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I'm curious why this topic "Shaking up the US two-party system: Cornel West’s 2024 Presidential bid, with Jill Stein" was removed?
There was a post the other day about a possible third party run for US president. I thought it was generating some good discussion, but it was removed. I'm curious as to why.
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It's an inflammatory subject where the discussion always devolves into the same tedious, endless bickering. Nobody has the slightest interest in changing their mind about it, so they just talk past each other and get progressively more condescending and aggressive.
That thread already had multiple indications that it was going that direction, including quite a few people misusing labels (even Exemplary and Malice ones).
If it's important to you to be able to have that type of political argument, I'd strongly encourage you to find a different site for that. I believe that almost nothing productive ever happens in them, it's just people getting upset with each other. So I have low tolerance for them and generally won't hesitate to shut them down as soon as they start looking bad.
And on that note, I'm going to lock this topic too, because a lot of the comments here are trying to continue the argument.
I have no idea why the topic was removed. However, as someone who has been around this site for most of its existence, there is a history of keeping things very tight when it comes to political discussions. There was a time around the 2018 midterms where politics was much more prevalent and that led to some very passionate, sometimes heated debates. Unfortunately, being such a small community, those exchanges would cause a rift between users and that would spill over into other threads. Some people were banned, some people left on their own, lots of navel gazing ensued, and since then Diemos has been pretty quick to pull the plug on threads that head down tit-for-tat road.
Sometimes it's a bummer because I'm very passionate about politics and I want there to be threads where I can discuss and read opinions from a community of users that I respect. But that's a lot easier said than done. And part of the reason why people get along around here, I think, is because of that tight-fisted moderation that prevents us from crossing the line.
Thanks for the historical context. It helped explain why the way things are now.
Seemed like a fair number of comments were going along the lines of, "the only political positions that exist are: far left, spineless, or fascist." Don't know if that was the reason, but it wasn't really an insightful 70+ comments.
No, most of the comments were correctly pointing out that 3rd party candidates in the US can ONLY be spoilers that take votes away from one of the two viable parties. There is no way for a 3rd party to win under the current FPTP voting system. Not everyone understands this and the article was trying to convince these low-information voters that voting 3rd party is a good idea. It was disinformation, and I am happy to see it was removed.
I was one of the people who commented and gave an example from my state of this phenomenon in effect.
So although I agree that I wasn't really happy to see the original post in the first place, I also sympathize with the people who are upset it got removed.
I think more exposure to a dialogue that allows people to see why this concept doesn't work out in practice would be better than trying to obscure the topic.
People will find out about it anyway, but if they're only finding out about it from Jill Steins social media page, then they're only finding out about it from a single sympathetic perspective.
This is only my opinion and I won't try to defend it, but I think the OP was knowingly spreading disinformation. Their post history is loaded with left-leaning political articles which strongly implies they are politically knowledgeable, and presenting themselves as liberal. Then they slide this turd in, along with a few comments about how it could only be a good idea. It stank.
There are multiple attempts going on right now too. In addition to typical Green Party stuff, there's the "No Labels" push. It's a new party that fits the "enlightened centrist" meme, with the backing of several very wealthy people, attempting to promote RFK Jr with the goal of splitting the democratic vote and handing the election to the republicans. They were literally considering Joe Manchin as their candidate earlier on.
We should be very suspicious of attempts to drive interest in unviable third parties, because that's the play du jour to put Trump in office. It sucks that my entire life has been the choice of mediocre conservative Democrats or a brewing fascist catastrophe, but that's the reality of things unless we either have electoral reform or eliminate the Republican Party. (Waning interest in the latter may be the more likely event, given the leanings of Gen Z.)
I wasn't looking at OPs comments, so you could very well be right about that. I think it's a real toss-up and I don't particularly fault Deimos for that decision. I'm more just considering the general question of content moderation strategy.
I guess my perspective is this: Misinformation or bad faith are both statements of intent, and can be ascribed to the OP, potentially.
But a forum thread is not solely the creation of the submitter. Its a collaboration of different voices. I think that synthesis of ideas is distinct from the original idea the OP had in mind when they submitted it, so deciding whether a given thread is misinformation is a separate consideration from the OPs intent.
Like, there are times on Reddit where I will link a news story I saw to a technical subreddit, not because I believe it, but rather because I'm skeptical of it and want other well informed people to give their take. So in that case I might be submitting a piece that is itself propaganda and misinformation, but the thread debunking why it's not true is no longer misinformation.
There are limits to this. If commenters coordinate to try and make a false impression of consensus and approval the thread itself can be just as damaging or moreso than the original piece. I think the moderation approach for that would be better served if it oriented more toward moderating comments and removing comments that are made in bad faith rather than removing posts that are made in bad faith, because I think the latter can still result in valuable discussion.
You have to be extremely careful doing this. IMO the misinfo should never be the first link. Even the most irresponsible, mindnumbingly gullible user you can imagine shouldn't be misinformed by this, so that article link should only come after a disclaimer that you think it's misinfo. None of this happened here. OP expressed support for the green party.
Personally, I think the best way to deal with Misinfo posts is by editing the post to no longer be misinfo, maintaining the valuable discussion it generated. Basically, remove/replace the link, and add the important context. We habitually edit post titles, so I don't see an issue of messing with "author's intent" or anything, particularly since in this case, afaict, the authorship consisted of copy/pasting a link and title.
I guess I just don't really like the idea of moderating by identifying "misinformation" because it requires having someone be the arbiter of what is a valid idea. It's much easier to identify specific rhetorical tactics and say this comment right here is detrimental to productive discussion.
It's harder to look at a post and say this post is wrong, and OP should have known that, so it must be intentionally wrong. As opposed to a case where it was wrong and OP got fooled.
It's a tricky balance because there's clearly "I know it when I see it" bad stuff which should be removed even if the comments within are provide adequate debunking. Like, if I were to post a link to some Q-Anon stuff about whatever the hell life-juice stuff they go on about, that should absolute be removed. Somebody's gotta draw a line somewhere, even if imperfectly, to maintain the quality of the site.
As a side note, I don't know how Deimos does his mod practices, but I for one would sometimes remove a post on reddit that needed serious cleanup and work and I just didn't have the time for. It'd be a practical decision even if not really a fair one to the users in the thread having meaningful discussions.
We don't have to go there. You can say that it is wrong, correct it, and be done with it.
Of course that still requires an arbiter of truth. I guess I don't view top-level posts as the author's property unless it is inherently personal. So correcting content on the site can and should happen all the time as a matter of course, and we correct towards whatever position has a sufficient majority behind it. Maybe not 50%, but if 75% believe that something is harmful or misleading and should be changed, then we do it.
I'm sorry, but what you keep calling "misinformation" is actually "disinformation." Just like when you would say, "I'm sorry, I was misinformed," misinformation is just incorrect information. Disinformation is purposely misinforming people. Misinformation is an accident; disinformation is an insidious action.
I guess thats kind of a new question then, is that really a distinction?
Because it seems to me as though the principle here is that misinformation and disinformation are the same thing. I dont know if there was specific comments made to make it seem like the OP of the removed post was malicious. If the OP just really liked Cornell West and genuinely wanted to push progressive politics, then there's nothing deceptive about it, so this wouldn't be disinformation, it's misinformation.
But here are talking about how bad a take it was, and how it's so bad that they don't even believe it was an accident. It seems at a certain point when misinformation is egregious enough to a person, it becomes synonymous with disinformation for them. It's really more a matter of severity at that point.
I suppose it could go either way, when disinformation is posted, depending on what user behaviour is. Do all people go to the comments and get informed? Or do they only click through to the article and end up misinformed?
Probably a better path would be a text post that properly contextualizes the link. Although the user no longer seems to exist, so it’s anyone’s guess what their view on it was.
The user still exists. They post a lot of links and don't comment much. Frankly seems kinda like for the most part they just post whatever they happen to read that moment. The green party one is the only thread they've actually commented in, beyond pasting full texts of articles as quotes.
I agree with RubberBando . No good vibes.
I would be more open to the Green Party if they had someone in literally any position of real power. According to Wikipedia there are 136 elected officials in the Green Party, and the highest ranking of any of those seems to be some mayors.
As far as I'm concerned, until they have at the very least a good number of state seats then advocating for someone to vote Green in the presidential election is no different than posting on Facebook "A new bill passed this year let's you click this link to have your vote tallied for Joe Biden, so you won't have to go to the polls in November!".
Personally i'd be more open if some candidates didn't pander to the anti science "health" snake oil crowd. Green seems to always include people who are certain that vaccines are "unhealthy" or that you should never use GMO's (not that they're all good, it's just not that simple) or that only natural things can help you.
Local elections are the ones with the most effect on our lives anyway. I vote for Green candidates on local races every single election.
Which is cool. I hope I didn't imply that wasn't valid if they align more with you. Honestly I wish we had a bunch of small offshoot parties that were still under the umbrella of the big two. Maybe we do and I just don't know about them. But until one of those parties has a swell of local support, any national campaign seems counterproductive.
I can't see the original article since it's deleted so I'm sorry if you mean something else, but are you actually claiming that promoting voting for anyone other than the Democrats or Republicans is disinformation? Even if you think it's a bad idea, that's an absurd misuse of the term.
So i'm going to be pedantic here because I think when you're discussing very serious issues it matters.
This is not true if you look at almost any other elected position outside the presidency. Further if you want to get technical, a 3rd Party candidate has finished 2nd in a presidential race in the past.
I get the point is that Jill Stein is just going to split votes from the democrats with no chance to win because she's Jill Stein, and that's true (and i personally think she's a horrible candidate). Still, I also think that we're probably closer to seeing a viable (for a given value of viable) 3rd party candidate than we have been in a long long time.
It's not going to be some outsider or radical. It would more likely be a candidate from one of the major parties who splits off without having all the baggage (something along the lines of under 60 and willing to ignore the more radical elements). They'll still lose but might beat the candidate from the party they split from, and it could bring about some serious change.
Now I don't really want this to happen on the dem side right now because, yeah, it'd be a fucking disaster. But these comments claiming they can only be spoilers are antithetical to getting any meaningful long term change.
The last time a 3rd party candidate finished in 2nd was in 1912, and it was a former president. That is hardly relevant to today's political climate. In this day and age 3rd parties only exist as spoilers. If you want real change first we have to alter the way our voting works. As long as FPTP exists 3rd parties can only be spoilers.
Even if the Republican Party were actually just ideologically opposed to democrats and not fascists, a lot of people here would suffer consequences if they were to win the consequences given their consistent anti-LGBT+ stances and pro-rich economic policies. So it’s hardly surprising the conversation went that way.
Those who are likely to suffer the consequences of those policies should have a greater desire for deconstructing arguments and focusing on discussion instead of devolving into emotional invective. It might not be surprising, but it's still not a particularly good strategy to affecting change.
This isn’t Reddit, though; we’re a group of largely self-selected individuals who think in similar ways. It would be preaching to the choir, a performative act.
@Deimos What's the story?
I may be proven wrong, but, as a general rule, Deimos does not comment on moderation actions.
Tildes is managed by people who choose to not have any transparency in their moderation actions?
No, it is run by a person who chooses to - after consideration - have some deliberate transparency in the admin actions.
Specifically, regarding the topic in question, there is transparency with respect to
This is all readily visible in the topic itself if you have the link (provided e.g. by unkz in another comment in this topic), even if you won't find the topic through the front page or the search function.
There is, however, not necessarily transparency with respect to specifically why these actions were taken. By this I mean the admin may choose to explain their motivation, but there is no requirement to do so to perform the action.
Some related and/or relevant information as to why this is can be found in the topic "The code of conduct doesn't say enough". I would specifically recommend the reply made here by cfabbro. It may not be directly the same situation here, but it is informative of issues with full transparency of admin actions.
Sadly, it's worse than that for comment moderation, as removed comments are not visible to anyone but the author. In those cases, all the evidence left behind is a "deleted by site admin" comment branch, and possibly a banned user account. In that regard we're deep within "trust" rather than "trust but verify".
I do generally trust Deimos, but I think there could be technical solutions here that enable a higher degree of trust. E.g. trusted users could be allowed to see removed comments; this way they too can attest that the mod action was reasonable or raise a stink if it wasn't. Additionally, giving trusted users some power to cool down discussions that are running hot could help reduce the need for more drastic intervention to begin with.
Alternatively, we are in “trust is earned, not given”. Granted I haven’t been on this site long, but I haven’t seen any terrible abuses of power so far, and it’s not like discussion of moderation actions is forbidden.
No, it is not worse from a transparency point of view when admins remove comments.
First, given only the context of the section of my reply you quoted: no, it is exactly that for removed comments. The admin may explain why they removed a comment, but it is not mandated that they do so to remove a comment in the first place.
Second, even if we take your reply as a reply to my post in whole instead of just the quoted section, removing an offending comment is actually more transparent than the removal of a topic. The topic was removed, meaning that
Comparing this to comments:
This seems to me like an unnecessarily adversarial reply. Nothing concrete, but the overall tone seems more interested in winning than engaging. I'm not a fan.
That said, evidence is in the other thread: You can still go there. You will not be able to read everything OP wrote, but with only the thread itself deleted, all that's lost is the opening post. The discussion is still there, which is where we can draw at least some inferences about what went down. OP's comments are also still there. We can judge pretty damn well what kind of an effect the post had on the community, and if that justified moderation action.
If a comment gets deleted, the default action is that all reply comments also get deleted. I've got deleted comments that are completely harmless in my post history to prove it.
Now, I don't think this is a technical limitation. I've certainly seen Deimos nuke a thread and it's comments, and I've also seen him nuke a comment branch but leave particular comments alive. So it could well be how Deimos uses the tools. But generally speaking, users banned for comments leave a lot more questions behind than users banned for threads. Similar for deleted content instead of banned users.
For context, I do not believe the second paragraph in your original reply was there when I started writing my reply. I may be mistaken, but your comment has been edited, and my memory definitely says you ended with the statement about "trust but verify". That part I chose not to engage with - so to that extent you are correct - but I chose not to do so because my reply to that section was not really adding to the discussion.
That said, addressing a perceived falsehood is not adversarial to a bad extent in and of itself. I pointed out what I consider to be a falsehood, I attempted a charitable interpretation of what you posted by considering it in context both of the limited quote and my full reply, I argued in a structured manner why that is so, and at no point did I attempt to attack you or discredit you as a person, only your assertion.
Do you consider that more adversarial than opening your reply with a vague attack on tone, declaring yourself "not a fan", and not engaging with the presented argument? After your reply here, I don't know if there's any of my assertions you consider false. I don't know if you think the conclusion doesn't follow from the assertions. I don't know if you've even read or understood my reply.
I don't know what "evidence" you refer to in the other thread, with respect to lack of transparency of admin actions of topics as contrasting to comments. There is only one comment shown as removed, and it is not the one I remember OP making (I do remember reading the topic before it was removed, thinking OP was not really commenting much, searching for their comments, and seeing only one). The posted topic has been removed, but from what I can recall it was only a link to begin with, no additional text (or at least no text of significant relevance) from OP.
But let's take a step back. Let's engage again. Maybe I didn't understand you when you in your first reply asserted
How, exactly, in the context of transparency of admin actions, is the information provided on removed comments worse than the information provided on removed topics?
It’s a benevolent dictatorship.
Generally speaking he's usually commented when asked, but does not comment otherwise. At least those instances I've seen.
I did not remove it by myself, sadly the more I use Tlides the more I start to think that this is not the best reddit alternative right now.
I will probably delete my account soon.
Well, that's because it is not a reddit alternative.
I recall seeing the post, but didn't click on it. Is the post removed or did the user delete their account?
https://tildes.net/~misc/191i/shaking_up_the_us_two_party_system_cornel_wests_2024_presidential_bid_with_jill_stein
It says
That's curious. I skimmed through the comments. It seemed harmless enough?
It was removed? I'm curious too.
was it removed by OP or was it removed by mod? OP can probably remove whatever OP wants to remove.
No, it was removed by the admin. You can see here (“ Topic removed by site admin”)