Civility has become a cult.
Mods on modern websites (including Reddit and Lemmy.world) are forced to maintain courtly behavior instead of deciding who’s the asshole. They will protect any cautious troll who can politely phrase ‘you’re subhuman and also secretly agree with me’ but jump on the obvious reasonable response: “Fuck off.” Even when that curt dismissal is followed by an explanation of how a comment was dishonest and manipulative, you said the no-no word, so only you get the boot.
And that boot will tend to be as heavy as possible, sometimes instantly permanent, because god forbid anyone learn anything. You keep permanently banning these trolls, when they can get a new account in minutes, and they keep coming back within minutes? Wow, it’s almost like you’ve given them no reason whatsoever to stick out their ban and keep that username. Spritzing them in the face with a three-day time-out works better. This is basic Skinnerian conditioning - immediate reliable feedback is internalized and shapes future behavior.
Ridiculous absolutism.
Nevermind the cases where gentle understanding was offered, and deeper clarification attempted, and yeah no it turns out some rando sounds like an asshole because they are in fact an asshole. You’re treating any judgement as intolerable egotism. You expect perfection before anyone’s allowed to reach a conclusion. In illustration of the original point: fuck that.
Difficulty doesn’t matter. Blunt callouts serve a distinct purpose. When ideal discourse has already broken down, because someone’s comments are not just factually wrong but morally wrong, the continued appearance of polite debate grants legitimacy to dangerous nonsense. ‘It assumes one’s own infallibility’ is on the near end of that failure mode. You don’t have to be flawless, to be right about something. Even if you’re wrong in this case - oh well! Learn! Be better next time! You don’t have to imagine yourself incapable of making a mistake, to spot and name some really clear cases of trolling and bigotry. Or any number of things people will deny and squirm away from and clutch their pearls over, no matter how gently it’s made clear that they did it and you saw it.
This is one step short of ‘just because you disagree.’ The universal effortless dismissal of criticism.
And on the receiving end - getting called an asshole doesn’t stop you from making your point, if you’ve got an actual point. I should know. This attitude comes from entirely too much bickering against unreasonable people in their own boltholes. A pile of downvotes and harsh language won’t turn the Earth flat. If you would like to offer endless patience and comforting words in the face of such pluripotent denialism, by all means, go ahead - but it doesn’t fucking work. Denying them respect is half the battle toward deplatforming their disinformation.