Seems to be purely to post misinformation with repeated claims that Russia is innocent and the US caused the Ukraine situation, that they’re stopping Ukraine from agreeing to Russia’s super amazing peacedeals, etc.
This is the sort of garbage one would expect to find on ML or Hex, is CA intended to be the same low quality instance?
That’s reasonable. It’s my bad that I was unclear with the use of that. It’s okay for you to argue against spreading intolerance, but I refer that the main topic of the post is about misinformation, and even as you rightly argue that the two often can have shared purpose and goals, and I also agree with you that both should have clear boundaries set here as to what is allowed and disallowed, they are distinct concepts. To be clear, I’m not making the distinction between MDM and intolerance to excuse either of them. Misinformation is bad too, and I agree that we should inform and root it out where we find it. However the banhammer is a tool that can make any comment look like a nail, so care should be taken when it is used. Conflating removal of clearly intolerant takes with removal of possibly misinformed takes when it comes to enforcement actions, would be viewed as mod/admin abuse and lower users’ trust in admins of that server.
The main example from the OP is the endlesswar community. The user there is pushing takes not fully related to “endlesswar” but are from other sources, questionable as some of them may be if we were to analyze each of them carefully. A separate example I have is a comrade I have seen around Lemmy since I joined, https://lemmy.ml/u/yogthos. This user has been constantly pushing narratives, to the point that one might think they could be paid to do it. Over the past couple years, they have become far more careful to avoid getting banned for intolerant takes, and now selectively posts articles and graphs that supports a specific narrative.
Do these users, or the users that might post a misinformed take within the power-users’ posts deserve bans? Do we analyze every comment, post and news-source and remove those that meet the criteria for MDM? Do we have a whitelist/blacklist to only permit links to reputable news sites server-wide (to stop someone from creating a community where they allow themselves to post from wherever)? Lemmy.world news communities had a Media Bias Fact Check bot that was rather inaccurate and very unpopular.
That is why I was suggesting a discussion of well-defined and transparent methods to deal with them, that should be constantly reviewed and improved.
I support a thorough discussion on how best to deal with it both locally and across the Fediverse. It’s not “not a problem”, but at the moment I don’t see any fair solutions that don’t rely on an undue amount of mod/admin discretion, besides removing intolerant takes and downvoting misinformed takes.
E: One solution could be like SlrPnk pleasant politics which instituted an AI moderator that checks and will issue temp bans for bad behaviour it detects. I’m still a little skeptical of it as to me it falls under “undue amount of mod/admin discretion” but at least it takes a lot of the tiring work for admins out of the equation.
I imagine that the discussion we are having would be more beneficial to c/main
However the banhammer is a tool that can make any comment look like a nail,
That is why methods are important, if your only tool is a hammer, the screws will look like nails. And people waiting for a solution will be expecting a “thunk”.
In real life, people do not get arrested for reposting fake news. Well, maybe if you call a war “war” in some countries. Correcting myself, in real life, people should not get arrested for reposting fake news.
Many people share them because they do not know better, are afraid, for many reasons. I have so many examples in my family. Usually, speaking with them with compassion and understanding, while using a common language works.
But there are people that benefit from it, instigators, bad actors. How long do you think it should be allowed to fester before you get to a point of no return?
From my experience, the places doing it properly without installing a censorship state, are the ones with well-defined and transparent process. They are doing proper investigations, working with the community, taking proper action against bad actors. Canada is not far from achieving it, it needs work, and I wish it was faster.
You cannot expect that an online community that depends on volunteer work would have the same level of scrutiny. I don’t even know if it would be possible to create some sort of committee to oversee lemmy.ca like is common in some forums and other open-source communities.
Do these users, or the users that might post a misinformed take within the power-users’ posts deserve bans? Do we analyze every comment, post and news-source and remove those that meet the criteria for MDM? …
Yeah, those are the questions that need to be discussed! And plans made over it.
I have facts, experience and opinion - for one, I am averse to mass scanning, even more without proper methods, but I have been proven wrong many times, if people think is the right way to go, I might as well understand it better and help where I can.
Back, to the community from OPs post
I imagine you are old enough in lemmy.ca to remember Geopolitics, trying to be more neutral, but the mod there would pin all his posts to hide people’s post, or just delete them. The account was also accumulating bans across instances until they were banned fully in this instance. Endless war does not try to be neutral, and the mod accumulated an even longer rep sheet, and in less than 2 months.
I understand a human can read their posts, analyze their actions, and understand they are acting in bad faith intentionally, dishonestly arguing and ill temper when talking to people. I don’t think an AI can classify this kind of thing consistently yet. But in quantitative analyze, there are enough bans and content removed to warranty at least an investigation and a warning.
…Over the past couple years, they have become far more careful to avoid…
Wow, that user was banned in so many communities and had a lot of content removed over time, including in ml.
They post many memes, but their reaction to people’s comments are not the most amicable, they take everything as direct offence, that could surely be improved.
