I thought it might be helpful to post the current site (lemmy.world) rules here to remind you nice people what they are. You can see them by following the link in the side bar.
General guidance on posting and participating:
- Do not post about inflammatory, controversial subjects without a Content Warning. Ideally, you would not post about inflammatory subjects at all. However, it may be acceptable to do so in some cases, but it is never acceptable to post inflammatory content without hiding the content behind an appropriate Content Warning.
- Do not post any type of nudity without a Content Warning.
- Regarding Spam: We are not your free advertising platform. If you are here only to sell your products or services, you will be removed. Occasional posts of commercial links are OK, but when the vast majority of a user’s posts are commercial in nature, we regard the account as a Spam account. Moderators will evaluate reports of Spam on a case by case basis.
- Do not engage in name calling, ad hominem attacks, or any other uncivil behaviour. Criticize ideas, never people.
- Do not report every post that upsets you. Please report posts that violate our rules but for others that you may find distasteful, or just don’t like, use the tools available to you. You can block the user or mute the conversation.
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Isn’t politics / ethics inherently inflammatory?
There’s a difference between asking “Canadian liberals, why do you oppose such and such law?” and “Canadian libtards, why do you always do dumb stuff like opposing such and such?”
Sure, but the subject is the same; it’s still posting about ‘such and such’, and the rule here is about subject, not framing.
If I need to put a content warning on a topic that could be inflammatory if someone appended ‘you stupid fuck’ to the end of it, then I need to put a content warning on everything, rendering it useless.
I respect the intent behind this, but I’ve been round internet (and pre-internet) discussion forums since the 80s, and this approach just muddies the water.
To be fair, when someone seasons their arguments with invective like you stupid fuck, to me, it reduces their credibility as a party interested in learning or arguing in good faith.
There are consequences to conversing online like a typical COD gamer.
I’m not sure how that’s relevant here.
There’s a ton of highly-polarizing, hot-button political issues out there at the moment - trans rights, climate change, the republican party, et cetera et cetera.
Presenting those issues in a blunt or confrontational manner is virtually guaranteed to generate strong feelings; starting a fight over them would be trivially easy.
By any reasonable metric, you’d have to call those topics inflammatory. But is it useful or appropriate to ban discussion of them from the platform on that basis?
I hold that it is not. They are inflammatory because they are important, because people need to be talking about them and taking a position, because people should be trying to convince others to be on the right side of history.
If people have to self-censor just in case things could potentially get heated, because god forbid anyone care enough to raise their voice, all you’re left with is celebrity gossip and fashion news - and that’s exactly the kind of bland advertiser-friendly pap I thought we were trying to avoid.
Quite frankly if you aren’t getting angry about important things, you’re doing it wrong - and imho it just smacks of entitlement to play tone-police and refusing to hear a message because the phrasing isn’t polite or the person saying it won’t stay in their designated lane.
I’m not asking people to stay in their lane, which is about disregarding their opinion based on their own circumstances. But I think its possible to argue an opinion without adding ad hominem attacks (e.g. well, you’re just an idiot ) or poisoning the well ( Anyone who disagrees with me is insincere about their convictions )
I assume you don’t mean to imply the internet population on average is incapaalble of discussing serious matters without popping off like the Midnight Bomber What Bombs At Midnight. Granted I have a background in tech support but that should not be a step up from the average regarding basic civility.
First point:
- High-stakes, polarising issues by their very nature raise strong feeliings, making them ‘inflammatory subjects’ by definition.
- However, censoring discussion of these issues would lead to a bland, feckless environment where activism and even the discussion of social justice issues is hidden, and the status quo is tacictly endorsed. Which, when the right of marginalised groups is on the line, is horrible injustice by default.
- Censoring discussion of certain issues because other people might potentially yell about them is even worse. If I go into /c/chess and start yelling in everyone’s threads, would that make chess an ‘inflammatory subject’ that people should avoid talking about?
Second point:
- The tone argument is routinely abused by privileged groups.
- It’s easy to have smug, civil, all-friends-here armchair debates on a purely intellectual level, when it’s not your life and the welfare of your children that’s being actively threatened by the outcome.
- As such, this forms the basis of a highly disingenuous tactic: Calmly discuss the merits of some hideous proposal, then when you get a lot of angry responses from the people affected by it, point out that it just proves your point: these subhuman oafs aren’t even capable of rational or courteous discussion!
- (the above is exaggerated for effect, but not a whole lot - see chapter 5 of The Witch trials of J. K. Rowling (though the entire video is fascinating and you should watch it).
- I too am a sysadmin. Fuck the tone argument, alexa play 70s punk rock.
I’m one of the crazy, disaster-queer anarchist pinko commies defending the marginalized, and its usually the outraged privileged losing their shit and showing poor tone, in my experience. This might reflect more consistent value on the other side of loyalty before principle such as when they accuse us of snowflakery while at the same time taking offense when common behavior subjects them to ridicule.
You and I are on the same side, I think. And yes, while I can’t fault someone for losing their cool when someone is suggesting they should be persecuted / annihilated / forced to follow a silly religious faith, I’ve found I reach more hearts and minds keeping my language civil, especially in the face of boisterous bigotry.
But then, I’ve also studied a bit, so my opinions and methods might be on more solid ground than most.
No, in principle it’s possible to discuss them like civilized people. People usually don’t on the internet, but it’s not a logical impossibility or anything. “Karma” and political astroturfing don’t really lend themselves to that, though, so on Reddit they usually were. This is supposed to be a chance to do it right, I think, along with a few other things.
Everytime I hear about the trolley problem I am triggered.
The trolley problem is misused a lot. Outside a moral philosophy classroom and making trolley-problem jokes, there are better examples of paradoxes to dontological suppositions.
From what I’ve seen so far, it’s just a broad rule they can point to if they want to remove certain content.
Essentially it’s their house and we’re just renting a room.
Sure, but the best ruleset I’ve ever seen actually work is “don’t make us ban you”. Everyone knows where they stand with that one.
Having blanket ‘rules’ that are enforced at-will under the pretense that they’re actual rules, like anti-loitering laws… tend to get used less-transparently and more disingenously.
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What I would like to see is fewer downer questions that drowned reddit and made me unsubscribe. I’ve already started to see them here.
Like “What song makes you sad?” “What screams ‘I’m lonely’?” or “What is the dumbest, most infuriating thing you’ve heard your coworker say?”
Every single one of your examples sounds like askreddit/asklemmy. Just block that community if you want to avoid them.
Which is a pity, because AskReddit used to have interesting questions a few years ago.
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I don’t agree about 1 and 4. Let the people speak by using their down and upvotes. That’s the power behind a platform like this. That’s how Reddit got big.
If you’re going to be overly strict people will post and comment less and some might even fully avoid Lemmy.
Of course things like gore and NSFW pics and vids should be behind a content warning. But other things?
I’ve blocked communities I absolutely don’t want to see and interact with. For everything else: down and upvotes.
On the other hand, what’s the harm of a content warning? If you feel like you’re okay clicking on something you’ve been warned about, you’re not any worse off.
Number 4 also seems like basic etiquette to me. You can’t always downvote and move on if someone decides to be a dick and hits home. Why blame the victim and not the perpetrator? There’s no reason to be uncivil to begin with.
Content warnings can be a bad thing. It’s the very first thing that’s in most posts, and so it forces you to read it. Otherwise someone can just skip by because the the actual discussion of the topic is deep without a paragraph, and usually doesn’t come out of nowhere
Content warnings can be a bad thing.
In what way could a content warning ever be bad?
HEY THIS IS ABOUT RAPE
Is jarring. The warning itself is the triggering thing. https://theconversation.com/proceed-with-caution-the-trouble-with-trigger-warnings-192598
The only content warning on Lemmy is the NFSW tag tho. That’s what they were talking about.
