i’ve admitted I don’t think ‘truthfulness’ exempts attempts at harassment in another forum, even if you think that your crusade of truth is justified
I live in no such ‘censored fantasy instance’, because i’ve not defederated from any of the instances i happen to disagree with. Lemmy.world, however, has censored themselves from further-left perspectives, so I don’t find it at all surprising that you’re having difficulty with the concept. People like you feel entitled to inserting your world-view into other people’s discussions, but that doesn’t mean others feel the same entitlement.
You’re free to block me if you find my criticisms objectionable.
I’m not skirting around anything, I’m just pointing to the problem. If someone walked into a LGBTQ forum and started harassing users about male and famale biology phenotypes, they’d be within their right to ban that person. It doesn’t matter if what they were saying was factually correct or not if the reason they’re there is to harass them along an ideological fault-line, especially if they’re instigating that topic themselves to begin with.
It’s their space, they’re allowed to keep certain charged topics out of it, even if you disagree with them or if you feel like they’re trying to censor what you consider to be factually accurate. You can talk about that topic anywhere else you want, they can’t censor you in your own space.
Honestly I think they’re not being strict enough, if it were me i’d be taking notes on everyone here affirming their intention to push this topic in my space and just preemptively ban them.
I’m not making a statement about the truthfulness of the specific claims being raised, i’m just pointing out that the topic is very famously contentious, and going to that space specifically to raise it knowing full well it is not a welcome one is itself bad-faith trolling and deserving of removal and possibly a ban, depending on how hostile you’re being.
It isn’t your space where you can decide what topics are fair game, and frankly whining about it here isn’t going to change anything about their moderation policies.
Yes I’m sure OP was having a very rational conversation about widely accepted and not at all contested facts that are not at all important to any ideological perspective.
And I have to wonder how many of the complaints about moderators abusing their authority are a result of people going into a Marxist space and pushing unwelcome liberal perspectives where they are obviously not wanted and suffering the consequences of those choices.
It doesn’t even take receipts to know this is usually the case, often the users complaining will say they were posting a completely reasonable take about Tiennemen square and then OUT OF NOWHERE they were banned and their comments were removed. It’s not like they spend any amount of time discussing that topic on their instance on their own, people go there specifically to kick the nest
I guess I just really don’t want some bullshitters to be able to influence roughly 50k web users without at least a little bit of push back.
I don’t mean to instigate an argument, but I think this comment illustrates pretty well why .ml might actually be justified in judicious use of the ban hammer. If people are coming in specifically motivated by an ideological disagreement, then maybe they’re well within their right (ethically I mean, they’re within their right just on the basis of owning the instance as it is)
Look, I’ve written and shelved a few responses to this already, but I wasn’t being coy when I said I think we’ve run this conversation bare. I’m having a hard time contending with what seems like willful rejection of my critique of your framing - which is fine, it’s your political world-view and I can’t possibly expect to change it in a day. It just seems there’s an insurmountable disagreement that we can’t get past, and the longer we talk the more exaggerated we’re getting about the other’s perspective and we’re not getting any closer to an understanding than we already have.
Here’s a problematic exchange:
Me:
I do not post memes ‘against voting for biden’, though I can understand interpreting it that way since I am mocking the essentialist and attitude that suggests it is the only thing that matters (I don’t mean anyone has actually said this, but the extreme sentiment conveyed certainly makes that implication clear). That attitude isn’t just short-sided, it is actively hostile toward critiques and agitation against democrats, who on their own routinely use it to rally support without offering real progress (anyone who pays attention to politics year-round might notice that these oppositional crises never really subside)
You:
I am very confident that I never suggested that voting was the only thing that mattered. Someone saying that voting does matter is in no way saying that it’s the only thing that matters. I think you will be hard pressed to find even a single comment on Lemmy saying that voting is the only thing that matters.
The misconnect:
“I never suggested that voting was the only thing that mattered”. I know, that’s why I said “I don’t mean anyone has actually said this”. My point is that all political activity within this frame of view is interpreted through that electoral lense, and I’m pointing to that framing as not just problematic but the actual target of pretty much all effective agitation. That the spectrum of political action must fit through this narrow opening of election day is necessarily a rejection of the use of dissent outside of it. Your objection to and suspicion of bad-actors is a reflection of this, too: even honest critique from reputable sources is suspect of over-the-line provocation simply because the intent may be to distort public opinion away from voting for Biden in november, even if the substance of that provocation is acknowleged as fair. It is that idea that is the subject of my critique, but instead of addressing that problem you fall back to shit like this:
“When they say “yes Gaza sucks please can we get a better president in the future but in the meantime also Trump is 10 times worse for Gaza among many other things”
You say you can’t see how this statement revolves/hinges around electoral essentialism, but I don’t think that’s true. I think (notice that I am stating an opinion and not a statement of fact) you do see it, but you believe it is the essential predicate to all agitative action that follows, which is a fair feeling (as i’ve acknowledged). Having acknowleged that perspective, I’m offering a challenge to that framing: that electoralist lenses collapse political negotiation into a partisan binary (you are either working for this electoral outcome or that one), and it functionally rejects activity that falls on the wrong side (e.g. critiquing Biden is fine (good even), so long as the intent is still to help him defeat trump, or at least that the intent is not to hurt his chances).
I have repeatedly stated my opinion that effective protest is only that which implicitly threatens that electoral coalition. It seeks to sow discontent with the policies on-offer to put pressure on representation, and it isn’t just yelling at the representative, it is an act of cleaving some portion of that base off so that the candidate must choose between their own goal of winning or relenting on the position being protested for.
Protest is necessarily hostile toward the electoral political calculations, and by gatekeeping valid protest to activity that fits within that frame neuters its ability to push for change. Fostering tension is the goal. It seeks to be present in every political discussion about that candidate, lingering as an ominous and threatening presence that makes not just that candidate squirm and feel unwelcome, but all of the moderates who work to support them, too.
You are wildly mischaracterizing what I actually think, to the point where you’re saying things I strongly disagree with (e.g. voting is the only thing that matters, any dissent against Biden is forbidden) and then attributing them to me.
No, I fucking haven’t. I am not attributing words as coming straight from your mouth, I am presenting you with what I think your underlying assumptions are. You have not literally said “voting is the only thing that matters, any dissent against Biden is forbidden”. What you have done is rhetorically narrow the acceptable forms of dissent to that which fits into this electoral binary. Your method of identifying ‘bad-faith’ argumentation revolves around how or if that dissent is intended to effect electoral outcomes. I have become a broken record, repeating the same words endlessly:
effective protest seeks to disrupt status quo coalitions, effective protest seeks to disrupt status quo coalitions, effective protest seeks to disrupt status quo coalitions
The conversation I would like to have with you is, we need better outcomes than Biden, how do we get there.
I’ve said this repeatedly, but sure, I will say it again. Political agitation involves being a relentless-fucking prick. It means dominating every political conversation with the shit you want changed, raise the issue until it cannot be ignored, and absolutely do not allow it to be dismissed as irrelevant noise or covert opposition. It involves being so relentless that their only reprieve is to forcibly remove you from the space you are occupying. That is what I am doing and what I think you should be doing too, and this is why MLK castigated white liberals as the single greatest hurtle toward black liberation. Their obstruction is defined by that line they simply will not cross, and it is the goal of agitation to drag those people up to the line and push their complacent asses over it.
When you say things like ‘why are you bothering people here with this, we agree with you’… Emphatically, no you fucking don’t.