We're looking to put together some more detailed rules on what should and should not be submitted to the instance. Things such as, but not exclusively:
- What types of message you would always like to see removed on sight
- Whether there are any types of message which should be left up (borderline, with strong corrections from the community)
- Where the line is drawn on political views (and how gray areas should be treated)
I'll make no bones: Moderating uk/ukpol has been a learning experience for me.
I've learned that there often isn't much difference between "leaving a comment up because the community has done an excellent job highlighting flaws" and "I should have removed this hours ago, the community shouldn't have to do this".
As there isn't a way to mod-tag a post, inaction on negative posts can reflect badly on the instance as a whole.
Having some clear guidelines/rules will hopefully simplify things.
And more admins should mean that if a report isn't looked at, someone can review it as an escalation.
I've also enabled the slur filters. And we'll be listening to see if anything needs adding/removing (the template had swearing blocked :| )
So...Answers on a postcard, I guess!
alright, since i'm first up to comment, i'll start with an easy one
tiananmen square massacre denial should probably be banned or removed on sight.
i'm making this suggestion because there is a... particular... audience and demographic in the fediverse that for some reason, has issues with accepting this. i will not name this audience, because this same audience also likes to brigade posters that dare to stick their head up above the trenches and point out that actually, some of their takes might be verifiably wrong. i hope that not naming them reduces my chance of being detected, and then drawing targeted fire. one of us had to be the person to point it out, so i guess it's my turn.
by all means, debate casualty figures, sure. debate why there were protests, sure, that's not the thing i have issue. but if a poster is trying to sincerely argue that
nothing happened, in my opinion, it's a strong indiciation that the poster is acting in bad faithhow to implement this as a rule? maybe i would go with "no denial of historically verified massacres"? it sounds obvious really, but if you don't spell it out, people can and will say "ahh but the mods didn't say i can't! 🥴"
i dunno how you want to go about it exactly, but yeah.
I'm sure we all know which instance (or instances, there's two that stick to mind) you're talking about! Their takes are usually crazy and extreme and their behaviour (it's usually the one of the two that are more problematic) is annoying as fuck.
That said, it sounds like we want to censor people who are arguing in bad faith? I think this might be broad enough, but I worry that people might get banned or content censored when they raise something that is deeply against the commonly held view a the time but later turns out to be correct.
Personally I think we should just downvote people who express these "opinions", as long as they're not being offensive. The more rules there are the more work the mods have to do, but they can also open up the possibility of mods banning people they disagree with under the guise of that rule.
In my experience, if bad actors have a specific agenda to push they usually hang around in groups of likeminded people and search for specific discussions, posts, subjects, etc to push their agenda in. This can often results in a toxic / bad faith comment being one of, if not the most highly upvoted comments (due to brigading). Most people that take the middle ground on a topic rarely have the energy to fight against a dog pile of downvotes and bad actors. Automatically assuming that bad actors are single outliers operating by themselves is a bad position that IMHO leads to "too little, too late" moderation reactions after the damage is done and the post has turned toxic.
This is a very complex topic, and not one I believe can be solved by just letting the voting system work it out. I don't know the right answer, it's one I've been searching for, for years. But the assumption of "good faith, until proven otherwise" in conjunction with "it's only a few bad actors" is specifically the mentality the bad actors are exploiting. IMHO, YMMV, IANAL, etc...
I've been at the thick end of this fight for over a decade (on reddit). The vast majority of the work I and my co-mods do is never seen by anyone outside the mod team.
It depends. Very few are stupid enough to say anything that's obviously bad. Most use dog whistles and innuendo. And when they do speak plainly, there's an army of their likeminded friends to drown out any descenting voices (brigading) and inflate their (and similar) comments.
Yes, bad actors can have their own community. No, you don't want to go there. Did you ever see /r/MGTOW, or /r/PussyPassDenied? Mysogony is rife, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, racism, etc, etc are all more common than they used to be 5-10 years ago.
If a mod is any good, and knows the group the bad actors are from, then the majority of the work is done behind closed doors (automod for dog whistles and known phrases, etc).
Bans are seen as a "badge of honor" by most of these people since it's so easy to create a new account. They can also wait to appealed after 3 months since that's how far back the moderation log goes (on reddit), so unless you've kept notes and evidence it's easy for them to play the fool and say they've "turned over a new leaf".
This doesn't even touch on suspected state actors / state run bot accounts. Several UK regional subreddits saw a wave of anti-Ukranian posts (false news reports about robbery, attacks, theft, etc by refugees) in an attempt to destabilise the UK's support for Ukraine shortly after the Russian invasion.
Or the "bad news" accounts that just go from regional subreddit to subreddit posting (legitimate) news stories about bad things. Rape, murder, assault. Anything that can stir up some rage. They never comment, and post at all hours of the day, every day of the week.
I think this can be covered by the "no intentionally inflammatory comments/posts" rule that u/flamingos proposed.
If someone is outright denying facts then they should just be downvoted, reported for trolling, and ignored.
I don't engage with the communities you're referencing so it may be things are worse than I'm aware - but the argument I've seen from more prominent members of the communities is that we shouldn't trust everything provided by the CIA as it is in their interest to demonise enemy states.
I believe that's a different opinion from outright denial of historic events so shouldn't be censored.
I can't imagine why these topics would be coming up in UK communities though so hopefully this is an entirely non issue and can be moderated on a community by community basis rather than instance wide.
As much as I like the idea of a trolling report function, it is a very subjective thing to introduce. Some people fall foul of believing the propaganda of their own country, and penalising them for living in a state that does this should not be a thing in my opinion. Ideally you should be convincing people of the truth with irrefutable evidence of the facts.