Given the state of technology, politics, and social media, we all share fears about interacting with bots, or having our social media manipulated. We know that this is happening on other platforms that are driven by engagement/profit models. However, Lemmy is about people – like you! While this platform is not immune to bots, we have several layers of protections in place to remove bots and trolls as quickly as possible.
Some of these operations are performed automatically at a server level, and you likely never see them at all. Some rely on the reporting system and the common sense of our userbase – that’s you again! If you believe that another user is a bot, please report it and our mod team will investigate. Please keep in mind that real people really do have radically different points of view. Not everyone who disagrees with you is a bot or troll. Do not abuse the report system.
We encourage the expression and discussion of different points of view, as long as the discussion is civil and in good faith. It is not a civil form of disagreement to call another user a bot or paid actor in posts or comments. It is a personal attack, which is a violation of our first rule. We have updated the language of the rule in our sidebar to reflect this. Our first priority is for the safety of our users to express their ideas. Thanks!
- Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Good idea to make it official, I'll float the idea of applying it to Politics and World News as well.
Do you mean float it with the users, or float it with the other moderators?
Other moderators. We already know how the users feel, lots of reports on it even though it doesn't technically break the current rules.
Hm… how does seeing a lot of reports translate into most users agree with these rules, though? How do you know it isn’t just a bunch of vocal users who like to do reports?
I mean, like I say I actually like the rule with some caveats, but I’d be curious to see the results of an informal survey or something instead of just assuming the volume of reports correlates well with what the users think is important. I don’t report misinformation, because I feel like generally mod intervention isn’t the way to address it, but that definitely doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s a problem (and actually a much bigger one than people being rude and unproductive in their way of responding to the problem, although that is also a problem yes.)
Well, that's where the discussion among the other mods comes in. :) I PERSONALLY feel it's a good idea, and I Iike the idea of News, Politics, and World News all being on the same page, but it's not solely up to me, nor should it be.
But it is solely up to the mod team, and the users who like to bounce on the “report” button, and not the consensus of the community as a whole?
I mean… you don’t have to answer that. I’m not trying to get in an argument about it and you can do what you like obviously. I just was a little surprised to hear that this is the big problem people want to solve - I feel pretty confident that if you surveyed the user base outside the bounds of the report button, most people would feel as I do that the propaganda is a much bigger issue than the people who get rude about the propaganda.
I think also that a lot of my prickliness in this comes not from the specific rule but from wondering about the question I asked OP - like I say, as written it seems perfectly reasonable (sort of just a clarification on the personal attack rule). But it’s interesting to me the question I asked, is this gonna creep into a “no talking about the shills or you get banned” or “no pointing out inconsistencies in another user’s story” rule.
One question I am curious about; do you personally feel that propaganda accounts are a problem at all on Lemmy? Do you feel like anything should be done to address that, in cases that aren’t bots or obvious sockpuppets or other things that can be administratively detected with surety?