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20 votes
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US Federal Reserve votes to ease rule aimed at preventing big banks from making risky financial bets
6 votes -
US President Donald Trump signs 'Right to Try Act' aimed at helping terminally ill patients seek drug treatments
12 votes -
China slams US President Donald Trump's ‘flip-flop’ on tariffs as trade spat worsens
12 votes -
Spanish PM faces confidence vote this week
9 votes -
Italy: Political turbulence spooks global financial markets. The euro has fallen to its lowest value against the dollar in almost a year
9 votes -
Nicaragua unrest: Government colluding with mobs, says Amnesty
6 votes -
A secret government report uncovered China’s attempts to influence all levels of politics in Australia
6 votes -
Forty officials, fourteen others charged over alleged $80m graft. Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta pledges crackdown on any individuals 'caught up in the web of corruption'.
7 votes -
Paraguay to have its first woman president, at least temporarily, after outgoing leader Horacio Cartes stepped down Monday ahead of schedule
9 votes -
Want to quell hate speech on social media? Talk to right-wing politicians
7 votes -
Obesity, discrimination and public health: What is the right balance to strike with government policy?
One of the stress points that seems increasingly correlated with modernity is a rise of obesity in many developed nations (most notably the United States, but also the United Kingdom, Canada,...
One of the stress points that seems increasingly correlated with modernity is a rise of obesity in many developed nations (most notably the United States, but also the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Mexico, and elsewhere). Japan instituted a fat tax that requires periodic weight measurements as a way to combat obesity. Denmark and India have taxed certain foods. New York City, while Michael Bloomberg was mayor, famously taxed soda as part of a policy package to address weight gains.
Meanwhile, groups have organized to attempt to reduce the amount of stigma associated with being fat, arguing that stigmatizing obesity and arguing for aggressive dietary change often creates runoff mental health issues among fat people, or worse that doctors' obsession with weight blinds them to other more serious health issues whose symptoms are being reported by fat patients.
This question is for everyone hailing from a nation dealing with some form of rise in obesity: What is the right balance to strike with public policy when it comes to dealing with the rise of obesity?
18 votes -
Abortion: Sanctity of Human Life and the Rights of (wo)Man
Yesterday, Ireland passed a referendum that will repeal a constitutional amendment that banned abortions. The government of Ireland will now have the explicit authority (as soon as the results are...
Yesterday, Ireland passed a referendum that will repeal a constitutional amendment that banned abortions. The government of Ireland will now have the explicit authority (as soon as the results are certified) to legislate matters of abortion directly. This seems likely to lead to a substantially less restrictive stance toward abortion in one of the most restrictive member nations of the EU. It would still likely end up being slightly more restrictive law than in the United States.
Ireland's history regarding abortion's legality is explicitly tied as a counter-reaction to Roe V. Wade, the American supreme court case that found abortion legal until the third trimester under a rights-balancing test under the 9th and 14th amendments (which--implicitly--enshrines a right to privacy and--explicitly--expands that right to the state level, respectively). While this balancing test was later changed to a standard requiring "fetal viability," states and activists through the United States organized against the Supreme Court's decision to create new limitations on abortion.
So today, I'm seeking to sidestep some of that history to wrestle with the core underlying balancing test Roe v Wade and other similar legal frameworks have tried to answer: when is a pregnant woman's rights more or less important than the life of the living being growing inside of her? In what circumstances (if any) should a woman be allowed to choose to end her pregnancy?
19 votes -
Trumps' Twitter is a public forum, rules federal judge: Good!
8 votes -
Tiger Mother talks tribalism: Amy Chua on why US society is slipping into perilous territory
5 votes -
'Miracle' cures and europhobia – the strange origins of Italy's new rulers
6 votes -
Acquittal of Fiji Times sedition case hailed as victory for press freedom in Oceania
4 votes -
Failed dialogue leads to fresh protests and more deaths in Nicaragua
7 votes -
Can a solution to massive carbon emissions include nuclear energy?
One of my frustrations with political threads generally is that they are often too broad to be meaningful in terms of policy discussion. So I thought I'd narrow the topic of discussion. I am quite...
One of my frustrations with political threads generally is that they are often too broad to be meaningful in terms of policy discussion. So I thought I'd narrow the topic of discussion. I am quite interested in political discussion and this seems a fine enough place to have it as any.
So let's talk: Nuclear energy policy!
With the Paris accord attempting to have countries pledged to reduce their carbon footprint to keep the globe from warming past 2 degrees above industrial era temperatures, it seems like a lot of countries have a whole lot of work to do in a rather short period of time. Maybe the US decides to commit to some informal reduction in carbon emissions eventually. Maybe it doesn't. Here we're talking about shoulds.
So for non-US people: how should a given country go about meeting their commitment to the Paris Accord?
For the US peeps: 1.) should the US bother trying to reduce carbon emissions and 2.) how should it go about doing it?
For everyone: What place does nuclear energy have in an energy portfolio that reduces carbon emissions?
24 votes -
Sex without explicit consent is now rape in Sweden
12 votes -
Is the United States on its way to losing its hegemonic status?
On the heels of President Trump pulling out of talks with North Korea over nuclear disarmament in the Korean peninsula, the United States' pending withdrawal from the Paris agreement (coming soon!...
On the heels of President Trump pulling out of talks with North Korea over nuclear disarmament in the Korean peninsula, the United States' pending withdrawal from the Paris agreement (coming soon! ... the day after the next presidential election), and the United States' unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement, combined with ongoing Russian and Iranian leadership in resolving the Syrian civil war and Chinese leadership in talks with North Korea, we seem to be heading toward an ambiguous point in international geopolitics.
So this question is simple and nasty: Is the United States on its way to losing its status as the unquestioned dominant world power in the international order?
If it is on its way off the top of the food chain, who will challenge it? Are we returning to a cold war-style era or are the lines shifting and different? If the United States is not on its way to losing its dominant status, how might it maintain its footing in a world that seems increasingly disillusioned with it?
13 votes -
US President Donald Trump calls off meeting with North Korea's Kim Jong Un
21 votes -
Donald Trump lawyer 'paid by Ukraine' to arrange White House talks
5 votes -
Michael Cohen’s business partner agrees to cooperate as part of plea deal
7 votes -
No Gods No Masters: A History of Anarchism (part 1 of 3)
5 votes -
Ex-Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak questioned over 1MDB corruption scandal
4 votes -
The princes, the president and the fortune seekers
3 votes -
Thoughts on handling political content on Tildes
(0) Background This is coming off a discussion in today's thread on forming new groups around whether or not to add a group for politics. I expressed there that, given my moderator experience on...
(0) Background
This is coming off a discussion in today's thread on forming new groups around whether or not to add a group for politics. I expressed there that, given my moderator experience on /r/ChangeMyView and /r/NeutralPolitics, I opposed making such a group given how Tildes currently stands.
(1) Political discussion is nearly always garbage.
I don't think anyone needs reminding of this, but political discussion almost uniformly fails to achieve anything positive in almost any social media platform. Your uncle's facebook rants? Garbage. Political sniping on Twitter? Garbage. The endless repetitive point scoring and outrage fest on most political subreddits? Garbage.
So, we have to ask, why is this content garbage?
(2) People want to be heard, but nobody wants to hear.
I do not think political discussion is garbage because of bad faith trolling. That certainly exists and does not help, but usually it's not hard to ID the trolls, and excepting egregious stuff like doxxing or threats, to ignore obvious bad faith absurdity.
The much bigger issue is that what people want to do is to be heard and validated in their political views. This is not merely that they want to proselytize or to win converts, but that they're seeking validation and a sense of rightness or righteousness in their statements.
This desire is toxic to a neutral forum, because invariably on any divisive issue, you will not merely be heard and validated, but will be challenged and denigrated. Indeed, often the challenges and denigrations themselves are the same performance in reverse. Members of each team trying to dunk on the other and earn validation for how hard they owned the other side.
(3) To overcome this, a successful political forum must have a purpose other than mere commentary.
On /r/ChangeMyView and /r/NeutralPolitics, we have been able to build forums which have large amounts of productive and non-hostile political discussion. The key to this is that neither forum allows for being heard, or general discussion, as its reason for being.
On /r/ChangeMyView we limit posts to views people genuinely hold, and are open to changing (CMV rule B). This requires that OPs cannot come to troll or soapbox. It is by far the most frequently used rule of ours in terms of removing submissions, almost always on the soapboxing side.
On /r/NeutralPolitics, we limit posts to neutrally framed questions about political subjects, which can be answered with facts. By doing this, we narrow the scope of discussion away from soliciting feelings (which is an invitation to people posting just to be heard) and towards bringing forth factual information, where people might learn something.
I don't know what purpose a political forum on Tildes might have, but to succeed it must have a clear purpose, and that purpose must be one which excludes people posting merely to be heard.
(4) In addition to a purpose beyond being heard, a political forum must have extreme civility rules.
Both CMV and NP have extremely similar rules in this regard, and they are absolutely crucial to the success of the fora.
In general, any comment or post which in any way denigrates another user should be removed. This is an extremely broad civility rule that is well past what most subreddits do. Calling another user a liar, or accusing them of bad faith posting is banned on both CMV and NP for example, even when such accusations are true.
The prohibition on what even may be seen as justified rudeness is I think the key to a civility rule. It immediately removes from the moderation process any discretion around the substance of the politics, and makes it a neutral rule which can be applied evenly to all parties.
It is also necessary because nothing productive ever happens after bad faith is accused. Almost uniformly, once someone is rude, if there is a response back to them, the response will be rude in kind, usually more severely. People love to try to get the last word in, and a clear, objective rule banning "they started it" spats is also an important component. CMV's wiki has a really good overview of how we enforce this rule there.
(5) Conclusion/TL;DR
I don't know exactly what political content should exist on Tildes. I do know that a general politics group will not work, and that rather a politics channel should be focused on a discrete purpose other than just discussion.
I would almost certainly ban link posts from any politics group, since inherently they're going to act as just headlines for people to pontificate on, without guiding discussion towards a particular goal. I would also obviously enforce civility, and have much stricter moderation of it than I might on a non-politics forum.
Edited for formatting
27 votes -
The Onion published the threatening email they received from Michael Cohen
@theonion: In the spirit of transparency, here is Mr. Cohen's letter, printed in full: https://t.co/uPnzZYUtyZ
10 votes -
Houston police chief says he has ‘hit rock bottom’ on gun rights arguments
5 votes -
Özil, Gündoğan meet German president over Erdoğan photo row
6 votes -
Malaysia: Najib Razak to face anti-graft investigators as pressure mounts
4 votes -
Trump Jr. and Other Aides Met With Gulf Emissary Offering Help to Win Election
6 votes -
Bill Gates: Trump twice asked me the difference between HIV and HPV
18 votes -
Kazakhstan's hunt for supporters of tycoon Ablyazov gets absurd and goes abroad
4 votes -
Venezuelans who hope for government change face dilemma — to vote or not to vote?
4 votes -
Gina Haspel confirmed as CIA chief despite scrutiny of her role in interrogation program
3 votes -
How Mueller’s first year compares to Watergate, Iran-Contra and Whitewater
5 votes -
Missing files in the Treasury Department's FINCEN database motivated a law-enforcement official to leak Michael Cohen's financial records
4 votes -
FiveThirthyEight 2020 Democratic primary way-too-early picks
5 votes -
US Senate votes to save net neutrality rules
9 votes -
US President Donald Trump reports apparent payment through his personal attorney to adult-film star Stormy Daniels in a new financial disclosure
5 votes -
Police raid home of ex-Malaysian PM over corruption scandal
8 votes -
Manhattan attorney threatens to call ICE on women speaking Spanish to each other.
@shaunking: Who this this bigot in Midtown Manhattan? What's his name? Please share this. Here he is harassing & insulting two women for speaking Spanish...TO EACH OTHER in the middle of Manhattan. Trump has empowered ugly white people like this to say whatever they feel like saying. https://t.co/WbHlet6H7c
7 votes -
Think American elections are bad? Indian voters get 1,000 texts a day
4 votes -
Democrats Flip a Pennsylvania Seat, Making 41 Since Trump’s Inauguration
4 votes -
Taiwan seeks 'correction' after Air Canada lists Taipei as part of China
5 votes -
A judge just denied Paul Manafort's motion to dismiss the indictment against him in DC
6 votes -
Sports are political! Athletes and politics are inextricably linked - just like everything else
6 votes -
Facebook to start fact-checking program in Brazil - Six months ahead of general elections, the platform pledges to reduce organic dissemination of "news" items confirmed to be false.
5 votes