3w ago

Whats going on over in the unpopular opinion lemmy?

119 comments

Short version: yesterday, Lemmy.world announced essentially, though they buried it under lots of distracting verbiage, that they were going to follow in the footsteps of Vichy Twitter and Meta and allow hate speech and misinformation, and probably more to the point, they intend to force recalcitrant mods to allow it regardless of their own views on the matter.
And the head mod/creator/whatever they are of unpopular opinion took exception to that and locked the community in protest.
- I'm another mod of the community. Admiral didn't let me know they were doing this.
  I still 100% support their actions regardless.
  
  So you don't support the LW announcement?
- I just want to highlight the term "Vichy Twitter" because I really like that. Thank you.
- Vichy Twitter is a good one, I'm gonna write that down.
- I thought this couldn't happen in lemmy. Oh well...
  
  This can certainly happen on Lemmy. And you can bypass it by setting up yourself and your communities on a different instance with more reasonable rules.
  Lemmy can't change human nature. It does not restrict bad behavior. It offers alternatives. Everyone gets to choose among instances and communities. The hope is that people will shift away from the ones that become toxic when better options are always available. It tends to be a gradual process, but I think it is working.
- Everyone has the right to make dumb decisions :)

Tankie mods on world are criticized for being too tankie in moderation.
Admins try to address this by forcing mods to argue instead of immediately ban if something is posted against their beliefs.
A non-tankie mod thinks it is bullshit that they have to engage in every online argument in good faith and takes their subs (I know this isn't the official term but it communicates the idea) dark in protest.
- i still use sub. i dont think ill ever stop. like how podcasts are still called podcasts and they dont even make ipods anymore.
  
  To be honest for people who didn't use redet a lot, 'subs' is very confusing because it doesn't relate to anything in the Threadyverse.
  
  Here's something to blow your mind: podcasts pre-date the iPod.
- While I don't agree with the 'tankie' rhetoric (it's been thrown around so much that word has no meaning here), mod abuse has definitely gotten out of control across most online communities.
  It's opening up an opportunity for communities that don't tolerate mod abuse to flourish.
  The mods only have themselves to blame. Hopefully these new communities won't repeat the same mistakes.
  
  It is going to be a learning experience for mods and admins on Lemmy. It took years for Reddit to cobble together a governance structure and, even then, it was really bad. I haven't seen the devs take any stance on building tools to help and we've seen a lot of cases where mod abuse have been defended by admins.
  This seems to be a first stab at admins taking a proactive approach to mod abuse. It is a bad policy, but at least they seem like they are trying to do something.
  
  Why are right wingers the only ones who ever try to devalue the meaning of words?
  If they don't like being called tankies or nazis they are free to chage their beleifs, same as you if you feel like you are being grouped in for your beliefs.
- Excellent summary.
- fucking tankies are here to ruin yet another alternative social network. Every. Single. Time. Be it alt-right nuts or alt-left ruining the party for everyone.
- Not that it matters, the whole .world instance is a toxic disinformation hub that should have been defederated long ago by every sane instance, but from what I've read it wasn't tankies, in this case, it was vegan fundamentalists going on a ban spree (it's far from the first time their .world community causes drama).
  
  Why are you commenting so much on .world if you hate it this much?
  
  Wait, it was about the VEGANS again?!

Mods are sad that this isn't reddit where their communities are their own little fiefdom
- As I understand, It was a move intended to inspire discussion rather than having overreaching moderators knee-jerk remove posts/comments. It just wasn’t worded properly.
  
  Yeah. Like, I do understand 100% that if someone says something in good faith, even if it's disagreeable or stupid, and not harmful, is there really a point in removing it? Although , even then, I got banned from politicalhumor for "racism" for posting the following meme:
  
  It was in a comment section and my joke was that Joe Biden legalised abortion. However they must have thought that I was posting it unrionically and was seriously claiming that Obama was a Muslim based on him being black, even though that it should be obvious that even the creator of the meme was parodying Facebook grandmothers

https://lemmy.world/post/24135976
So they're trying cut back on echo chambers and power tripping mods. I like this, but I wonder how this going to play out.
- We’re going to allow some “flat earth” comments. We’re going to force some moderators to accept some “flat earth” comments
  You.. like this? Glad I'm not a mod, this is how places like Reddit became what they are today. Opinions should be allowed, but admins should be able to moderate blatant falsehoods.
  
  Here’s the thing - who cares if someone wants to post about flat earth theories? If people like it, it will be upvoted, and if they don’t, it will be downvoted. Why remove it? That’s the point - let the users decide, not the mods. Power to the people, the mods just step in when they post 10 times in an hour about flat earth theories.
  Unfortunately, you’ll have to switch to subscriptions when you sort by new.
  
  We've already run into problems with that where mods banned people talking about Israeli war crimes as "misinformation". Despite it being headline news.
  So that's obviously not a great system.
  
  Reddit is a living emblem of the problem this is trying to solve so I have no idea what you mean.
  Mods can’t be trusted to enforce the truth. It’s far too complicated and they invariably end up enforcing their own distorted view of the world instead.
  
  Yeah. I'd rather have people rely on citations and inquisition than trusting mods to keep misinformation at bay.
  
  Define "blatant falsehood". See where the problem starts?
  
  You… like this?
  Yeah. You know the saying, "Sunlight is the best disinfectant.".
  
  I don't, but I also moved all the communities I mod off LW
- Policy sentiments aside, wow that post is so up it's own ass. There was definitely a more concise way to communicate the change.
- So they're trying cut back on echo chambers and power tripping mods.
  No they're not. They're trying to promote disinformation and hate speech, because they're trying to emulate Musk, Zuckerberg, and spez, as they've always done.
  Hopefully this'll be the drop that makes the glass overflow and will get .world finally defederated by saner instances.

Seems like they locked the community in protest of recent .world TOS changes. Although I think a much better protest would be to simply refuse to enforce the changes they felt are unsatisfactory.
- ...or just migrate the community to another instance? Like why are we in the fediverse? Have people forgotten that if you don't like a instance, you can just move to another one?
  
  Migration as a first choice is rash.

Well, time to make my alt community account my primary one. See y'all on the other side!
- I make them perna ban me first. Fuck them.
  But yeah. Gtfo, and be carful, if the world is flat that means it has an edge.

You have to allow a little raw chicken in the mayo now.
So now people are to be allowed to sealion and troll and JAQ off in your community, so long as they do it respectfully.
Or else.
Imagine running, say, a community for vulnerable trans kids, and being forced to allow a constant influx of 'helpful suggestions', just so long as they're phrased in pretty language.
- Imagine running, say, a community for vulnerable trans kids, and being forced to allow a constant influx of 'helpful suggestions', just so long as they're phrased in pretty language.
  What will happen is Trans kids will go over to one of the trans-friendly instances, and the .world will be where the trans defenders go to debate chuds.
- Anyone who's seen what happens when mods legitimize trolls knows it kills communities. I wish i could have stayed on blahaj but it's just as toxic as reddit lgbtq spaces now...
  
  It is? What happened to blahaj?
- Yikes

I'm not an expert in political philosophy by any measure, but I kind of feel like lemmy.world is a small case study in the pros and cons of realpolitik.
- Mostly the cons.

.world continually making dumb changes

I have no idea, what is it?
- They locked the community in protest of . world's new pro-disinformation and pro-hate speech policies.

119 comments