You may have noticed a distinct lack of return2ozma. This is due to their admitting, in a public comment, that their engagement here is in bad faith:
I'm sure there will be questions, let me see if I can address the most obvious ones:
- Can I still post negative stuff about Biden?
Absolutely! We have zero interest in running an echo chamber. However, if ALL you're posting is negative, you may want to re-think your priorities. You get out of the world what you put into it and all that.
- Why now?
Presumption of innocence. It may be my own fault, but I do try to think the best of people, and even though they were posting negative articles, they weren't necessarily WRONG. Biden's poll numbers, particularly in minority demographics ARE in the shitter. They are starting to get better, but he still has a hell of a hill to climb.
- Why a 30 day temp ban and not a permanent ban?
The articles return2ozma shared weren't bad, faked, or from some wing-nut bias site like "beforeitsnews.com", they were legitimate articles from established and respected news agencies, pointing out the valid problems Biden faces.
The problem was ONLY posting the negatives, over and over and then openly admitting that dishonest enagement is their purpose.
Had they all been bullshit articles? It would not have taken anywhere near this much time to lay the ban and it would have been permanent.
30 days seems enough time for them to re-think their strategery and come back to engage honestly.
Very disappointing. This is a politics group, not a news group. Politics is entirely about opinion and views on how to operate society. This is exactly the place for someone to post content that aligns with their political, moral, and philosophical views, even if that doesn't align with your own. There is no such thing as a neutral observer in politics, and trying to force it just biases this group toward what the moderators view as "neutral" through their own biases. While bad faith posting (spam, etc) is a concern, it needs to be clearly defined and distinguished from simply expressing strong political opinions. Silencing voices for perceived bias undermines the purpose of political discussion.
I am interested by how thoroughly you are mischaracterizing what jordanlund took time to explain in detail as far as what was the issue -- i.e. the dishonesty, and not the political slant.
I don't think I'm alone in saying that the mod team here gives way more leniency to slanted political posters and allows them to speak their mind, than the community as a whole thinks is reasonable (actually I think for pretty much exactly the reasons you're laying out.)
"Both good and bad news about Biden is out there. I prefer to share the bad news. But you know that already." (Emphasis mine)
I cannot see how that is an admission of bad faith (or dishonest as the mod said in the original post) in any fair interpretation. Unless you are defining "bad faith" as "something I disagree with" or "something that hurts my argument".
Starting with the result (who will benefit, who will look good and bad because of the analysis), and then looking for news that serves that conclusion, is dishonest. To me, and apparently to the mod team (or jordanlund at least).
Starting with the news, and arriving at the result (who looks good and who looks bad as determined by what happened), is honest. Again, this is my definition. You might have a different one which might also be reasonable, sure.
Right, just like how science begins with 'I have no opinion or theory on how any of this will conclude, here's a random sample of data and we will rationalize it later'
Yes. That is exactly how science works.
If someone did what ozma has self-described himself as doing -- following a feed of biden stories, and then posting the negative ones only -- in a scientific context, and then explained that they felt that the story that one portion of the data was telling was already represented, so they wanted to present only the part that was underrepresented... it would have a much less friendly reception than he's getting from doing in this political context.
Science might have been a pretty bad example, because what we're discussing here is subjective good/bad classification of a specific person and the parameters of that objective are themselves subjective and too broad, but there is no science that does not start with a hypothesis. It always begins from an expected outcome.
If there was a body of work in a field of science that was presenting conclusions along a binary classification, a new body of work presenting evidence to a counter-classification that challenged the accepted binary and made a case against an oversimplified narrative that ignored important parameters and data that were being discarded, that study would absolutely be a valuable contribution to the body of science.
"Hey, it looks like your classification of marijuana policy data as a fooblah is incorrect; I'm not trying to say anything in particular about your grand new scientific paradigm, but it looks a lot more like a yimbahim instead. Like in terms of A, B, and C. Right?"
(total silence)
MARIJUANA POLICY IS A FOOBLAH
IT'S ALL FOOBLAH
(time passes)
IF YOU CAN'T ACCEPT THAT MARIJUANA POLICY IS CLASSIFIED AS FOOBLAH THEN YOU'RE TRYING TO SILENCE MY DISSENT
Pretty quickly, I think that person would stop being published, if every one of their studies was exactly the same 3-4 conclusions which only drew on a selected portion of the data, and they had no real response to someone who was raising factual counterarguments.
In the abstract, what you're saying makes perfect sense, sure. As applied to ozma and the level of willingness he displays to adhere to anything factual or good faith while he's pushing his relentless propaganda, what you're saying doesn't even remotely apply.
IDK why you're telling me this or who you're trying to convince, honestly, but it's not accurate to ozma's behavior.
Because you said
That's just how perspectives are tested. "I think Biden is bad, here is evidence for that opinion". And then someone who disagrees says "I think he's good, here's my evidence", and taken together you get a good picture of Biden that's not completely good or bad. If there's a lot of evidence in support of one perspective that doesn't invalidate it.
It's not his job to be neutral, if it's anyone's job it's the moderators who are trying to cultivate a neutral forum for discussion.
I think we've long passed the point where it'd productive to go back and forth about it. But sure, a little bit longer maybe.
No.
Again: Starting with the result (who will benefit, who will look good and bad because of the analysis), and then looking for news that serves that conclusion, is dishonest. To me, and apparently to the mod team (or jordanlund at least).
Starting with facts about the world, and arriving at the result (who looks good and who looks bad as determined by what is happening), is honest. Again, this is my definition. You might have a different one which might also be reasonable, sure.
What you're describing is a little bit more like what happens in a courtroom, where it's someone's job to arrive at a particular conclusion, and they're going to marshal whatever level of evidence they can find to try to support it. It's also what's expected from someone who works in politics who's employed to support one particular interest no matter what. It's not how normal people behave outside of that type of very specialized setting, and I would argue that letting people who operate that way into the sphere (paid interests to come into the climate change debate, paid shills into online political discourse, advertisers into journalism, and so on) is a bad development in that sphere.
I think I've said my piece on it. You can disagree with my feeling, it is fine. But that is my feeling.