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.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14·
    7 hours ago

    From @[email protected]

    Look, I respect the intent, but as someone who’s been on forums since the freaking 90s, I can say with confidence that that’s a toxic meltdown waiting to happen.

    You need at least two bitter jaded cybersec experts and at least one game theory person on your team to stand a chance with this kind of thing.

    Can you provide supporting documents that disprove :nasty insinuation about you:? Of course not. Do you want to have to keep being required to? No.

    Can people provide supporting documents disproving :nasty insinuation about :demographic::? Also no. And they don’t want to have to keep being required to.

    So there’s the constant tide of exhaustion of people being constantly undermined and dehumanised, and being forced to either respond to yet another argument that :demographic: don’t really count as people, or to just let it ride and try to ignore it. And then the wreckers use it as rage-bait to get people angry to the point of getting banned, and others walk off in disgust, more trolls smell blood in the water and the whole thing spirals.

    It’s the damn nazi-bar problem: even ‘just a few’ nazis smirking in the corner create a hostile and unpleasant environment that other people don’t want to be in. And so they drive the good posters off, reducing the opposition - and within a depressingly short time, you’ve got yourself an alt-right shithole full of trolls and sociopaths that just love being able to exert that kind of power.

    I’ve seen it approximately three bajillion times so far, and god dammit why won’t you youngins learn.

    Yes, powermods and power-tripping mods are a problem. But the approach to it you’ve chosen was gamed out and defeated in detail probably before you were even alive.

    And oh god, if you try to parse a rule about what categories of opinions and statements are covered by this, the rules lawyers are going to clown-shibari the entire damn site.

    The only two rules I’ve ever seen be effective over time are:

    • Don’t make us ban you
    • Don’t make us de-mod you

    and probably hard-cap the number of communities one person can mod.

    Have other stuff on top of that, but they’re load-bearing and non-optional.

    And I get that the site is trying to be a neutral platform that’s insulated from the content, but honestly I don’t think that’s feasible. Sometimes you need to just throw people out of your bar regardless of the exact phrasing of the terms and conditions, and that means picking a side.

    Also can we have a better markdown parser that doesn’t turn angle brackets into failed html markup sometime please