Would completely cripple the ability of the site to act as a pipeline.
And almost none of its growth comes from "recommend to a friend" style of new user acquisition. Almost all of it comes from random memes being posted with watermarks or random links being posted with "go here for communist shit" descriptions.
Invite only would cripple the site and send it into perpetual decline as user churn would outstrip user growth.
Yeah, no. That would be the case if the mods were absolute tyrants, but they've proven time and again that those kinds of bans are justified/are more than willing to lift bans to people banned by mistake. Also, I wouldn't consider banning transphobic content "ideological purity" at all, that just comes off as bad faith
The mods aren't tyrants. They're certainly doing their best under difficult circumstances, but an outsider coming in during a purge is not going to have a good impression of the place.
Lifting bans is good but most people who go out of their way to advocate for their accounts to be unbanned are already invested. I imagine the half way curious people who get banned just move on.
Maybe ideological purity is not the best phrasing. I meant that if you want this place to be a pipeline you can't expect everyone to have perfect takes on everything all the time.
Most people out there are still by-and-large ignorant about trans issues, and lots of things done out of ignorance can be transphobic.
an outsider coming in during a purge is not going to have a good impression of the place
What's the solution, though? Never get rid of reactionaries and wreckers? Try to do it slowly and quietly, even though part of the wrecking strategy is to whine about the oppression of getting your account banned (even though you can literally start up another one right away)?
There are a million reasons someone might check out a new place on the internet and nope out. We can't remove them all, and we shouldn't remove the ones that serve a legitimate purpose.
Wreckers can be easier to spot than others, because they're writing lots of weird comments and wrecking. But the real solution is to recruit lots of new users from places you know are good and have them drown out the bad stuff. This is the internet, you can't moderate stuff that can get posted like hundreds of times a second.
A newcomer won't go through that process. They'll just say "lol wtf" and leave. It's not just the bans though (or even mostly the bans) it's the entire vibe of the sub these last few weeks.
Would completely cripple the ability of the site to act as a pipeline.
And almost none of its growth comes from "recommend to a friend" style of new user acquisition. Almost all of it comes from random memes being posted with watermarks or random links being posted with "go here for communist shit" descriptions.
Invite only would cripple the site and send it into perpetual decline as user churn would outstrip user growth.
The pipeline also doesn't work so well when people can get banned for upvoting the wrong thing or phrasing something in a questionable way.
A pipeline inherently demands some degree of tolerance for deviation from ideological purity.
Yeah, no. That would be the case if the mods were absolute tyrants, but they've proven time and again that those kinds of bans are justified/are more than willing to lift bans to people banned by mistake. Also, I wouldn't consider banning transphobic content "ideological purity" at all, that just comes off as bad faith
The mods aren't tyrants. They're certainly doing their best under difficult circumstances, but an outsider coming in during a purge is not going to have a good impression of the place.
Lifting bans is good but most people who go out of their way to advocate for their accounts to be unbanned are already invested. I imagine the half way curious people who get banned just move on.
Maybe ideological purity is not the best phrasing. I meant that if you want this place to be a pipeline you can't expect everyone to have perfect takes on everything all the time.
Most people out there are still by-and-large ignorant about trans issues, and lots of things done out of ignorance can be transphobic.
What's the solution, though? Never get rid of reactionaries and wreckers? Try to do it slowly and quietly, even though part of the wrecking strategy is to whine about the oppression of getting your account banned (even though you can literally start up another one right away)?
There are a million reasons someone might check out a new place on the internet and nope out. We can't remove them all, and we shouldn't remove the ones that serve a legitimate purpose.
Wreckers can be easier to spot than others, because they're writing lots of weird comments and wrecking. But the real solution is to recruit lots of new users from places you know are good and have them drown out the bad stuff. This is the internet, you can't moderate stuff that can get posted like hundreds of times a second.
A newcomer won't go through that process. They'll just say "lol wtf" and leave. It's not just the bans though (or even mostly the bans) it's the entire vibe of the sub these last few weeks.
For this reason, a quarantine for new accounts would be a better solution IMO
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