so if you haven’t come across it, see here , here , here and here .
in short, one side says sources are pro-imperialist, the other side believes they’re legitimate sources. then there is one user thinking we have been targeted by troll farms, one accusing others of being conspiracy theorists and stuff like that. it’s one of the most unproductive arguements I’ve seen on Lemmy, something that looks like one those downvoted-to-oblivian threads on reddit. it’s just a mess.
I think we can do a few things to prevent such pointless fights in the future:
- my favoriate response would be creating a community of fact-checker Lemmurs. it’ll function similar to a wikipedia talk page, anyone can request a trial for an article shared on c/worldnews , then they will present evidence and sources to challenge the article, while the other side attempts to do the same. personal attacks, accusing of being a troll, asking for a call on jitsi to debate face to face (like seriously?!?!) will be forbidden. both sides will debate untill they reach an agreement. trying to go off-topic, bad faith arguements etc will be forbidden as well.
each time we reach a conclusion, a positive or negative point will be assigned to news source and to the person who posted it. best contributers who show the least bias will get a point as well. overtime it will help us to see if a source is really good or not.
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a much easier approch would be to let downvotes and upvotes decide the fate of each post. I understand that this is the whole point of lemmy and similar platforms, but right now we have the problem of each side using downvotes and upvotes like it’s a battle. posts about internet censoreship and tiny pigs are being downvoted because the person who posts them trusts the Guardian and other news outlets.
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we can limit the number of posts on c/worldnews to minimize the amount of personal attacks and arguements.
so what do you think? I personally think as more users come to lemmy, we’ll be dealling with more diverse opinions, and people might just engage in behaviors that harms the platform and benefits no one. this will be a real problem considering that Lemmy leans far-left. in my opinion having a fact-checking community will be neccessary if we don’t want fact-based communities turn into battlefields.
ps: am I going too far and overreacting? to be honest I don’t know xD I just think there’s no chance for productive political arguements if we can’t agree on the facts, and i see no point in what’s happening on c/worldnews right now.
I came to Lemmy because I’m sick of the nonstop corporate interference in internet communications. I support open source and the movement towards decentralization. That’s why I’m excited about this platform.
Like any community, we’re going to have growing pains. But this site could easily descend into extremist echo chambers that many reddit alternatives have. Look how quickly a site like Voat turned into a Nazi / alt-right propaganda site. I don’t believe it’s civil to completely discredit an article because it’s from a “Western” or “European” source without credible citations. A comment such as “Another pro-imperialist post I see!” is nothing more than a shitpost. An informative post that brings to light some hypocrisy is fine, sometimes a reality check is needed. But we should be civil.
I would support a fact based curation system, but I don’t know how we could scale that. Not to mention you’d be in a “who watches the watchmen?” kind of situation.
Agreed! That New York Times article about Russia vs. Twitter could have been an interesting discussion about sovereignty in a world of near ubiquitous internet access. Instead, the whole thread was “bikeshedded” into talking about media bias. And it seemed that the arguing was really just aggressively agreeing that the media is biased.
I’m not sure about fact checking either. I’ve seen posts where any bit of criticism of Putin or China is met with violent opposition, accusations of propaganda, then backed up with “facts” from other media sources. As if people aren’t allowed to be critical of the government and anything but absolute praise is just wrong. I’m not defending one side or another, because the only thing I do know is that I don’t know the whole truth. And I don’t think anyone here does either. The best we can do is have civil discussion about what we do see.
So people discredit articles based on continent they were written on?..
No, they are discredited based on who funds the narratives and news outlets and what political tilt they have.
That sounds more right ;)
Look how quickly a site like Lemmy turned into a Communist / far-left propaganda site. I’m so far left I hardly can contain myself setting cars on fire and even I think we’re pretty far out there already.
Yeah. There’s a difference between science and journalism. You can fact-check stuff in the comments and look at the downvotes to see if it’s a controversial issue.
Sigh. Ye age olde game…