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Ye Power Trippin' Bastards @lemmy.dbzer0.com
PhilipTheBucket @ponder.cat

A story as old as federated social media, in 3 parts

  1. Mod of !anarchism@slrpnk.net posts a great Greta Thunberg quote, but then tries to use it to justify not voting in the upcoming US election
  2. Multiple people point out that’s very clearly not what she meant
  3. Removed by mod Removed by mod Removed by mod Removed by mod

Using your mod powers to decide who is allowed and not allowed to speak is not very anarchist of you, @mambabasa@slrpnk.net

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211 comments

  • YDI: Going to an anarchist space to spout anti-anarchist viewpoints makes the use of mod powers to remove such viewpoints reasonable. It's like going to a vegan place to argue about the benefits of meat, or going to a feminist place to argue "not all men".

    Some anarchist communities are setup for this sort of debate. Some are not. Both are OK to exist.

    • Yeah, no. Pointing out that a quote does not support the point of view that someone is trying to use it to support is tacitly not equivalent to "going to an anarchist space to spout anti-anarchist viewpoints." Your other examples are insufficient analogies, and I hope you can see that.

      If your hypothetical vegan space had a moderator who posted a quote of Lynda Carter saying "I try to avoid cheese, dairy, and a lot of meat, but I do like them," and attempted to interpret that as "Wonder Woman advocates veganism," it's perfectly valid to call out the absence of that sentiment in the source quote. Removing such responses, especially on one's own post, reeks of a petty reaction to criticism.

      While I typically find value in your opinions, including the ones I don't agree with, I'm having trouble mustering respect for this one.

    • Thank you @db0. I co-mod !anarchism@slrpnk.net and administer on SLRPNK. I also support @mambabasa's moderation decisions.

      • Is this really what we are going to be? I don't recall the community every banning people left and right for comments like these. I myself made similar arguments before, where is my ban and comment removal? OP here did not post anything in bad faith, they didn't come to troll, nobody complained and there also wasn't a flood of the community. There was a total of 17 comments, 7 were removed, and 5 are just the mod getting into fights with people, and the post was locked after that. This is something you support?

        Speaking of the mod, they are aggressive and insulting in every comment they make, almost every post is "don't vote for Harris", and this has been flooding the local instance for some time now (11 posts "don't vote for Harris" in 2 days last week). There is absolutely nothing constructive in this whole story, just one person making as much noise as possible without adding anything constructive and then banning people who make good faith counter-arguments. I thought this was one mod out of control, but if you support all of this, if this is what the slrpnk anarchist community is, I have to say that I am profoundly disappointed in this instance. I can only hope that the majority of slrpnk.net would condemn this whole story, they just aren't aware.

        • You are mixing up different things here. I was also not so happy about the high number of low quality memes they posted in a short period of time inciting nothing but anger shortly before a very emotionally loaded election. I mentioned to the mod privately that I found this quite trollish at this exact point in time and they agreed to stop.

          The specific post in question was maybe one of the less bad ones (Greta's take is pretty sensible IMHO) and due to the high number of upvotes it had the usual drive-by comments by non-community members that were mostly off-topic, did nothing but stoke the flames and were also partially offensive*. Maybe the mod overacted somewhat with deleting most of them, but locking the thread was absolutely the right call after it derailed and handing out a temporary (!) community ban to a very argumentative drive-by poster is IMHO good practice to defuse the situation.

          *I agree with the mod that you can vote for your lesser evil or strategically whatever, but there is no need to provide lengthy ideological justifications to convince yourself and others that it was something other than a lesser evil vote.

          • Repeated explicitly political memes spamming the community = "not so happy"

            This election is hugely important and, however shit some Democratic policies are when compared against what we actually need, Trump is clearly dangerous as fuck on a whole other level. That applies to the Mideast just as firmly as it does on climate change. Personally I agree with 100% of what she has to say here, both the first and second parts.

            = "nothing but stoke the flames and were also partially offensive" "no need to provide lengthy ideological justifications to convince yourself and others that is was something other than a lesser evil vote", 10 day ban

            What a crock of shit. You're buying word for word the mod's revisionist history about "ideological justifications" where I don't think those ever existed in any of the messages they deleted. Definitely not in mine. See for yourself:

            https://ponder.cat/comment/791878

            I'm not a troll. I don't make bad-faith arguments, create political spam, or inflame things to no purpose. This person does, and you're giving them authority and booting me from the community.

            I'm not trying to reopen the discussion by saying this. It's been and gone, and I've moved on from !anarchism@slrpnk.net. I think this person has learned how to manipulate the Slrpnk admins to their liking for their own political ends. Have fun with them.

            • No one said you were intentionally trolling or making bad faith arguments. What you did was randomly enter a post you disagreed with and started an off-topic argument with the OP using emotionally loaded language to justify something that is in the end just a very mundane lesser evil decision. I am old enough to have seen this spiel out many times during every other election cycle and I find it quite offensive to be exposed to such arguments lacking even the slightest bit of self-reflection, especially in what is supposed to be an Anarchist community.

              • I find it quite offensive to be exposed to such arguments lacking even the slightest bit of self-reflection

                Here. I'm just going to paste what I said elsewhere in these comments:

                But please, tell me why anarchists should tolerate anti-anarchism, liberalism, and ideological cover for genocide in their space. I’m sure it’s enlightening.

                Because talking with people who don't agree with you is a valuable thing to do.

                If I'm wrong, and you take some time to talk with me, maybe I'll absorb what you are saying, and take it on as a good idea. Probably not the first time, but it does happen over time. It's good to be able to talk with other humans. If as soon as I'm wrong, you ban me, then I'll never have that opportunity, and I'll just go on being wrong and getting banned from places, indefinitely.

                If you're wrong, or what you're saying is applicable sometimes but it's not a good idea in some other situations, letting me say what I've got to say might show you a new perspective. Or, even if you're completely set in your way, it's still valuable for the people watching the conversation to be able to see both sides expressed, and decide for themselves.

                I think it's universally agreed that the places on Reddit and Lemmy that aggressively remove "the wrong viewpoint" are laughingstocks. A lot of the time, they're doing that because they don't have a good answer for questions people are asking or points they're making. You've chosen to make !anarchism@slrpnk.net into one of them, in this one particular instance. Well done.

                You've asked over and over why I am supporting genocide. I explained over and over that what I'm saying is an attempt to prevent genocide, and calmly explained how. That pattern eventually starts to sink in, for people watching the conversation, even if it never does for you, and impacts what they take away from the conversation. I think it would be better for you to reassess your way of approaching conversation with people who don't agree with you, but you do you.

                See how good this is? We don't agree on things, and we're talking to each other. It's normal, it's healthy. Like I said, if you're insistent on making "your" community into one where that can't happen, that's on you, but I think it's a bad idea.

                I think, if I'm being honest, that the lack of time and moderation resources is at the root of a lot of this. You made a separate comment about that under Blaze's comment. I think that's the real issue. I think if someone could wave a magic wand, and have moderation of !anarchism without giving god-power to any given person who's also an active participant in an argument in the discussion, a lot of these issues would go away. I made a whole post somewhere talking about how mods being an underappreciated volunteer position I think leads inevitably to the "mods are power tripping" perception and pattern, whether or not it's accurate in any given case.

                You're able to run your instance however you want to run it. Good luck.

                • There are certainly many things that could be improved about Lemmy's moderation tools and general setup, I agree.

                  However the core argument is not about "talking with people who don’t agree with you is a valuable thing to do". There was no real disagreement about any topic where an exchange of ideas would be beneficial to both sides. Unless you have infinite patience, there is no point in arguing with people that don't even realize how hypocritical their position is, in fact usually doing so only results in them digging in their heels and arguing even stronger as you are likely challenging some of their deeply held believes. I believe this is what happened, and your reaction in the original post itself and even more so in making this new thread to complain about someone not having infinite patience with you pretty much proves that.

                  • We have two very different opinions about what the purpose of moderation is. Among some other things.

                    There's a huge difference between "not having infinite patience" to talk with someone, and deleting comments from several different people who are trying to have a discussion with each another about how they disagree with your point of view, thus driving the conversation to some other location where people come to a broad consensus that you're out of line. Honestly, that's part of why I posted here, to serve as a check to make sure I wasn't the one being awful. There seemed to be a broad consensus formed after all the discussion, which I'm happy with. The slrpnk authorities as a group plus db0, seem to have their own consensus, which of course they've got a right to do.

                    If you've read some of my comments and exchanges and you've decided that talking with me would take infinite patience, then okay. If you've read Mambabasa's comments and think they deserve a position of authority, then okay. I don't seem to have any issues talking and interacting with a bunch of anarchists, and presumably a wide variety of people, in these comments. Probably I will continue to do so. Slrpnk can do what it likes.

            • I think this person has learned how to manipulate the Slrpnk admins to their liking for their own political ends.

              I dont know why you would need such conspiracy theories when there is a much simpler way to explain it, which was confirmed by most folks(mods and admins alike): We are fine with the moderation actions taken, we dont need to be manipulated for this.

              Its quite something to make up a conspiracy after writing this just a few sentences earlier:

              I’m not a troll. I don’t make bad-faith arguments, [..] or inflame things to no purpose.

      • You are letting people into your space to use it for political propaganda, because they are making a pretty thin and implausible claim to being on your team. I don't think this person is on your team. For about two weeks, they have been posting constantly about Kamala Harris and the Democrats. They can't keep their story straight as to whether they know who Jill Stein is. They constantly accuse anyone who dissents from their viewpoint of various wild strawman horrible things, repeatedly, and even after repeated clarifications.

        Regardless of whether you agree with me on that or how you feel about the original issue, they're representing the anarchist community in an incredibly poor light. I think you should take some time to look over all the comments here. There's a group of people who are perfectly open to anarchism, reading and learning about it, and talking about moderation, having differences of opinion but working them out like normal humans. Then there's one person cursing at everyone and accusing them of all kinds of weird imaginary crimes, wanting to kill Palestinians on purpose with that as the only possible explanation for their statements, along with "evilism."

        Are you really wanting to give this person a position of authority, to represent your community? I think that some of these political bad actors have developed the skill of putting on the right tribal affiliation so they'll get cover from genuine members of the community, even though when looked at in an objective light, they are clearly acting in toxic ways, and their motivation is pretty obviously related to the election, nothing to do with anything beyond the electoral.

        You're free to grant authority in your community to whoever you want, but I don't think this person is showing any kind of good judgement or good faith, or showing your community in a positive light.

211 comments