hate twitter, but this is something its community notes gets right. it takes all of two clicks for us to see a removed comment and when it’s “Reason: misinformation” that does nothing to combat the misinformation.
like you don’t have to link articles for obvious stuff like antivaxx shit (though that’s appreciated). but when it’s like deep lore on political parties or terrorist groups, or when the comment is like 80 paragraphs long “reason: misinformation” doesn’t really cut it and doesn’t inform the community of what specific point(s) of information were false.
for all but the most egregious misinformation (such as those encouraging or threatening harm, which should be modded anyway for those reasons), if you can’t link an article in the modlog it’s almost better to leave the comment up and let your community do a paragraph by paragraph fact check for you. otherwise it’s just kind of festering out there unchecked, your servers are still hosting the misinformation, just in modlog form.
i think giving info correcting links was more common in the past so no idk why it’s uncommon now. hoping this can be some friendly constructive criticism :)
Disagree on account of Brandolini’s Law
Don’t let bad faith liars drag you down.
also fair.
a mod here suggested forcing users to cite dubious claims which i do like the vibe of. puts the labor of research on the potential perpetrator.
Sourcing just shifts the problem to having to verify the source though. Antivax people could easily cite thousands of sources. We’d know there bullshit, but some mod would be stuck needing to vet them.
It’s easy for common misinformation like antivax, but more unusual claims could easily be left around just because they have something seemingly relevant linked.
I don’t disagree with the idea, it just isn’t enough of a fix and would still require a lot of work.
There’s nowhere on the internet saying that you don’t actually kill kittens as a hobby. Guess I can just said that wherever I want because can’t be prove false.
so this one would be generally modded as harrassment or a personal attack, not misinfo
thanks for the example though
The point I’m trying to make is that the proof should be on the person saying something, not in the person trying to disprove or reporting the dis information. If I say that you kill kittens, it should be me who show proof that that is true.
Compare “When did you stop beating your wife?”
There are many ways to spread disinformation without making a direct personal attack.
that’s a pretty direct personal attack idk man. mods are human beings they aren’t gonna get fooled by framing harrassment as a question.
Yeah they removed one of my comments for misinformation even tho it took one simple google search to prove it
I agree. With everything you said
Misinformation shouldn’t be a removal reason. It’s an easily abused rule, and it validates the notion that suppression is happening. By allowing it to stay, you can gauge how pervasive a belief is, and you have a handy ability to comment an explain to future readers the level of bullshit in the comment. This also makes for less work from the mods.
Correction links mean fuck all to the original poster, so putting them in a mod log isn’t that helpful as most won’t see it that might benefit from it.
understandable (e: except for TOS violations)
sometimes i wish i could tag a bad comment under my posts to the mods like “hey keep this little freak of a guy around unless they get worse, i want something to cite next time i complain about transphobia/sexism/racism” lol
Not removing misinformation doesn’t mean not enforcing other rules. It does mean you need a more concrete reason to do so.
