A quick note on the return2ozma ban:

You may have noticed a distinct lack of return2ozma. This is due to their admitting, in a public comment, that their engagement here is in bad faith:

I'm sure there will be questions, let me see if I can address the most obvious ones:

Can I still post negative stuff about Biden?

Absolutely! We have zero interest in running an echo chamber. However, if ALL you're posting is negative, you may want to re-think your priorities. You get out of the world what you put into it and all that.

Why now?

Presumption of innocence. It may be my own fault, but I do try to think the best of people, and even though they were posting negative articles, they weren't necessarily WRONG. Biden's poll numbers, particularly in minority demographics ARE in the shitter. They are starting to get better, but he still has a hell of a hill to climb.

Why a 30 day temp ban and not a permanent ban?

The articles return2ozma shared weren't bad, faked, or from some wing-nut bias site like "beforeitsnews.com", they were legitimate articles from established and respected news agencies, pointing out the valid problems Biden faces.

The problem was ONLY posting the negatives, over and over and then openly admitting that dishonest enagement is their purpose.

Had they all been bullshit articles? It would not have taken anywhere near this much time to lay the ban and it would have been permanent.

30 days seems enough time for them to re-think their strategery and come back to engage honestly.

tl;dr - https://youtu.be/C6BYzLIqKB8#t=7s

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423 comments

Look, I have zero illusions to how popular of a decision this is in this comm, and this isn't my instance so who the fuck cares what I think.
but
I have a very hard time seeing this as anything other than a disagreement over personal political tastes, rather than anything to do with a violation of some unwritten rule. Your comm already has rules regarding article quality, misinformation, and off-topic posts and comments that could be used as a justification here if it applied. If there was a problem with the volume of posts for which he was responsible (i think this is the legitimate concern here), then you could either call it spamming or there could easily be a rule added limiting the number of posts per day that applies globally and isn't reliant on subjective judgement.
I've been very vocal about my own political opinions, and have myself been accused of bad-faith trolling and of being a covert agent of some type or other. Speaking for myself, I think there's a pretty obvious bias (maybe preference is a more fair term) when it comes to the coverage and rhetoric about the upcoming election in the US specifically. There's legitimacy to the observation that inconvenient bad press about Biden is ignored/rationalized/dismissed on a 'lesser evil' and 'at all costs' political rationale that I (and I think ozma) tend to react negatively to. Breaking through the iron curtain of electoral politics to people who genuinely share political values (not all of them, mind you) sometimes involves repeated reminders and presentation of counter-partisan coverage. I personally appreciate ozma's contributions because often these posts and articles encourage real discussions about the limitations of this particular politician, and people like @mozz@mbin.grits.dev frequently jump in and provide nuanced dissection and context to what would otherwise be an easily dismissed issue.
This is not my instance so It's not up to my judgment what the right or wrong thing to do is here, but .world being an instance that has already de-federated with most others with louder left-leaning politics, the overton window has already been considerably narrowed. By removing the loudest dissenters (who are 'not wrong, just assholes'), you run the risk of warping reality for those who don't care enough to confront coverage they might find uncomfortable and might prefer a more quiet space to affirm their politics instead of being challenged. You're cultivating an echo chamber simply by cutting out the noise you find disagreeable. The goal of agitation is to get exactly those people to engage more so that we can move the overton window further left and accomplish more at the electoral level in the future. It isn't 'bad faith' to be motivated by that goal, it just might be unfair to people who are comfortable with where that window currently is and would rather not be challenged by it moving further left.
- Is okay: Having a viewpoint, whatever the viewpoint
  Isn't okay: Pushing a particular chosen viewpoint regardless of how well it aligns with the information you're drawing from, being upfront about that being your strategy, and then following through to a beyond-parody level of annoying everyone and repeating yourself day in and day out
  IDK why everyone's so eager to read a pretty detailed explanation of why the issue isn't his viewpoint, and then follow up right away with extensive hand wringing over the idea of censoring his viewpoint.
  
  Because it's pretty clearly about his viewpoint, since the cited comment in the post is 'this is my viewpoint, and that viewpoint is why i'm posting these things'
  If it's about the volume of posts call it spamming and address it with a rule about post limits. Calling it bad-faith is necessarily about the reason he's making the posts, not how many of them there are or the quality of the articles.
  
  I have a new idea: Anyone who wants to hide behind "I am posting this as a far left person, to help the left, because I care super much about the left and if you don't like my viewpoint you are clearly a shitlib censoring my helpful left viewpoint of shitting relentlessly on Biden," has to post at least a 1:1 ratio of posts in favor of ranked choice voting, or local helpful leftist candidates, or directing people to a Palestine protest, or some left helpful viewpoint that isn't "let's have Trump come to power because Biden isn't everything I hoped and dreamed for, as for-sure genuine leftist."
  If the shills are gonna accuse people of policing viewpoint let's police some fuckin viewpoints, to make sure they make some sense
  (Note: I am clearly joking about this. Mostly.)
  
  I'm noticing you do this a lot:
  "We should require proof of support of some leftist goals from people who want to criticize biden - i'm only kidding (kinda)" "This instance looks a lot like a troll farm - i'm not accusing just saying it's suspicious"
  Sounds to me like you wouldn't be opposed to a political alignment test as a requirement to participating in political discussions (i'm clearly joking about this. mostly)
  
  I talk from time to time about wanting to set up a forum where if you say something, you have to back it up, as a way to mitigate the impact of low-effort trolling "of COURSE we all agree Biden ruined the climate" from 5-10 different accounts as a technique to distort the discourse. I think it's toxic if it is politically slanted so that someone with mod power is deciding what is the "right" political viewpoint, obviously; on that much we will agree. But I do think that the discourse is being radically distorted by the existence of organized shilling efforts, and I think about what would be a good solution to it (which seems like a pretty difficult problem), in ways which I am sure would be wildly unpopular with a certain segment of the userbase.
  You can characterize that as me thirsting to silence dissenting political views, if you want. I won't stop you.
  
  I don't think you're trying to silence political views at all, but I do think you're trying to dismiss them as fringe, dishonest, or intentional subterfuge.
  Castigating people you disagree with as 'shills' or 'bad faith actors' is, in my opinion, the lowest quality of political commentary. It excuses you from engaging with what that person saying, simply because you doubt their honesty, as if somehow that invalidates what they're saying. I think it's lazy and I wish mods would enforce their own rules against it.
  I also find it frustrating that you continuously accuse people like myself and ozma of acting according to some agenda, but then appear in every political thread giving impassioned arguments about how we need to look past Biden's flaws no matter how real they are, as if that is not itself a political agenda. Do I think you're arguing that in bad faith? No, but then again i'm not in support of banning people who are simply too loud about their perspective.
  
  Castigating people you disagree with as 'shills' or 'bad faith actors' is, in my opinion, the lowest quality of political commentary. It excuses you from engaging with what that person saying
  Can you point to anyone who's said anything that I responded to without engaging on its own merits?
  Everyone has a rosy view of themselves I am sure, but in my mind, I've spent an almost pathological amount of time here talking to ozma about the merits of what he's saying, on the face of them, and likewise for you, likewise for a lot of the other people. Then also in addition to that, if they display shill-like behavior I tend to call it out instead of just avoiding the potentially-unfair accusation. But I don't think I have ever really led out of the gate with anything along the lines of "you're a shill so that means I don't have to respond to what you just said".
  Can you point to an example of someone who said something and I just dismissed what they were saying instead of breaking down why (in my view) it wasn't right, at least as a first step even if later I proceeded to what I thought of their motivations or changing the subject or etc?
  
  If you need to qualify your acquittal with 'but I haven't said it to their face', i think you've kind of proven the point. I don't think the face-to-face accusation is at all a requirement for it to be considered lowbrow prejudice.
  
  That's just in this thread, but i've seen quite a lot of, 'i don't know for sure, but this person/these people really seem like bad-faith trolls to me' in your comment history. I run into it maybe once a week, and those are just the ones i happen to run into. I've seen you speculate that midwest.social is a troll farm, based on what I assume is just your interactions with me (i don't see you arguing with anyone else from here, anyway. maybe that's just my vanity talking).
  Even if it's not in response to what that person is saying, you're still encouraging others to disengage with them based on some false notion of them being bad-actors.
  
  I've told some people to their face (virtually speaking) that I think they are shills and why. Ozma is one, and in this thread I said it to somebody else after looking over their user a little bit. My point was that I generally engage with their arguments on the merits at first, and then proceed to accusing them of bad faith if it seems really clear to me that they're engaging in bad faith; I don't think I usually engage in it as a reason not to engage with their arguments.
  I've seen you speculate that midwest.social is a troll farm, based on what I assume is just your interactions with me
  It wasn't from you. If I ever fully realized that you were from midwest.social I then forgot it; my instance doesn't show what someone's "home" instance is in comments unless I mouse over to investigate. It was a different user that raised my suspicion (who I didn't really engage with all that much, just observed the type of stuff they posted), and the overall nature and setup of the site. If that's relevant.
  I'm not completely sure if you are a shill user or not. I have suspected it in the past. If I'm honest, you engage in some of the same types of behavior they do (using some particular talking points, and mischaracterizing what the other person is saying to a more convenient thing to argue against, being the most egregious), but that could just be what you feel like saying because you feel like saying it, and you also talk at length back and forth which is un-shill-like behavior, just because I think it's not really time-efficient for them to do that for any extended debate.
  Honestly, except for really egregious examples like ozma, I don't feel like I can tell with any confidence who is and isn't fake, so I tend to talk to people on the merits and then talk about fake users as a systemic problem as a separate thing.
  Even if it's not in response to what that person is saying, you're still encouraging others to disengage with them based on some false notion of them being bad-actors.
  Yeah, maybe so. I think in general, accusing people of acting in bad faith is a bad way to go, just because it doesn't really lend itself to productive conversation (and I realize that's ironic since I do do exactly that sometimes). Definitely getting into the weeds of ad hominem, categorizing each person in the discussion as is or isn't a shill, shouldn't be the main thrust of the discussion. It's only relevant in this thread specifically with ozma because he does it like a full time frickin job.
  That's the other side of that coin: if there's a cohort of users that is so clearly engaging in bad faith that it's distorting the overall conversation, I do feel like that's worth talking about. I don't think it's real productive to just play the sucker and keep saying "No actually Biden didn't ruin the US's climate change policy" over and over again indefinitely, without delving into why it is that so many people keep saying that he did and using the same very particular talking-point framing.
  But yeah, the point about it being usually not really a friendly or productive thing to do to run around throwing accusations of shilling around, I'll somewhat agree with you on.
  
  I’m not completely sure if you are a shill user or not. I have suspected it in the past. If I’m honest, you engage in some of the same types of behavior they do (using some particular talking points, and mischaracterizing what the other person is saying to a more convenient thing to argue against, being the most egregious), but that could just be what you feel like saying because you feel like saying it, and you also talk at length back and forth which is un-shill-like behavior, just because I think it’s not really time-efficient for them to do that for any extended debate.
  Well I guess i appreciate the benefit of the doubt, even though I still take issue with the default seemingly being 'shill, unless enough effort is shown'.
  You and I, I think, have put in far more effort into arguing our cases than most people on here do. Most people who share my perspective have long since stopped trying to argue anything in good faith at all with centrists, because doing so almost always ends with an accusation. Therein lies the pitfall of the shill-unless-proven-otherwise attitude - it makes it easy to characterize most people as shills, enabling anyone to dismiss or accept a perspective at-will according to what they believe a 'normal' perspective to be.
  I have no suspicion you are a troll - not because you put more effort into your comments than I think a bad actor would, but because it's not hard for me to imagine your perspective as valid. It's also not hard for me to imagine someone who supports trump, or doesn't believe in climate change, or believes gay marriage is a sin (my relationship with my father is almost defined by our vociferous disagreement on those subjects). Half the battle of political organizing is trying to genuinely understand other people's perspectives, and trying to persuade them on their terms, and writing those people off as bad-faith actors is a non-starter for organizing. I know people here value most of the same things I do, that's why I harp on the things I do - those are the things we agree on, and those are the things I would like to organize pressure for. I have a lot of other perspectives I know for a fact are outside the norm for .world, and I don't agitate for those on here because I know i'd sour any chances of progress on other fronts if I did.
  Ozma likely sees things the same way I do: there are a lot of well-meaning and left-of-center people in this community, with a lot of overlap in overall goals. A part of any strategy for normalizing and organizing around more left-leaning policy is pointing to that discrepancy between what we all agree on and what our electoral system fails to produce, and that's uncomfortable and easily misinterpreted as voter suppression. "Biden at all costs", while completely justified, stifles any discussion of progress outside of what has been provided, so the 'blue no matter who' rhetoric is a natural target for any agitation. There is nothing that enrages me more than a good discussion about 'we should do x' being derailed by 'well that's not electorally realistic, not nationally popular, not gonna happen', and those are the things that cause me to spend a week straight posting agitprop memes.
  I'll get off my soap box now. I think getting mad at the people agitating against complacency is counterproductive, even if it's completely understandable.
  
  IDK why everyone’s so eager to read a pretty detailed explanation of why the issue isn’t his viewpoint, and then follow up right away with extensive hand wringing over the idea of censoring his viewpoint.
  Simple. They're not buying the explanation.
  
  Dude admitted to being a propagandist. You have no argument here.
  
  he was posting stories from reputable sources.
  
  And ONLY certain stories that fit a narrative. How is this part being ignored?
  Oh… I get it. You also support that narrative.
  
  no one shouldbe compelled to spread a story that supports a point of view with which they disagree. so long as his posts were, in themselves, in compliance with the rules, there should have been no problem.
  
  Do you have a problem with reading comprehension? This was all explained already. They were spamming the community with agenda-based news. No one suggested they share news they disagree with.
  And if you check the mod logs, not ALL of what they shared was legitimate.
  They were rightfully banned. And I’d prefer it permanent, but it’s still a step in the right direction. Not arguing this with you further.
  
  And if you check the mod logs, not ALL of what they shared was legitimate.
  you know what, fair point. of course, that's sort of what mods are for, and i think that the power to decide which sources are legitimate is itself the power to propagandize.
  
  Look at that… a bad-faith argument! Who could have exp-
  I could have.
  
  i thought you were done.
  
  your accusation of bad faith is, itself, bad faith.
  
  They were spamming the community with agenda-based news.
  each of their posts was in compliance with the rules
  
  I’m not sorry you’re upset by this. I’m not going to argue it further. The right thing was done, and you’re mad. That’s not my problem.
  
  The right thing was done, and you’re mad.
  the wrong thing was done. i'm not mad. i just know what injustice is.
  
  i thought you were done already. is it this time for real?
  
  He admitted he disliked Biden. That does not make him a propagandist.
  
  He admitted he only chooses to post negative things about Biden. Don’t move goalposts for someone else… it’s VERY bad look.
  
  When people only post negative things about Trump what is the reason?
  
  Find me someone that does nothing but post negative shit about Trump all day here and I’ll concede this discussion.
  
  Everyone who posts anything about Trump on this instance? You ever see a good post about Trump here? Or hell, China?
  
  So what I meant was, find me a single person, one individual, that posts nothing but shit about Trump on this instance.
  And for the record, there nothing good to be said about either.
- Well said.
- It's actually not a disagreement. :) I actually agree with a lot of the substance of the articles. Biden needs to address his support in minority communities for example.
  The problem comes from posting negative news purely to be negative, over and over and over.
  It becomes less constructive and more about harping on Biden, a la Fox/Newsmax/Oann.
  
  I think it's safe to say you do disagree about what constitutes 'fair' coverage of Biden
  
  I think it’s safe to say you don’t understand them when they tell you it was because it was agenda-based spam.
  
  If it's spam then set a limit on the number of posts and move on. If it's because he has an agenda then I guess everyone here should be banned, too, including jordanlund, since 'there's too much anti-biden coverage here' is an agenda-based determination itself.
  
  .
  
  "Biden doesn’t have enough slips to merit the number of negative posts"
  edit: You did the same thing here. You keep twisting the argument being presented into something facially ridiculous rather than engaging with what other users are actually saying.
  He's specifically supporting his argument that some accounts criticizing biden are bad-faith actors, by providing an example of what he doesn't consider to be bad faith (the difference being generalized support with some loud criticisms). I don't think I misrepresented him at all, and mozz and I discussed it at length, if you care to read it
  
  .
  
  This is pointless. I linked to the comment I was referring to. Either it was something he wrote or it wasn't, but I don't care to argue with you if it was fair of me to single out that one comment or if he didn't really mean it. He took issue with Ozma's repeated posting of anti-biden articles because he 'had an agenda' that was not reflective of the overall coverage of Biden. It was only too many posts because it was allegedly not representative of overall coverage, e.g. 'too many relative to positive coverage'. Tell me where i'm screwing that up, I want to know. If it was simply 'too many posts' then fucking say so, but it seems pretty clearly about the perspective ozma was pushing.
  Those two arguments are not in any way the same.
  I'll wait for you to explain it to me, then, because to me the gist of that statement is 'it's normal to critique biden, but i find it suspicious if they also aren't saying good things about him'. I'll permit that I did exaggerate it to make a point, but the thrust of his argument is absolutely represented in my re-framing.
  Why do you keep doing that? Why can’t you engage with the words as they’re written in black and white?
  Because explaining why someone's statement or argument is problematic requires restating it in a way that shows the problem clearer. If I just copy-pasted his comment into mine I wouldn't really be engaging it, it'd just be parroting it.
  
  .
  
  Agitation isn't against the rules as far as I can see, and I'm of the opinion that agitation is an essential part of political activity.
  Educate. Agitate. Organize.
  It’s not the content, it’s the admission that the behavior was intentionally provocative
  If the behavior in this context is not itself against the rules or bannable, then what is the standard that makes it so? If I said "i think people are too mean to Biden", and I then exclusively post pro-biden articles (lets say the same number of times as Ozma), have I also broken the rule? Wouldn't I still be agitating for some perspective? Or would I have to post a certain number of good things? Or is it just a number of posts generally? Or can I admit that I have a bias but i'm required to balance my negative contributions with positive contributions?
  It is the subjective, arbitrary standard of the ban that I'm specifically taking issue with. It is my opinion that simply having a bias and clearly acting in accordance to that bias is not worthy of any kind of ban, 30 days or permanent or otherwise. A lot of people having complained about that user isn't enough by itself for a ban, he had to have broken some kind of rule. What rule was that and what is the standard for it? How do I personally ensure I do not break that rule?
  If you found my re-framing to be ridiculous, it's because I found the original statement to be ridiculous. You're free to argue for that viewpoint yourself, but I'll just tell you now, I don't think good-or-bad-faith has anything to do with stating only good or bad things about someone, or the ratio of good or bad things said, or even outright saying that "I don't like the candidate and prefer only pointing out the bad things I don't like".
  
  You honestly think mods have the time to count how many posts each person makes?
  RTO has been spamming this community and others with anti-Biden rhetoric for a long time. People have been complaining a LOT in the comments. To the point where it was damn near biased that they kept protecting the clown.
  There’s enough anti-Biden stuff around posted in this, and other communities that it’s not necessary for ONE person to pepper a community with that shit all day.
  Let’s not resort to bad faith comparisons when the explanation was sound. Even if you disagree with it.
  
  Mods hardly do anything manually, i'm arguing for a automated limit that's community-wide. So no, I don't think mods have time to count the posts of their thousands of users, but I think scripting that rule into an automod would be almost trivial.
  Let’s not resort to bad faith comparisons when the explanation was sound. Even if you disagree with it.
  It's not bad-faith, my point is that having an agenda doesn't make behavior bad-faith. I don't even think it's unreasonable to ask for fewer posts from ozma, just call it what it is and enforce it for everyone, instead of making it about the specific perspective he's pushing.

423 comments

Educate. Agitate. Organize.