There’s a new one suddenly popping up in my feed but obviously the reports are being “resolved” by the mods of that community. They suggested to me that I block their community but I will not because that is how you get a cesspit of an instance. How do we report disinformation communities straight to the admins?
Edit: the admins did remove the community in question so I’m going to take that as the official stance on disinformation communities and also assume that any type of community (right wing, left wing, or other) that are intentionally spreading disinformation will be removed. That makes me feel much better about the situation since this type of thing is pretty much guaranteed to pop up again.
The admin here takes a conservative stance on defederation. He doesn’t do it unless there are lemm.ee rules violations or network abuse. I haven’t looked at any explodingheads content, but if it does not violate any lemm.ee rules and presents no network abuse it will probably not get defederated.
I agree with lemm.ee’s philosophy on defederation and that’s one of the reasons this is my home instance. In general you can’t call for defederation just because you don’t agree with content. If it’s blatantly offensive then I suppose that would be valid grounds, but I would hope that reason is used sparingly. I mean discussion that’s offensive to you may not be offensive to me.
It’s hosted on this instance: https://lemm.ee/c/vaccines
“All reports calling post here missinformation will be ignored unless the post says that covid vaccines are healthy. Which is dangerous missinformation because covid vaccines kill.”
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !vaccines@lemm.ee
Given that even twitter is full of that these days, is a Lemmy community the end of the world? Idiots are going to keep believing their stupid beliefs.
End of the world? No.
By the same token, a few bugs in my house is not the end of the world, but I’d still prefer to have screens on the window and keep a flyswatter handy 😉
The “bugs” you’re referring to are actual people, and “your house” is my house too. We are both anonymous users on a general purpose instance shared with ~15k other people. If you start removing people from our house, and I don’t want you to remove those people, I think it’s fair to have a good-faith conversation about this.
How do you suggest determining whether or not something is considered disinformation?
I’m also not advocating for killing trolls that bother me… so take care not to belabor a quick metaphor.
The vast majority of disinformation comes in a few key topics related to current hot button political issues and is generally pushed by recognizable sources. It’s not unreasonable to expect admins to check into user reports of disinformation and organized trolling against known sources. I’m not an admin so I’m not going to write up the specific criteria right here and now.
Choosing not to do so is also a conscious choice to host such content.
Hey, it’s okay to break down a metaphor if I don’t think it’s applicable to the conversation.
Yes, totally I agree with you, I think admins should review reported content and do some investigation if needed.
I guess I have a problem with removing users and communities based on someone’s opinion of the content itself. Vote manipulation, brigading, creating multiple accounts to push agenda, repeated automated posting, and even organized trolling like you mentioned are not direct opinions on the content posted. They are clearly defined and relatively easy to identify. “Disinformation,” “recognizable sources,” and “hot button political issues” are direct opinions about the content or subject of a post or community. They are not clearly defined and differ greatly from person to person.
I asked you to suggest a definition or criteria of disinformation to move us from the “what” to the “how.” Thinking about how this might be regulated practically might help you understand why I think it’s problematic to remove users and communities based solely on someone’s opinion of their content.
Believe me I do understand why it could be considered problematic. My disagreement stems from the idea that it’s better to have no policy rather than an imperfect policy or one that relies on some discretion.
My point in highlighting that disinformation centers around a few hot button issues is to reinforce that we’re not talking about some nebulous or opinion-driven debate; rather there are a few key disinformation strategies that take advantage of the “bullshit asymmetry” to poison real discussion. They are easily identified because they are well documented and reported on.
I’m simply unconvinced by arguments that it’s too hard to identify and nip such malicious communities in the bud. Even less so by arguments that doing so is somehow a slippery slope.
So in other words, it’s been taken over by right-wingers. 🤦 Wasted my time again.
Not everything you disagree with is right wing. You sound like an American lol FYI this server owner is Estonian, one of the most liberal countries in the EU.
And everyone knowd if a country is liberal it can’t have any conservatives in it /s
And? Is there something wrong with anyone not having US-style far left neo-liberal views? I don’t get your point
Since when was the US far-left?
It’s more about the bipartisan system and very vocal representatives of both extremes it breeds.
Since when was the US left very vocal?
Always, just like the US right. A living example - a person that responded to me in this very thread.
If you want to create an eco chamber for yourself, you could’ve just said so.
Well, if you wanted to take over left spaces and deny them the ability to have a community of their own so you can more easily kill them off, you should have said so
This isn’t about defederating it’s about misinformation communities being hosted on this instance.
What would be the difference between a disinformation community being hosted on this instance and one being hosted on another federated instance?
From a practical perspective: it’s much easier to choose not to see content from an entire instance I’ve deemed unhelpful or harmful than it is to play whackamole with communities popping up on my home instance.
It’s the difference between my preferred news outlet broadcasting garbage vs a different channel.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but that sounds like this is about convenience then. I’m all for convenience, but completely removing content for everyone on a general-purpose instance because someone thinks it is harmful is not ok. That is suddenly declaring your opinion as everyone else’s absolute truth. Saying “you should not see that” is great. Saying “you can never see that” is censorship, and in this case it would be censorship based on a certain opinion.
I propose Lemmy adds the ability for users to label communities and posts when they create them with a content tag of some sort. Users could also suggest adding or removing a label from posts or communities as they browse. This would make content more refine-able and searchable for users/admins and give us each the ability to limit certain types of content we don’t want to see. It would also help solve the NSFW label issue where someone is okay with gore but not with nudity.
I was just responding to your question of what was the difference between blocking an instance and a community.
The community-sourced labeling is an interesting idea, which I hadn’t really considered. Not sure it fully solves the concern of bad faith actors looking to JAQ-off and otherwise poison discussions but it’s a step in the right direction.
Blatant lies are blatantly offensive.
Attempting to institute a brutal theocratic dictatorship and genocide all LGBT+ people is also blatantly offensive.
Speaking of disinformation…
What are you trying to say?