Daily Tildes discussion - our first ban
After reaching a nice milestone yesterday of over 1000 users registered, we've followed it up with a slightly less nice one—I've now banned someone for the first time. This almost certainly won't happen with every ban, but I'm going to be quite transparent with this one since it was the first one, and it gives a good starting point for a discussion today.
Trying to be transparent about this one is actually a bit funny, because the user I banned was named "Redacted" (really, I promise!). I had removed his comments from the thread, but I've un-removed them for now so that you can see exactly what I banned for: https://tildes.net/user/Redacted
There were two reasons that I decided to ban him:
- Those last 3 comments, all in the ~talk thread. That thread has been a bit heated in places, but overall it's been civil and going pretty well. He came into it without being involved in the discussion at all and went straight to personal attacks.
- He went through and tagged almost all of Mumberthrax's comments as some combination of "troll", "flame", and "noise"—sometimes even all 3 tags on a single comment. That's just blatant misuse of the tags, with no possible reasonable excuse. (Note that I've already removed all his tags, so you won't be able to see them any more)
So that's a pretty clear case of being an asshole, in my opinion. Let me know what you think—I'm not sure that there's any particular focus for the discussion today, so we can just talk about this specific case as well as banning/removing in general since this is the first time I've had to do anything (and I was just saying how nice it had been).
Agreed. I have no doubt a formal banning system will be put into place in due time, but in the absence of such a system transparency is very much appreciated. Since the site is still young, I think the admins need to be heavy handed in enforcing the code of conduct in such a way that nurtures the site into a healthy community. It looks like this user had no interest in thoughtful (and respectful) discourse.
I think that the ban for his tone and his personal attacks is fully justified even without warning. I mean 'don't insult people' is a pretty natural law of civilized communication, but he was still right. People in that thread were 100% concern trolling, pretending to have irrational fears and worries that outweigh their 'worry about racism'
It's a real fact that America has an incredible problem with racism right now in their administration. It's a real fact the Government's obvious indifference and/or dog whistling whenever another escalation of tension between racists and normal people happens empowers more and more racists around the country. It's absurd to give people who say things like:
an open forum to discuss and recruit people. This has been literally stormfronts and co go to strategy to invade communities for years. Especially if they are invite only, because it's easier to get the upper hand in numbers.
/u/Redacted was wrong to stoop to their level and used personal attacks, but when he said
he was being completely accurate and truthful.
A community that allows people to spread their indifference and lies about the violence committed by hateful groups turns into a T_D child really fast. It happened to plenty of subs in the past few years on Reddit (e.g. /r/worldnews, a bunch of the smallish european subs).
This is the part that gives me pause. Redacted was out of line but the Maga supporters also know what they’re doing.
This for sure. Lest we turn into voat. Alternatives gain members for positive and negative reasons. It will be tough handling all the people who left reddit because they were permabanned for trolling. Hopefully the redesign brings some people here with a positive attitude though.
Is there a place on ~tildes we can see the codes of conduct?
Yep: https://docs.tildes.net/code-of-conduct
Good to see behavior like this is not tolerated. I think I agree with the majority when I say that some type of warning system should be in place, but for now, the right choice was made. I came here for calm, civil discussion, and so far that's what I've seen. I'd like this to continue. Glad to be a part of this community!
In my experience as an internet mod, when being a jerk has consequences, the jerks just make new accounts and keep on being jerks. And then they go on other subs and complain about how mods are nazis because being a jerk had consequences.
(because let's face it; being banned isn't much of a consequence)
You should read up on the (planned) trust system, particularly:
https://docs.tildes.net/mechanics-future#increased-punishment-effectiveness
That's absolutely true of most users... but occasionally you end up with the really crazy ones who make dozens or hundreds of accounts over the course of months or years. Doesn't happen often, but it does occasionally.
Of course, that mostly happens because on sites like Reddit you have enough users that by virtue of sheer large numbers, there's going to be some batshit insane people using them. Tildes is small enough that that shouldn't be an issue for a good long while.
Invite only means that they can't make 100s of accounts without someone inviting them repeatedly. But taking away the inviters ability to invite should handle that.
Right, but my understanding is that the plan is for tildes to not remain invite-only forever - that's just for the beta, unless I misunderstand.
It's better to start of with a policy in mind for when that does happen than it is to try to come up with a band-aid policy after it starts.
I've been dealing with a specific jerk for 7 months now. He doesn't stop. It's that bad. D: I wish he stopped spamming our users.
You should have subbed to /r/modsupport back on reddit then, some horror stories in there of persistent trolls... Kinda scary that some people would be so utterly consumed with petty rage.
That's always been my experience as a mod on reddit. Ban someone, they either come back with some a new account or start trolling in modmail.
I agree. Acting early is an important sign towards the type of community we want to build.
Personally, as someone can always try again creating another user account (or was he ip banned as well?), I don't think a warning was necessary. I like this kind of zero tolerance policy against an obvious troll.
I agree that this sets a great standard for the community, I just hope that this standard can be upheld with the influx of new members. It's going to be a lot of work!
This sets a very interesting precedent:
I love the idea of disclosing the reason behind any ban. Maybe a ~tildes.bans could be created and house these. From this point maybe the users could then discuss and evaluate the punishment.
I think it's fair to say that there won't ever be any bans without clear reasons attached. That's also going to hold true for all of the trust-based feedback systems - reports against content will need reasons, reports against users or moderators will need reasons. If there's no reason given, clearly, there was nothing important to worry about in the first place and whatever it was shouldn't be reported.
I wish I had the same optimism, but I find it hard to agree with the sentiment that "there won't ever be any bans without clear reasons attached". Every online community thought the same; Reddit, Digg, StackExchange, every IRC channel, etc.
I like the trust system (a la StackExchange), but at some point there will inevitably be an abuse of power. At the moment, the trust system seems to be a good way of moderating / administering "justice", but I wouldn't be surprised if that falls flat at some point.
We only find fault in failures, how we learn from them is key.
What I was getting at is there should be a [reason] box and clicking on the [ban] button won't work if it's empty. :P
And you could even go full circle: "Are you sure you want to ban this user? Your tone in that ban reason is quite agressive." ;)
I was going to post a similar suggestion. A daily or weekly digest of bans with the ability to view the specific comments they were banned for (even if those comments were removed from threads) would be a very nice thing to have. I've always said a lot of the problems with reddit moderation could be solved with better transparency. All actions should require a publicly readable reason with an audit trail.
If it's possible to view the comments that induced the ban they might have to be sencored if they for example contain hate speech.
I absolutely and completely disagree with this. Removing the comments from the thread so they don't derail the discussion is one thing. I'm an adult and I can handle reading awful things. Some people say horrible things and it's important to be aware that they exist and exactly what they think. There's absolutely zero value in censoring the content of a comment when it comes to recording the reason for a ban. If you can't handle reading hate speech, don't read the ban log.
The argument is that the site has to follow Canadian law.
I can't find anything to suggest this would be illegal under Canadian law. In fact I can find specific provisions in the relevant Canadian federal law that explicitly state it's legal if said hate speech were in a context of pointing out hate speech. In this case the only guilty party would be the submitter and hosting it publicly after being removed would be a clear example of pointing out hate speech, not commiting the act.
Oh! Right. Let's go for it then.
I would agree here. That account was a fairly fresh one with very little initial activity, and already they lashed out so readily. That's a pretty big red flag right from the start, and since they haven't gained much trust, there's not really an incentive to give them the benefit of the doubt. Older accounts with plenty of activity where lashing out is fairly rare, however, would indicate someone whose emotions momentarily got the better of them and who needs to cool off, so it makes more sense to give them a warning or a sort of "probationary period", so to speak.
That's something that works flawlessly right now because the community is small and not insular in the slightest, but full transparency when it comes to something like this can also easily be abused.
If the user in question isn't just a random faceless new user but for example someone who is established in a specific community (that approves of his behavior) you would now see a thread that is full of his friends arguing in his favor. If they somehow would be a dedicated group and one would come into the thread late while they showed up early people would easily be led to believe that the ban was excessive and unfair because that's what most comments and the highest voted comments would talk about.
Forcing mods to be held accountable in public for all of their individual actions would set things up for complete gridlock and ineffective moderation. That's something I believe teams should generally manage within themselves (under guidelines set early in in a communities lifespan and with ways of appealing to admins/mediators for example if there is evidence of them violating them).
It's all in all a very difficult balance between allowing moderators to do their job effectively, keeping a degree of transparency as well as accountability and keeping bureaucracy something that doesn't get in the way of day-to-day tasks.
A couple of things would balance that though:
I think this is one of the reasons behind the distrust of mods on Reddit: there is no way of knowing the crap they deal with, no way to empathize with them. Public disclosure of bans / toxic behaviour is as much a tool to held moderators accountable as a tool to make them more humane.
Keep in mind I'm not a Reddit mod, and never moderated large communities, only fairly niche BBs back in the day ;)
The right balance between transparency and efficiency is definitely tricky to strike.
I think the main problem is that transparency works fine when the people who are watching are principled and really do care about the rules being followed, but unfortunately, the general public will often care more about mods doing what is popular rather than about them enforcing the rules as written. Moderators sometimes have to do things that aren't popular in the interest of enforceing the rules, and if they fear backlash (harassment, doxxing, etc.) it can make them less likely to do that.
Currently, on Tildes, I don't see that really being an issue, because odds are that if you're in the beta you probably approve of the principles behind the rules. What's popular and what the rules say is likely to be the same thing. If the site becomes bigger, though, it could be an issue.
Agree on all three points and they all are procedures I have advised as well, including the complete transparency part on all site wide bans (along with reasoning). At this early stage I think this ban was appropriate though given ~ currently lack the capabilities to implement those procedures at a systems level and I think it was important to send a message that sort of behavior is exactly the kind @deimos was talking about when he refered to “assholes”, which has nothing to do with ideology but purely behavior.
I really like the third idea but the second idea could be challenging if the community gets bigger don't you think?
Was the user warned for their behavior in the thread? What was the tipping point towards banning?
No. If it had been only the comments I would have warned them, but the tagging was a clear attempt at finding any other tools they could to be able to attack someone with. That wasn't an accident, and that sort of blatant bad-faith behavior is really what made the difference between a warning and a ban.
I believe that every user should be provided with a warning, rather than a ban outright. Or perhaps we could ban users like that from political threads, but let them contribute to other threads. Either way, people should have a chance to redeem themselves, otherwise you just encourage them to create a new account, and potentially commit more bad-faith actions.
On a more finished site, the user would have had to earn access to the tagging systems through trusted behavior. On his fresh alt, he'd have to do the work of earning that all over again. The vote weights on his new account would also be back to the minimum again, losing all of the influence he'd managed to attain. Imagine what that's like for people with curator or moderator access - literally years of trust-building.
Bans have teeth here... big, nasty, merciless teeth, especially while it's an invite-only platform.
The way you beat bad actors is by tipping the scales against them - so that they have to do orders of magnitude more work to behave badly than it takes for the community to clean up their mess. I like the basic idea of months of work earning access being wiped out by a single mouse click. That's incredibly tipped in favor of the community, and that's what we need if we're going to beat literal bot armies and large paid-to-spam companies who will be trying to advertise here.
This also gives us the opportunity to make warnings more effective. People will take those much more seriously if they know they can't just turn around and make a new account to avoid the punishments.
The way it should be. The only way to stop bad actors is by providing disincentives, and if one doesn't care about their account, then the only real disincentive is to make them care about their account by making it a colossal headache to start over.
Reddit bans being effectively useless unless you're extremely zealous against freshly made accounts (which has other drawbacks) is definitely on the list of terrible things when it comes to moderating over there.
In listentothis we set up automod to remove anything from accounts younger than 60 days, and we turned that on the same day we became a default. It worked incredibly well, and when we ban someone, we know we won't see them again for two months no matter what they do. It's not very fair to new users, though. The mods do read the threads there and we'd approve the comments and submissions from people who'd run afoul of the ban despite being honest community members. It was a little bit of the askhistorians philosophy. I'd prefer a less draconian solution, but on reddit, draconian solutions are the only ones possible thanks to their primitive mod tools.
Hey! Sorry for bringing this up but your comment really caught my eye.
As a mod of decent sized subs on reddit, how do you think having a 60 day min account limit would change anything? There's nothing easier than creating 100 accounts and maturing them like fine wine and cheese for a period of 60 days and spamming your sub later. I can make 10 accounts everyday for 60 days and I'd have 600 accounts to use.
What are your 2 cents on this topic?
It keeps out the low effort, high turnover types and the ones we ban who don't have a small army of socks already aging. Most people don't bother to do that. The ones who do tend to be SEO spammers and other paid interests. We can keep them out by blocking their channels on other services. The 50 comment karma cap is even more effective. It seems like people focus on link karma when artificially inflating their accounts and forget about comment karma.
It's not perfect but it does eat up a surprising amount of garbage.
That seems reasonable. Although I believe there still should be a way for a user to contest a ban if they believe it was unfair.
I think most of us would be happy with a promise to behave themselves - but only the first time that happens. ;)
This I hadn't thought of in this thread so far and now the outright ban makes more sense
I disagree with this (obviously, I suppose). Warnings and bans are different tools, and there are cases where each is appropriate. In this case, the user specifically went out of their way to use one of the functions of the site as a "weapon" (a weak one, but still). This wasn't a mistake or something that they didn't realize was the wrong way to use tags, they just assumed that they could get away with it. That's not a place where you need a warning, the user's already shown willingness to act maliciously as long as they think they won't get caught.
That sounds exactly like the user in question failing to heed a warning.
I'll play the devil's advocate but one could argue no one has really figured out "the right way to use [comment] tags" so can we really define what he did as "the wrong way to use tags"?
From what you described ( since I believe all those tags were removed? ) it definitely sounds like his tagging wasn't useful at all, I wouldn't assume that he thought he would get away with it though. If we read his last 3 comments, it sounds more like he was angry and got a bit trigger happy without thinking about the (potential) consequences, which doesn't really indicate a willingness to act maliciously imho.
( That said, I'd have been on the fence on this one, and given that it's the first, I think setting a precedent was the right move )
I disagree with this. I think this assumes that people can’t change or are in someway inherently bad.
I’ll agree that it’s important that in the early days we should ban quickly, but I don’t think thats a good longterm plan.
"Ideological opponents"? What do you mean by that?
Ah okay. I didn't catch you switched from talking to the mods to him, that makes much more sense now. Thank you!
I disagree. If you read the rules you should be coming in with knowledge of what to do and what not to do. It's not hard to not be a jerk, and I approve of removing someone who is. It's simply an attitude that should not be tolerated.
That's a very good point, didn't think about the tagging (yey reddit mod brain). Thanks for the clarification.
How would warnings be sent? Private message?
Yes, that's really the only method since I don't have email addresses or anything.
How about locking all inputs (votes, posting, etc), until you've acknowledged the warning? Like having the text box and buttons greyed out, with a new button "you have a warning you need to acknowledge". Then they need to read it and confirm before continuing.
(just don't drop submissions they've already started typing on when they got the warning, cache them and let them post after the acknowledgement)
I like this idea; it is direct and gets the job done without letting the user ignore it. It's a step in between a slap on the wrist and a temporary ban.
That's a really good way to make sure they've actually read the ban notice. Then they can't complain that they never saw it.
Don't know how hard it would be to code though.
Another method one can consider would be public warnings as a reply to the rule offending comments.
From experience I'd say that's a great tool to get good users back on track who are simply behaving badly in a specific situation - personal attacks by regular and otherwise totally fine users in a heated argument being one of the prime examples.
This is something I frequently do when debates get heated. A simple warning that highlights which behavior that is being negative will simultaneously discourage that user and the others from escalating the argument. It usually only requires a single warning, sometimes one per person, and then people usually stick to the rules afterwards.
It also usually doesn't require deleting comments, so nobody can even shout "mod abuse" or complain about lack of transparency.
I support this strongly. The only two reasons (as it boils down) that I have ever banned anyone on reddit has been for being an active bigot, and for acting in bad faith. In my experience, neither a bigot nor someone very clearly acting in bad faith will ever take warnings as anything but a dare to play it up more or a personal attack.
its interesting you bring this up using other tools that are provided by the website. (I'm in the middle of a response to your post about "A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy ")
Should there be a limiter on how the tagging system works, if excessive tagging is considered harassment
Well, I'm going to put it out there that I disagree with this ban, and this kinda exemplifies my original fear where trying to create a space for positive discussion overreaches into squashing people who genuinely have an emotional response to something, therefore prioritizing the party who displays the least emotion and is most detached from the situation.
I dunno, I don't want to go back to Reddit, but this does make me a lot less confident in the site. I'm wondering if I should even stick around a place that will ban me for saying mean things to people who harm me.
Emotions are fine. We're human. You can even throw your emotions into the mix as well. But you need to be constructive about it rather than resorting to attacks. Arguments on this site are about being a civilized person engaging in civilized discussion, not being a child and resorting to childish tactics like insults, baiting, and other nonsense. The former is what you would consider higher quality content--this site's focus--whereas the latter would be considered low quality. If you really want to engage in the latter, there's enough of that on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Reddit to satisfy you for the rest of your days.
To be honest, this is exactly what I'm talking about. If I don't properly entertain any given idea and treat it as equally valid and worth discussing as anything else, suddenly I'm being "childish."
What you're doing here is falling for a very common fallacy know as the false dilemma (alternatively, false dichotomy). This isn't an either/or situation at all. You don't have to entertain all ideas in order to not be childish. When it comes to actually responding to the original idea, argue with some combination of reasoning, facts, philosophy, and sources. If all you can do is appeal to emotion, then cool off for a bit and reevaluate your position so you can better understand it at a fundamental level, then respond once your understanding has improved. That's what it means to engage in civilized discussion.
What's important is that you don't act like a complete dick. If someone's being a dick, don't respond by also being a dick. Tag them as flaming and simply walk away. If that user's behavior continues to be toxic, they'll eventually receive a ban. And hateful rhetoric isn't allowed, so just tag them for that as well. Same deal.
So I have to entertain it. I have to either treat the idea as if it's as valid as anything else or ignore it, otherwise I'm a child. As I see it, this attitude's prevalence on places like Reddit has done a great deal to normalize extremely harmful positions.
No, but supporting things that do far more harm than hate speech without action is clearly 100% okay. Clearly speaking in favor of actions which lead to families being destroyed don't count as "dickish" behavior. As we see in this thread, using tags to call that some manner of "dickish" is also not acceptable.
You're doing it again. That's not entertaining the idea at all. You can easily say "you're wrong, and here are the sources to prove why that is". Boom, argument shot down and never once treated as valid. But you can do that without saying "you're a fucking idiot, and here's why". Tone matters.
That's what engaging in civilized discussion is for. It doesn't mean "treat the opposing viewpoint as valid", but "figure out why that viewpoint is held and, if it's not a valid viewpoint, then provide the appropriate information to disprove it, especially by addressing any of the misconceptions you learned about by discerning why the hold that view".
My cousin once called a black man a "chocolate person". She was a child and didn't understand that someone could have a different skin color. She wasn't being a dick, she was just ignorant. Similarly, there are a lot of people who ignorantly do things that harm others, not really realizing that what they're doing is wrong. But we don't fight that ignorance by lashing out, but through engaging with them. Look up Daryl Davis to see how effective this is, compared to the constant verbal attacks we see on social media. We want to take the Daryl Davis approach to people who we believe are in the wrong.
That's a strawman argument. That is not the stated reasoning at all. The problem is using those tags inappropriately. If someone is being civil, then tagging them as flaming or trolling is abusing the feature to attack them.
I understand that you're upset with Trump and his supporters. I get it. I am, too. But this isn't how we move forward.
Well, clearly our disagreement is around the idea that directly engaging with a point is validating it. I want to be clear that by "validity," I mean something that is okay to hold. Something that you can openly believe and be more or less safe.
Speaking anecdotally, that's exactly what I've seen. We talk about Richard Spencer and the like in the context of free speech and in the process we engage with the ideas, and suddenly we're moving toward a point where open white supremacy is a lot more acceptable than it used to be. When you treat something that way, it becomes part of the new norm. Obviously there's a lot of factors working into that, but it's hard not to see this trend of sitting down and talking politely with shitty people while shaming people who are actively being harmed and who lash out against that without being all nice and presentable as being related.
Clearly you're misunderstanding. The stated reasoning is irrelevant. If I find that to be dickish behavior, which I do, tagging is clearly not a solution. It will be shot down and considered abuse...the reason it's considered abuse doesn't matter in the context of responding to your suggestion. It's not a strawman because I'm not talking about the reasoning or the moderator's position at all. The only thing I'm saying here is that tagging is not a solution to that kind of dickishness, because doing so is considered abuse.
In all honesty, what you've said requires a more involved answer that I don't currently want to put the time in to give right now. All I see here is that if this is the prevailing attitude, I'm going to stay away from directly political content in this place. In my eyes, this is far more toxic than someone saying "fuck you."
I'm going to stop replying, not because I don't think what you're saying is worth engaging with, but simply as a time thing. Sorry, I know it's frustrating for a conversation to end like that but I didn't really intend on getting in a long debate today and I probably should've realized my comment would trigger one to occur.
Simple Question:
Is "engaging" a climate denier in order to explain why they are wrong in a civil manner "validating" their opinion?
edit: Feel free to answer in your own time, by the way... No rush and I wont be offended if you just ghost me, either. :)
I would say yes, it pushes it further into the realm of acceptable debate.
It plays a dual purpose, which is why I'm not like arguing civil debate is an objectively bad thing. While it does help make the position look like something that should be considered in the first place ("teaching the controversy"), it also publicly deconstructs the position. I just don't think civil debate is such a wonderful, magical thing that it should override anything which flies in the face of it regardless of the content of either.
Okay, this time I'm actually done.
LOL, okay... I'll leave you be. Thanks for the conversation. And just know I am not entirely unsympathetic to your perspective here. I just disagree that we should tolerate habitual bad-faith behavior like personal attacks when they are made against people acting in good faith to explain their position (no matter how incorrect you think that position is, so long as it is not hate speech).
Where did @emerald_knight say you need to treat all opinions as equally valid?
If someone is a climate change denier that is IMO an entirely invalid position... however calling them a "stupid fuck" for being a climate change denier helps no one and only serves to make this site a worse place to inhabit. Productive, civil discussion with that climate change denier, on the other hand, can perhaps sway them to see reason.
The same goes for any position you feel is invalid, including being a Trump supporter, if that is what you think. Productive, civil discourse over the issue != validating the opinion
That approach only works when you assume good faith on all sides of a discussion. If people are allowed to say basically anything as long as they do it politely you will inadvertently end up with all kinds of extremely shitty situations (and people) within your communities.
"It is my personal opinion that the Holocaust didn't happen, maybe the people you had in your family that you claim to have died back then died of natural causes and you're just misremembering? Sometimes the human brain does interesting things, we don't need to jump to the conclusion that anyone would actually kill 6 million people. Ha, considering how much money Jews are making off this silly story I can totally understand how some people would wish for something like that to actually happen, haha!"
There are analogues to this basic approach for a lot of topics. If you want rules that only keep in check when someone clearly resorts to personal attacks or specific calls for violence you will inadvertently attract these types of people.
This is something that can sometimes be witnessed in larger reddit communities when mods end up being slow with enforcing stricter rules or when they're giving users the benefit of the doubt for too long - you will end up with people who aren't interested in a civil and productive discussion but with people who want to use your lack of rules as a recruitment tool for their platform.
I agree that good faith is required by both sides in order for productive dialogue to be had. But while judging good faith isn't easy, that doesn't mean it's impossible either. It's unlikely the intention is to allow all ideas on the site, only ones made in good faith. And it's also worth noting that ~ is Canadian Not-for-profit Corporation, and Holocaust denial has been successfully prosecuted here under the Criminal Code of Canada (Section 319) laws related to Hate Propaganda, specifically because it was judged not possible for it to be made in good faith.
And those convictions were later upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada as well, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Keegstra
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Andrews
So Holocaust denial will very likely be prohibited and any person who expresses such opinions will probably be banned.
IMO this situation is partially due to Tildes being such a new site. Were Redacted an old user with months or years of time on the site (something not currently possible) it would be unreasonable to ban them so quickly. But after just over a day on the site they had already started to throw a public fit.
I understand your position, but here is my problem with what you just said:
What did @mumberthrax say to harm @redacted that justified them making such personal attacks?
If someone crosses the line into threats or hate speech (i.e. calling for the harm or death of a person or group of people) then I understand your position and agree that we should not ban people for outburst against them. In fact we will instead be banning the person who made those hateful or threatening statements. But @mumberthrax did no such thing, expressed no hatred towards any group and as far as I can tell has been acting in good faith on this site since day one. I vehemently disagree with his positions on a great many things (abortion, US politics, etc) but those positions he holds are not hateful in and of themselves unless they involve wanting to genuinely harm others.
Paradox of tolerance <-------- Tildes --------> Echo Chamber
It's a fine and precarious line but one we feel is necessary to walk if we want to promote productive dialogue between all these now incredibly polarized ideological groups.
It wasn't what they said in the thread (well, it could've also been something, I saw some trollish stuff from them but that's not the point), but rather that by supporting Trump, they have either harmed @redacted or at least an oppressed group that @redacted clearly is emotionally attached to enough to get a response.
There's real material harm being done there, and I would argue it's far more inflammatory and harmful than hate speech without any action behind it.
Of course, yall put your foot down at hate speech and don't have any intentions of banning for opinions expressed without resorting to that. I don't agree with the approach entirely, but I get it. At the same time, it seems foolish to me to pretend that the only thing that someone can do to receive insults in response and have the one insulting them be in the wrong is spew hate speech. As it is, someone can come into this site doing absolutely awful things, and as long as they present everything civilly and without directly going to hate speech, the people who attack them are somehow in the wrong.
To your edit about where ~ should fall in that spectrum, I agree that's where it should be, I have no problem with that, but it doesn't address what I'm saying at all.
That is material harm being done by Trump not @mumberthrax so what right does that give anyone to personally attack him?
And for the record, I am Canadian and vote Green/NDP (our most leftist parties) and am a firm believer in LGBTQ rights (even gender neutral pronouns get a thumbs up from me as does our recent inclusion of them in our harassment laws... just look at my post/comment history if you don't believe me) but even I can recognize there are some potentially valid reasons to support Trump that don't simply stem from a desire to cause material harm to other minority groups. I don't believe those are good enough reasons, personally, since the man is an absolute bigoted moron and causing a great deal of harm to the US... but there are legitimate reasons (mostly based on misguided fear, but that's besides the point) and lumping all Trump supporters in to the same bucket and treating them as undeserving of civility, once again serves no one.
If you disagree with @mumberthrax, explain why to him. Reach out. Show him that members of the groups that Trump's policies harm are worth considering too. Attempt to build common ground with him and you may very well convince him that his support of Trump is misplaced by doing so... but once again, simply giving in to your emotions and calling him a "stupid fuck" only serves to widen the divide, not bridge it.
How was Trump given that power? Unless you believe in Russian conspiracies (I don't), it was @mumberthrax and many others.
Their reasons are almost entirely irrelevant. I had this conversation somewhere else on ~, but whether they supported Trump because they hate Muslims or because they like a suit he wore once, they have the same effect on the world. They caused the same harm regardless of their reasoning. They're all in the same bucket because they all did the same thing. They're just as responsible for every family destroyed as a vocal hateful bigot who voted for Trump even if they don't agree with that person in the slightest.
Well I actually do happen to believe a fair few of the Russian Conspiracies, especially in regards to their PSYOP activities influencing the US electorate through fake news propagated through social media ad networks in a highly coordinated campaign using pilfered data acquired by Cambridge Analytica, and catfishing using fake social media accounts to artificially increase appearance of Conservative support and racist policies... because there is 100% definitive proof of that having happened.
530 million fake accounts were removed from Facebook this quarter and that is not a coincidence. Major alt-right twitter personalities followed by millions have turned out to be fake identities controlled by the Russian Internet Research Agency. Cambridge Analytica pilfered data from hundred of millions of Facebook user profiles using an exploit in the system using paid surveys. These are facts.
Does that give me the right to start personally attacking you for not believing in "Russian Conspiracies" despite the increasingly mounting evidence they took place?
Okay fine, you have a point but what is your solution to the problem then? Civil war? Mass murder of all Trump supporters? Going around calling all of them assholes isn't going to fix the problem nor convince them they made a mistake. IMO the only solution we have to these issues is civil discourse, attempting to build common ground, and engaging in productive dialogue. And we here at ~ want to be a part of helping create that environment.
Clearly calling people assholes is not ok. But when you have someone causing toxic discussions, even if they do so very politely, you need to excise that poisonous discussion.
A number of people have made similar points: trolling is harmful, especially if the troll is skilled at remaining calm.
Fair enough... but as I have said previously, ~ just doesn’t have the manpower to deal with that yet nor are the tools in place yet to empower communities to deal with that themselves either. However that will come eventually, and you can read about these potential systems (e.g. trust/reputation) in the documentation, the daily discussions and elsewhere. This is an alpha, after all, and the site has only been up for a little over a month so people need to be patient and try not to over-extrapolate too much right now. However people driving the point home about certain potential pitfalls like this does help, so thanks.
Tildes mods can't know the details of every person involved in the far right. That makes it really important to pay attention when people who do know tell you that Yaxley-Lennon / Tommy Robinson is a far-right poster boy. I'm not talking about the Trump thread. I'm talking about this thread: https://tildes.net/~news/x1/can_the_uk_really_do_this_to_tommy_robinson_uk_ban_on_reporting_on_grooming_gang_reporter See in particular the choice of title and tags.
For some background (from an English barrister), see this: https://thesecretbarrister.com/2018/05/25/what-has-happened-to-poor-tommy-robinson/ or this: https://twitter.com/AdamWagner1/status/1001018033744334848
I don't want Tildes to be a place where the far right can post inflammatory bullshit in the guise of just asking questions.
I agree that post is far from ideal, and once title and tag editing is in place, that submission would have had the title and tags scrubbed clean of editorialization at the very least. @deimos has even talked about link editing being potentially possible in the future as well, perhaps to high trust users, so rather than the inflammatory opinion video it could have been changed to a more neutral source on the topic like the BBC or even a megathread with multiple sources (mechanics of which are still being discussed). However one thing that gives me hope is seeing how quickly and thoroughly the alt-right narrative was debunked and dismantled on that post by @Evolution.
But I personally disagree about trying to completely disallow the right wing perspective entirely here though... we need to engage this stuff head on or it’s just going to keep spreading and convincing more and more young, naive, isolated and vulnerable people that the alt-right narrative is correct, IMO.
I didn't realizing the editorializing in the title was inappropriate. Should i have just left it with the direct copy-paste of the clickbaity title Tim Pool used (he uses similarly clickbaity titles for all of his videos, i believe in a sort of pseudo-tongue-in-cheek manner since he often criticizes such things himself)?
It's preferable you don't editorialize titles, especially on controversial topics... but if the original title is obvious clickbait, flame bait or trolling then feel free to modify it to be more neutral and an objectively descriptive of the issues being discussed. Until there are systems in place to allow trusted users to assist with that, submitters will just have to use their best judgment and discretion...
Okay, so i just watched another video by Tim Pool that I wanted to share here and see what people thought of it. Just to make sure that I don't make people rage over the title, how should I title it, and do you think ~misc is okay? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU-kIunAVRg
I think using his original title of "The Left Is Going Too Far" would probably anger people - I don't want to do that. But I do think Tim does a good job of explaining his perceptions of the issues with the extreme political left, and I would like to have a conversation with folks about it. People have accused me of trying to "stir the pot" or post "inflammatory" content before, and I don't think I have even really actively tried to do the kind of engagement I have wanted to do on political issues... but this one is an instance where I'd like to try to engage with a position that I know that some people here will disagree with.
So I'm himming and hawing over whether i should just not post it, or if there's a chance of it actually going well and being an interesting discussion. and if I DO post it, since i got in trouble for trying to clean up the title to be less clickbait-y in the past on something i didn't think would be as controversial as it turned out to be, I don't even know what should be done for this one that I know some people will react angrily with, no matter how soft-spoken and rational the speaker in the video is about his opinion (Tim is even left-wing himself, but has been physically assaulted and personally harassed by far-left antifa types merely for being present as a reporter during protests).
I’m about to go for dinner with my sister and nephew, but if you don’t mind waiting I can watch the video when I get back and let you know what I think on the issues you’re struggling with regarding it. It may be a few hours from now before I can get back to you though.
Right on. No rush - and thank you.
Alright, sorry for the delay but I wound up sleeping over at my sister's house so I could spend some more time with my nephew this morning before they go on vacation for the next 2 weeks. But when I got home this morning I watched the video and here is what I would say about it.
I think my and many other people's biggest problems with Tim Pool are almost perfectly exemplified in this video. The clickbait and intentionally inflammatory title isn't just an issue with the title itself, it's indicative of how he frames all his statements and arguments, that is to say disingenuously in order to draw attention to himself and artificially amplify the controversy over what he discusses. But let's ignore that for now... on to the video itself:
He spends the entire first half (8 minutes) of the video relying entirely on unverifiable anecdotes (which he even fully admits!) and then using those anecdotes to build straw man arguments. E.g. His claim that discussions of White privilege with people are somehow comparable to "white supremacy". That is clearly a straw man and patently absurd as it's not a matter of "believing" in White "superiority", it's historical fact that White Colonial/Imperialist powers held incredibly sway over the rest of the world, and still do through exertion of economic, political and military soft and hard power. And White people themselves still have significant privilege in the World by way of their higher Socioeconomic Status and even in the Western World over minorities due to undeniable and well studied inequality in their Justice Systems, Cultural/Economic Segregation through White flight and Gentrification, etc. You could, and many have, written entire Theses on White privilege, how thoroughly it has been studied and the systemic effects it has both on Whites and Minorities.
I entirely agree with him that radicals on the Left using the fact that White privilege exists to dismiss criticism of their own behavior and discriminate against White people should not be tolerated. However to imply that it is somehow "white supremacy" to even discuss White privilege is a clear attempt by Mr. Pool to draw false equivalence between the far Right and Moderate Left/Centrists who acknowledge that White privilege exists, study it and are attempting to find ways to address it.
Now, the second half of the video is at least more fact based, rather than anecdotal and opinion based. What happened (and continues to happen) at Evergreen College is an absolute joke and clear sign of the dangers of extremists on the Left. Prof. Weinstein is actually well known to me and I have watched a great many of his interviews, speeches and lectures. I am acutely aware of how insanely unfairly he was treated by losing his job over simply contradicting the views of the radical Left student body at Evergreen and how cowardly the President of Evergreen has been in capitulating to their demands. Prof. Weinstein was even given $500k in a settlement recently as a result of this event because the College likely realized they would lose any discrimination suit he brought against them.
I also agree with Mr. Pool's assessment that a lot of these current trends are not a strictly Right/Left issue but rather an issue of Authoritarianism on the rise on both sides. In fact, just a few days ago I finished reading "The Authoritarians" by Prof. Bob Altemeyer which covers that very subject. I would highly recommend you pick it up and give it a read since you're clearly interested in the subject as well... it's free to download by the way.
And thus ends his video. Now, having watched it (and many of his other videos previously), do you want to know what I consider to be the ultimate irony of Tim Pool?
I actually largely agree with him when he is discussing events and facts. He isn't entirely unreasonable in most of his assessments of the issues with the far Left either. However, and it is a big "however", because of his idiotic clickbait and inflammatory titles, heavy reliance on anecdotes and opinion with no supporting evidence, and his attempts to draw false equivalence between well studied phenomena (he just happens to disagree with) with actual extremist views... I can't take him seriously.
So should you post this video to ~misc? I think if this video didn't have such a ridiculously obvious clickbait and intentionally inflammatory title, had the first nonsensical half cut out, and only had the second half where Mr. Pool discusses actual objective fact and verifiable events then sure, it could have been posted. In that case it would have been a quality video capable of generating decent discussion. But as it stands, it's problematic for all the reasons stated above.
Now all that said, here is my question to you. If you are genuinely interesting in having good faith discussions on the issues of the radical Left, rather than posting a video that you know (and admit) is set up at the outset to be clickbait and inflammatory, and also riddled with anecdotes and personal opinions... why don't you find some actual objective sources that discuss those same issues instead of videos by people like Tim Pool?
For example, why not post an article or interview with Prof. Weinstein himself who, unlike Tim Pool, is objective and incredible rational when discussing problems with the radical Left? E.g. This older interview with him by Joe Rogan where he goes on at length about the issues at Evergreen but does so without relying on the same bullshit logical fallacies, click/flame bait and pure opinion that Tim Pool does.
Wow, i really appreciate that you took the time to write all this up for me. Thank you very much, cfabbro. I didn't exactly go into this expecting an analysis of the video itself, just more an opinion on what i should do about the title since the title itself was the only thing i was really concerned about. I'm not sure i agree that the content in the video itself is intended to be "clickbait" or inflammatory necessarily, or at least I'm not sure I share the same perceptions of it as you do, and I really do appreciate you sharing your perspective of it - it's basically what I would have hoped for in the tildes comment page for the video.
I thought the video was nice because 1) it's short/succinct and easy to digest 2) I thought Tim explained things in a way that I found coincided with my own perceptions more or less. 3) Tim is left-wing, so probably less likely to anger people than most people I've encountered who express comparable opinions 4) recent/timely, and conveniently handy (it had just shown up on my video notifications moments before i watched it) 5) It's all put together. Tim's done most of the work for me, rather than me going around gathering up all the sources and repeating the same arguments (which won't go well, because anything I say will be seen as less credible than if a left-wing person says it).
My only issue was with the title. I think it's a reasonable title for the video, because generally speaking it is accurate, it summarizes the perspective described in the video itself. I also know that if I post the video with that title, I'll be accused of being a troll for using an "inflammatory" title, when I don't even care about the title - it's the video itself, and responses like yours that interest me. But I don't want a repeat of the Tommy Robinson video thing where I tried to actually remedy the issue before posting by clarifying the content of the video while also maintaining the original title for transparency purposes... and people still found a reason to get angry at me over that.
So I'm just asking... if we assume that I am going to post the video, what, in your opinion, is the title I should use that will not be used to say that I'm posting in bad faith and get me banned in the same fashion as hypnotoad (e.g. actions which were not immediately apparently in violation of the content policy)?
NP man. If you genuinely want to spark good discussion then I am glad to try and help you do that.
Let's play a hypothetical game and reverse the situation here. If I was to post a video titled "The Right Is Going Too Far" and in that video the author spent the first 8 minutes using complete hearsay and anecdotes (providing no actual evidence whatsoever) to build straw men arguments and attempting to paint some of the basic core tenets of the moderate Right (that are incredibly well studied, and the historical/scientific consensus is that they are well founded in reality with a solid body of evidence to support them) as not only factually wrong but then further went on to make the ridiculous, fallacy filled argument that the core tenet is in fact comparable to the hateful beliefs of extremists on the far, far Left.
How would that make you feel seeing that, and what would you assume about me by having posted that video?
p.s. Just because Tim Pool is "on the left" doesn't mean he is worth listening to by others on the Left, nor does it mean his arguments are not fallacious, constantly lacking credible sources, reliant on heresay/anecdotes or inflammatory even to other people on the moderate Left.
The reason I have not provided a title change recommendation, which you also asked for in your first comment, is that IMO no title is going to change the inflammatory nature of the video itself. And even if the issue was only the title, which it is not, changing the title on ~ would not change the title as originally written on Youtube.
And once again I have to ask, why do you keep insisting on posting this pure conjecture based opinion piece that has absolutely no evidence backing it up whatsoever, instead of finding more legitimate and objective sources of the issues he brings up in the second half of his video, which is more fact and real life event based?
If you honestly do want to discuss the topic of the problem with Extreme Leftist views in good faith, I can even help you find some objective sources to use in order to do that, since even though I am on the Left, I am actually incredibly familiar with those Extreme Left issues and also think they are ridiculous and dangerous.
Or better yet, why not post a topic fostering discussion on the issues with the extremists on both sides of the political spectrum rather than constantly focusing your attention and posts on the Left?
p.s. Can you please drop the constant Hypnotoad comparisons? It's getting really obnoxious. I have also yet to see you edit your comments in a similar manner as he did nor do anything even remotely comparable to what he did on reddit either.
Just want to say, your comment here has made me angry. So I'm going to take some time to cool down and respond later.
Fair enough... take your time and feel free to let me know why it made you angry, especially if I said anything you feel is inappropriate. I can take the criticism and won't be offended.
I've decided not to post the video. It's apparent that it is not persuasive to someone as reasonable as yourself, and while it might spawn an interesting discussion where we (or others) could drill down to specifics, in general it probably will only contribute to polarization of views as people on tildes will be inclined to defend the far left and simultaneously feel disgust for Tim Pool, despite the substantial effort he puts into trying to be a bridge between left and right.
So, thank you. I do appreciate you taking the time to write all of this, to give it the thought and energy you did.
I decided as I went to sleep last night that it is best to set aside my ego since it was only getting in the way, and I am no longer angry or upset. I would prefer to not go and dig into the hows and whys of that anger because I don't want to offend you, but in the interest of transparency because you asked, I will try to at least paint an image of the emotional landscape in my mind last night when i first read your comment. In writing the lines below, I brought myself back to that space, so it might sound accusatory - please don't take it personally, and I assure you that I hold no ill will toward you at all. I'm deeply appreciative of our interactions, especially when we may have differing perspectives.
The anger/frustration I felt was a response to a combination of things. I'd say mainly it is a growing sense of indignation at feeling forced to walk on eggshells instead of being open and genuine on tildes. But this is an illusion - nobody is forcing me to do this, I have been doing it to avoid upsetting sensitive people. I've been doing it because it is not strategic for my purpose - which is to help increase mutual understanding and harmony. Sometimes I forget that that is my responsibility as the more or less de facto representative of conservatism/maga populism on the site, despite not really wanting the role.
With that particular emotional context, when i went out of my way to meet the restrictions on my participation on the site, feeling they were being offensively placed on me by others when in actuality they are of my own choice, and instead of a simple response I got an argument saying essentially that I should not even express myself or participate in the way I wanted - that i had to invest hours in re-forming Tim's and my perspective to fit a certain kind of presentation that felt less... real or human, that was frustrating.
Asking you about the title was almost an afterthought - i was about to post it and remembered your comment, so from the weird perspective I had, it felt like I was doing you a courtesy by asking what I should do for the title, when in actuality even this i felt was being too subservient. To then have even more demanded of me... (I know you weren't demanding, but this is the perception i had at the time), added to the frustration.
You asked why i wanted to post the video at all, and I listed 5 reasons influencing my desire to post it - I don't think I have seen anyone try to psychoanalyze their motivations for posting things like this on tildes, but i did it out of courtesy. Then you blatantly ignored this and asked why I was insisting on posting it, which is a misrepresentation of my actions and statements. That angered me. You almost implicitly accused me of trying to post something inflammatory just because you said it was inflammatory, even saying that I agreed it was inflammatory when i did not - only that the title would probably upset people. I do now agree that it is best not to post it because while I don't believe the content is objectively inflammatory, your very response indicated that the heated emotions that people on the left will have when viewing it are not conducive to a healthy discussion - if you get as offended and bothered by the video while being as rational and calm as you are, I have very low expectations for better results from tildes at large.
I will skip over some of the other stuff that frustrated me, but the last thing you said about hypnotoad angered me as well. You said I constantly compare myself and hypnotoad. I perceived this as a lie, and an insult. As I wrote the line about hypnotoad, i thought to myself that it was the first time I had made any such explicit comparison, so your comment being so blatantly in contradiction to this triggered some emotional discord. (it may be that I have made a comparison before, but i did not and do not presently recall one) It is the first time I've felt like you lied, much less attacked me - so on top of the surface level upset, there is a sense of betrayal of rapport or mutual respect that i had felt we've been developing. To my knowledge, the only times I've mentioned hypnotoad outside of this conversation have been in the context of discussions of the ban of hypnotoad, where i have been one of the only people critical of the ban because the justification for the ban is ambiguous. The whole reason it is concerning to me is because it is an instance where mob rule over someone who did not appear to violate the rules has prompted a ban. I don't even care about the guy personally, i don't think i even engaged on the discussions his posts spawned because i was busy with other things at the time. But the manner in which the ban occurred sets a precedent, leaving a foul taste in my mouth. Deimos specifically asked me to share my perspective on these sorts of issues when he responded to my request for an invitation. That is why I am vocal. I have this sort of rule that I say to myself that, "if everybody kept quiet assuming someone else would speak for them, then nobody would. So if I don't speak up, then nobody will". So... dismissing that whole thing with your little PS at the end as if it was something you've been holding back and just sniping it at me at the end with, it made me angry.
Again, I want to reiterate that the above is just my attempt at reconstructing how i was feeling as I read your comment yesterday evening, and does not reflect my current and overall emotions or attitude toward you. I deeply respect you. I appreciate the work you have been doing engaging people on the site, and in particular being a respectful and interesting discussion partner on the occasions where we've interacted. I bear full responsibility for my own emotions, my own quirks and perceptions. I sincerely hope this brief exposure of my own failings does not sour things too much, and i hope it's a sufficient explanation.
edit: were -> weren't
And thank you too, man. I genuinely appreciate your perspective and our interactions as well. My father is an old-school conservative of the "we don't talk about politics in this house" variety, so it's nice for me to be able to talk to someone like yourself who is more open about their similar conservative beliefs but who is actually willing to discuss/defend them as well. I have said it before but I will say it again, I do respect the hell out of you for your willingness to defend your beliefs, and your fortitude in doing so in the face of being outnumbered here. And I honestly wasn't trying to upset you but if my previous comment came across as accusatory, I sincerely apologize for that, as I swear it was not my intent.
As for the Tim Pool video, in your first comment you mentioned struggling with deciding whether or not to post the video at all, and while I know your primary concern was with the title, the reason why I dived so deep was because I wanted to give you an honest assessment of my perception of the video itself which would hopefully help you understand how others on the Left would perhaps perceive it. I know you eventually came to that conclusion yourself, although I really could have done a better job of being clear that was my intent, so I apologize if it wasn't.
I wound up watching the video about 5 times in the process and tried very hard to take the arguments presented at face value and not let my personal bias get in the way. However, ultimately I couldn't help but feel that if Tim Pool is honestly trying to be a "bridge between left and right", he either does a really poor job at it or he is being intentionally inflammatory (neither of which is your fault). Here's why:
IMO his rhetorical style is not really conducive to bridging gaps but, in fact, further dividing them by very clearly misrepresenting ideas that the Left holds. E.g. The Left acknowledging White Privilege exists and debating how the situations that have arisen from it could be remedied is not at all comparable to White Supremacy and by making that incredibly insulting comparison, any potential bridges get immediately burnt, not built.
My hypothetical was an attempt, perhaps a horribly clumsy one (so sorry about that), to help you see my perspective about how insulting that comparison was. It being clumsy is perhaps why it came across as a personal attack on yourself, which it was not intended to be, and so I apologize for that as well. My honest intent with it was to simply help you see my perspective on why his argument about acknowledging White Privilege = White Supremacy is incredibly inflammatory.
With that said, I also acknowledge that some on the far Left take that concept of remedy way too far and rather than attempting to find a way to offer minorities more opportunities to equal the playing field, they instead try to reach equality by oppressing the former oppressors... as perfectly exemplified by what happened at Evergreen College. That is why I kept suggesting you focus on that as a more "actual event, fact based" approach to the topic of extremism on the Left, rather than the Tim Pool video.
Now with Tim Pool out of the way. I also do have to acknowledge that I probably didn't pay enough attention to your stated reasoning for why you originally wanted to post the video and you're right that I did go overboard and misrepresent you by implying you were insisting on posting the video when you were not. I now recognize you were simply doing exactly what I was attempting to do, helping me see your perspective. I should have recognized that, so apologize for not doing so and instead misinterpreting that as insistence to post the video. So again, I apologize.
And as for Hypnotoad, I was genuinely trying to reassure you that none of us see you as even remotely comparable to him... I'm sorry I let my frustration with the topic of him being brought up repeatedly taint my perception of your reasoning for bringing him up in the first place. You have a genuine worry and I could have done a much better job of appreciating that and reassuring you without attacking your for bringing him up. So I'm sorry about that too.
Also the fact that I felt the genuine need to apologize so much for what I said and how I approached the conversation with you here also lets me know I need to try much harder to do a better job at the outset, rather than relying on cleaning up the mess I made afterwards. So thank you for being so patient with me and so understanding regarding my mistakes here.
Me too, man. Me too... God, this meeting of the minds thing, especially on such highly polarized topics, really isn't easy is it?
p.s. You're not the only one walking on eggshells, believe me. The site is in a particularly precarious state right now where it could all potentially fall apart rather quickly with just a few missteps. And I am trying my absolute best not to be the one that makes them.
It is indeed hard. Every person comes to a situation with a complete reality that is almost totally opaque to anyone outside of their mind - this has been a visceral reminder of that. Based on what you've said here, I definitely overreacted, and completely misinterpreted just about everything you were coming to the discussion with. Just thinking about all of this, it seems like a miracle people ever get along. :P
I know that Tim has had issues monetizing his videos in the past due to youtube's screwing around, and it is possible that he's specifically trying to pace people like me psychologically to solidify a subscriber base - perhaps more optimistically it's potentially to help bring us closer to the center, rather than just generally being a bridge going both ways. When I see his videos, knowing that he doesn't agree with some of the things I do, it's reassuring to me that not everyone of "the other side" is afflicted with 'trump-derangement syndrome' or an equivalent. If that is the case, then it would explain why the video felt more appealing to me, confirming whatever biases i may have, rather than that going both ways.
Also, five times?? That's an admirable amount of effort, sir.
I think that I will do as you suggested and try to compose a post for discussion about extremism generally. I think I have some insight into at least the normie-gateways to some of the more extreme parts of the "alt-right" that might be of relevance. Maybe someone who has comparable familiarity with extremists on the left, or some other dimension of political factionalism will be willing to collaborate. Also, I will read the book you linked - thank you for it.
Wow. I just want to point out how incredibly insightful your comment is. The way you stated everything actually just allowed me to instantly solidify a whole bunch of loose, intuitive ideas/concepts that I had floating around in my head.
Incredibly well said. Not fully appreciating the truth of that statement is exactly why I think we're in the state we are with regard to the polarized ideologies attacking each other in such an unhealthy way. Not comprehending that statement explains why so many people (on both sides) assume the absolute worst of others with wildly differing perspectives... they assume that since there is "no way" someone can not see the world exactly the same way they do, the only "logical" explanation to them is that the other side must be "trolling" or being intentionally inflammatory. When the truth is exactly what you said and it's just people with wildly different personal experiences seeing the world differently as a result and in most cases there is no ill-intent to deceive or incite at all.
I also think your point about Tim Pool is also incredibly insightful as well. My perception that he is either doing a poor job or being intentionally inflammatory is perhaps less that, than simply due to the fact that his content is not really meant for me. He is attempting to bridge the gap between the moderate/far Right and the Center and in order to do so he, by necessity, must make concessions with regards to his comparisons and language so that those on the Right can understand him. The unfortunate side effect of this is that those of us on the Left who view his content assume he is kind of an asshole since we feel his is misrepresenting our deeply held beliefs and ideas. ;)
p.s. If you need someone to collaborate with in regards to highlighting the dangers that the extreme Left pose, let me know since as I said before I am intimately familiar with them, especially in regards to what is going on a Evergreen College thanks to Prof. Weinstein's incredibly brave efforts to highlight them.
haha, well I'm glad I have been of some use. :)
It is sort of like what I've been saying about people watching two movies on the same screen, but perhaps a little more personalized. It's kind of funny how you can know a thing, and not have it fully integrated.
I'd gladly welcome your offer. I think we could make something awesome. How about I PM you tomorrow?
I probably won’t be around much on ~ this weekend. I have a bunch of stuff to do around the house and I really need to get started on the 1k invite requests on reddit since I have barely touched them so far. So if you don’t mind waiting until Monday then I can probably be more help then.
P.s. IMO, you should also definitely ask @buckeyesundae to help as well. He is ~ resident “hot topic” debater, argument defuser and has a background in rhetoric. Not only that but I know that he is just as well informed on the issues surrounding Evergreen College and Prof. Weinstein as I am, since we have discussed those events privately with each other before.
I would say if my disbelief in Russian conspiracies is somehow having a negative effect on the world, then yeah, you'd be right to. If I were to clarify my position for an actual conversation, it'd be that Russian intervention acts as a scapegoat to avoid looking at our own problems, regardless of if they're true or not. Clearly there's some fuckery, but I can't see a grand scheme that put Trump in power.
If my belief is actively harmful, I'd like to hear about that, and I fully expect to get insulted for having it. That's what happens when you harm people. If I'm actually hurting someone, some mean words are tiny next to whatever I'm doing.
While I don't agree that it's all we have to work with, there's still a place for it. To me, it becomes a problem when we go so all-in on "civil discourse" that the only way you're allowed to express anger for your own life being made worse is if you make a point-by-point takedown of another user's argument.
As I said in response to the other user here, I'm gonna dip. I know it's frustrating ending a conversation like this, but I didn't intend to spend this long on this in the first place and I should've considered that before commenting. Sorry!
Well then I guess by your logic I have a right to personally attack you since PYSOP activity on Social Media has had a tremendously detrimental effect on the world and is one of the reasons ~ exists in the first place (to combat such efforts through privacy-by-design and substantial data security). But guess, what? I won't because insulting you wouldn't get us anywhere but further apart.
Well it just so happens I think your opinion that insults and personal attacks against people you disagree with is justified is actively harmful to society. However if I had started insulting you for that at the beginning of this conversation, be honest with yourself, would we even still be having this conversation? Would you be more or less willing to listen to my position had I insulted you? Do you see my point now?
You can play that game with anything. Even with disallowing hate speech, someone could always say "well I think x is hate speech!" There's a judgement call that needs to be made there just as with this. Recognizing that others can choose different places for that to fall is worthless. Instead, it should be about where it should fall.
And yes, I do genuinely believe that coming at me if I hold a harmful belief is a reasonable thing to do. You can be like do you reaaaalllllyyyy all you like, but that's how it works in person and this false rational detachment moves away from that for no gain.
I'm really bad at ending conversations, I guess.
That will not be happening here. We have extremely well defined laws in Canada regarding Hate Propaganda and we are a Canadian Not-for-profit Corporation. If you want to see what we are most likely to follow as our guide for defining hate speech on the site I would suggest you give it a read (I suspect you will agree with it a great deal):
http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-319.html
However being a Trump supporter (which there are over 62M in the US alone), expressing that fact and defending why (in good faith) is not hate speech unless that support derives from something that does fall under that definition of hate speech, like wishing harm on all Muslims, nor is it sufficient grounds for personal attacks against them. It's that simple.
The Tommy Robinson thread: Tommy Robinson filmed in a courtroom. (This is against the law in England). He filmed defendants in a trial and called them, before they were convicted, "muslim paedophiles". He was convicted of that crime and given a convicted sentence. He was clearly warned by the judge not to do it again. He did it again, and he was imprisoned. The sentence he got this time is the original suspended sentence, plus another sentence for another contempt of court.
To post a thread titled "Can the UK Really Do This to Tommy Robinson? [UK ban on reporting on grooming gang, reporter imprisoned 13 months]" is clearly unambiguously bad faith posting. Robinson is not a reporter; he was not reporting; any reporter doing what he did would have got the same sentence; there is no blanket ban on reporting this case. There was no attempt from Mumberthrax to understand UK law before posting, and there's no genuine attempt to understand UK law by posting.
Hah, no kidding. It will be far from easy and not everyone will be happy with our decisions (in fact most probably won't) but all of us here at ~ genuinely believe that it's a worthwhile goal. Everything has gotten so incredibly polarized online these days that without some place where civil discourse can be maintained, so we can work out our differences, we are in for a potential disaster of epic proportions. :(
Tagging a video with "grooming gang" is an anti-Muslim dog whistle.
That doesn't mean it's okay to lash out at that person, but it demonstrates a lack of good faith.
Or simply demonstrates that @mumberthrax believes that crap. Let’s not forget that there are, unfortunately, a great many people who have fallen prey to the alt-right “media” (and Russian PSYOPs efforts).
I had an argument with a friend about “Somali gangs roaming the streets, raping women in Toronto and the police are too PC to arrest them!”... when I live in Toronto and no such damn thing is happening here. It took our discord quite a while to convince him he was wrong and being manipulated but did eventually. It also helps he tried to switch it up and change the subject from Toronto to Sweden having similar “problems” and our Swedish buddy stepped in and shut him down on that front too.
It’s not easy but getting through to people caught up in the far right echo chamber is possible and unless we take the time/effort to do so, the situation is just going to keep getting worse, IMO.
I appreciate you posting a bit of a dissenting opinion, so I wanted to reply and mention a couple of things (I think the discussion below gets a little off the rails though, so I'm going to try to stay away from that).
First, I want to be clear that while tone is a factor, it's absolutely not the only one. Just because someone's expressing things in an emotionally detached manner doesn't mean they've got a free pass to say anything. In fact, this is often its own type of trolling—sometimes people refer to it as "concern trolling", and it can also have some aspects of "dogwhistling" and "sealioning" and various other terms people have come up with. The tricky part about it is that it can be difficult to distinguish from legitimate posts (which is also why it's effective as a trolling method), so it often has to be more about a consistent pattern than an individual case. However, it's something I'm definitely aware of and will be watching out for.
Second, the fact that you feel less confident about the site is understandable. One of the things I'm trying to do is have a vision for how I want Tildes to be, and I'm going to take actions that I think will move the site in that direction. Some people will disagree with that vision, and that's a perfectly valid opinion. It just means that Tildes may not be the right site for them. There's nothing wrong with that at all—every site doesn't have to try to appeal to everyone.
With that in mind, a person that's been on the site for less than a day and goes into a thread that was (generally) pretty civil and immediately jumps to angry insults and abusing site mechanics isn't the type of user that vision includes. So I removed them from the site. I can understand how that can seem drastic, but especially near the beginning, I consider it extremely important to not let the site's culture start drifting in the wrong direction.
In the end, I think you'll just have to see whether this kind of approach means that Tildes might not be the site you were hoping for. Either way, I appreciate the honest feedback, so thank you.
Thanks for the keywords. I was looking into this kind of thing as well. I'm glad you're aware and watching out for it.
I'm especially concerned about the kind of "trolling" that (sometimes unknowingly, I believe, but often not) just ignores points made or dodges them usually with the aim of reinforcing their position tangentially or not questioning it or plainly pushing an agenda. Those conversations can become very toxic as well, although less evidently. But I'm not sure if there's anything to do about them. Do you know of any references that talk about this kind of phenomenon, by any chance?
Maybe there needs to be some sort of limited use function to express intense anger or disagreement? A polite expression of strong disagreement. You'd get maybe one of them a day so it can't be spammed or abused and it actually has some weight behind it.
It can highlight certain "problem comments" and let people know that they aren't the only ones who are upset which can help alleviate strong feelings of anger and the urge to personally attack someone with insults.
I agree with you, personally that thread had me livid so I kind of understand how @redacted felt. I ended up not posting anything because of how bad the discussion was getting, and I didn't want to spend my afternoon arguing about semantics or whatever.
The whole thread was set up so OP could act like a victim. There was no viable discussion on it, you can't have a sensible discussion about politics when the thread's topic is about what team are you on rather than discussing policies. In my opinion the troll tag was correctly used, although it depends on which posts they were tagged, however, I think that thread should have been deleted instead of letting it run its course. It had no "meaningful" value, it's your average circlejerk thread on the_donald.
If someone harms you, use the system to your advantage. Tag them, report them, ignore them. Don't fight fire with fire, that lowers you to the same level as those people. If someone is sprouting ridiculous nonsense, they'll be banned soon enough. But if they have a controversial opinion that you disagree with, I'm afraid that you can only dispute it, ignore it, or accept it. Name calling and insults will not change their opinion, so why bother? It might even solidify their belief due to your hostility. All you'll be doing is adding more noise to the conversation.
As to what things are considered nonsense and what are valid opinions, I have faith that deimos will set a fair line.
And on the other side, blanket banning doesn't help either. Yeah it protects the community, but the banned individual will feel indignant and persecuted and won't be able to resolve their anger, and will bring that bitterness elsewhere. There needs to be clear paths for reform on both sides instead of just shutting people out instantly without giving them a chance to improve.
Did you communicate anything to Redacted by way of a conduct warning? I don't dispute the decision given these definitely unacceptable posts & tag abuse, but I would like to know more about your process.
It is difficult to express anger in restrained terms.
Perhaps when one is angry, one should take a walk to cool off, or sleep on it, rather than lashing out. It's always worked for me. Anger is typically a short-lived emotion.
If this were a much more fully-featured version of tildes (like what we hope to have in a couple of years' time) I expect this would all play out a bit differently, with multiple checks. For example...
When Redacted was submitting his flames, the site would have had a popup (the result of tone/contextual analysis performed by Bayesian and/or narrow-AI systems) that said something like "This seems like an attack. Are you sure you want to post this? Perhaps take a walk, and think about it." He could ignore that and hit submit again, but he'd have to hit the submit button a second time - signifying a conscious decision rather than a knee-jerk reaction.
After the 2nd or 3rd 'flame' trigger of this type was posted, the site would have automatically notified the moderators that it had detected a sort of 'rampage-mode' posting activity, with relevant links right there in the mod report area so they could get some context at-a-glance and not have to dig around in threads for it.
I'd expect most of the mods to have agreed with the warning, and muted the user for 24-72 hours to give them time to cool off. This would have been registered in the public-facing moderation logs, whatever those turn out to be in the future - so that other users could see the exchange. If those other users had a problem with it, they'd also be able to report it somehow - to the entire moderation team of hundreds, rather than just the few mods who had noticed the problem and taken action. At that point the entire team would decide if they have a problem with those moderators or not, and those moderators would have their reputations adjusted accordingly by the feedback (up or down depending on the consensus).
Banned or not, this particular user would have risked losing access to the comment-tagging systems because he had been abusing them in bad faith, so he'd have taken a hit in the trust systems for that. It's also likely that muted/banned/whatever he'd still lose trust ranking based on these actions overall, not just the trust needed to access the comment tagging system.
Some people would be checking out his user page, who invited him, who he invited, past behaviors - and if they uncovered a pattern of bad behavior and abuse, or a chain of invites that appeared to be comprised of others also behaving badly, this would be reported to admin-level so the admins could investigate the possibility of a tainted group of users - be they spammers, paid shills/astroturfers, or just a group from a toxic external forum (such as stormfront or certain chans) - attempting to make inroads here.
Excellent, thank you for your thoroughness. I appreciate that this is still a developing system--.
I find the concept of using tone analysis as a soft-gate for potentially inflammatory content extremely interesting and useful. Are there existing examples of such methods being used in production commenting systems?
I've seen it talked about a couple of times in discussions about improving comment systems, but I don't know of any places that actually do it yet. I think it's likely to cut down on the number of incidents, though, by making people a bit more aware of their own tone.
Seems like this might be an interesting avenue of approach for a platform like this. Python has a lot of data analysis / ML tools so integration might be somewhat more viable here than elsewhere
I would argue that, whether well-intentioned or troll, this is Mumberthrax's style: to remain nominally civil while trying to incite angry responses through inflammatory (but polite) rhetoric, rather than trying to have a reasonable dialogue. Then, when they get those angry responses, they can point to their own nominal politeness in expressed confusion and disappointment.
Some people might argue that this, more than angry posts, is the behavior of a skilled troll: the ability to bait others into anger while having the appearance of civility.
I had the feeling that, as the comments went on, they did devolve into politely phrased bait, especially the "Charlottseville is a hoax" assertion. I would even go so far as to say that was a common right wing meme. I had to walk away from the conversation after that statement was made.
Yes. Looking into this further, I am increasingly convinced that Mumberthrax is the sort of troll-zealot I have seen recently in these sorts of discussions, and that the founders of this site are unfortunately falling for the strategy, though frankly, I have yet to see an effective response to it anywhere.
We're not "falling" for his strategy, I assure you... we realize his arguments often relied on many logical fallacies, unfounded (and unsourced) claims/assertions of being the victim, etc. However those are not always made in bad-faith thanks to the mainstream (and alt-right) media in the US and echo chambers of social media perpetuating and reinforcing those fears and beliefs on people.
At some point in the future we hope to address these issues in a similar manner as /r/neutralpolitics and /r/changemyview which have comprehensive policies for recognizing and dealing with such issues. However right now we're not really equipped to deal with it ourselves yet (we're only a very small team of mostly volunteers and the site is barely a month old), nor are the tools in place for us to empower our users (such as yourself) who recognize those issues to help us deal with them either. Because of this, we can only punish those who fall outside the bounds of what we consider acceptable behavior, which the personal attacks did, and the more nuanced issues (which we still recognize as problems) we will have to just let lie for now. It's not ideal but it's where we're at.
However in future that will not always be the case so I suggest you give the NP/CMV rules/wikis a read (see them here: NP and CMV) if you want to get a sense of where we plan on eventually going, policy wise, for dealing with these issues you all in this tangential thread have recognized and brought up.
Listen, I don't really know what cge is talking about calling me a troll or a zealot, but if my presence here is a problem, if I've done something specific that you guys don't like, I can just stop posting. I never intended to bother people.
I can explain it to you because I used to do it all the time.
There's a certain magical air of condescension that is just barely detectable not in the content but in the way it's expressed... the most subtle hint that the people who disagree with you are somehow deluded, or silly, or ignorant, or sheep, or whatever the flavor of reaction you want to display. It's always flawlessly civil... but man, some people pick up on it and just snap. It's completely passive-aggressive. That's what separates a master troll from the garden variety. I once destroyed an Everquest guild with eight words using this method... that thread was 200 pages long and lasted for almost a year.
I don't think you're doing it intentionally, but the whiff is there. You're lacing your comments with just a bit of snark and condescension, and it gives the impression that you're scornful of the issues/people/news/whatever that you disagree with - like you're having to 'step down' to their level to talk to them. Like there's nothing they can say to change your opinion. That scorn is what sets people off.
That tone always provokes reactions. It's a superpower, you just have to decide if you want to use it for good, or evil. I've used it for both. :)
Do I understand correctly that you're saying there are people who are literally deluded about who and what I am, because I have this perception that there are people who are literally deluded about who and what I am and that is leaking into the way I say things?
I hate this kind of crap. I shouldn't have to be fake in order to convince people that I'm not fake. But I guess that's just how the whole damned deluded world works.
Still, I am not certain that your theory is 100% correct. For example, i had an interaction with someone on that "ask questions" thread in the lgbt group, where i was again accused of acting in bad faith, doing the "just asking questions" thing. I don't think I conveyed any sort of tone of derision or anything like that there - what motivation would I have to go into that thinking I would be attacked? At least your theory makes some sense for political things since it is inescapable that I am aware people here are strongly anti-trump and a handful strongly anti-me.
No, they are just assuming the worst - which is something they shouldn't do, but it happens. I guess you could think of it as 'forum fatigue' because this crap has been happening everywhere. Every discussion out there ends up a polluted slap-fight and it's been training people to assume the worst about everyone. That's the price of losing civility and being downvoted, a negative-feedback loop. Spend enough time in that loop and it makes you angry and judgemental, rather than curious and tolerant. It's going to take a while for people to decompress here and get over that ingrained snap-judgement thinking. Right now you're reminding them of the worst places on reddit - the political forums.
We saw this the other day, and it's not going to make you happy. Now we need to talk about username change mechanisms, ignore systems, etc. and if we want all of that here on tildes, how it might all work.
That link is actually hilarious. I think it's a rational thing to have created in the absence of a means to block users or content someone does not like - it reinforces what I've been saying elsewhere about the filter bubble of course, and if it becomes anything like those lists people have for RES tagging/filtering of /r/the_donald users, it is slightly more disconcerting.
Given this, do you think it would be wise for me to stop expressing dissident comments? Do you believe that this sort of thing would be healed with more time without disagreeing opinions? I'm not really sure that people will forget about reddit and the people they hate on there while they are using tildes - it isn't like people will only be on here so long as reddit is still where people are coming in from.
I mean, I know you've been saying that the tone I convey, which i haven't been consciously aware of, is what is triggering people. I'm not sure how to change the way I talk without feeling fake, or like I am without integrity. And I don't want to change just to make people be more likely to agree with me - because that sounds propaganda-y. I don't want to be a problem for your site, and I want to engage with people on important issues where there may be disagreement without flaming, trolling, etc.
I don't personally believe you are a Troll either, which is why I said that those are not always made in bad-faith. As I have said before, as far as I can tell you have been acting in good faith, and continue to do so.
However unsourced claims are an issue and something that probably needs to be dealt with eventually. NeutralPolitics and ChangeMyView have source requirements for substantial claims... whether a policy quite as strict as they have is going to be required here, I have no idea. Since ~ is small all it may take is simply asking/reminding people to use sources when they make substantial claims for now.
I myself am guilty of not sourcing all my claims either, BTW, and so I should probably get in the habit of it lest I be a hypocrite.
And no man, the fact that you're here and engaging with people is a really really good thing IMO and so you're more than welcome here. So long as you can handle being so surrounded by so many users who don't necessarily agree with you when it comes to politics, which I know can be tough, especially since you have been wrongly targeted with tags (and continue to be IMO), at least until systems can be put in place to hold people who abuse those systems accountable. But personally, I'm glad you're here and would even invite you to invite any other Conservatives you know who can also add valuable discussion from that perspective to the mix here.
The Tommy Robinson post is an example of trolling. It's a deliberate attempt to cause argument by misrepresenting the actions of a hateful criminal fraudster. It's not possible to post about Tommy Robinson in the way Mumberthrax has without it being an attempt to troll. A good faith attempt to post would have asked what the English law is, or would have left out the muslim grooming gangs tags, or would not have described him as a reporter.
It's a bit worrying that this transparently obviosu concern trolling is being ignored.
See this for more: https://twitter.com/AdamWagner1/status/1001018033744334848
The well mannered troll is the most insidious kind of troll.
how about I just start insulting people who call me a troll? Would that help?
Excuse me?
Sorry about this. I was a bit testy at the time i saw your comment here because some people had been accusing me of being a "well mannered troll" more or less.
I agree. I don't think that thread was started in good faith and I don't think his comments served to start a productive dialogue either. From his framing, disagreement with him meant his own victimhood/martyrdom.
It's mindless trolling.
I'm trying to wrap my head around this. I'm trying to imagine myself in your shoes, seeing me as something that I don't see myself as... and I can't figure out what you would want me to have done differently. Can you elaborate on what specifically I did wrong (or rather, what specifically I should have done instead of whatever was wrong)? I promise I'm not trying to "bait" in asking this (though i guess such a promise doesn't mean anything since the well has been poisoned already).
I have another comment about your thread here: https://tildes.net/~tildes/wv/daily_tildes_discussion_our_first_ban#comment-5sa
However, you've gotten enough feedback from myself here, others in several threads, and through the tagging system that if you want to do a mea culpa you can examine your writing and arguments critically and move forward without trying to go down a rabbit hole with me here.
That comment just says the same thing as your comment above - that my post was not made in good-faith, that it did not produce productive dialogue, that it was an attempt at being a martyr. It doesn't offer anything concrete in substantiation, nor anything actionable. If you do have more to elaborate with, I am very curious to hear it.
Like I mentioned before, you have enough feedback without my aid to take an introspective look at your writing/argument and improve if that's what you'd like to do. I don't believe you are making good-faith efforts to improve though, including this conversation, so I'm choosing not to engage beyond this here.
You're kind of thinking past the sale here - I'm not at the point where I'm trying to "improve" per se, except in the sense that I want to know if I've actually done something wrong that needs to change. So far the only negative feedback I've gotten from a small handful of people has been "Troll!" "noise!" "bad-faith!" without any explanation of why they think those things.
I understand if you don't feel you can reasonably respond, or if this interaction has been distressing for you since you obviously feel very strongly that I'm not a good and genuine person with plain good-faith intentions. Likewise, I could make the same sort of allegations against the small handful of detractors, alleging they are acting in bad-faith or under the influence of tribalism and cognitive dissonance - but that claim without anything to substantiate it is meaningless to them or to anyone else.
You don't understand how calling Charlottesville a "hoax" could be construed as inflammatory or trolling? If not, what evidence or sources do you have that it was a hoax?
ahh i see. hmm. Well I don't agree that it was trolling or intended to be inflammatory, since there was a media hoax to portray the President as defending nazis/white-supremacists as "fine people", when that never happened. But if I place myself in the shoes of people who fell for the hoax, who are so sure that he really did say white supremacists were fine people, then someone saying their view of reality is wrong could be perceived as inflammatory.
The event in question was one in a series of public demonstrations and legal protests to not have the statue removed - the white supremacist tiki torch people who joined the protest were latecomers. Here for example is an open letter from the Sons of Confederate Veterans on the matter explicitly dissociating themselves from these usurpers: http://www.nbc29.com/story/35441821/sons-of-confederate-veterans-issues-statement-on-lee-park-protest
Here is the q&a session where he made the alleged inflammatory remark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmaZR8E12bs
here's cnbc's transcript: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/15/read-the-transcript-of-donald-trumps-jaw-dropping-press-conference.html and NYT's: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/us/politics/trump-press-conference-transcript.html
There were basically four sides to this event. 1. People who wanted confederate statues torn down. 2. People who did NOT want the statues torn down. 3. white supremacists/nationalists. 4. antifa.
There were some very bad people amongst 3 and 4, and some very fine people amongst 1 and 2.
The hoax was the media reporting on President Trump's comments. Here's a web search that turns up tons of articles and videos from media outlets saying "donald trump supports nazis" etc.: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=palemoon&q=donald+trump+nazis+fine+people&ia=web
some specific examples:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/trump-defends-white-nationalist-protesters-some-very-fine-people-on-both-sides/537012/
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-colin-kaepernick_us_59c6846be4b0cdc77331a2f0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3vmUNi0yhs
https://www.salon.com/2017/08/16/trump-the-far-right-and-the-fine-people-of-charlottesville-is-our-president-a-nazi-sympathizer/
https://www.weeklystandard.com/white-house-watch-trump-and-the-very-fine-people-who-march-with-neo-nazis/article/2009314
-and so on.
If you watched the actual q&a session, if you know the background of the overall confederate statue conflict - even the specific dispute over this particular statue which has been in the middle of a legal and public protest far before the specific violent clashes between antifa and the tiki torch people, it is clear as day that this was another intentional hoax by those large media outlets to try to persuade the American public that our president is a nazi sympathizer.
And again, the comment i made about it was in response to a specific question. someone asked, and I answered with how i see things. It wasn't intended to be inflammatory, and certainly was not intended to troll (I still don't really understand how it could be).
Do you think the word "hoax" was what triggered the handful of people who thought i was trying to be inflammatory? Do you believe that it's the wrong word to describe what the media did, as demonstrated by the links above you requested from me?
I do know the background of the statue in question. I'm from the south and uncomfortably familiar with the foam-flecked rhetoric that surrounds such issues. The link you posted above appears to have Trump calling both "sides" of the people who showed up to the protest as "very fine people". It does not appear that he is referring to people on either side of the long-standing debate about the statue. He never outright says, "nazi's are fine people", but he seems to insinuate it. He then starts the false analogy of asking if we should take down George Washington statues because Washington was a slave owner. I don't see how that compares to the celebration of a person who literally participated in an act of treason (the confederate war).
I think the word "hoax" is part of why some people responded the way they did. The links you posted don't demonstrate intention to deceive.
Also percieved as trollish: Defense of Trump making fun of disabled people and veterans who were POW's. It's not funny, it's tasteless. It seems beneath the office of POTUS. He's supposed to be setting an example to be followed.
I read through each of your posts with an open mind and found most of them to be well-written and non-inflammatory. The one I refer to seemed to be pushing for emotional responses.
How would you like to see conversations go on tildes where people have different beliefs and opinions? Would you like to go around poisoning the well, calling people names for being civil and polite, alleging misconduct where none exists in order to score points with those who happen to fall on one side or the other? Or would you rather people be honest and open about their thoughts and feelings when asked?
Not only am I one of the most peaceful and reasonable people I know, I literally created an entire project to try to guide the community of Voat.co into humane behavior.
Back in the day, I created a pacifist library on the most cutthroat PvP survival minecraft servers i knew of and thrived - In fact, I even wrote the book on kindness for my library - it served as my greatest weapon.
Later on, I was so respected by the players and staff after constructing the first major collaborative city on the PvP server, Egreth, that I was made a moderator, and then a server administrator of s.nerd.nu (here's a random post from when i was admin as proof). Here's the record of the bans and notes i issued for players, in case you're curious - note that it is a short list, since I'm a very forgiving moderator/admin and prefer to rehabilitate rather than punish if possible.
I co-created /r/posireddit as an experiment when i first became frustrated with SJWism, like the CVA it didn't get developed as well as it could, but one glance at it will show the kind of spirit in which it was intended, e.g. comity, mutual understanding, and celebrating literally anti-troll behavior on one of the most troll-ridden sites on the internet - reddit.
I literally created THE public moderation log bot on reddit, specifically to help combat moderator misconduct AND to promote trust between mods and users to help extinguish rabble-rousing. If that isn't anti-troll behavior, I don't know what is.
Outside of nerd.nu and these things I've listed, I haven't been very active online. I think these ought to be sufficient though to demonstrate that I'm probably the most peaceful comity-oriented person around. I get flustered and emotional pretty easily, but holy crap do I try to be good.
Maybe you want to think twice about going around insulting and attacking innocent people on the internet. I may not have the best information, I might post things that I've been misled on or have incomplete information on, but I'm so &&&&ing honest you probably can't believe it - which probably explains your behavior. (1, 2, 3, 4)
This is almost a perfect example of the "two movies on the same screen" sort of phenomenon I was talking about in that other post.
At that point, the two parties have to just agree to disagree - and move on to talking about other topics. You bridge gaps in understanding by building common ground, rather than scorching the earth. ;)
Hm, or perhaps certain tildes, like political ones, should require comments to be substantive. The /r/CanadaPolitics subreddit has this rule, and it works wonders in terms of keeping people "on track." Thoughtless rhetoric and inflammatory remarks are likely to be removed if the user cannot backup their claims.
For reference, see rule 3 here: https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_3._keep_submissions_and_comments_substantive
I answered @burntcookie90 about the (lack of) warning.
Yes, it is. And that's why this isn't a simple thing—we're all human and will get upset and occasionally act like an asshole, and that's okay. People shouldn't get banned for occasional slips. But the fact that staying civil can be difficult can't be treated as a free pass either.
I am not disagreeing with the ban, particularly this early on the site when we have no capabilities to do otherwise with bad-faith users. But isn't that what this user potentially did? Other than the three comments and the inappropriate tagging in the Trump thread, which were admittedly wildly inappropriate, they seemed to otherwise be a decent user. Without an extended history to look at we can't really judge whether or not that was an out of character outburst or not.
Understood and agreed.
Honestly, why don't we strive for better? Why is it okay to act like an asshole? Maybe I'm naive but I agree with this entirely and I'd love to strive for total civility.
I think warnings and temporary bans are an important part of the banning process, as opposed to jumping to a blindside banhammer, although there may be clear cases of bots/trolls that can safely be swept away. However, that is something that's going to either need to be defined with site-wide guidelines in the future, or at least by mods/curators on the group level. It might not be something that's necessarily easy to do with the current state of the site.
I agree that this may serve as a reminder that an understanding of the banning process is probably something that may need to be done.
As an aside, I wonder at what point would you want trolls in a community like this? Part of what will need to be done for tildes to be successful is for it to be robust to trolling. Manual ban-hammer only works for so long...
I like to think of it in terms of 'troll' vs 'devil's advocate'. If you ban the DA-types, content gets stale and ideas don't get challenged, because you lose the vigorous debate these people bring to the table. Trolls, on the other hand, tend not to bring anything at all to the table, so their loss has no side effects on the community.
Keep the devil's advocates around. They keep things lively.
That said, it should generally be pretty easy to tell a devil's advocate from a troll. DA-types will stay civil if they are actually interested in discussion. Trolls have no such motivation, so you can tell they aren't real DA-types.
That's been my experience as well. I tend to lock horns with the DA-types because they can help me fully explore the space of an idea by trying to tear it down. Do that long enough and the ideas start to become better, more robust.
This came up in a thread just now (not going to link it because my intent is not to call out the user), and I'd say that DA is reasonable to allow if people are upfront about it. That way, especially in the context of a political topic, people can decide not to engage if they don't want to test out their ideas further than they already have been by people who sincerely believe the DA's arguments.
I was pretty harsh in my response to this user because they started a conversation with no indication they were a devil's advocate. This, to me at least, is not constructive if you're looking for a substantive policy/moral discussion. There's no trust there, and if you engaged assuming that the person was sincere when whoops, they were just testing your beliefs, it feels like trolling, even though it technically isn't.
Hi, that was me in the abortion thread. I don't mind being called out c:
You were rather harsh, but I do get it. If I decide to play the DA again I will note that I'm doing so upfront.
I hope that my DA adventures there did fall under what @amarok and @gyrfalcon said above.
I usually do preface my ponderings with 'to play the devil's advocate' when I'm planning to do that sort of thing - you've got a point.
Maybe we could use a tag (or something similar) for that? Or maybe just add some point about it in the code of conduct?
Interesting use of tags - to announce one's intentions. I never thought about that before. What else might we do in that realm I wonder?
I remember someone mentioned being able to selftag as off-topic, given that you might be well aware your contribution is not directly related to the topic in hand.
I think I read somewhere about a sarcasm tag, as well?
I have been thinking of the idea of suggesting giving OP a different set of tags to their own posts. This could include DA, OT, /s... Maybe (high tiered) trusted users could have a "Warning" tag, to make a comment explaining why a conversation might be entering a dangerous terrain or deviating into an inappropriate tone. It might work as a deterrent and ease things out... I don't know though.
I can see however how this could be used maliciously as well, by tagging your own post as DA when it is actually pushing an agenda and using strawmans, for example.
I agree that self-tagging could be used maliciously, but probably no more so than simply saying you're playing a DA at the beginning of your comment and then hiding behind that to discuss controversial ideas that you actually believe. (Which is already a potential problem, but difficult to detect.)
Which is precisely why there will likely be public action auditing. If you tag yourself and then try to play the victim it will likely result in losing the ability to tag anything ever again.
There's been a lot of discussion about a "trust" system, which would allow the community itself to take reasonable action against bad actors while also putting an accountability process in place so that such actions could also be reviewed in case those community members themselves were engaging as bad actors.
I think this will put emphasis on the content policy that you only get banned if you're being an asshole, and that it's not just based on political leaning. This will ease the concerns people had about that.
I feel a bit awkward about this. All he did was express his or her emotions... sure it flustered me, but I did kind of bring it on myself by posting something so contentious (though i really didn't expect it to be quite as contentious or an extreme minority position as it turned out to be) here.
I hope that @redacted gets to come back eventually, if possible - maybe after some time to cool off. I would not like to be the cause for a permanent ban. They had some nice comments on other posts that did contribute to the community.
I appreciate your forgiving nature and I agree with you that in future we should strive to give people a chance to reform through warnings and timeouts... however one thing I specifically wanted to mention is:
That is a major problem, but not by you... it’s only human to be flustered when personally attacked like that by someone. However you being flustered also caused you to react emotionally when you were tagged inappropriately in another recent thread as well. That could have caused you to lash out as well (but thankfully didn’t because of your restraint) and so the cycle continues. That sort of potential for a negative feedback loop is exactly the reason that “asshole” behavior needs to be dealt with immediately and cut off at at the source before it spreads, IMO.
When you started posting to that thread, I was pretty sure you were going to be the lucky user who teased out our first troll. See, you were being perfectly civil despite holding opinions that a lot of people don't agree with - so you're doing nothing wrong at all. The tags a few people were tossing on your comments - that's the beginning of the bad behavior. Nothing you said in there deserved a troll or a flame tag - people tagging it were using it as an 'I disagree' or a 'fuck this guy' button. It was only a matter of time until someone saw that and took it as 'permission' to wail on you thinking the community would have their back.
Clearly we're going to have to work on the tag mechanics to make them resistant to this. I wonder maybe if we need some sort of way to express an agree/disagree metric - so people can get it out of their system. When we survey politics we usually have questions phrased in the [strongly agree - etc - strongly disagree] model. I don't know if that would cause more problems than it solves here, through.
I would like for tags to work basically like a report, where after a mod-lite/mod-like user looks at the tag and approves it, it can show up (but not before). That user-validation would let the tag be both a means to alert someone in charge of reviewing the content and show others in the community what feedback is being given about some comment (without that comment needing to necessarily escalate to any formal moderating action).
Effectively, the tags can be looped into an informal warning system.
You can voice your disagreement in a comment. Tagging it serves no purpose except to alter someone's take on it before they even read it. We should be promoting more discussion and less behind-the-scenes tagging and voting.
Perhaps tags could be visible to mods only? Keeps the public discourse more civil but allows mods to take action or ignore as appropriate.
Reading through the history, wasn't it a bit much? You could basically feel the spit flying through the screen as he or she denounced some million people with no spare of insult. It goes against everything this site tries to be.
I'm completely fine with the ban. That kind of nutty, frantic behavior does nothing to further discourse.
However, I don't believe the original thread was started in good-faith either and similarly does nothing to productively advance discourse. Instead, the OP's framing of the issue made himself a martyr if faced with disagreement. Even though he's using polite dialogue, it's the same dialogue designed to 'trigger snowflake libs.'
I don't think that style of argument as a place here and while it's an interesting one-off thread for early ~, if it becomes a pattern it will be wildly irritating because the intent isn't to have a discussion or engage. It's /pol/ with better writing.
I can't say I'm surprised. I had the feeling that that account was participating in bad faith. Thanks for being so open about it. However, I feel that the other party wasn't really participating in good faith either. This is why I think political posts are poison and I probably will avoid them here in the future.
Is this going to be a permanent ban, or is there some sort of warning, where he's disabled for a week or something?
It's effectively a permanent ban (I don't really have any way to do otherwise). If the user contacts me somehow with an appeal that seems reasonable I'm not opposed to giving them another chance though.
Also, it's only an account ban. I'm not going out of my way to do anything more to prevent them from re-registering—if they get another invite and come back (and behave), that's totally fine and I'll probably never even notice.
In my experience, this is by far the most effective way to "reform" users that have been banned. Rather than making it automatic, requiring them to request access after a predetermined amount of time (usually 3 months or so) does a good job at letting the people who are actually remorseful back into the community, where someone that just wants to flame probably won't have the same motivation.
Indeed. The flamers will just move off to other pastures where they have less of a barrier to their bad behaviors - they tend to have short attention spans to begin with, in my experience at least. Meanwhile the user who is actually sorry about their mistake will stick around and come back when the time is up.
It reminds me of the ban appeal system we have at the minecraft server I used to admin. https://nerd.nu/forums/topic/2865-ban-appeal-policy/ Examples of closed appeals: https://nerd.nu/forums/forum/19-closed-ban-appeals/
It may not be the best system - i don't know how that would be measured, but the way it works is the user gets banned from the game servers by a moderator/admin for this or that rule violation, the user is still able to log on to the forums and post in the appeal section, and create an appeal for the ban. The banning moderator then is expected to substantiate the ban (with evidence if available) and declare an interval after which another appeal will be heard and/or the user is expected to cite the specific rule they violated and indicate an intention to abide by the rules from then on. A lot of it is sort of kept in check by the head admins to make sure no abuse or misconduct is happening, and every once in a while a mod gets too emotionally involved, but 99.9% of the time everything is professional and bureaucratically executed.
It has its drawbacks, and sometimes mods are too quick to ban and players never make an appeal, whereas if they had just made an appeal they could be back on the server being contributing members of the community. Even sometimes players who rightly ought to be banned have been treated playfully and forgivingly, and those players have become active and rule-abiding. It's hard to say if it's a good system or not, but it has been working for them ever since minecraft servers were a thing. I tried not to ban people if I could avoid it while i was there, but when people come on specifically hacking and griefing anything and everything, you just have to hit that button.
A question on the mechanics - did you ban his account or his invite code? Because I thought you can register multiple accounts with the same invite, and so just banning the account would be rather ineffective. Or is it that one invite is only good for one account?
Invite codes only work for one registration.
I understand Redacted’s anger. I even can get his point. But yeah, no one should be a jerk. Good ban.
Though I do hope we get more of a warning system.
So one thing I would consider in future cases is whether there should be tiered "time out" bans before escalating to a permaban.
On CMV we have a two-track system. Ordinary violations can result in 3, 30, and then permabans. There are also special cases like threatening another user or encouraging self harm where we escalate immediately to a first-strike permaban.
If I were modding this user on CMV, I'd probably have done a 3 day, though the tagging abuse might have been in the same category of how we handle report spam, where we would escalate to an immediate permaban for breaking the site.
The idea of this is that the short bans serve as a combo warning and cool off period. Just warnings are I think ineffective since people are gonna blow up at you every time when you give a plain warning. But temp-ban-as-warning is pretty effective.
I've always believed permanent bans without prior warnings are prone to malicious if-not broken moderation. For site-wide bans I wouldn't say the staff should give warnings after warnings, but for example, on /r/teenagers where we've had first case examples of how warnings can help curb unwanted behaviour, I believe a warning system should be in place.
On /r/teenagers we follow a strict infraction policy where you can track your warnings and demerit points. No user is to be banned unless they validly broke a rule as when they request why they received a removal or temporary ban they would be given evidence of their own rulebreaking. Gain enough demerit points and you'll have a 3 day ban, to do so after, you'd get 7 day ban, 14, and then finally an indefinite ban (with the chance to appeal).
Now I know that for a site that will eventually get bigger and bigger, this may not be efficient nor productive use of staff time (especially when a user could essentially ban-evade and create a new account afterwards), however I'd like to think users should receive a warning prior to a permanent ban.
If a user has committed an act that is very much illegal such as doxxing and/or posting child pornography, then yeah a permanent ban would make sense without the need to warn.
This is just my 2 cents after years of moderating and seeing communities grow, transparency is great, but methods of moderation should always be constantly reconsidered.
I like the ideas of warnings. I prefer a single warning - "do something like this again and we'll have to ban you".
Wow. There are so many thoughts bubbling in my head that I scarcely know what to comment on. I guess I'll limit myself to two things initially.
Warning as a constructive and/or effective action - from my point of view each and every one of us have already been warned. Right at the beginning of my first visit I was made aware of the Please Don't Be an Asshat policy. I was encouraged to read the underlying philosophy of the site. I was also encouraged to at least look at the FAQ. I chose to do so in the support of the founding ideals of the group, which included the idea that self control in discourse > asshattery.
Then we have Redacted come on, who said a great many things (apparently very uninhibited due to drunk and/or tiredness.) If a person is drunk and physically in a public place creating a disturbance, in many of the places I've lived they are usually arrested. This policy is also controversial, and depending on the experience and training of the officer may come with a warning. If the strange, drunk, loud, swearing person was in my living room, they would shortly NOT be.
Whether or not we stick to the one warning (FAQ and policies) or two (personal individual warning as behavior warrants it,) I'm good either way. But whatever method, let's aim for the most practical and pragmatic in effort cost with the simplest possible appeal method. Because this site will only get bigger. XD
Second - the idea of avoiding harm. Everything has the possibility of causing harm. E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G. Just by choosing to say hi or not can potentially cause harm. Most people, no, but a small percentage, yes.
Courtesy was invented to slow down or minimise harm. I do not agree that personally judging someone else's stance to possibly causing economic, social, emotional, or mental damage to some undetermined demographic makes it OK to be extremely rude to them.
I'm okay with people having opinions that are different, weird, bizarre, hurtful, unproven, or hallucinogenic from mine. I'm totally okay with people thinking I am wrong. But if they are going to be an asshat about it, I would like them to get out of the livingroom.
I think this ban is good and I appreciate being able to see what he did that resulted in the ban.
I was taught as a kid that you never say, write or do anything you don't want anyone else to hear, read or see.
I was also taught that stick and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me. And that's true for the most part as long as it isn't lies that harm my reputation.
What I don't get is people who think that insulting someone advances their cause. It's OK for you and I to disagree. But when you start insulting me, you just proved you can't back up your opinion/view with logical points and therefore I have no interest is paying attention to you.
That's what this person did.
Hopefully, people here won't act like someone disagreeing with them is insulting them or attacking them. There's a HUGE difference.
Wow, I go on vacation and come back to a completely different ~, complete with thousands of users, threads that have so many comments in it that I forget how to make a comment (you scroll down to the bottom), and a person getting banned!
That's some real growth there.
I wholeheartily agree that for that user the ban was clearly something coming due to its clear negative behaviour. This topic however made me think about a feature of the platform that could be a sort of summary of the reason that brought the user to a ban when you access its profile after he's been banned.
I suppose ban will be a human decision in the end, even if the system can help suggesting it for users that shows a pattern recognizable by the code itself, so a sort of "free text" in which the mod that bans can write down the reasoning would be something good to have.
Also, I wouldn't lock out of the login the user (no idea if that's what happens) but have him allowed to login and read but not comment nor interact (voting, tagging, etc) at least for some time so that he can be sure to know that he's been banned and for which reason.
If the user cannot even login back and don't have a way to see that he's been banned, the thing lose part of its value that should be to educate the "bad" users or at least try and give them a feedback.
We must consider that once this platform will not be "invite-only", nothing would stop the user from creating a new account. Of course the trust system etc. etc. would impede the user from starting from scratch to harass others but still, without a feedback you really just punish without teaching.
Dunno if it's clear, it's quite late here and I just open tildes for a moment before going to sleep :P
I don't personally need or want the ability to insult people on ~ because it's not my style or inclination. If I get angry like I did yesterday on the abortion thread I can (hopefully) manage to attack ideas not people and step away when I realize the immense stress it is causing me. But I do sympathize with some of the other commenters on this thread, because I agree that a policy of "be civil" or "don't be a jerk" could miss horrific ideas hiding behind a veneer of civility.
Take abortion, which has already been featured in a thread.* What if someone said, "abortion should be banned completely, no exceptions ever"? It's perfectly polite, and they might then go on to support the statement further. It is, however, utterly horrifying (to me), because this means they think people should be forced to continue pregnancies to term against their will and potentially be punished if they have an abortion. It would cause untold suffering, including deaths from back alley abortions and pregnancy complications. So... it's not as direct as hate speech that says "[x group] should be tortured or killed," but it has a similar result if followed to its logical conclusion.
Based on what I've seen so far, I'm guessing that as long as this hypothetical commenter didn't say something like, "the sluts who die from botched abortions deserve it and I hope anyone in this thread who's had an abortion gets cancer," they'd be allowed to continue posting. If that's the policy, fair enough.
But I think it's also fair to point out that this will push out at least some members of certain groups, and the end result is not getting their viewpoints at all. So you'll get the people posting extreme views politely, plus some users who are unaffected personally by those views challenging them but perhaps missing things due to their lack of personal experience, and a few members of the group affected standing up (and burning out quickly because it is upsetting and exhausting to argue for your rights).
I don't have any specific suggestions. But I think it's worth discussing, even if the consensus is that civility/"don't be a jerk" is enough, or that this sort of problem will have to wait for more robust features.
*I want to make it clear that I am using this as an example only, because it is fresh on my mind and something personal for me, and not because I am advocating for any particular user to be banned or reprimanded. I've tried to make my example more extreme than anything said in that thread on purpose.
Good points, but I think cfabbro addressed at least some of them here? Do you think those kinds of rules would not be enough either?
I'd read the CMV rules before but not NP, and yeah, a combination of those rules would help. I think what's missing currently at ~ is a clear idea of what "not in good faith" means, which I sort of covered in my more recent post and @meristele more clearly stated when suggesting brainstorming and voting upon a list of examples of "bad faith."
I will note that a lot of examples that I've seen of acting in bad faith are how someone makes an argument (logical fallacies, "just asking questions," etc.). Makes sense, because these can be applied to any argument from any side of any issue (even if it may be sometimes hard to tell if something is meant sincerely). But I think part of what I was trying to bring up is whether or not sometimes the content of an argument can be moderated.
I'm gonna turn into "that abortion person" with all these examples, but recently The Atlantic hired (and then fired) a columnist who thinks people who have abortions should be executed. This is a genuine belief of some people, and could probably be argued without gish gallops or fallacies or whatever, but that doesn't diminish that is essentially advocating for 1/6 of the population to be killed.
I see. Yes, deciding whether someone is acting on good faith or not is not going to be easy at all. It's been mentioned that it must be assessed in the long term (not sure how long), seeing if the twisted rhetoric is constant, etc.
Problem is, even when acting on good faith, bad faith strategies may be used unknowingly, I think. If someone does believe something because they've heard it enough times or has fallen for someone else's fallacies, for example they might now be aware of their bias, so I guess it comes down to personal inclination to critical thinking and being open to changing views.
I believe that unless the content is some form of hate speech or incites violence it should be allowed. But noted and considered. If after inspection it appears the person is consistently putting forward flawed arguments and unwillingness to discuss rationally, then actions should be taken.
LOL, don't worry, I think these are good case studies. In that case, I think it would fall into inciting violence and I would prefer that it wasn't tolerated. It doesn't really matter that someone honestly believes something, they should have to make a case for it and it shouldn't break the basic rules (insults, hate, violence...), what matters is that they're conscious that controversial issues should be treated cautiously and discussed as calmly as possible.
I agree, it's easy to use these bad strategies unknowingly or accidentally, especially since a lot of discussions elsewhere online fall into them so often. (Habits can be hard to break.) I think warning systems and assessing things over a longer time span (as you mentioned) could help with that.
It's actually really encouraging to see these things being discussed on here. I may have sounded a bit pessimistic in some of my posts, but I think it's great that things like the tolerance paradox or more subtle forms of trolling are being considered as people develop the site's features and culture.
I'll be honest, if this place is going to force me to "be nice" to vile assholes who sound civil, then this place is not for me. I do not care to debate whether or not black people are human, women are as capable as men, immigrants shouldn't be slaughtered or their children separated from their family, or if LGBT should be allowed to marry and commerce without discrimination. No matter how innocuous or polite someone may sound, these are vile positions to hold, and 1000x more vile than calling that person a MAGA wearing asshat who is ruining our country. I personally think people who think politeness is a substitute for decency or civility are either lazy, cowards, or both, and it just oozes white male privilege. You're forcing women, minorities, and LGBT to not only defend their own basic humanity, but they must "be nice" about it. Let me put this frankly, fuck that.
You sure are making a whole lot of assumptions about the place. Read the announcement, particularly the limited tolerance for assholes section where it's stated ~ "will not be a victim of the paradox of tolerance". So if you think ~is going to allow users to get away with comments like "black people are not human" or blatant misogyny/misandry you're likely very much mistaken.
~ is a Canadian Not-for-profit Corporation and Canada has laws on Discrimination (which include Gender Expression/Indentity), Harassment (which include willful misuse of gender pronouns) and Hate Propaganda that classify exactly those sorts of speech as discriminatory, harassment and/or hatespeech. E.g. (from a comment earlier):
Someone saying "black people are not human" would likely be viewed exactly the same as Holocaust denial and likely result in a ban here. Someone saying blatantly misogynistic/misandrist things would also likely result in a ban for discrimination. People purposely misusing gender pronouns against another user who is genderqueer or transgendered would also likely result in a ban due to harassment. However, with all that said...
Would also likely result in a ban (temporary or permanent depending on severity) since civility works both ways.
I read the thread in question, and I don't appreciate the rude and baseless accusation that I didn't. If only you treated the vile racist enlightened centrism Mumberthrax was spewing, and many members here were happy to engage in the way you're treating me. I guess my frank and direct language make it easier for you to confront, which is supporting my point.
The thread in question contained a lot of hot takes like it's not the blatant bigotry flying out of Trump's mouth and every corner of the GOP these days causing division and hostility with an increasing browning US population (and the half for the population that are women), but muh media and people who enjoy being uncivil. Maybe, just maybe there's an entire group of people that dont' like being uncivil, but are fucking tired of being force to be civil while people like Mumberthrax can euphemize away his bigotry away as simply "differing opinions". I'm really sure his gardening buddy enjoys having to discuss the finer points of MAGA and not simply humoring Mumberthrax because they have to live near that guy.
If this site is going to roll out the red carpet for MAGA, an "ideology" based completely on white supremacy, so long as they "sound nice" like Mumberthrax, then you're not really any better than reddit, nor are you in any way "civil".
I think I'll just head back to reddit, at least I can call out MAGAs for what they are, and not be forced to deal with them seriously under some forced nonsense you call civility.
Maybe it's best I leave this to someone that has said it better than I have:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/leak-the-atlantic-had-a-meeting-about-kevin-williamson-it-was-a-liberal-self-reckoning_us_5ac7a3abe4b0337ad1e7b4df
The idea that politely stating an opinion that you disagree with is "white male privilege" is hilariously irrational.
The fact that a person can state a strongly-held, "vile" opinion while remaining calm and collected, while you can't argue against it politely in response, merely shows that he has more control over his emotions than you do.
Jumping in very late on this (and still reading through to catch up)...but this point is interesting:
It may be a good idea to start planning out tasks for throttling posting and throttling tagging and other potential vectors for abuse. Better to have that in place sooner, right at the start, rather than be reddit and take a while to build the moderation and defensive tools necessary to handle this kind of abuse of the features of Tildes.
I basically agree with the ban, but I'd like to necromance this topic by stating my philosophy of bans.
So, I think you seem to have well considered views on moderation, @deimos, and I imagine you agree with a fair bit of what I'm saying. But, even if I'm not telling you anything new, I still feel the need to express it so you have a fair view of what ~ers want out of the site's moderation policies.
Let's say hypothetically that the conversation started nicely but somehow escalated to that. Could we set up a ~tildecourt or something where people could ask to be unbanned and the like? I just worry about some heated discussion leading to a flat ban on someone with no prior offenses, and thus being removed from the whole site. With that said, I don't think this person would win in ~tildecourt, he seems to be a little crazy and would probably need a ~tildelawyer
I agree with this. It's hard to easily qualify what "asshole" behavior is, but ad-hominem attacks are pretty much one of the more obvious ways to hit that mark instantly.
Edit: I realize I just zombie-posted this thread, please forgive me! :D
Doesn't it seem a bit difficult to moderate all the tagging? Just imagining this site as a fairly big and anonymous place, I can foresee a lot more tag abuse than moderators can potentially keep up with.
I worry about that for myself, too, because I often post things on Reddit that many people don't like. Are people going to go around tagging me as noise and troll for disagreeing with the hivemind/circle jerk? You've ALL seen the circle jerk. And I'm a guy who doesn't like Star Wars. I'm fucked.
Who will decide if something is appropriately tagged or not? Are you going to start banning people for questionable tags? What if someone gets too many inaccurate tags -- will that be like a "vote out" system that gets them banned for too many troll posts?
What if someone feels like I'm flaming them for disagreeing? You will probably say "Oh just be civil, use nice words, etc" but people don't perceive it like that. If you're attacking a core belief they have, they will see it as a personal attack. Here's one that got me banned from r/conservative, in an anti-Muslim thread: "Do you have to be anti-Muslim to be conservative? Christianity is also a toxic poison on the earth. Where are the conservatives who hate Christians?" (Paraphrased)
Am I going to get banned for THIS comment? If this place were run like r/LateStageCapitalism I would 100% be banned. I can't imagine any community run by people as vindictive as that one, T_D included, but still... What sort of expectations should I have?
Sorry for asking so many questions but I figured now that this is on the table, it'd be worth discussing. Especially considering how you suggest that this place might not be right for everyone. Let's figure out a little more closely what sort of place this is.
I just can't help but think that a more hands-off approach might be better.
I'm a little late to this discussion, but I wonder if there is an alternative to banning in the form of user blocking. What are people's thoughts on letting individual users block other users?
In the same way I might want to filter out certain groups that aren't relevant to my interests, it might be useful to be able to filter out other users as well.
I could imagine a feature that allows users to block an account, effectively hiding all posts and comments and preventing direct messages. This would allow a critical mass of users to make a user invisible but also allow supporters to continue contact.
This wouldn't be completely effective for the most egregious offenses and bans could still be reserved for such ocassions, but this option could potentially provide users with a way to self moderate.
It could also be a way to enable users to defend themselves from harassment without needing to wait on a decision from an admin or moderator.
The main problem with blocking (as anyone that's ever been the target of a large group can tell you) is that it basically puts all the work on the target's side. I don't think it's a bad thing to support by any means, but if it's needed often then there's a larger systemic failure happening.