[sealion noises]

You’re asking me questions, and you don’t like the answers. You’ve got a right to your opinion, but I think I’ve explained sufficiently why I would like to see you banned. I’m not interested in a debate about it.

I do want to address this:

Seriously?! You’re saying that me posting articles from Newsweek to Lemmy—a platform with a much smaller audience than the original sites—is “threatening development” in your government? Do you even realize how tiny the Lemmy audience is?

I think the impact of this particular pollution will be small, but I value the idea of being a part of a little community where this type of pollution is minimized, and I think that in the aggregate across many different types of social media, the impact is large. I think that social media large and small are subject to a huge amount of manipulative content of some kind, and I think that does incalculable harm to the exchange of information that’s essential to a functioning democracy. It’s why democracy is on such a back foot in so many different places right now. The old model of journalism with high standards, whatever its numerous flaws, has been replaced by standards-free anarchy which carefully engineered propaganda is free to flood into at scale, and it’s happening to a huge degree, and we’re not well-equipped to deal with it. Whatever your intentions in being here, whether or not they are well-meaning, you’re participating in that flood.

I don’t really care how the mods are currently defining good behavior and bad behavior. Whatever they’re doing as pertains to you, it’s leading to a massively unpopular reaction in the ordinary members of this community, and I think we’ve all spent enough time explaining our reasons for that reaction at this point. You can hide behind the mods if you want. I’ve observed your openness level to what people are telling you, and at this point I’ve mostly given up on talking with you, and am simply aiming my conversation at the moderators, arguing for why their current approach to moderating you is wrong, and you need to be banned.

If you were just coming in with an unusual point of view, that would be one thing. Honest criticism of the war in Gaza, honest criticism of the Democrats’ economic policies, honest critique of the whole idea of capitalism in general, is all fine. They’re far from un-heard of. Lemmy is far, far, far from some kind of DNC circle-jerk where you’re the only one who’s got any kind of rebellious viewpoint. The problem with your content is that, like this article, it is wildly and deliberately misleading, and repeated at a scale that’s offensive. You post all this stuff blaming Kamala Harris for the massacre in Palestine, but you voted for someone who wants to accelerate the massacre and is angry at the Biden administration for not doing enough to support and enable it. You claim not to care who wins the election, but you constantly post attacks against one side like it’s a part-time job. You claim to want third parties to be viable, but you spend very little time supporting the exact reform that would make them viable at doing anything other than spoiling the election for the other side.

If you don’t want me criticizing you, and it seems that you don’t, then be straight about what you believe. People respect plenty of minority and counterculture views here. Pretending that you’re getting this reception because people love Kamala Harris is precisely the problem. Recognize that other people have valid reasons for their criticism. Respect their time and opinion enough to cool it with the megaphone, and engage directly with what people who disagree with you are saying, instead of pretending they said something else. If you refuse to do any of those things, you’re going to receive criticism from the community, and when that criticism is ignored, you’re going to receive insults in kind to the disrespect you are showing to everyone else. That’s how humans function.

Do you actually think Newsweek, Reuters, AP News (the sources I often use) are all publishing false and dangerous material?

Yes, sometimes. Absolutely. The badness of the mainstream press is a big part of the problem as well. We’re currently discussing Newsweek, which it seems like has been taken over by an explicit propaganda operation to some extent, but almost all of the US press is subject to the corruption to at least a certain degree.

Come on! I thought you were serious at first, but now it’s hard to take you seriously. Sorry, guy.

I’ll have to try to carry on, somehow.