off. Ragebait. That very specific, slightly-too-formal dialect of trollspeak. Shitty edgeplay designed to taunt and demoralise without ever quite stepping over any well-defined line, and a bat-signal to like-minded sociopaths that the dog is chained up.
Hell, bluesky has been infested with LLM debate-bots recently that fucking automate the process.
I suspect that you’re mistaking the symptoms for the problem: it’s not that mods are too quick on the button and need to learn to tolerate a little raw chicken in the mayo, it’s that some of them have been captured by corporate / PAC / generally-unsavoury interests, and use the button as a weapon.
And to those people, there’s only one thing you need to say.
Mods are still generally going to have a lot of discretion. How often do you see admins get involved here?
We’re not going to allow hate speech. This is fully intended to give us something against those who, as you say, use the button as a weapon.
Give us a chance and let’s see how this actually plays out.
You could as well have said “I want to ban everyone who disagrees with me without them having any recourse”.
Introduce rules disallowing lies (anything which can be proved as not being factual - hard facts rather than opinions) Nazi propaganda, illegal contents, post supporting genocide. This is completely sufficient for the vast majority of contents. You definitely should not ban users because they engage in what is in your OPINION “edgeplay designed to taunt and demoralise without ever quite stepping over any well-defined line”.
Lolno. God, lawful-neutrals and their damn rules.
If you do that, they get to play the dictionary-definitions game and well-ackchewally at you indefinitely and demand you provide sources for the word ‘the’, while creating endless reports demanding people be banned because technically that’s not paedophilia that’s ephebepholia… or whatever the fuck.
It’s a game to them; all they care about is making a disruptive and unpleasant environment.
The only way to win is to not play.
When you recognise the pattern, you short-circuit the whole damn thing and just boot them out.
Than you are absolutely not suitable of being a mod, as simple as that.