So the LW Team put out an announcement on new, site-wide moderation policy (see post link). I've defended, to many a downvote, pretty much every major decision they've made, but I absolutely cannot defend this one. In short, mods are expected to counter pretty much every batshit claim rather than mod it as misinformation, trolling, attack on groups, etc.
My rebuttal (using my main account) to the announcement: https://dubvee.org/comment/3541322
We're going to allow some "flat earth" comments. We're going to force some moderators to accept some "flat earth" comments. The point of this is that you should be able to counter those comments with words, and not need moderation/admin tools to do so.
(emphases mine)
Me: What if, to use the recent example from Meta, someone comes into a LGBT+ community and says they think being gay is a mental illness and /or link some quack study? Is that an attack on a group or is it "respectful dissent"?
LW: A lot of attacks like that are common and worth refuting once in awhile anyway. It can be valuable to show the response on occasion
I understand what they're trying to address here (highly encourage you to read the linked post), but the way they're going about it is heavy handed and reeks of "both sides"-ing every community, removing agency from the community moderators who work like hell to keep these spaces safe and civil, and opening the floodgates for misinformation and "civil" hate speech. How this new policy fits with their Terms of Service is completely lost to me.
I'll leave the speculation as to whether Musk dropped LW a big check as an exercise to the reader.
For now, this community is going dark in protest and I encourage other communities who may disagree with this new policy to join. Again, I understand the problem that is trying to be addressed, but this new policy, as-written, is not the way to do it.
So you (self-admittedly maining on another instance (in reality the admin of that instance)) are locking an entire community on LW in protest of their admin policy on their instance? That's bold, to put it mildly. You instance-ban users for downvoting, so it makes sense you find this change personally unreasonable.
Myself? I don't think the new change is a great idea, but I prefer it to short-fuse blanket bannings like that.
Yep, sure do! But only on my own instance in accordance with our polices; communities I moderate elsewhere are modded according to those instances' rules and TOS.
If someone does nothing but give out downvotes (the upvotes-given to downvotes-given ratio threshold for the automated ban is quite generous), then they're contributing nothing but negativity and shitting on things for everyone else. If everything here displeases them so much, they can and should go somewhere else.
I stand by (and have reviewed) every automated "Mass downvoting" ban my automod has issued.
Your soft-banning of anyone fully participating in this community on LW belies that claim.
"Generous" downvote banning. Now that's an oxymoron.
If I setup 100 fake accounts to downvote every content in a community, how is the mod supposed to react?
Damn calling em out on their own community. Thats almost as funny as it is bold.