Comment on The lemmy.ml Problem
Roflmasterbigpimp@lemmy.world 5 months agoHere are three posts from the memes-community. They got downvoted to oblivion (from the Users) and contain false information, but were not removed or anything from the moderators or admins.
Here is a Comment from someone who tells about his own experience in communist Hungary. His Comment got removed for violating rule 1 “Be civil and nice.”. Why does this comment of his own experience get removed for being not nice, but posts which contain propaganda and clearly insult people in an non-political Community like Memes did not?
This Comment ( even though I disagree with its content) got removed for “Bourgeois Bootlicking” despite having Rule 2 in place, which states: “Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.” His Comment was as, if you ask me, maybe not totally polite but still acceptable.
kabe@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I appreciate the effort you’ve put in here, but still I do not see grounds for defederation.
The question isn’t “are there communities on lemmy.ml that are ideologically censored”, because of course there are; the question I am putting to you is “is the average user going about their business and not actively engaging in politically-oriented communities affected enough to warrant the largest Lemmy instance completely defederating?” I would still say no, personally.
taipan@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I see more than enough justification to defederate. Being banned from the linux community because you dared to make a critical comment about China or Russia in another lemmy.ml community is ridiculous and unacceptable.
lemmy.world should only support communities with reasonable moderation policies that do not punish users for merely contradicting lemmy.ml’s political stances.
s38b35M5@lemmy.world 5 months ago
As a user subbed to multiple communities there, I never see this stuff. Ever. I stay far, far away from news and current events though. I actively seek news from sources, not aggregation platforms.
I would prefer to have the option to interact with those communities rather than have a few users brigade the admins into defederating. There’s a reason one of the SCOTUS cases that is cited as binding precedent in freedom of speech cases relates to the distribution of Communist propaganda. The marketplace of ideas is meant to be freely available to all, not curated by the most opinionated or noisy.
taipan@lemmy.world 5 months ago
The political content published in lemmy.ml isn’t the main problem, it’s the fact that lemmy.ml moderators are banning users from general interest communities when they criticize China or Russia elsewhere. This happens not only when the criticism is posted within a lemmy.ml community, but also when the criticism is posted outside of lemmy.ml.
The behavior of these lemmy.ml mods corrupts the “marketplace of ideas” that you’re describing. lemmy.world should not present communities that only allow users to participate if they avoid making comments critical or China or Russia.
s38b35M5@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I appreciate your reply. I agree with the principals and ideals, but I just don’t get worked up over every bit of outrage out there. I used to be a real worked up individual, willing to throw everything I’ve got at anything that didn’t fit with my ideals, but I’m older now, and sometimes I want places where I don’t have to fight for every inch of ground.
I don’t disagree that the mod actions are worth highlighting. I disagree that defederation is the first and only solution. It reads to me like some users argued with mods about topics known to be hot-button over there, on a post guaranteed to be controversial, and a temporary ban occurred. That action and its reach is worth discussion.
I don’t agree that the users should go to the biggest lemmy instance and try to soap box their POV in order to trigger user outrage in hopes that they pressure the admins to enact some vengeance on an entire instance in the form of defederation. I disagree even more since the source of the outrage is not a user at LW, and wouldn’t be affected in any way by the proposed defederation. What they really want is for their subbed communities to move away from ML.
SpaceCadet coming here suing for defederation is barely different to me than the mod that banned them from unrelated communities. “Someone I disagree with did a thing I don’t like and I want to flex on them,” is what I see from my POV. I don’t care they got banned. It seems like a foregone conclusion that would happen there, and I’ve known that since the first fifty posts about how Dessalines and Nutomic behave (on social media and on github) were posted.
If I follow their weird rules, I won’t get banned. The implicit rules include not talking shit about topics cleansed by glorious fascist leaders? OK. I don’t care. I have no interest in changing the hearts and minds behind the eyeballs on ML. I’m not on a crusade to fix the world one post at a time. I’m browsing while my game loads, or the water boils, or on the bus.
What I care about is a few idealistic users posting picture evidence of a clear power-trip ban and expecting admins to defederate. That’s the corruption of the marketplace of ideas. Silencing the entire instance for thousands. For all we know, half the users on LW would like to learn more about their point of view, if only to dismiss it as wacky and untenable, but not only do they lose that opportunity, they lose the opportunity to engage with unrelated communities, of which there are several that are more active than anywhere else.
At the end of the day, its a lot easier for anyone up in arms about this to block and move on than the workarounds required for the majority who don’t care and want to stay engaged in the communities they are subbed to. They’d have to make accounts elsewhere, or even at ML.
Call me apathetic, but I just don’t care about this fight.