Edit 2025-01-13: LW has indicated they will be clarifying these rules soon. In the mean time, the community will remain locked until those are updated and deemed acceptable.
So the LW Team put out an announcement on new, site-wide moderation policy (see post link). I've defended, to many a downvote, pretty much every major decision they've made, but I absolutely cannot defend this one. In short, mods are expected to counter pretty much every batshit claim rather than mod it as misinformation, trolling, attack on groups, etc.
My rebuttal (using my main account) to the announcement: https://dubvee.org/comment/3541322
We're going to allow some "flat earth" comments. We're going to force some moderators to accept some "flat earth" comments. The point of this is that you should be able to counter those comments with words, and not need moderation/admin tools to do so.
(emphases mine)
Me: What if, to use the recent example from Meta, someone comes into a LGBT+ community and says they think being gay is a mental illness and /or link some quack study? Is that an attack on a group or is it "respectful dissent"?
LW: A lot of attacks like that are common and worth refuting once in awhile anyway. It can be valuable to show the response on occasion
I understand what they're trying to address here (highly encourage you to read the linked post), but the way they're going about it is heavy handed and reeks of "both sides"-ing every community, removing agency from the community moderators who work like hell to keep these spaces safe and civil, and opening the floodgates for misinformation and "civil" hate speech. How this new policy fits with their Terms of Service is completely lost to me.
I'll leave the speculation as to whether Musk dropped LW a big check as an exercise to the reader.
For now, this community is going dark in protest and I encourage other communities who may disagree with this new policy to join. Again, I understand the problem that is trying to be addressed, but this new policy, as-written, is not the way to do it.
Ehhhh, the problem with that is Brandolini's law, aka, asymmetrical bullshit.
The process of refuting bullshit takes more time and effort that spewing bullshit.
While the line of what is and isn't well established enough to not merit dissent vs just removing bullshit can be cloudy, it isn't cloudy in everything.
Hell, the very example used, flat earth, is 100% not worth refuting again. It's empty headed bullshit that is so well established that it wastes everyone's time and electricity countering it at all. It just needs to be moderated away.
There is no respectful dissent about some things, period.
You come out with some anti vaccination stupidity? Bye. You already ignored a century of established data on the subject, one more internet rebuttal isn't fixing your stupidity.
Come in with nazi rhetoric? Bye, because fuck a nazi piece of shit.
We're not talking about a difference of opinion on whether roasting is better than pan frying. The kind of things the policy was trying to address are the kind of issues where there's no such thing as respectful discourse to begin with. It's about political rhetoric.
The problem is that the admins made the policy over broad, giving it the shotgun treatment, and it was a horrible move.