Edit: Oops, it is /r/Tennessee, not /r/ProgressiveHQ
Tennessean here who tried to organize on my state/city subreddits. Can confirm this kind of partisan censorship is not new.
A while ago I made a innocuous enough post on my city’s sub about a “Release the Epstein Files” billboard that went up and was paid for by our local Mobilize chapter. Within an hour it was the most upvoted post of the past month. Within 2, it was removed without reason and I was blocked and banned permantly
That’s Reddit, I was banned from a Pokemon Go subreddit for being against Niantic forcibly leaving their sandbox environment on iOS.
We need to be careful on Lemmy. Only the fact that the moderators and admins have goodwill are keeping Lemmy from becoming like Reddit. If Lemmy gets big and starts attracting people who want to pay to take over communities, that will stretch the moderator goodwill to the limits.
The difference being that Lemmy supports multiple communities with the same name.
If an instance is allowing their communities to be sold, they can be defederated.
As the number of users goes up, it becomes more difficult to enforce that way. Even if many people switch communities, when new ones search for the community by name, the one with the most users will pop up first. And it becomes more and more difficult to justify defederating an instance over a couple of communities if the instance has a ton of big communities.
It makes me think that maybe “communities” wasn’t the way to organize, maybe you subscribe to a topic and see all posts for that topic on all instances.
But moderation is good, and defederation is too severe a tool to use for moderation. It feels like there is no good solution.Piefed has topics I think (I’m mostly on mobile so not something I use but I remember it being there when I set up my account)
Yep and it works well: Example: https://piefed.social/f/fediverse
or ~fediverse@piefed.social (this resolves if you are on a piefed instance)
Ive always liked subscribing to hashtags so you get user led topics. EX: https://piefed.social/tag/peertube
Ive always thought it would be good to elect mods from the community. Instead of having a mod that is in charge of EVERYTHING in a community, it should have periodic elections (or just a vote of no confidence by a certain % of users, then an election). The ones that vote have to joined the community for X number of days/months/etc… That way it prevents a bit of the brigading. Also if communities are basically dead, it can help revive them.
Just an idea.
It might be some sort of vetting to know all your users are real people.
I’ve considered setting up a Lemmy/Piefed for my neighborhood, but I’ve been told I’m unlikely to get the neighborhood off of our very active Facebook.
Which will make the return on investment questionable, especially if the whole thing gets meme’d into the spotlight. And if it doesn’t attract more attention, it probably didn’t need to be shut down in the first place.
Public mod logs help a lot.
It doesn’t, at all. They don’t care.
It can be used to pressure admins to remove problematic moderators. It can be used to pressure admins of your instance to defederate from other instances with problematic admins. It means mods can’t gaslight people about their actions. Obviously it doesn’t magically stop bad actions but it gives us a lot of ways to resist it and counter it.
In theory, yes. I have seen one (1) case of it working, across hundreds of communities.
You’ve only seen one case of mods not being able to gaslight people? I’m been a little cheeky because it’s so much more than getting mods to step down or apologize or shit like that. If they’re the problem people can make a new community. If the instance is the problem you can jump ship to a new one. Hell, you can even self host if it comes down to it.
Ive seen it work. https://piefed.social/modlog?communities=765
Im seeing quite a bit of activity in just this community. Looks like they are doing their (unpaid) job :)
Thats where federation comes in. Don’t like how mods are running things? Just set up a mirror forum on a different instance and people will come if theyre sympathetic.
If we ignore the network effect, or the effort it takes, it’s a great idea!
It’s a fair point. Don’t discount the power and value that comes from keeping the same platform, APIs, and client software during a community migration away from the censorship. Plus having a clear line delineating the extent of a mod’s power to suppress viewpoints likely reduces the incidence of abuse in the first place.
I was banned from Reddit by Reddit for calling out a shill. And then they censored my post and deleted it from my data request so that it was impossible to prove I wasn’t inciting violence. That whole place is fucked.
It sounds exactly like the behavior of Reddit moderators. The entire platform was a form of hidden marketing; if anyone discovered it, they would flag or ban you.
Super curious about the Pokemon Go thing, wasn’t able to find anything on Google though. Could you tell what to search or share a link? Thanks <3
Reddit mostly cleared that up by deleting the posts, and banning the users. They couldn’t risk looking like they did anything wrong, like working alongside a company to check for running apps on iOS, when it’s specifically designed to be sandboxed. Not surprisingly, other users discovered Apple was turning a blind eye to the attempts to check systems memory for hooks.
they’ve shut off posting so that no more pesky informational posts can be made.
We MUST Protect Jeffrey Epstein!
-Republicans!
We need to stop attacking pedophiles!
- Ted Cruz
*can
But yeah fuck Raphael
This is why Reddit is garbage and anyone that still has an account on there is only fueling the fire. Fuck Reddit and their mods
Reddit’s glory days were when it was big enough to have consistently interesting stuff, especially in the niche subs, but not so big that bad actors (corporatization, foreign influence, domestic partisan bots, hate groups) could enshitify it. Now it’s practically unusable.
Ice soap and 2AM chili were peak reddit.
Knowledge is power. France is bacon.
Monacles and narwhales!
Stupid long horse.
I finally left the platform entirely a few months ago, but for a time I maintained an account for discussion on hobby and niche topics. Nothing political, and it would be a real stretch to call any of it controversial. After I got a very dubious account suspension, I just said “fuck it” and moved on.
Can’t say I miss it either. It’s a fucking cesspool.
I get so mad whenever I see a post hating on Reddit, but yet they are still there and making posts. Like wtf, Lemmy is great, a lot more people should’ve migrated here, but it’s like they like the abuse.
You think Lemmy is better? Mods here are engaging in the same shitty behaviours. Lack of moderator accountability is a serious issue on this platform.
Edit: brigading just proves my point, you dumb fucks.
Public mod log is a big accountability improvement over the absence of information Reddit has
Remember when the person behind GamingOnLinux decided to leave Lemmy after someone pointed out their community manipulation tactics in the modlog? Something that you have to assume they had been able to get away with as a Reddit mod. They then took to Mastodon or something to complain about how a modlog being public is “bad design”.
What kind of agenda would a GamingOnLinux powermod push?
IMO the biggest flaw is that the mod log doesn’t append a copy of the content that was deleted. It allows mods to just straight up lie.
From what I have seen, removed comments definitely are still visible in the modlog. But if the mod just bans the user instead of removing the comment, all the user’s comments are automatically removed as a result and are not visible in the modlog. All that said, you are correct, this can be abused by moderators who understand the distinction and take advantage of it.
But really it’s a human problem. As long as humans get power, they will misuse it. Perhaps not all, but some will.
The key is to prevent any one human (or associated group) from gaining too much power. With limited exceptions, it ends poorly.
I absolutely have observed mods on Lemmy engaging in the same shitty behaviors (I am sitting on a post about a little cabal of !progressivepolitics@lemmy.world people who seem to be trying to rig the discourse in a particular direction to meet their electoral goals). But the simple fact of it being less centralized and more transparent (and with more of a culture of effective pushback against the mods) makes it a lot harder. They can’t just say “lol get fucked” like the mod from this post did and have that be the end of the story.
Plus federation means that the admins can’t just step in and shut down any competing communities unless they are on their instance. And if that happens, it just starts up on another instance.
I’ve seen the mod in that community delete comments that simply disagreed with them or called out their deletions. It’s always “harassment” or something no matter how polite people are being.
Honestly yes, I have not had much problems with mods (and admins!) deleting the words I’ve taken time out of my day to write.
Free Luigi Mangione!
You’ve been lucky.
I’ll give it more time then. I spent years on Reddit and intend to spend years here.
i mean lemmy def is better. we dont have one ahole controlling everything here.
Modding attracts a certain type.
As part of the LW Community Team, I’ve tried to combat this in a couple ways.
One is that when we need moderators for a community I don’t just put up a post that says “who wants to mod?” Instead I try to draft specific individuals one at a time who are relevant to that community.
You wouldn’t believe how many people just tell me no. They have time to post to Lemmy a dozen times a day, but they just don’t have time to mod c/threepostsaweek
The other is that I try not to just keep recruiting mods we already have. It’s very easy to turn to the people already doing the modding and ask them to pick up just one more, but we’ve seen what that has done to Reddit, and I’d rather not repeat it.
But all this takes time and effort, and it doesn’t seem to have much effect yet. I probably just need to keep at it.
Exactly
I hope you realize Lemmy is just as bad, maybe even worse
We have MAGA mods suppressing voter turnout?
We have .ml propaganda blaming our only hope of resistance for everything the Nazis do.
It’s not much different from the projection tactic the GOP use. Just in this case it’s “you didn’t stop it”.
Ml dont have much influence and we can easily remove them by blocking or defederating them because no one controls lemmy and that is the beauty of lemmy.
that’s a bingo
Many instances defederated .ml and you can block the instance.
But lemmy allows for various viewpoints unlike reddit which is mostly run by the same mods in every large subreddit.
That’s fair.
There’s also a handful of users on other instances that love bashing the dems for not being left enough or something. These are just a few nutters, not really moderators pushing agendas.
Those nutters are sometimes mods. Try criticizing Stalin on any lm community, see how fun.
Because obviously only MAGA can be bad people. Yeepee China and Russian number one!
/s needed because we’re on Lemmy
I’m not sure if you’re American, but for me as an American Maga impacts my life many times more than china or Russia so maga’s evil is far more relevant in my life. But either way you are doing a lot of whataboutism.
The comment I was responding to pretty much said the only abuse is about MAGA stuff. As for whataboutism, idk how you can do better
I’m not in the USA.
Shirley, you jest…
(and yeah, am calling you Shirley…)
From
The start page of the internet
To:
this tiny little corner on the internet
Reddit sure has come far
At one point it was a glorious place. Then 5 people became admins and mods of the most popular 100 sub reddits and began controlling the narrative to fit their beliefs. In my opinion reddit has been dead for at least 5 years now
Way longer than that. The rot was evident during 2015/2016 election cycle. Narrative crafting and political astroturfing for days. The last 5 years or show has just illustrated how unhinged the admins and mods of major subs are
Front page, I believe was what they called themselves. But yeah, it’s been a glorious fall.
Taking the Facebook and Twitter route
What a power-tripping little dick energy cunt. God I fucking hate reddit.
That is why Lemmy exists. And I hope that even more people will start using it since new harsh Reddit policies have appeared.
Lemmy has power tripping bastards too. it’s just usually more transparent.
And federation means that they usually don’t have the power to terminate your account.
How is Lemmy different? As far as I know it just comes down to chance, hoping the first user to start the community is fair.
It is not totally different, it is just slightly better so far.
Just the modlog being public allows for way more accountability and pointing out PTBs.
Pretty common if Reddit mods and admins these days. I’ve been banned from so many communities for being right in the face of mod ignorance.
A person in Tennessee defending pedophiles and abusing power in that pursuit?
Shocked, shocked I tell you.
Lmao reddit mods love sucking nazi cock
They got rid of all of us mods who didn’t bow and kiss the ring and the star.
Now all that’s left is the worst of the mods.
What is the charge? Eating a meal? A succulent
ChineseThai meal?We know how they source and process their chicken…
Wow. Just fucking wow.
Does Facebook and X do similar types of censoring when it comes to the Republican agenda?
Or is it somehow easier to install them as mods on Reddit subs, making it appear to be more “grass roots” without blaming the platform itself for censorship and bias?
I guess of fb you have “groups” (as opposed to subs) where you could install similar “mods.”
Facebook, Twitter and Reddit all have a history of silencing by shadowbans and most people have no idea. There’s a billion different ways to silence you on each of these.
Reddit moderation has been pretty comprehensively captured by bad actors.
I think left wing content on Xitter just gets suppressed, not deleted. Since buying a checkmark gets your posts boosted to the top of the algorithm, and right wingers are far more likely to give money to the Nazi bar.
But, I haven’t used it in a long time, so I could be mistaken. When I gave up on it, I was being shown almost nothing but alt right shit regardless of how many accounts I blocked/muted or what posts I interacted with, though. (And pretty much the only other content I’d get was porn and gore that I didn’t want to see.) And every search would show me a hearty mix of Nazi propaganda and porn, no matter how irrelevant.
X probably does. Facebook seems to be more impartial. Not that it speaks much against Zuck’s support for the administration.
New study shows just how Facebook’s algorithm shapes conservative and liberal bubbles
The answer seems to be yes. After analyzing popular political news links posted on the platform between September 2020 and February 2021, the researchers found that there’s not much overlap between political news consumption within the two camps. Segregation also increases as a news link moves from being selected by the algorithm, to being seen by a user, to being interacted with.
That ideological gap was larger than what other research has shown for overall news consumption online and in traditional media.
“This borders on an indictment of Facebook’s algorithm,” said Laura Edelson, a computer scientist and postdoctoral researcher at NYU. She was not involved with the project but has done similar research and reviewed the studies’ findings. (In 2021, Edelson and her team were blocked from accessing Facebook after a clash over the data they were collecting.)
I assume with X you need to directly manipulate the algorithm to manipulate what appears in feeds. Which means you don’t have this plausible deniability by blaming a third party mod. OTOH it’s more difficult for a user to detect the platform doing algorithm manipulation and call out the platform because it’s just a black box to them.
Designing an opinion platform with “volunteer” mods is asking for agenda-driven operatives to volunteer.
especially when you boot out all the volunteers with accessibility needs over API monetization that was clearly just meant to kill off API usage.
“And so then Lemmy said ‘Hey you know what would be a good idea is if we copied that model exactly’” :-(
I would expect Twitter to be a huge conservative circle jerk, but it really is not. I think the fighting between the two sides is good for business. I also would expect TikTok to do so as well, and maybe it will once Ellison takes over, but so far that’s the best boots on the ground source for seeing real events happening in real time, even if it conflicts with whatever bullshit narrative is spun out of the event.
Is Oracle really going to host TikTok? That’s been a rumor for like two years now. Even if they do host it on their servers, what kind of administrative or moderation control are they expected to have?
I don’t know about hosting - but the deal was being finalized a little over a month ago and it was reported that Oracle would manage the security and algorithm after the purchase of TikTok US. Or at least, they will be licensing the algorithm if they won’t own it. The new development I was unaware of is that it won’t just be Larry Ellison, but also Rupert Murdoch and Michael Dell. We truly live in hell.
I’m not surprised the amount of propaganda here in Tennessee about that race is staggering.
I’m not in that district… But we still have commercials, radio and television along billboards and small signs.
So much spin both sides.
So weird to imagine having political adverts on television.
We have them here for big elections, kinda, but they’re special government mandated broadcasts that each party have access to in order to get their message out for free to ensure equal representation, otherwise you could have a situation where the party with the most money to burn could sway the election results in their favour with a bigger ad campaign.
the party with the most money to burn could sway the election results in their favour with a bigger ad campaign
in the US we get around this problem by having the same corporate and 1% donors funding all 2 of our political parties. so whether you vote for wage slavery or you vote for begrudgingly agreeing to wage slavery, you know your voice will be heard and you will die penniless and starving.
Citizens United says that money is free speech… so all the adverts by all the political action committees
Practically the GD dog catcher gets pac money. :/
Shits absolutely stupid
The easy way to avoid them is just to not watch broadcast television. Something I’ve been doing for a decade now. I haven’t seen a political TV ad since then.
Reddit has really gone down the hole and sucks Republican cock hard.
Yeah but greedy little pig boy Spez just became a billionaire, so it was worth sacrificing your speech for his wealth.
To which I disagree.
With all the cases on reddit where it seems that outcome serves republicans - there is a counter-argument of how most major subs are democrat-sided subs. Maybe mods are republicans, but still user base is majority of democrats. r/pics, r/adviceanimals, r/therewasanattempt, r/clevercomebacks, r/facepalm - these were never primarily about politics. And now they are and these are only democrat-sided.
Or, maybe, it is astroturfing and political bots swarm these subs. Who knows at this point?
Can’t except much better from a reddit mod team.
Shiiet. At least they awnser. Other mods just mute you for 30 days for asking and report you for harassment if write again afterwards.
TBF the Reddit mods who do a good job never get talked about. I’ve seen very reasonable mod teams
Why would you bother talking about them, I suppose. Bitching about dickheads - fun, wow, everyone loves a moan. Complimenting the capable? Dull, flat, uninteresting
That is basically the same reason that conservatives have been able to sell the lie that government programs are inefficient compared to the dictatorship of corporations. You don’t hear anything about the vast majority of government programs, because they work. You only hear about the ones that got corruption and greed mixed in, because those can be called wasteful. In reality most government programs are far more efficient than any corporation could hope to be.
Particularly egregious because any private replacement of a govt program is inherently a monopoly and therefore, by economic rules, almost certain to be wasteful and shite. And outcome metrics are financial rather than intentional. Yeah but ok let’s not go down this hole, we all know where we stand.
You only hear about the ones that got corruption and greed mixed in, because those can be called wasteful.
Incidentally the parts of Medicaid that have the most fraud are run by private corporations
Expect?
Exactly!
Extractly?
Yikes on bikes.
Lemmy isnt Better, all the mod rejects from Reddit are mods on Lemmy and are using any tiny speck of power to do what Reddit mods would do
Thing is tho, you own r/bastard mods, you own it entirely
You own c/bastardmods.lemmy.bastard, people move to c/bastardmods.lemmy.fuckyou
It kinda fucks with me when mindlessly scrolling and being like “didn’t I see this exact post not 10
bseconds ago?”. Then realizing it’s a separate instance.Edit to clarify.
That problem isn’t unique to Lemmy, though. Reddit had many similar duplicate subs.
10… billion seconds ago?
Good memory
300 some odd years ago…
Yeah volunteer mods almost always act like fief lords on any platform.
The type of person that would volunteer is precisely the type of person who shouldn’t be a mod, usually.
You see the same effect in person, too, with HOAs being the most notorious example. But there are many volunteer-based organizations that do incredible good work. Power tripping is a thing to watch out for and build guardrails against, but thankfully it’s not universal.
My very first Lemmy post was in what is essentially the only Lemmy comics group, and it got removed because it contained “profanity”.
I was trying to post original content directly to Lemmy, which is something no one ever does. But it got removed, so fuck it, I posted it to reddit. Two hours later, it was on the front page of reddit. So not to toot my own horn, but I think that’s a sign that it was pretty fucking premium OC, the kind of content that a Lemmy mod should want in their community.
I’ve since seen it reposted all over the internet, and it’s hit the reddit front page several more times.
The profanity in question: “balls”.
I once got into a debate on a left wing community about the methods to outsmart conservatives. The guy wasn’t agreeing with me, at one point I said “doing the same thing is just lunacy” I was removed and banned for “ableism” That’s the best the mod could come up with to silence my opinion.
I once solved Goldbach’s conjecture in only 7 lines. Mods absolutely deleted it. Reason given? Damn, if I could remember that I could remember the proof
I don’t know, I haven’t been banned on Lemmy for saying pedos deserve to die yet. I got that twice in one week on Reddit, and then again almost immediately when I got back.
*expect
Fuck reddit, and fuck censorship.
Lets be clear though, reddit is only worse than lemmy because it is centralized by one group of douchebags.
Lemmy has plenty of shitty moderation too, and arguably is worse at dealing with it within any given instance due to the lack of proper mod tools, the way posts that are deleted remove entire comment sections from being accessible, the lack of any appeals system and I’m sure a few other things I don’t remember off the top of my head.
Its a people problem, and its a style of organization problem with this style of forum.
I agree. Lemmy has a ton of awful moderators that abuse their power just to support “their” viewpoint.
Lemmy is better though because it at least has the potential for people to have better moderation, as well as a modlog that keeps mods somewhat accountable and let’s people see what is being censored.
as well as a modlog that keeps mods somewhat accountable and let’s people see what is being censored.
I’m not sure if this is still true, but you can get around that though if you ban the person before removing the comment. Also, some communities have a delay on showing what’s been removed.
I agree. Lemmy has a ton of awful moderators that abuse their power just to support “their” viewpoint.
Indeed. Famously the elephant in the room of the ml instance where they’re gone so far off the deep end on a lot of topics that they end up in essence supporting extremist conservative views/human rights abuses and worse. This is either with direct support with the weird straight up dictatorship praises many sing, being so toxic and hard to talk to that they push people away (who I hope know they certainly aren’t the average left leaning person) or the awful thing many do where they feel any incremental positive change is bad, and the only good change is a magic overnight revolution and shift to 100% exactly their view of how society should work, that they’ll also never spell out.
Lemmy is better though because it at least has the potential for people to have better moderation
In some ways yes, in some ways the opposite (as mentioned with the lack of tools).
Regarding the modlog, maybe I am missing something, but when things are deleted here, its actually a little bit worse than reddit sometimes in that you won’t be able to immediately see the content that was deleted of yours, and then for mod logs, I believe (As I am not 100% sure) that comment removals disappear when the user who made the comment is banned as well, so its kinda false transparency.
reddit is only worse than lemmy because it is centralized by one group of douchebags
That’s a really big distinguishing factor though. When a group gets “too big to fail,” it becomes a problem by giving said group too much control. Look at the genocide apologist mods on /r/worldnews .
The de-centralization / fragmentation of Lemmy is an important check against bad moderation.
You absolutely bring up good points yes, but at the same time, I don’t think its a check, so much as a mild mitigation. Even on the lemmy verse there are still mega subs that take on the most activity and gain similar types of “too big to fail” critical user bases.
The core problem, is that when a group gains disproportionate control over what users can see, they can push their views/twist arms, and that ultimately isn’t solved here.
and its a style of organization problem with this style of forum.
Which lemmy mitigates by being decentralized.
Lemmy has plenty of shitty moderation too
Oh absolutely. Not long after I created my account, I saw an obvious spam post on All, I downvoted it and went about my day. Turns out I was banned from that community because of that downvote. I asked why and was told that because I downvoted a post in a community I wasn’t subbed to, I was banned for “brigading” even though it was a spam post. I wonder if I had upvoted despite not being a community member if I would have been banned?
More recently, I reported a comment for a common ableist slur (against someone else, not me), and the reply to the report was “doesn’t break the community rules and also we agree with the guy who said it”. I looked up their community rules and they specifically say all opinions are welcome and not to attack or harass others, which I would presume calling someone the “R” word for having an opinion would violate both tenets of that rule set. Nope, they support garbage like that despite what their rules say, so I told them to please ban me.
If I recall a similar thing happened to the San Antonio subreddit. Something like it was taken over during the mod revolt, and the new mods seem to have very specific interests.
The /r/canada sub has long been controlled by far right people as well. There’s been an effort to seize control of city / state / country subs.
There are three Seattle subs because of this shit.
Not surprising. Most of the left-leaning people would’ve left by June 2023.
The San Antonio sub is the only one I’ve been banned from and all I did was make a well educated argument for a massive voter initiative. Fuck those guys.
The mod of a fascist sub about a fascist state of a fascist country on a fascist website is behaving like fascist? I’m shocked.
I dunno why, can’t really put my finger on it, but I have this slight hunch that it might be related to fascism in some way.
So what you’re saying is that it’s a small corner of the Internet problem eh? ;)
They have been playing ads on TV consistently for them. Hers saying she wants to help try to keep health insurance available, not get premiums raised and help the people of Tennessee.
His saying she’s a radical that was opposed to ICE agents and trying to bully them by blocking them with her car.
His ads have nothing policy based ever said, because it sounds like none of his policies help the people. I guess he is pro tariffs or something, idk
The right never campaign on policy because if they did they wouldn’t get any votes.
In first-past-the-post election systems, campaigning on fear is well established as the winning strategy. In this case the fear the D candidate is playing on - loss of health care access - is more fact-based than the fear the R candidate is playing on - xenophobia - but both campaigns know fear-driven turnout is the only way to win.
I hope ranked choice voting makes more inroads. I am under no illusion it would break the two party system (Australia has used it for eighty years and still has two main parties), but by making second choices relevant it gives a winning election path to a pro-cooperation, get-things-done style of campaign.
His saying she’s a radical that was opposed to ICE agents and trying to bully them by blocking them with her car.
Shit, that makes me want to vote for her more than her own ad. Someone willing to personally take action to stop the Gestapo?
