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 [email protected] 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.

  • Elle@lemmy.world
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    55 minutes ago

    Is there some context that could help clarify what’s led to this change?

    Similarly, could you provide clearer examples, and how this is intended to fit into the existing Terms of Service/Rules? Despite the length of the post, the way in which it’s written leaves this change too ambiguous to be easily understood, which I think is evident both from the voting and commenting patterns.

    In my opinion, my questions should have already been addressed in the post, and I think may have helped reception of this change (supposing at minimum it’s to curtail some abusive moderation practices).

  • Nollij@sopuli.xyz
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    There’s something that everyone should keep in mind with this announcement. Due to the nature of federation and the fediverse, it can ONLY apply to lemmy.world. Users and communities on other instances can, do, and will continue to have their own policies on the matter.

    Expect the tankie and fascist instances to keep doing tankie and fascist shit, and very little has changed in that regard. They still have the same risk of defederation, even if the chances have inched up slightly.

  • realitista@lemm.ee
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    I don’t have the time or desire to go around arguing with every tankie troll on the platform who says that the Ukraine war is the west’s fault or that the Holomodor or the Uyghur genocide or Tienamen Square massacre didn’t happen. They are too numerous and it accomplishes nothing.

    I simply block them. Which leaves them to troll everyone else and spread more misinformation. Mods in communities should have every right to ban trolls as well, otherwise they will strangle said community and drive all sane people out.

    I’m all for a good spirited conversation but that’s not what they want. They just want to drown out all conversation with their narrative.

    Why not add subscribable block lists like Bluesky has? Then it would be easier to accept such a policy.

    • SkyezOpen@lemmy.world
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      Yep. Are the admins going to at least force mods on world to let me call them a tankie when they post tankie shit? Cause I got banned from a .world comm for exactly that.

  • DragonsInARoom@lemmy.world
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    Fair, just don’t expand this any further, because its a slippery slope into taking autonomy from community mods.

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    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.

    • OpenStars@piefed.social
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      One issue there is technical limitations: PieFed (a Lemmy alternative) and some apps will show the sidebar of a community, but some others bury it behind several clicks in long-ass (>5 items) menu structures.

      Then again, what should the expectation even be for someone who comes in via All without ever having posted to the community before.

      Ultimately imho the community belongs to the userbase that enjoys using it, so if they don’t want to see something, then they should not be forced to have to.

    • DragonsInARoom@lemmy.world
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      When you have everyone who agrees on something, having one person disagree is noise. That’s the point. To have a diversity of opinion without punishment, within “in-groups”. Ops post seems like it’s some sort of appeals process if someone is “generating noise” (disagreeing) in good faith, they have a recourse. And op does state that a history of bad faith can be punished, or just obvious trolling. My worry is that this is a “foot in the door” for future admin overreach.

  • VeganPizza69 Ⓥ@lemmy.world
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    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.

    • Sunshine (she/her)@lemmy.ca
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      5 hours ago

      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”.

  • CityPop@lemmy.today
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    8 hours ago

    “A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World While the Truth Is Putting On Its Shoes.”

    This policy change will only reward bad actors. This sort of behavior needs to be stopped ASAP, simply correcting the record after the damage is done is not enough.

    • Zagorath
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      5 hours ago

      Have you seen the thread that brought this about? It was one group of vegans lamenting at a formerly vegan restaurant which added a small number of non-vegan options to try and attract enough customers not to close, and then closing regardless when that didn’t work. Then there was respectful debate as to whether it is better for every restaurant to have a small number of vegan options, or for one restaurant to be 100% vegan. The mods of that community shut the whole thing down, despite it being incredibly respectful, because to them any possible concession in any circumstances makes you a “fake vegan” and worthy of a ban.

      This rule change could be problematic if applied in the wrong circumstances, but it’s being enacted for a very clear and beneficial purpose.

      • CityPop@lemmy.today
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        And? Go make a new community if you don’t like how one is run, don’t invite misinformation and trolls into all spaces because you don’t agree with how one mod runs their community.

      • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
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        It sounds like you’re being trolled by the mods. Open a different vegan community, even if it’s small. Also, in almost every other instance, this rule change would be a bad thing.

      • TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee
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        3 hours ago

        so much drama stems from the vegan community it’s honestly hysterical. Textbook case of why vegans are memed on so hard

        • Zagorath
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          4 hours ago

          Your opinion on veganism does not justify the mods’ abuse of their power to silence other vegans.

          • Sunshine (she/her)@lemmy.ca
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            You do not get to bend words to suit your beliefs. Every legitimate vegan community would ban anyone who falsely claims they’re vegan. It’s always an abuse of power every time vegans moderates their communities but not when carnivore grifters do it.

            • Zagorath
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              You do not get to bend words to suit your beliefs

              But apparently you do? Almost nobody is a carnivore. They’re more rare than vegans by far. I think the word you were looking for was omnivore.

              Anyway, the mods of the community you seem so desperate to defend were banning vegans. Vegans who were discussing what they sincerely think is best for them as vegans. I don’t understand how you can think that’s ok, regardless of how one chooses to define what vegan means.

              • Sunshine (she/her)@lemmy.ca
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                But apparently you do?

                Well yes because I dont eat/use animal products for ethical reasons. A carnist obviously knows the least about this subject.

                You’re dismissing the definition from the vegan society because it allows you to participate in reductionism. Go hang out with the flexitarians, vegetarians and the plant-based if you want to engage in the kind of conversation.

                There are so many people who claim to be “vegan” who consume honey or oysters or fish for crying out loud. No wonder why the general population is so confused on what being vegan actually means.

                Not to mention all the bad actors who lie about “being vegan” or that they know “someone is vegan” to push false narratives about the community in an attempt to discredit the whole movement.

                • Zagorath
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                  3 hours ago

                  Ok, so (a) you don’t know how language works, and (b) you’re happy to be a complete hypocrite and insist people use your personal definition of vegan while using “carnivore” to refer to what is properly “omnivore”. Nice.

                  Anyway, an ethical vegan is no “more vegan” than a dietary vegan or an environmental vegan. If you want to have arguments amongst yourselves about who is “better”, go ahead. Just don’t try to do it by twisting the definition of the word itself.

          • Sunshine (she/her)@lemmy.ca
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            3 hours ago

            For following proper definitions?

            People hate vegans because they feel guilty about their actions.

            Flexitarian: one whose normally meatless diet occasionally includes meat or fish.

            Vegan: a person who follows the philosophy and way of living that excludes all forms of animal exploitation and cruelty for food, clothing or any other purpose.

            This is why I’m going to block you for arguing in bad faith.

              • Sunshine (she/her)@lemmy.ca
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                Wrong, people do not like the status quo being challenged.

                People in certain places in the world do not appreciate being told to stop beating or eating dogs. They think those animal advocates are “rude”.

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    15 hours ago

    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.

    • Serinus@lemmy.worldOPM
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      15 hours ago

      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.

    • Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.win
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      8 hours ago

      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?

      • irotsoma@lemmy.world
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        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.

        • Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.win
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          Because most are saying that

          So, not ‘pure hate’. There’s some impurities in there apparently.

          There are more issues with autism than ‘it breaks social norms’ and seeking treatments for the condition is looking to improve lives, not being hateful.

  • WrittenInRed [any]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    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.

    • SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml
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      15 hours ago

      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

  • Sunshine (she/her)@lemmy.ca
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    16 hours ago

    I respectfully disagree with this policy change as debate communities have their place in allowing discourse on topics.

    • YarrMatey@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      9 hours ago

      Because the one thing a vegan community (meant specifically for vegans) needs is carnists coming in to troll everyone into debating them, it’s just a little dissent that totally won’t turn the community into a hostile environment /s

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        Let me come to the vegan group to discuss finer points of slow cooking a brisket, I really think it will convince you. You have to tolerate me, just debating, bro.

    • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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      Yeah. not every community needs to be a debate community. It’s perfectly fine for some communities to be fan communities where the expectation and intention is like-minded people discussing a shared interest or world view. Someone going into a “marijuana” community and saying “marijuana is bad” is just trolling, not engaging in some higher philosophical exercise.

      • OpenStars@piefed.social
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        2 hours ago

        It would be nice if they were labelled which are which. Except I guess now, as you said, any community at all on Lemmy.World will by definition be one.

      • FelixCress@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        Someone going into a “marijuana” community and saying “marijuana is bad”

        And? Than he will be downvoted or ignored. Why would you advocate removing his post (assuming he can link to a scientific study proving his point - I don’t know if he could).

        • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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          7 hours ago

          They won’t be downvoted and ignored, they’ll spawn 5 replies escalating the forum fight and whatever the actual topic was will be pushed to the side. And the people who just want to talk about marijuana will feel like their fan community is now a debate club for trolls.

          • FelixCress@lemmy.world
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            They won’t be downvoted and ignored

            Why wouldn’t they be downvoted in the sub dedicated to marijuanna?

            they’ll spawn 5 replies

            What you mean is they will engage in the discussion. Good, this is what Lemmy is for

            people who just want to talk about marijuana will feel like their fan community is now a debate club

            This is still the discussion about marijuanna, not about classic cars.

            You are making no sense unless your point is “I am entitled to air my view without any opposite views contradicting mine”. If so, go away sweetie.

            • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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              7 hours ago

              If so, go away sweetie.

              Yeeeah. Really demonstrating how you’re dedicated to high concept discussion and not just wanting to “debate me bro” wherever you feel life.

              • FelixCress@lemmy.world
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                7 hours ago

                No. I am dedicated to the concept of people being able to express their views without idiots trying to ban them for expressing their views.

                I never said it will be me engaging in the discussion.