• redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    Please familiarise yourself with Rule 2. You’ve been struggling to satisfy it throughout this thread and it’s starting to get tedious.

    • 133arc585@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Unfortunately they don’t care. They know what they’re doing,

      This discussion (and name calling) isn’t for you. It’s for the audience.

      And yet they keep doing it, and defending it.

      And it’s not just this thread: read their comment history, and it’s littered with name calling and personal attacks. I report their really egregious stuff but it’s tedious reporting every single comment that has personal attacks.

      • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        I think you might be right. I let it slide in other comments as I put it down to the ordinary liberal world-outlook. But there’s only so long I’ll put up with schoolyard name-calling. I’ve got better things to do.

        • 133arc585@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          I think Lemmy needs a little bit of work on how blocking a user works. It gets confusing seeing new comments come through and not being able to see what they’re replying to. You also have no option to report a comment if you can’t see it. Even if you click the “show context” button, knowing that you’re about to force a blocked user’s comment to show, it just refuses. You have to open in an incognito tab and click show context. Basically, I want the ability to not see their comments in general, and not see them on the “new comments” feed, but if I explicitly ask to see their comments, let me do that.

          I have blocked a large number of users who have consistently added nothing to conversation, or who routinely resort to personal attacks.

          I am truly frustrated and disappointed that so many people:

          • feel it acceptable to personally attack another commenter
          • accuse everyone who disagrees with them of being a paid shill, or a troll
          • use “shut down” words, with the intent to either entirely discredit the person they’re responding to, or end the conversation where it is
          • literally copy-and-paste the same reply all over a thread or targeting a person[1]
          • make bold claims with no sources, and when you reply correcting them and provide sources of your own, they downvote and don’t reply
          • engage in conspiracy thinking and go on imaginative expeditions, where connection to reality is secondary to consistency with their beliefs

          I know it’s naive to think people will be able to always get along. And I guess it is naive to assume that people actually want to learn, and try to help others learn. But that’s what I want. I’d much rather converse with someone who shares none of my values or beliefs as long as they’re level-headed, not resorting to trickery or fallacious reasoning, are willing to source their statements, and respect me in dialogue.


          1. I saw one yesterday where the person copy-and-pasted something like “Russia started the war” about 10 times across a thread, several times replying to the same person, sometimes other people. Every time, it wasn’t actually directly relevant to the comment they replied to. It’s just an attempt to brute-force shut someone down. ↩︎

        • 133arc585@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Yeah I had them blocked for a bit over a day, but they’re so prolific that I keep seeing other comments responding to theirs (without the ability to see theirs) which confuses me even more while reading my feed.

        • Aesthesiaphilia@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          I read the page that 133arc585 linked. I can’t actually see the lemmy.ml homepage unless I log out of my fediverse account, I believe.

          I understand the intent of the rule, but I’ve seen communities who require “only respectful discourse” get swamped by sealions and bad-faith “just asking questions” types with dogwhistles and veiled references. In my opinion, sometimes namecalling and insulting is a necessary counter to someone spreading a poisonous bad-faith idea, especially when it’s outright propaganda. But, I’m not a server admin, so I’ll try to be more respectful of that rule in the future.

          • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            You called me an idiot after a few hours of us talking in what was apparently good faith. This isn’t tone policing because it’s not the way that you’re formulating your argument that I’m objecting to, rather, it’s the fact that you’re mixing arguments with name-calling. There’s very little point in us continuing to engage as everything I say that doesn’t confirm your worldview is more evidence that I’m a shill. Where do we go from there? You’re clearly not interested in a discussion.

        • Aesthesiaphilia@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Ah. I’m from kbin, so I can’t view the lemmy.ml homepage (to my knowledge) unless I navigate outside my fediverse account. The linked post seems to be down right now, but I’ll view it when I get a chance.

          • 133arc585@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            I’m from kbin, so I can’t view the lemmy.ml homepage (to my knowledge) unless I navigate outside my fediverse account.

            You can view it, by pointing your browser to https://lemmy.ml. This community is hosted on lemmy.ml, and as such, the instance rules apply in addition to the community rules. Just like on the rest of the fediverse.

            The post is not “down”, whatever that means; it pulls up fine for me. Either way, here is an archived version.

            • Aesthesiaphilia@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              You can view it, by pointing your browser to lemmy.ml.

              Yeah, that’s outside of my federation account. For example, right now I’m viewing this post with the url kbin.social/m/[email protected]. But I don’t think there’s any mechanism to look at the page kbin.social/lemmy.ml or something. Or at least I’m not aware of it.

              Anyway, the page is back up, and I read it.

              I understand the intent of the rule, but I’ve seen communities who require “only respectful discourse” get swamped by sealions and bad-faith “just asking questions” types with dogwhistles and veiled references. In my opinion, sometimes namecalling and insulting is a necessary counter to someone spreading a poisonous bad-faith idea, especially when it’s outright propaganda. But, I’m not a server admin, so I’ll try to be more respectful of that rule in the future.

              • 133arc585@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                Yeah, that’s outside of my federation account.

                I am so confused at your comments here. It’s a webpage. You can point your browser to (or click the link:) https://lemmy.ml. You can do it on your computer, on your phone, on your refrigerator. It’s a website. Just like https://youtube.com is a website. I don’t know why you’re even mentioning kbin here, it would be like saying you can’t view facebook because you’re logged in to kbin.

                I understand the intent of the rule, but I’ve seen communities who require “only respectful discourse” get swamped by sealions and bad-faith “just asking questions” types with dogwhistles and veiled references. In my opinion, sometimes namecalling and insulting is a necessary counter to someone spreading a poisonous bad-faith idea

                The presence of name calling and insults is always a problem. The absence of name calling and insults does not guarantee there is no problem. Moderation is still necessary even with “only disrespectful discourse” rules; any effective moderation needs to know how to moderate as well: moderators need to know how to spot and resolve types of detractive content that aren’t simply name calling.

                Name calling and insults are also not a productive way to address what you consider bad-faith conversation. You should attack an idea and not the person. There are already other rules in place to help address when the idea itself is harmful: there is a rule against bigotry, xenophobia, racism, sexism, and the like; there is a rule about knowingly spreading false information. I would also stipulate (and this is personal speculation but I feel it to be an accurate view): most people who are “spreading propaganda” are not doing it with the knowledge that what they’re saying is propaganda and with the intent to spread propaganda; most probably believe what they say to be true for various reasons including their media exposure, the political climate in their interpersonal interactions and their community and country, their parental influence on their beliefs, etc. If you look at it from that point of view, what good is insulting someone who isn’t actually acting with malice? They’re going to be less likely to reevaluate their beliefs and look at what you’re saying objectively if you’re spewing emotionally charged personally attacks at them, even if you are mixing in valid logic and evidence. And you’re hopefully not here purely to argue and throw insult; hopefully at least part of you wants to learn and help others learn. If that’s even part of what’s driving your participation, wouldn’t you want to do so in a manner that’s more productive to everyone involved? So, in my opinion: if they’re not acting with malice, insulting them does nothing good; if they are active with malice, report them and if there’s proper moderation it’ll be removed.

                • Aesthesiaphilia@kbin.social
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                  1 year ago

                  I am so confused at your comments here. It’s a webpage.

                  It means there’s no link to it from the [email protected] community that I’m viewing. I would have to proactively navigate to a new website to check the rules, and why would the instance have different rules than the community? I wouldn’t naturally in the course of logging into my kbin account, opening this thread, and commenting on it, see those rules or a link to them anywhere.

                  moderators need to know how to spot and resolve types of detractive content that aren’t simply name calling.

                  This is a nearly impossible ask, because that type of content is tailored specifically for plausible deniability. There’s a ready-made “mods are overreaching/censuring” argument if they get banned or silenced. Community censure is the only way to stop these types.

                  Name calling and insults are also not a productive way to address what you consider bad-faith conversation.

                  I disagree. Attacking an idea requires a lot of effort; indeed, that’s why sealioning and JAQing off is a type of trolling at all. It’s asymmetric warfare, designed to wear a person down who’s trying to attack an idea.

                  Conversely, responding to a bad faith argument with “that’s stupid and you’re stupid for saying it” is a no-win position for a concern troll. They either waste time getting dragged into the mud with you trading insults, which doesn’t convince anyone of the thing they’re pushing. Or they leave and they don’t get the chance to push the thing in the first place.

                  what good is insulting someone who isn’t actually acting with malice?

                  It’s a quarantine. How often have you managed to convince someone of something by arguing with them on the internet? Or been convinced of something yourself? It’s quite rare. The whole idea is that forums are a debate stage, and the 85% of forum users who just lurk are the audience. You’re not trying to convince your opponent; you’re trying to convince the audience.

                • Aesthesiaphilia@kbin.social
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                  1 year ago

                  hopefully at least part of you wants to learn and help others learn.

                  Sometimes, yes. But we can’t ignore that the internet is an ideological battleground. For us (democrats, and US leftists in general), ignoring that fact got us Trump in 2016, and I don’t want to make that mistake again.

                  And this is just a personal thing, but I’ll often get more involved with arguments than with learning when my brain is spent from work. It’s easy (for me) to point out propaganda and cognitive dissonance, and yes to call people names. It takes more mental effort to learn or teach.

                  • 133arc585@lemmy.ml
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                    1 year ago

                    And this is just a personal thing, but I’ll often get more involved with arguments than with learning when my brain is spent from work. It’s easy (for me) to point out propaganda and cognitive dissonance, and yes to call people names. It takes more mental effort to learn or teach.

                    So you’re here to play a game. To play whack-a-mole. I find that to be a disturbing approach to interacting with humans. I know I’m idealistic, but for anyone who (like me) is attempting to have real human-to-human conversation, someone coming in with the intent to just shout “fallacy!”, “propaganda!”, “wrong!” and play a game is extremely offensive.

                    For us (democrats, and US leftists in general), ignoring that fact got us Trump in 2016, and I don’t want to make that mistake again.

                    You have contradicted yourself here with another of your comments. In another comment you said

                    How often have you managed to convince someone of something by arguing with them on the internet? Or been convinced of something yourself? It’s quite rare.

                    And now you’re saying you have a duty to convince others to change their mind by arguing with them on the internet. So is honest argumentation effective or isn’t it?