I appreciate everything the .world admins do. As a mod of a community here, I also agree with the general concept of letting the community downvote posts that aren't actually harmful in terms of hate/abuse. That being said, I think it would be wise to reformulate and reduce down this post to a straightforward announcement: what events precipitated this policy change, what are going to be permitted kinds of content, and what is not allowed. This post is just a kind of wandering philosophy right now.

I couldn't care less about flat earthers. It's the lack of moderation of hate speech that prompted me to leave Meta products. When the speech is specifically designed to harm others it's a huge difference from just harming themselves and their willing peers. Allowing spreading that LGBTQ+ people are mentally ill or that Autistic people need to be fixed rather than accepted, or that all immigrants are bad people, those things are not just bad science (though that's part of it). They are designed to have those people ostracized or murdered. That is not "respectful disagreement". That is pure hate-speech, even if the person saying it truly believes it. It is detrimental to the community and if that is allowed here like on Meta now, I'll happily leave as a proud LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent person among other things that current "political discourse" (i.e. acceptable hate) is being allowed to spread.

We’re going to allow some “flat earth” comments. We’re going to force some moderators to accept some “flat earth” comments.

In general I would agree, but if the community moderators decides to set some ground truths (aka an echo chamber), I don't think the admins should be involved.

Allowing these posts and comment despite these agreed upon ground truths (ex: the earth is round, vaccine works, eating animals is unethical, etc) is only going to generate noise by having to refute these again and again instead of fostering productive discussions.

I say let the communities handle their own affairs, and the admins should only intervene in severe cases.

I posted this in another thread but I also wanted to say it here so it's more likely one of you will see it. I get the intention behind this, and I think it's well intentioned, but it's also definitely the wrong way to go about things. By lumping opposing viewpoints and misinformation together, all you end up doing is implying that having a difference in opinion on something more subjective is tantamount to spreading a proven lie, and lending credence to misinformation. A common tactic used to try and spread the influence of hate or misinformation is to present it as a "different opinion" and ask people to debate it. Doing so leads to others coming across the misinfo seeing responses that discuss it, and even if most of those are attempting to argue against it, it makes it seem like something that is a debatable opinion instead of an objective falsehood. Someone posting links to sources that show how being trans isn't mental health issue for the 1000th time wont convince anyone that they're wrong for believing so, but it will add another example of people arguing about an idea, making those without an opinion see the ideas as both equally worthy of consideration. Forcing moderators to engage in debate is the exact scenario people who post this sort of disguised hate would love.

Even if the person posting it genuinely believes the statement to be true, there are studies that show presenting someone with sources that refute something they hold as fact doesn't get them to change their mind.

If the thread in question is actually subjective, then preventing moderators from removing just because they disagree is great. The goal of preventing overmodedation of dissenting opinions is extremely important. You cannot do so by equating them with blatent lies and hate though, as that will run counter to both goals this policy has in mind. Blurring the line between them like this will just make misinformation harder to spot, and disagreements easier to mistake as falsehoods.

Is there some context that could help clarify what's led to this change?

Similarly, could you provide clearer examples, and how this is intended to fit into the existing Terms of Service/Rules? Despite the length of the post, the way in which it's written leaves this change too ambiguous to be easily understood, which I think is evident both from the voting and commenting patterns.

In my opinion, my questions should have already been addressed in the post, and I think may have helped reception of this change (supposing at minimum it's to curtail some abusive moderation practices).

Happy i migrated off of lemmy.world some months ago with the piracy mess.

Well, hopefully this will finally get saner instances to deferate .world as the disinformation hub it's now openly admitting to intentionally be (and has always been, see the misinformation bot debacle for a previous example), so that's good for lemmy as a whole, I suppose, in the long term (once .world communities have moved to other instances).

I respectfully disagree with this policy change as debate communities have their place in allowing discourse on topics.

A zero tolerance policy against zero tolerance policies against intolerance and mis/dis/malinformation? The explanation was a bit figurative language heavy.

This policy to me seems as an attempt to sensibly resolve the power trip problem, but it appears a bit vague and there is still room for improvement. There are some communities where this makes sense but I think there are others where it does not. Moderators are volunteers and I think they should have a degree of discretion how they run the community. You're the admin so do as you will, but may I suggest:

Where a one sided narrative is strictly being enforced that world admins don't appreciate, would it be better to just move/rename that community to better reflect it? Such as moving the example community mod to a new community called "marijuana is bad", to better reflect the variety of views the moderator is looking for? I know a pervasive issue is a single poster/moderator just posts and enforces a one-sided view, but perhaps the root of that issue is that the community's name misleadingly looks to be a neutral place when it is not being run that way.

I say this because there are places that are not intended for neutral discussion and are meant to be more supportive of one group.

LGBTQ+ safe spaces are a prime example, but a different example about more trivial matters would be, say, Premier League football clubs.

If someone makes a Chelsea fan community, someone else coming in to say why Liverpool is better can be removed, as it should be more of a Chelsea echo chamber. Whereas in a Premier League community, blocking Liverpool posts and only allow Chelsea supportive posts would make sense to get admins involved to have it be more open and neutral.

Personally I think it would be better to enforce a policy of ensuring a community's moderation matches the intent implied by the name of it. The policy as it stands feels heavy-handed on moderators.

There's something that everyone should keep in mind with this announcement. Due to the nature of federation and the fediverse, it can ONLY apply to lemmy.world. Users and communities on other instances can, do, and will continue to have their own policies on the matter.

Expect the tankie and fascist instances to keep doing tankie and fascist shit, and very little has changed in that regard. They still have the same risk of defederation, even if the chances have inched up slightly.

“The moon is upside down in Australia”

[email protected] is about to get heated.