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Serinus @lemmy.world

Moderation Policy Change - Respectful Dissent

There will be a new announcement soon to clarify.

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 !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com 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.

228 comments

  • 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.

    I get that those are examples, and I am pretty sure I understand the problem this is trying to address. Like, I get that.

    But, aside from the aforementioned "many root comments in every thread", where do we draw the line with regard to misinformation and/or trolling? Are we expected to refute every crackpot claim and leave misinformation, conspiracy theories, and the like on display? I feel like that's just a recipe for gish-galloping mods to death while opening the door to mis-information.

    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"? According to common sense and the LW TOS Section 1, it's the former. According to how this new policy is written, it seems to be the latter.

    Again, I understand what this is trying to accomplish, but I feel the way it's being handled is not the best way to achieve that.

    • 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.

      This right here may be the key to the whole thing. If not, then it's time to move communities to other instances bc ultimately the communities are merely rooms inside of someone else's house.

      • That was what I assumed it boiled down to, yeah, and that's where I agree with them. The rest of it, though, is indefensible and sounds exactly like what Meta just announced with their recent content moderation changes (read: it stinks).

    • We're not going to allow queer people to be attacked using the same old tropes. That's not what this is about. The coincidence with Meta is unfortunate timing.

      This is generally about manipulating people through echo chambers. It's about allowing users to counter misinformation, particularly from moderators.

      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. Additionally, you don't always have to have the last word. When they end with something ridiculous enough, I often just leave it. The point is to help the reader see the options, but you can't make them drink. If they look at the water fountain, then the toilet, and then they choose the toilet, well maybe they're not able to be helped.

      If they keep spamming, you have a legit reason to remove them.

      The communities where we take action should have a very clear pattern. I don't expect this to be perfect, but we're open to suggestions.

      • Feel free to check my comment history in this community on prior announcements; you'll see I've defended pretty much every site-wide action the LW Team has taken because I've seen the bigger picture, the merit to it, and/or understood where they were coming from.

        I cannot defend this one, though.

        If someone submits something counter to objective reality, mods should have every right to squash that as misinformation even if they're not spamming it. Sure, we can't make them drink an antidote, but we should not be stopped from preventing others from drinking the poison.

        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.

        Are you referring to the example I used re: Meta and someone popping into an LGBT+ community to say that being gay is a mental illness? Because that just sounds like feeding the trolls to me. I definitely don't want an echo chamber and welcome more varied opinions/positions, but my tolerance is zero when it comes to those operating in bad faith (a quick look at their submission history easily confirms/refutes that).

        I sincerely hope your team revises this or applies it more granularly where the problem actually exists because I feel like this is just creating a whole new set of problems.

      • You underestimate the masses’ susceptibility to be gradually grifted into believing increasingly worse falsehoods, bigotries, and self-destructive ideals.

      • If they look at the water fountain, then the toilet, and then they choose the toilet, well maybe they’re not able to be helped.

        But sticking with this analogy, imagine you see someone hanging a sign saying "water fountain" over a toilet, and you're told you have to leave it there because of "respectful dissent" and "if someone chooses the toilet, they're not able to be helped." Which makes more logical sense- telling every single passerby that despite the sign this toilet is in fact not a water fountain, or just taking the sign down and dealing with the few people who do question it?

        Like, I get that heavy-handed opinionated overmoderation is a problem that should be addressed in some way. Forcing mods to blanket accept factual falsehoods isn't the way to go about it.

      • Cool, totally looking forward to having to "debate" people that my identity isn't mental illness. Sure am happy I get to dust off my refutation of that "occasionally". You can say what you want, as long as you word it right. Just be inquisitive! I can see the "toilets" now: "Oh gee whiz mister, I sure do not understand why you think you're a lady. I heard it was a mental illness. Can you explain it to me? I pwomise to respect you and leave my anecdotes out."

        EDIT: There's someone replying to this from lemm.ee whose replies I cannot see because my instance banned them for transphobia. To that person: I'm pretty much referencing you.

      • Fuck man, I may as well get back on reddit. If you're open to suggestions, I suggest, perhaps, meditating on where the value of lemmy actually lies.

      • Just saw your edits:

        We're not going to allow queer people to be attacked using the same old tropes. That's not what this is about. The coincidence with Meta is unfortunate timing.

        This is generally about manipulating people through echo chambers. It's about allowing users to counter misinformation, particularly from moderators.

        I'm not saying allowing attacks on queer people was the intention of this policy, but as-written, this policy absolutely has that side effect and more. The fact that the policy was so easy to interpret as being similar to Meta's just goes to show how poorly written and poorly thought out this policy is.

        As-written, this policy leaves too much open to interpretation, makes no mention of how it meshes with the existing TOS, removes agency from moderators to keep their communities on point and civil, and is generally punishing all moderators/communities for the actions of a few. Furthermore, forcing mods to "debate" every crackpot claim just lends credence to the claim that it's something even worth discussing.

        Again, I highly encourage the team to reconsider this entire change and go back to the drawing board for a solution to a problem that only seems to affect a minority of communities.

  • I couldn't care less about flat earthers. It's the lack of moderation of hate speech that prompted me to leave Meta products. When the speech is specifically designed to harm others it's a huge difference from just harming themselves and their willing peers. Allowing spreading that LGBTQ+ people are mentally ill or that Autistic people need to be fixed rather than accepted, or that all immigrants are bad people, those things are not just bad science (though that's part of it). They are designed to have those people ostracized or murdered. That is not "respectful disagreement". That is pure hate-speech, even if the person saying it truly believes it. It is detrimental to the community and if that is allowed here like on Meta now, I'll happily leave as a proud LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent person among other things that current "political discourse" (i.e. acceptable hate) is being allowed to spread.

    • Our original ToS hasn't gone anywhere and will still be enforced. Hate speech is not respectful. None of this means discrimination or hate speech is okay.

      1. Attacks on people or groups

      Before using the website, remember you will be interacting with actual, real people and communities. Lemmy.World is not a place for you to attack other people or groups of people. Just because you disagree with someone doesn't give you the right to harass them. Discuss ideas and be critical of principles. Show the respect you desire to receive.

      • The problem other than the fact that the timing is suspect as other social media is moving as quickly as possible to allow hate speech under the guise of free speech, is that the language uses seems to imply that moderators must cater to moderating only things that are hateful or attacks by all users. Problem is that many on the far right don't consider the things I mentioned or most other hate speech to be disrespectful. They don't consider those people to be worthy of respect or human at all. They are "followers of the devil" or whatever excuse they have told themselves to justify their hate.

        So saying that hate speech is not respectful only works if all parties consider it hate speech. But all of these things are now excluded from what Meta considers hate speech (they do still ban hate speech in general, just are more specific now about what that is). For example, they just consider LGBTQ+ people being mentally ill to be a fact or at least setting up for debate. They even provide examples of what they consider to be "opinion" and thus "free speech" and not "hate speech" like calling trans and non-binary people "it" or calling women "household objects" to dehumanize them is considered not hate speech by them.

        So, either you need to specifically call out all the things you consider hate speech that far right people do not, or you need to allow moderators to do their job as members of society that understand what is hate and what is not. It's never black and white.

    • https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/ could be a good fit for you

    • It isn't necessarily 'pure hate speech' and shutting off the discussion is what is leading you to come to this conclusion. If a pill were developed that allowed someone diagnosed with autism to live more like the general public without a lifetime of current therapies, and no side-effects why is me suggesting they consider this option 'pure hate'? Can you see how one-sided your stance is?

      • Because most are saying that my existence is a disease to be cured and not simply a different way of existing. It's like telling a black person that drug should be developed to bleach their skin so they can live more like the general public without a lifetime of prejudices. Autism only requires therapy to force us to act differently than our brains tell us to act. Not because oír normal way of acting is somehow self-destructive, but because it breaks social norms and makes others uncomfortable. The "cure" is fir other people to accept us as we are, just like the "cure" for being black is to accept them not change them.

  • 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.

    This just translates to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean or "reversion to mediocrity". Much like 🤬🤬🤬🤬it's /all, every time that mainstream spills into a community it ruins it and brings it closer to the mainstream.

    In biology, you may recognize some of these phenomena from biochemistry: osmosis and diffusion. The demand to disable the "semi-permeable membrane" ends the purpose of the compartment.

    Either the invading posts/comments get removed or the influx of participants (including voting) has to be rationed somehow. Doing neither is not a discussion about narratives, it's a mobbing. It's the opposite of promoting discourse, as that setup heavily favors the "mainstream" narrative, the status quo.

    I should mention that I've been a moderator of internet communities since before Web 2.0 and I find the moderation tools for Lemmy type platforms to be terrible. If the expectation is to not have practical moderation, but instead to separate into fedi-islands and block the problematic networks, well, that would be a very blunt way to get to the same goals. Instead of having moderators individually ban users, you have admins ban entire networks of users.

    There is no getting away from the need for moderators. Musk proved that again since he took over Twitter. Zuckerberg is proving it again now. You're not building a protopia by hampering moderation, you're building a cyber-wasteland. Any success with that will be temporary, like a pump and dump: you get a period of growth and a honeymoon, and then the critical mass of assholes is achieved and they turn everything to shit, and then most users have to start searching for greener pastures food forests to migrate to. Another term for that is unsustainable, it can't last.

    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.

    Rationality is much more complex than you think. The experience of the COVID-19 pandemic should've taught you that already, first hand. The simple model of persuasion by presenting reasonable arguments and evidence is wrong. There's an entire field looking into cognitive biases that show how irrational humans are. How exactly do you plan to argue with people who believe in "alternative facts" and "post-truth"?

    All I see in the article you posted is a lack of experience in dealing with bullshit, a lack of understanding of the viral or memetic nature of bullshit.

    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.

    It's disheartening that you haven't learned yet that flateartherism is a variant of creationism, another religiously inspired pseudoscience.

    • Well said the majority will often want to oppress the minority.

      The phrase “common sense” is flawed as the majority have been wrong about certain topics in the past like lobotomies being used to “correct problematic behaviour”.

  • I posted this in another thread but I also wanted to say it here so it's more likely one of you will see it. I get the intention behind this, and I think it's well intentioned, but it's also definitely the wrong way to go about things. By lumping opposing viewpoints and misinformation together, all you end up doing is implying that having a difference in opinion on something more subjective is tantamount to spreading a proven lie, and lending credence to misinformation. A common tactic used to try and spread the influence of hate or misinformation is to present it as a "different opinion" and ask people to debate it. Doing so leads to others coming across the misinfo seeing responses that discuss it, and even if most of those are attempting to argue against it, it makes it seem like something that is a debatable opinion instead of an objective falsehood. Someone posting links to sources that show how being trans isn't mental health issue for the 1000th time wont convince anyone that they're wrong for believing so, but it will add another example of people arguing about an idea, making those without an opinion see the ideas as both equally worthy of consideration. Forcing moderators to engage in debate is the exact scenario people who post this sort of disguised hate would love.

    Even if the person posting it genuinely believes the statement to be true, there are studies that show presenting someone with sources that refute something they hold as fact doesn't get them to change their mind.

    If the thread in question is actually subjective, then preventing moderators from removing just because they disagree is great. The goal of preventing overmodedation of dissenting opinions is extremely important. You cannot do so by equating them with blatent lies and hate though, as that will run counter to both goals this policy has in mind. Blurring the line between them like this will just make misinformation harder to spot, and disagreements easier to mistake as falsehoods.

    • A common tactic used to try and spread the influence of hate or misinformation is to present it as a "different opinion" and ask people to debate it.

      Very good point

  • We’re going to allow some “flat earth” comments. We’re going to force some moderators to accept some “flat earth” comments.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law

    So basically you're saying people should be allowed to post blatant false information and everybody should try their best to tell them they're wrong rather than doing the sensible thing of stopping false information spreading in the first place.

    People who would post that stuff would never argue with good intentions and would often argue in bad faith. What you're suggesting trolling should be allowed, moderators and community members need to waste their time engaging with controversial content nobody wants to see, and threads will have even more people fighting in them. Who decides when wrong info and propaganda posts are allowed to be removed? LW admins? You won't be able to keep up and are guaranteed to incite distrust in your community either way.

    I'm with reducing echo chambers and taking action on bad moderators that abuse their positions, but making the blanket statement that basically translates to "flat earthers are now welcome here whether you like it or not, get ready to see posts unironically arguing about why flat earth is right in your feed" surely can ring some bells on why this is a bad idea.

    This is like the third time LW tried to be front-and-center in deciding how conversations should happen on Lemmy. You are the most popular Lemmy instance and most content is on your instance. This isn't an experimental safe space instance to dictate how social media should work. Please understand that any weirdly aggressive stances you take affects everyone.

  • We’re going to allow some “flat earth” comments. We’re going to force some moderators to accept some “flat earth” comments.

    In general I would agree, but if the community moderators decides to set some ground truths (aka an echo chamber), I don't think the admins should be involved.

    Allowing these posts and comment despite these agreed upon ground truths (ex: the earth is round, vaccine works, eating animals is unethical, etc) is only going to generate noise by having to refute these again and again instead of fostering productive discussions.

    I say let the communities handle their own affairs, and the admins should only intervene in severe cases.

  • I appreciate everything the .world admins do. As a mod of a community here, I also agree with the general concept of letting the community downvote posts that aren't actually harmful in terms of hate/abuse. That being said, I think it would be wise to reformulate and reduce down this post to a straightforward announcement: what events precipitated this policy change, what are going to be permitted kinds of content, and what is not allowed. This post is just a kind of wandering philosophy right now.

    • That being said, I think it would be wise to reformulate and reduce down this post to a straightforward announcement:

      Indeed. I know what they mean and why they arrived at this decision, and I agree with it, but I got bored half-way through.

  • Pretty sure I agree with the gist of this, and it's welcome. My corner is small anyway, with not a lot of trolls and troublemakers, and I hope I'm already in line with this policy.

    Well, unless I'm one of the mods who'll "receive an immediate notice with a link to this new policy."

  • You're trying cut back on echo chambers and power tripping mods. I like this, but I wonder how this going to play out.

  • This is refreshing to see, good on you for daring to do this. There is no reason to fear respectful debate in the absence of an agenda.

    • It's really easy to disguise a campaign to wear out moderators as respectful debate, e.g. by sealioning, especially if you're not working alone. The new rules don't have any provision to distinguish between respectful debate and bad-faith posts, so it's not unreasonable to worry that this change will do a lot more to promote bad-faith 'debate' than respectful debate.

      • I agree that it's a difficult balancing act. Overall though, the role of a moderator is to facilitate conversation in accordance to the rules, not enforce their own narrative on the community. These steps are not perfect, but they are an attempt to try and get moderators to moderate more and dictate less.

  • I support you in this decision. To me, Lemmy is fundamentally about the free exchange of ideas, independent from the prevailing mainstream dogma. This platform was built to accommodate a diversity of experiences and viewpoints, and allow people to engage with unfamiliar perspectives without being overwhelmed by them.

    This policy only applies to lemmy.world, it doesn't apply to every server on the fediverse. If the complainers truly feel that their experience is being negatively impacted by this policy, then go ahead and move to one of the many servers that maintain the policy of removing and banning opposing viewpoints on sight. There's absolutely nothing wrong with finding your preferred walled garden and savoring that environment.

    But if Lemmy is just a collection of echo chambers, there won't be any space for people to hash out their differences of opinion, and we will just become more isolated and out of touch. As the largest server in the network, I think it's quite suitable for lemmy.world to explicitly advocate for a diversity of viewpoints, and I believe it will ultimately benefit the platform as a whole.

  • This is a hard one to enforce but it should result in a much more pleasant experience overall. I think we have something great on Lemmy and decisions like this set us apart from places like reddit.

  • Holy shit lw finally makes a good moderation decision. This is great this will open up lemmy to more free speach make it more welcoming to normies with opinions that differ from the lemmy echochamber.

    This will not be popular but it is nessasary to ensure lemmy and Activpub can become mainstream and continue to maintain its open nature.

    This is brilliant.

228 comments