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 (highly encourage you to read the linked post), 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.
TLDR;
I can see both sides.
On the one hand, history is replete with popular opinions that were later shown to be incorrect. One of the reasons I chose to move to Lemmy was the inherent resistance of the fediverse to the enforcement of a particular narrative, and the inherent potential for respectful discussion and debate. As long as people remain respectful, my inclination is to leave up content that I disagree with. Please note, it has to be respectful, not merely polite.
On the other hand, there’s no shortage of evidence that deliberate misinformation remains a threat in online communities. This is why we implemented no astroturfing and no sealioning rules in the larger community I help mod.
Holding these two competing thoughts, I think that points of view that run to the current scientific understanding should not be removed provided that the quantity is limited, it’s respectful and it’s not-harmful. But that’s just my perspective, and how we handle it in the communities I mod. The beauty of the fediverse is that I also have no problems with someone setting up a competing community that takes a much less tolerant perspective and has a rule that participation is conditional on agreement to certain perspectives.
I’m mostly with you, though with a much more strict stance against allowing misinformation/conspiracy/etc. On that:
That’s what this new moderation policy abolishes: That competing community is now apparently required to platform misinformation, propaganda, et al while also being more or less required to spend time refuting every claim lest it stand unchallenged. As I said in the announcement post, it’s holding the doors open and saying “no, after you” to gish-galloping the mods and platforming every crackpot conspiracy, propaganda, “civil” hate speech, etc so long as they’re civil and not spamming it.
Yeah, the Fediverse allows for “just moving to another instance” but for the largest Lemmy instance to force a “both sides” stance on its entirety is a slap in the face.
Vote manipulation is common in Lemmy. While the actor described in that post has changed tactics (and that post barely scratched the surface), they certainly did not stop. All they need to do is boost the misinformation and downvote the rebuttals when previously, the misinformation would just be correctly modded.
Facts are sacred and freedom of speech is not a freedom to lie.
I am all for moderating outright lies. I am strongly against mods removing views they disagree with under the pretence of “trolling” or other made up reason.