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!world mod breaks own community rules
(lemmy.cafe)
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this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2024
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Mods have been using their positions to silence/ support specific political views in both c/news and c/politics (see non-rule breaking ban of @[email protected] ). The have a very specific and narrow political view they are "ok" with seeing and anything that strays from that gets removed (see @[email protected] , @[email protected] ). However, its not any different than reddit in this regard, which was more draconian in that because it was so much larger, there were fewer consequences to banning individuals.
Here, the consequences are much much steeper. You can map the return2ozma ban directly to a drop in site wide/ lemmy wide engagement, because they were the one doing the actual work of posting content. Banning them had immediate and significant consequences to the viabiltiy of the platform, in that it survives on content/ engagement, which @[email protected] was disproportional responsible for. In these kinds of arbitrary bans, these mods are hurting the entire platforms viability in a significant way.
Can anecdotally say that I've pretty much stopped using Lemmy completely at this point because of mods than somehow feel even worse than Reddit's. Only shitposting because I've got a 5 day weekend and fuckall to do
I think this is a good example of the "cost" associated with how people decide to mod.
Were a very, very small community. There are maybe in the low thousand to upper hundreds engaged users across the entire fediverse.
And social media engagement always follows a log distribution, so for every 10,000 scrolling past, maybe 100 comment and 1 posts.
Preventing people from posting/ disrupting engagement because you've got a little fiefdom and an axe to grind is a great way to kill lemmy as a platform in the crib.
I do not necessarily think this is something that can be solved, and I do believe that mods are generally in good faith doing free labor. That said, I experienced similar cases just recently. Once, I got in an argument about the pope slur thing, and I was trying to explain that the slur was the least of the problems (being Italian, providing context), and not the reason to call out the church's and pope homophobia (for which much stronger arguments exist). One other commenter was basically wishing death left and right, including to me, because they perceived this argument as a defense of the pope. Ultimately they reported my comment that quoted the slurs to explain the difference between various words and I got banned for "missing the point/defending a homophobe". Apparently, wishing death to people was an acceptable behavior, questioning the severity of a word in a language I understand was not.
Just yesterday, I was discussing the post about some republican politician being in a relationship with a much younger person. I was in good faith entertaining a conversation about relationships with big age differences, but apparently the only acceptable opinion is that in those cases the older person must be a predator - no exceptions and no other possibilities allowed. For me it is almost a philosophical debate (especially because I was questioning my own morals), as it's obvious that the age we would consider "too old" is essentially arbitrary, but no, got first moderated and then banned for "defending predators".
Basically what I noticed here is that a lot of moderation goes into moderating opinions, and not behaviors. I understand that a lot of it is done with good motives, but it feels frustrating that it's impossible to even discuss certain topics among adults. There are a lot topics for which only rigid opinions are allowed and any discussion that questions any part of that is forbidden. Not really an environment for productive debates, which is unfortunate.
I ended up blocking both communities where the above cases happened, so I guess ultimately the risk that you are mentioning is real. It did take away a lot of my desire to participate on Lemmy at some point.
Interesting. I regularly peruse the modlog and I remember seeing that comment getting removed. I considered hopping in to share an anecdote , but I'll just drop in here.
I have a roommate who is an only fans model, who considers herself a self-styled "coffin robber", her words, not mine. She began living with my wife and I in her early 20s, and I've literally never seen her date some one within 25-30 years her own age. That's just her.. thing. She like muscular, older dudes with shaved heads in their 50s and 60s. As she says, she like em wrinkled and wriggling.
There is a weird moralizing that comes with these flags gaps that to me seems to find its roots in American protestantism. We're weirdly conservative around sex in ways that are just.. well.. weird? Like if you have a problem with it, make it illegal, otherwise, mind your own business.
I think you are spot on on your assessment that these mods are moderating opinions, not behaviors, or at least selectively moderating behavior to control opinions in the meta.
That's a great anecdote really. I think I tried exactly to play the angle of the human experience being very diverse. It obviously didn't work out. The story you tell is definitely one that shows different perspective in a relationship between people of different ages. There are also "famous couples" where the age difference is large (I wanted to discuss one where a female director is marrier to a 23 years younger actor, and they met on set when he was 18 - just to have one more scenario to discuss). Most importantly, I bet many people would have different answer to the question "what is the maximum age do you think a 18yo person should date", and probably this answer would change if talking about a man or a woman being 18yo. I think it's an interesting conversation questioning why you think a certain answer is the right one.
Now, I understand that people who want progress want to normalize discussions about phenomena that years ago wouldn't be acknowledged as much, like predatory behavior. However if the approach is purely dogmatic it is not a progress at all. Many people use a completely binary approach to define things that are much more complicated and nuanced. And as you say, this is then enforced via moderation, which further reinforces this dogmatic perspective for people who are forming an opinion.
Sorry for the long comment, but thanks a lot for the contribution. It was a nice reality check about the fact that it is an interesting topic to discuss with many nuances!