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?
I reached there accidentally. The mod u/humanspiral is completely deranged. He banned me with comment “pure evil NAFO scum” for saying “Real coincidence that Nazis and pro-russian are but hurt about this. Makes you wonder…” regarding the Rumanian nullification of the first round.
Amazingly, he’s at least not going on a ban spree, even if all comments are negative. All the removed content is his own missinformation!
It’s well known that peace activists are just enemy spies. Everyone who protested against the Iraq War was a Saddam fanboy, all hippies were really bolchevik agent, and so on /s
Seriously, why aren’t you in ukraine if you care about it so much? Ah, that’s why, warmongerers only want other people to serve as cannon fodders
We have had multiple communities of that nature, all heavily downvoted. A previous example was Geopolitics where Russian and Conservative narratives were pushed daily. Eventually the creator, poster and community mod gave up, left and deleted it.
You can always block communities or instances that you don’t want to see. Every instance has its own policy on what types of communities are allowed, and how strict they must align with admin values.
I frequently disagree with Russian apologists, but pre-emptive restriction of viewpoints I don’t like doesn’t make for good discussion, even if in my eyes many of the arguments are on dubious ground. You see many complaints of lemmy.world and lemmy.ml admins enforcing certain policies and worldviews sitewide, which is fine for them to do, but not every server has to ascribe to that. Some servers restrict community creation to mods/admins, some like beehaw.org have a limited but curated set of communities. !conservative@lemm.ee is a hotbed of clown-take articles, doesn’t mean I think they should be banned.
If you see posts with harmful misinformation, or harmful behaviour by the mod of such a community, please report it to the lemmy.ca admins. Demonstrating a pattern of harmful behaviour with evidence will get the mod and community banned.
I vehemently disagree with an article posted there that having their experimental Mach-whatever missiles means that Russia and China’s going to get everything they want in a conflict, to me it’s a total bluff. But it was written by a Canadian so it would seem it belongs there, even if it is indeed a blatantly pro-Russian narrative.
Perhaps as a solution going forward: new communities start as private communities for the instance only, and then upon admin review and approval can be federated to other instances?
I do not understand people here defending misinformation/intolerance as a merit of discussion. The dichotomy of naive or complicity.
People spreading misinformation and intolerance are not here for healthy arguments, you just need to check their history to see their dishonesty and ill temper.
In the meanwhile, accounts like the one OP highlighted are just creating trouble for mods of other instances to solve.
The problem is, who is the arbiter of that? There are essentially 3 types of moderation styles here:
Laissez-faire: Let people do whatever as long as it doesn’t actively hurt anyone. People can govern themselves and serious incidents are expected to be reported and dealt with. Some jerks will tiptoe around the rules but will eventually get caught. Lemm.ee, lemmy.ca and some others follow this.
Casual enforcement of admin-philosophy: Most topics outside of politically contentious ones are not strictly monitored. Mods/admins will root out communities, comments and posts that actively go against the narrative, particularly on threads on political topics like Ukraine, Palestine, etc… Lemmy.world and lemmy.ml follow this.
Strict enforcement of admin-philosophy: do not tolerate any potentially harmful statements (to that instance’s narrative or vibe). Any violation will be removed and repeated violations get you banned. This philosophy can be reasonable like Beehaw.org, which I think works very well for them and makes it a welcoming safe space, because there is no tolerance for bigotry and jerks. It can also be unreasonable like lemmygrad.ml, where dissent to the pro-Russian narrative is swiftly dealt with.
Admins of other instances should ban users that go against their philosophy from reaching their servers, if they follow the latter two styles of moderation. That’s how it is with federation, sometimes different instances have conflicting philosophies (the vegan one for example). It’s up to each admin to decide whether a foreign Fediverse user belongs in their kingdom. The moderation style that lemmy.ca has lets it be a good neutral place to discuss various drama and lore from other servers.
The problem is, who is the arbiter of that?
Intolerance is well-defined in many languages, and, so people do not confuse I am talking about milk intolerance, the hate crime is defined in many law codes across the globe, including Canada. There is no need for philosophical discussion of what is “intolerance”.
There is no need for a linguistic expert to realize someone’s discourse is ill intentioned, when the semantics of “the victim deserves to suffer” is the same as the call to action.
For countries that depend on common law, the account in question was already punished in other instances, creating precedent.
The modus operandi of these kinds of accounts are also well-know and documented. And popularity contests should not be a tool to define what is right in an online platform where there is no real accountability. How many upvotes do you think a single worker in a troll farm can generate in a couple of minutes?
We should not depend on admin humour for results (philosophies, as you suggest), but I agree that we should help when/where we can, their volunteer work is invaluable for the health of the instance.
I think that the discussions worth having in these kinds of posts are about methods, checks and balance to prevent bad decisions from people in power, and that people will be fairly treated.
Methods are many, and there are many examples out there.
- would twitter like community notes solve some of these problems or create more? Would lemmy repo accept such PR?
- the problem of twitter x Brazil: is it worth locking those accounts while an investigation is pending? One of them was instigating machete attacks in school/nursery. When would this lock be ok, or not ok?
- how long should people complain/report before a something (an investigation, a lock, or a conclusion) happens. - The account we both mentioned not in this thread (but in this post) went on it for 2 months before being banned - they did not leave on their own. …
Sure, we should not tolerate intolerance, “No Bigotry” is rule #1 here so if you see that then please report it. Misinformation, though? That’s the main thing OP is talking about and they gave a few examples, they are propaganda but not intolerance.
If you check the history of lemmy.ca, you will see that this intolerant propaganda/misinformation is cyclical. One user disappears and another comes in. Sadly, it usually takes a few months before something happens to them.
The mod of the community you shared, created an account and on the same day started to post propaganda and tiptoeing around the instance rules. Before, it was another user posting the same content from the same sources, with the same tactics, until they went a bit too far and were banned.
They always do the same thing, create an account, create a community with a “normal” name, like geopolitics, and start spreading stuff. I would not be surprised if it is an agency doing this kind of stuff: I cannot imagine someone being so evil to do it willingly, might be either coerced or depending on the money.
I do not mind when the propaganda is benign, like bots posting random video game or Canadian news, but I draw the line on intolerance.
Another of those intolerant people tactics (tiptoeing) is that they do not demand for people to get killed in their comments. They construct it as a consequence of the victims’ actions, they deserve to die. For me, that is just as bad, if not worse, because they know the things they are doing are wrong, and they are trying hard to no get caught.
I hope the instance comes with a better and swift way to deal with these kinds of problems.
