Commented on a post with the most recent (non-Breitbart) headline and updates. Added this with 3 independent sources:
FYI, Breitbart is a far-right, low-quality source.
Mod apparently didnāt like a more reputable source being added to their post because it was removed in minutes lol.
reason: Rule 6 Violation
Rule 6: Using the Poisoning The Well fallacy to attack sources shared in a post is presently not allowed (this rule may change in the future, and isolated instances will not subject you to a permanent ban)
Just admit you want an echo chamber to spread disinformation and promote biased articles! Using this rule to police sources is very thinly-veiled censorshipā¦
Sorry if I was unclear! I quoted a bit, so tell me if I should edit something to make it less confusing (already clarified slightly). I am venting because I donāt think I broke a rule, but my comment with a reputable news source and several independent sources calling attention to the problems Breitbart has was removed.
And yes, I avoided pointing out exactly who it was, but itās pretty obvious who, when the instance has a single moderatorā¦ whoās also the OP. Their own community has the post downvoted 9 points vs a single upvote! š¤£
I would just make it a little more clear which side youāre on. People sometimes come to YPTB because they are being unreasonable. Something like:
Then the sources to prove it, but have the simple explanation first. Sometimes if you indicate the primary sources first without the explanation it takes a little triangulation for someone to figure out whatās actually going on.
And yeah, I donāt even know if this counts as PTB just because of the superseding issue that realcaseyrollins is just here to spew and nothing good can come of interacting with them, mod or not. Like you canāt go in the monkey cage and then be surprised when some poop comes flying at you. Iām actually a little surprised that thelemmy.club is not defederated from more places given the apparent waste-of-time state of the place.
thelemmy.club admin here
Their communities are small and generally most conservative posts get clowned on if they get any attention at all. And itās mostly self-contained. Any instance admin could just ban those few communities or that user thereās really no reason to defederate the entire instance.
Iām not at all a fan of their content but I also donāt want to ban people or comms that I personally disagree with (to a limit, of course) who donāt otherwise break rules.
But I definitely donāt want to run a right wing site. Iāve only left it alone this long because it seems like theyāve mostly failed at creating any kind of community. I may have to do something, I dunno. Itās hard to get a read on them, if you look they also post bbc, msnbc, etc articles. They post articles about Trump and Musks failures too. Itās kinda all over the place. To do it would force me to foray into a more active, ideological based moderation which Iād really like to avoid. Right now Iām at āif instances donāt like that user, they can ban themā.
Until you posted this I thought all of thelemmyclub was a right wing disinformation platform and have heard similar from others. It is the only content and users I have seen from the instance.
Have you heard the Nazi bar story? Not being sarcastic here, itās honestly pertinent to your situation.
Yes of course.
But scrolling through their history I hesitate to throw that label so strongly. Would you ban them? Actually, you havenāt done so despite having the capability. Nor their communities.
I think my problem is more that theyāre such a prolific poster on my small instance that it reflects more on my instance. Like if I had a few other communities that were larger than theirs I probably wouldnāt worry about it so much.
Thatās the whole point of the āNazi barā story though.
From being hosted on my instance? Absolutely. Iāve already banned similar ones. From being seen on my instance? Well I only just heard about it, so I would have to check.
Hmā¦ I just looked over their comment history and I have to say you kind of have a point. I have RCR mentally categorized as a bad-faith engager, but I really donāt see much at all of that after a quick glance over what theyāve actually been doing.
I think there is a big example set in conservative media that the right way to go about things is to spew propaganda, or be āsnarkyā and refuse to engage with reasonable conversation about politics in favor of just dunking on the opposition. That comes across as āfun,ā or as sort of doing battle for āyour teamā in the marketplace of ideas, and I think people are taken in by the idea of it even if theyāre not necessarily bad people or intending to do anything wrong. Looking over RCRās history Iām going to take back what I said about their intent being to violate the social contract. I think theyāre just posting a bunch of conservative stuff. Which, of course, thereās a lot of overlap between that and naked propaganda, but that doesnāt necessarily have to be their fault or their intent if thatās just the media they consume.
@realcaseyrollins@thelemmy.club as an olive branch Iām going to ask you about some details of some of the stuff youāve said recently, under appropriate comment threads. You donāt have to answer my questions of course if you donāt want to. I am just trying to sort out whether you are (1) posting this stuff because you think itās true (2) posting it because ādoing battle for your teamā so to speak is the pattern of behavior you see, by fun conservative commentators youāre trying to emulate (3) posting it because youāve independently decided that you donāt give a shit whether itās true as long as it āfeelsā like a win for your side. Those are somewhat different behaviors, as far as how youāre treating the social contract and as far as the Nazi bar analogy people have been talking about here, and so if you want people to treat you and your instance some certain way you might want people to be placing you in the earlier categories instead of the later ones.
Edit: Oh, one of the comments I wanted to respond to is not federated here. My question is:
Where did you read this? Can I find out more details about why you think this is happening, and read for myself the argument that it is happening?
Hey! I really appreciate you looping me in on this.
For the things I post, Iāll usually post them because I either 1) think that the content is probably both relevant and true, 2) it portrays a relevant perspective, or 3) is just plain interesting
If any articles I share make false claims in a community like @news@thelemmy.club then Iām more than happy to remove them. For places like @opeds@thelemmy.club Iām not as careful and I hope itās clear that the stuff over there or at @rightwingvideos@thelemmy.club arenāt always going to be 100% true or objective.
Now as far as my behavior is concerned @bdonvr@bdonvr@thelemmy.club if Iām no longer welcome here Iāll leave. Many of my communities here are continuations of my old Lotide communities, and I only left that software because itās abandonware now. Iām sure at this point thereād be other Lemmy instances I could go to if you donāt like what I post here.
Edit: Also, the point of Rule 6 was to reduce spam, as my communities were starting to get brigaded by leftists basically saying āfake newsā verbatim in the comment sections of certain news posts. I donāt like those types of rules, but it seems necessary for now since it keeps happening. Itās a neutral rule, so if anyone says āfake newsā on an article from a center or left leaning source Iāll remove that comment too.
Edit 2:
This was something I noticed during BLM riots particularly, and in some blue areas afterwards like in New York (though not as prominently since the riots), thereād be cases of somebody stealing something or hurting someone, caught on video, and the DA would refuse to place charges on the individual. For the life of me I couldnāt figure out why else they would do that.
Now to be fair I think there was some overlap between the BLM riots and me still watching Steven Crowder so maybe some of the stuff I observed at the time wasnāt entirely accurate or correct (I stopped watching him during the Summer Of Love because I noticed he wasnāt as truthful as he claimed to be during his coverage)
Yeah, Iām not trying to be unfriendly about it.
Butā¦ you surely have to see how (2) and (3) are bad things, right? Iām not saying you necessarily mean any harm, but this whole explanation that something is āa perspectiveā or āinterestingā and so that means itās okay if it doesnāt fall into the category of ātrueā isā¦ itās not good. Thereās a lot of deliberately misleading stuff out there.
There are a lot of people in the US getting amped-up over some thing that they saw online thatās total fabricated nonsense. People have died as a result. It really matters whether stuff is true. I know it is sort of popular in some circles to retreat into a kind of landscape where itās not all that important, everythingās just a perspective, if the stuff starts getting challenged, but it is important. Perspective is perspective, and truth and falsehood are truth and falsehood. Theyāre not the same.
I mean just someone explaining their take on things is fine. Maybe thatās what you mean by (2). Something doesnāt have to be āobjectiveā to be based in fact and reality. I guess my beef is more with the stuff where itās treated as not that important that the factual backing is not there or just imaginary.
Yeah, I do get that. I would rather have some kind of productive conversation about it. I donāt think itās really all that useful to just have two sides yelling at each other whichever side anybody happens to be on.
What youāre saying now is different from what you said before. What you said before was āequitive justiceā and āprogressive prosecutionā where people in the present tense are not prosecuted because of their race. Where does this happen, what are some of the cities? Where can I read more about it? How did you find out about it?
I have more to say on the arrests-during-BLM issue specifically, but thatās different than saying that blue states are using progressive prosecution and refusing to charge a crime because of the race of the person being accused, so I want to focus on the first thing instead of switching if we can.
Yeah, fair enough. Iāve had that experience of paying attention to something online and believing it, and then later on putting it together that it was bullshit, so I can respect the idea. The whole endeavor of trying to figure out who is actually telling the truth is important and itās not real easy.
I mean, it can be if youāre amplifying irrelevant voices, as amplifying irrelevant extreme rhetoric sparks panic and polarization. But if, say, an official says he thinks something about how Trump is running things, thatās interesting. If a new poll comes out about sentiment amongst voters about how Trump is running things, thatās interesting. And Rachel Maddow blogs, which I share in @opeds@thelemmy.club here and there are, if not interesting, at the very least a perspective shared by a non-insignificant portion of the population. By sharing these things, readers get a window into the thinking of people who have a different perspective than they do, which isnāt just positive, but a necessary means of fighting polarization, and fueling compassion and empathy.
Correct. Iām not going to run around sharing links to conspiracy theories, that is completely different.
Yeah, in hindsight I wasnāt entirely correct in that initial response. I know for a fact that I saw some things that lead me to that conclusion, but I am less sure that those things I saw were accurate now that I think about it.
Some cities I have seen this happen in were San Francisco and New York City (there might be others as well but I canāt remember off the top of my head). I am not aware of any studies or anything that quantify or validate my conclusion though.
FYI, we are having a thelemmy.club instance defederation vote in our governance community here: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/40329206, so maybe consider rethinking your position. We also banned Xitter links a while back for similar reasons. Any instance that caters to the alt-right is gonna find itself defederated sooner or later.
Itās actually a common right wing tactic to sprinkle some ordinary looking posts in between the problematic ones, for plausible deniability. But donāt be fooled, they know what they are doing. Iāll be happy to withdraw my governance defederation proposal if you are willing to take some meaningful action against right wing content on your instance.
Hereās my take on it. I had to deal with this a few times in spaces I control.
I feel you on not wanting to be capricious or ban people you donāt agree with. I actually think that having āenemyā points of view easily accessible for people to talk to or amongst each other is a really good thing. I wish there were more āconservativeā voices in the discourse that made some kind of sense for example, although thatās a pretty tough sell at this point because āconservativeā has become synonymous with dangerous violence and total dishonesty at this point. But the issue with realcaseyrollins or other people like them isnāt exactly the point of view. The issue is how they approach the social contract with their postings.
I think Lemmyās incentives and overall structure have led people to this entitled mindset under which theyāve got an absolute right to be part of the social interaction, as long as they donāt violate āthe rulesā beyond a reasonable doubt with a lot of debate and abundance of due process and benefit of the doubt. As long as they donāt cross certain incredibly loose standards of behavior (or other standards which are bizarrely and pointlessly strict), theyāve got a right to stay forever and interact however they want. I donāt actually think thatās a healthy way to build a community.
For the small number of times that this has come up, Iāve opened a conversation with the person. āHey, it kind of seems like such-and-such is an issue with what youāre posting. Whatās your take on it? How do you respond if someone raised that particular aspect as a problem for the community?ā
Every time, the reaction Iāve gotten has been along the lines of āwaargbrlgbs fuck fuck you fuck you Iām going to post it anyway argargarbawe you canāt stop me.ā Iām sort of paraphrasing obviously. But thatās the vibe. Kind of āI donāt have to justify it, now fuck off and let me post.ā At that point, I felt totally comfortable taking action against them. Because itās not censorship, itās justā¦ I donāt know, decency. Enforcing normal human interaction. The modern internet with its anonymity and its free accounts for whoever wants one, has entitled people to act with this kind of impunity. Experience has taught them that the social contract doesnāt apply to them. They donāt have to pretend theyāre here for a good reason, they donāt have to answer questions or talk like a reasonable person. If they just want to broadcast slop and abuse, they can. I do feel like someone whoās in control of some little part of the space has a responsibility to remove that stuff.
Iām not trying to tell you what to do by any means, you can handle it however you like. Like I say, I really feel you as far as not removing the viewpoint. I just donāt think that the viewpoint is really the issue with a lot of the posters that are problems in my opinion, and I donāt think āthe rulesā as they are commonly understood on Lemmy are the answer for building a good place.
Edit: Also, youāre definitely at risk of becoming the Nazi bar if you are not already. I took one look at the communities and, as you saw, came to the conclusion āwhoa welp okay fuck this place.ā Again, not because of the political bent of the content, but because of who was involved and their modes of interactions with other people that Iāve observed. I feel like it would be a lot more healthy to build up some kind of intentional good interactions and communities, however small, than it would be to have it dominated by the people who are having issues with getting banned in other places and just getting clowned on all the time.