Communities should not be overly moderated in order to enforce a specific narrative. Respectful disagreement should be allowed in a smaller proportion to the established narrative.
Humans are naturally inclined to believe a single narrative when they’re only presented with a single narrative. That’s the basis of how fiction works. You can’t tell someone a story if they’re questioning every paragraph. However, a well placed sentence questioning that narrative gives the reader the option to chose. They’re no longer in a story being told by one author, and they’re free to choose the narrative that makes sense to them, even if one narrative is being pushed much more heavily than the other.
Unfortunately, some malicious actors are hijacking this natural tendency to be invested in fiction, and they’re using it to create absurd, cult-like trends in non-fiction. They’re using this for various nefarious ends, to turn us against each other, to generate profit, and to affect politics both domestically and internationally.
In a fully anonymous social media platform, we can’t counter this fully. But we can prune some of the most egregious echo chambers.
We’re aware that this policy is going to be subjective. It won’t be popular in all instances. 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. One sentence that doesn’t jive with the overall narrative should be easily countered or ignored.
It’s harder to just dismiss that comment if it’s interrupting your fictional story that’s pretending to be real. “The moon is upside down in Australia” does a whole lot more damage to the flat earth argument than “Nobody has crossed the ice wall” does to the truth. The purpose of allowing both of these is to help everyone get a little closer to reality and avoid incubating extreme cult-like behavior online.
A user should be able to (respectfully, infrequently) post/comment about a study showing marijuana is a gateway drug to !marijuana without moderation tools being used to censor that content.
Of course this isn’t about marijuana. There’s a small handful of self-selected moderators who are very transparently looking to push their particular narrative. And they don’t want to allow discussion. They want to function as propaganda and an incubator. Our goal is to allow a few pinholes of light into the Truman show they wish to create. When those users’ pinholes are systematically shut down, we as admins can directly fix the issue.
We don’t expect this policy to be perfect. Admins are not aware of everything that happens on our instances and don’t expect to be. This is a tool that allows us to trim the most extreme of our communities and guide them to something more reasonable. This policy is the board that we point to when we see something obscene on [email protected] so that we can actually do something about it without being too authoritarian ourselves. We want to enable our users to counter the absolute BS, and be able to step in when self-selected moderators silence those reasonable people.
Some communities will receive an immediate notice with a link to this new policy. The most egregious communities will comply, or their moderators will be removed from those communities.
Moderators, if someone is responding to many root comments in every thread, that’s not “in a smaller proportion” and you’re free to do what you like about that. If their “counter” narrative posts are making up half of the posts to your community, you’re free to address that. If they’re belligerent or rude, of course you know what to do. If they’re just saying something you don’t like, respectfully, and they’re not spamming it, use your words instead of your moderation abilities.
Your opinion on veganism does not justify the mods’ abuse of their power to silence other vegans.
You do not get to bend words to suit your beliefs. Every legitimate vegan community would ban anyone who falsely claims they’re vegan. It’s always an abuse of power every time vegans moderates their communities but not when carnivore grifters do it.
But apparently you do? Almost nobody is a carnivore. They’re more rare than vegans by far. I think the word you were looking for was omnivore.
Anyway, the mods of the community you seem so desperate to defend were banning vegans. Vegans who were discussing what they sincerely think is best for them as vegans. I don’t understand how you can think that’s ok, regardless of how one chooses to define what vegan means.
Well yes because I dont eat/use animal products for ethical reasons. A carnist obviously knows the least about this subject.
You’re dismissing the definition from the vegan society because it allows you to participate in reductionism. Go hang out with the flexitarians, vegetarians and the plant-based if you want to engage in the kind of conversation.
There are so many people who claim to be “vegan” who consume honey or oysters or fish for crying out loud. No wonder why the general population is so confused on what being vegan actually means.
Not to mention all the bad actors who lie about “being vegan” or that they know “someone is vegan” to push false narratives about the community in an attempt to discredit the whole movement.
Ok, so (a) you don’t know how language works, and (b) you’re happy to be a complete hypocrite and insist people use your personal definition of vegan while using “carnivore” to refer to what is properly “omnivore”. Nice.
Anyway, an ethical vegan is no “more vegan” than a dietary vegan or an environmental vegan. If you want to have arguments amongst yourselves about who is “better”, go ahead. Just don’t try to do it by twisting the definition of the word itself.