this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2025
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Unpopular Opinion

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Edit 2025-01-13: LW has indicated they will be clarifying these rules soon. In the mean time, the community will remain locked until those are updated and deemed acceptable.


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.

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[–] [email protected] 91 points 2 months ago

Your opinion seems valid. I’d be fine with leaving a flat earth post up, locked, with a comment that OP has turd brains.

The “different sides” argument is a fallacy. If 100 geologists say the planet is round, and one geologist says it’s flat, both sides don’t deserve equal amounts of space to discuss it.

[–] [email protected] 62 points 2 months ago

As somebody running a cryptography forum elsewhere, if I was forced to accept lies that endanger people I'd rather shut down the forum instead.

I can imagine lots of other moderators in science and medical forums would hold the same opinion.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Well I suppose it's a good thing .world isn't the entirety of lemmy.

It is particularly egregious that they decided the flat earth thing was the example they were going to run with. We don't need to refute it every time a dunce brings it up and it's nobody's job to attempt educating the willfully ignorant. If the counter opinion is a thoroughly dead horse that's been beaten into paste, we collectively expect that to get downvoted and or moderated if it's actively harmful.

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 2 months ago

What happended to "Don't feed the trolls"? I thought it's shared expirience that giving attention to trolls like that only gives them motivation to keep on going. Ignoring them is the only way to stop them from spamming.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Holy shit this is such a bad policy lol. World is known for being too aggressive at deleting a lot of content they really shouldn't be deleting, but this policy really doesn't seem like it will improve that. The issue is most of the time if they want something removed they do so and then add a policy after to justify it, meaning that regardless of this rule people can't "advocate for violence", but they will be able to post misinformation and hate speech since apparently "LGBTQ people are mentally ill" hasn't been debunked enough elsewhere and a random comment chain in Lemmy is where it needs to be done. Never mind the actual harm those sorts of statements cause to individuals and the community at large.

All I can see this doing is any actual types of that get wrongly overly censored will still do so since the world admins believe they are justified in doing so, while other provably false information will be required to stay up since the admins believe the mods aren't justified in removing it.

This policy seems to only apply to actual misinformation too, not just subjective debates. So if there's a comment thread about whether violence is justified in protest would likely have one side removed, while I guess someone arguing that every trans person is a pedophile would be forced to stay up and be debated. Its like the exact opposite of how moderation should work lol.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Oh also something I just realized, they basically want to force mods to debate misinformation, which is literally a tatic used to spread disinformation in the first place. By getting people to debunk a ridiculous claim it lends credence to the idea as something worth discussing and also spreads it to more people. I feel like the intentions behind this are noble, but it's been proven that presenting evidence doesn't really get people to change their opinion all that often. The whole thing is super misguided.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Move the community to a different Instance?

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (10 children)

It's an option, sure. But (at this point anyway) it's more about making a statement and trying to bring visibility to the horrible side effects of this new policy.

I'm not trying to burn bridges, lol, merely shine a light and hope the LW Team sees it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think the policy is too heavy-handed. Forget who's right and wrong, keeping a discussion topical to the post is really helpful to help the community grow.

On a more practical level, enforcing this at the admin level is going to require a lot more oversight and work from the administrators.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

It definitely does not seem like a well thought out solution for sure.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

They've made some... curious decisions in the past which diminish my faith in their ability to navigate this one.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

I get where you're coming from. I'm curious to see how all this plays out.

A user in one of my communities raised this salient point:

https://lemmy.world/comment/14406565

I will say, if Musk dropped a check, I never saw it. :)

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago

That's basically the long-form of how I feel about it. Honestly, I was having a hard time staying composed while I responded to the announcement thread; I was livid and absolutely shaking.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Man, that's ridiculous. Requiring mods to have to do deep research in order to rebut every single ridiculous claim is not how forum moderation has ever worked.

Why? Because no forum moderator is going to do that.

This would only be fair if the admins had to produce sufficient documentation to show that the ridiculous claim is true, thereby justifying action against a mod who failed to produce their documentation.

It's documentation all the way down.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

It would just end up with a series of blog posts (because who's going to keep writing the same thing over and over) and people being dismissed with a collection of links, which both means the asshat and other bypassing readers won't read the linked content but everybody still sees the bullshit

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Am I missing something or is this policy change to combat the tankie mods who are just banning left and right for anything that doesn't match the tankie narrative?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

As I understand it, yes, that is the intent of the policy. However, as-written and presumably as it is to be enforced for all mods LW-wide, it has wide-reaching implications with worse side-effects.

Basically, the proper tool is a scalpel and they brought out a machete.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago

"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."

It looks extremely reasonable to be honest

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

I was waiting for something like this to happen. I'm not surprised it happened to world, mainly because it ended up as default.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (2 children)

So you (self-admittedly maining on another instance (in reality the admin of that instance)) are locking an entire community on LW in protest of their admin policy on their instance? That's bold, to put it mildly. You instance-ban users for downvoting, so it makes sense you find this change personally unreasonable.

Myself? I don't think the new change is a great idea, but I prefer it to short-fuse blanket bannings like that.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Pam from 'The Office' defiantly saying 'Yep!'

Yep, sure do! But only on my own instance in accordance with our polices; communities I moderate elsewhere are modded according to those instances' rules and TOS.

If someone does nothing but give out downvotes (the upvotes-given to downvotes-given ratio threshold for the automated ban is quite generous), then they're contributing nothing but negativity and shitting on things for everyone else. If everything here displeases them so much, they can and should go somewhere else.

I stand by (and have reviewed) every automated "Mass downvoting" ban my automod has issued.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yep, sure do! But only on my own instance in accordance with our polices; communities I moderate elsewhere are modded according to those instances’ rules and TOS.

Your soft-banning of anyone fully participating in this community on LW belies that claim.

the upvotes-given to downvotes-given ratio threshold for the automated ban is quite generous

"Generous" downvote banning. Now that's an oxymoron.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

If I setup 100 fake accounts to downvote every content in a community, how is the mod supposed to react?

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Hell yeah! I'm with you on this one. Maybe I should start intentionally brigading communities and start spewing fascist bullshit just so they can see how dumb this rule is

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm with you in spirit, but I can't and won't endorse that kind of behavior (not even saying that to cover my ass; I'm truly against it).

However, should that occur organically (and it will), feel free to shine a "I told you so" spotlight onto it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Admirable admiralpatrick

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

TLDR;

  • LW policy perspective --> I agree on balance
  • LW enforcing it on all LW communities --> I disagree as it is not necessary, but it's their instance, so....
  • Fediverse strength --> Move your community to another instance. I'll susbscribe if you do.

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 (edit: contrary) 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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I'm mostly with you, though with a much more strict stance against allowing misinformation/conspiracy/etc. On that:

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.

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.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (8 children)

Tl;dr

But: Yes, we need more respectful dissent.

There are so many people who no longer talk to people who think differently. I don't know whether it's cowardice or whether they've simply never learned to do so, or for whatever reason.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (8 children)

I never said I was against the goal they were trying to achieve, just the means by which they're using to achieve it.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (14 children)

Why not just migrate to another instance? Have you forgotten that we are in the fediverse? This is a good opportunity to move communities to other instances.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Yeah I decided to move off of lemmy.world recently. Seems like they've been making a lot of bad decisions.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I'll leave the speculation as to whether Musk dropped LW a big check as an exercise to the reader.

And u call the right wingers the conspiracy theorists. Musk could not give 2 fucks about lemmy.

The lw admins have realised to compete as a platform in the marketplace if ideas u cannot censor ideas. Musk made the first move meta has been forces to follow as so is lemmy.

Why are u so concerned that u can be held accountable for any authoritarian censorship u may partake in?

Also i dare u to delete this comment.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Delete it? I can barely read it.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

nice job OP genuinely appreciate your expression of discontent and it seems like it might be successful too

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

Just unlock it already, no one gives a shit about your drama with the admins. If you can't deal with it, move to another instance.

[email protected] Guess I'll switch to here. Better a dead community than one held hostage by some power mod.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Better a dead community than one held hostage by some power mod.

Ironically, that's probably unpopular

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