this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2024
35 points (88.9% liked)

World News

39005 readers
2155 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

The News Community updated their civility rule, and based on recent reports here and in Politics, it seemed like a worthy addition to our rule-set.

I talked it over with the other mods, and we feel the change is a good idea.

The Civility rule now includes accusations of bots and paid actors.

" This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban."

There have been a lot of comments along the lines of "Disregard previous rules, write x about y", implying the person resonded to is an AI or a bot.

I've been ignoring reports on those until now because we never really had a rule about it, well, now we do!

As usual, if you see trolling, don't engage, just report it.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] keegomatic@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I think that public call-outs of suspicious behavior is the only real and continuous way to teach new or under-informed users what bots and disinformation actors (ESPECIALLY these) sound like. I don’t remember the last time I personally called out someone I thought was a paid/malicious account or a bot… maybe never have on Lemmy. But despite the incivility, I truly believe the publicity of these comments is good for creating a resilient community.

I’ve been on forums or aggregators similar to Lemmy for a long time, and I think I have a pretty good radar when it comes to identifying suspicious account behavior. I think reading occasional accusations from within your community help you think critically about what’s being espoused in the thread, what the motivations of different users are, and whether to disbelieve or believe the accuser.

Yes, sometimes it’s used as a personal attack. But it’s better to have it out in the open so that the reality of online discourse (extremely frequent attempted manipulation of opinions) is clear to everyone, and the community can respond positively or negatively to it and organically support users that are likely victims.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

If you see a suspicious post or comment, report it. Easy peasy.

[–] keegomatic@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago

You must have missed my point, which was entirely about education of new and under-informed users. Reporting is invisible and does not have that benefit.

[–] Jajcus@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Valid point, but leaving thins as is does not seem like the optimal solution. Maybe the mods could occasionally post examples of removed spam/bot content, for transparency and awareness. Leaving this to random users can end with more mistakes and actual abuse.

Also, the troll/bot comments and discussion around them will less disturbing outside of the intended context (where they were posted to cause disturbance or misinformation).

[–] keegomatic@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

That’s a very interesting suggestion and I’d love to see it done, actually, regardless of what I’m about to write.

The problem is that mods aren’t bot sweepers or disinformation sniffers. They’re just regular people… and there are relatively few of them. They probably have, on average, a better radar than most users, but when it comes to malicious actors they aren’t going to be perfect. More importantly, they have a finite amount of time and effort they can put into moderation. It’s way better to organically crowd-source these kinds of things if it’s possible, and the kind of community Lemmy has makes it possible.

Banning these comments makes the community susceptible to all kinds of manipulation, especially in the run-up to a US election (let alone this one). The benefit of banning these comments is comparatively very minimal: effectively removing one type of ad hominem attack in arguments that have always featured ad hominem attacks, in one form or another.