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."
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.
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.
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
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 instance is still federated with explodingheads, so I wouldn't expect anything to come of this. I saw the community you're speaking about and it seems to be pretty small-time. You're best off just blocking it.
Do I even want to know what that is? I'll give the admins a chance to respond but if I don't agree with the response I'll just delete my account here, because otherwise more of this will pop up and I'll have the entire instance blocked and then what's the point?
God I fucking hope not. There are plenty of other servers that take this stance that you can sign up on. Don't try to change this instance when there's a million out there that already do what you're looking for
You...you want to be on a server that allows the intentional dissemination of harmful disinformation? There are lots of instances that allow that for you to sign up on.
Yes, and that's why I signed up for it. Feel free to not join lol. I don't want to defederate from anyone (except illegal instances), so I want access even to the porn ones. Most ban these so I don't want them to decide what I see.
This is the logical stance. If I wanted random busybodies deciding what I see because they think they're the only ones wise enough to discern truth from lies, I'd join Facebook.
Remember, this is a global general-purpose instance with a wide variety of backgrounds and worldviews.
With that in mind, I think I should have the choice to see information if I want to—even if someone else determines that it is incorrect, right?
From my perspective, you can learn extremely valuable things from the corrupt (the horrific history of my country for example) just as much as the good. Removing information like this effectively removes my ability to see the full picture. By definition, this is censorship. It is removing content based on someone’s opinion of the content itself.
If your going to tell me that your definition of disinformation is 100% truth, I’d love to hear how you got to that conclusion.
This is a general-purpose instance on a decentralized platform that doesn’t have much of an algorithm. All of us here most likely run into things we don’t like or want to see, and as long as it’s not illegal I think things like this will still be allowed. You can always block communities and follow ones that you like to tailor what you see. If you’re looking for more specific content all around, I’d join an instance that’s more specific to the type of content you’re looking for
We're talking about a community that is dedicated to posting misinformation and apparently trolling. It is very common for that kind of content and community to be explicitly forbidden in general purpose online communities because that isn't general purpose content. This isn't a matter of things people simply don't want to see. It's content that has proven to be problematic for any community that it infiltrates and generally results in a decline in quality and decorum.
I agree. The unfortunate reality is that the line between misinformation and opinion is very different from person to person—especially when it comes to politics. It’s easy to moderate and remove illegal content based on local laws of the country an instance resides in, but trying to moderate content from a single U.S. political party raises more questions and will take more volunteer manpower from admins. We would need to define as a community:
- What is the criteria for a misinformation or trolling community?
- Will we defederate from entire instances if they meet the criteria for misinformation/trolling?
- Will we regulate all types of communities (like technology, hobby, humor, culture, news, and war-related communities), or will we only regulate politically-driven communities.
I still don’t think this is the right move. I joined the Fediverse because of the ability to post and consume content without any person or entity manually or automatically determining what I can and cannot see. I specifically chose this instance because of it’s relaxed policy on defederation. I value being able to see all content and be aware of everyone’s voice, even if it is blatantly false information or offensive.
The amount of idiots sitting here defending right wing propaganda trolls is fucking incredible. No one wants them, and they ruin everything they come in contact with, ban them. It's not the end of the world, and if they wanna spread their bullshit let them pay for their own server to host it on. ThE fAr LeFt nEoLiBeRaL eLiTe ArE SiLeNcInG uS. Get real, no one buys your bullshit, and no one wants to pretend to have a conversation with you
