Moderators banning/censoring people arent oppressors violating your rights; they are customer service representatives curating a space for their intended customers. All this to say, I see you Karen.
As a newly-appointed moderator myself, I think "customer service representatives curating a space" is going a little too far. I see myself more as a janitor taking out the trash while doing my best to leave all the art alone, whether I like it or not.
It's a very mixed bag, dependently largely on the personal views of the moderators at-large relative to the speakers. For the most part, the mods at .world seem egalitarian and amicable to liberalish dissenting views. We haven't seen a slew of censorship/bannings over arguments about veganism or Israel/Palestine or capitalism vs socialism.
But the "y'all deserve to get banned" mentality is largely tied up in the idea that their ideas are bad for being outside the spectrum of your allowable discourse. Meanwhile, a community like .ml or Truth Social doing a censorship/ban on content is morally repugnant because its limiting conversations that are inside the spectrum of your allowable discourse.
The technical mechanics of these communities are the same, everyone's just arguing where the lines should be drawn.
Not to be that guy, but exactly what kind of conversation are we supposed to have with fascists and people openly calling for an end to both your and my liberties?
Ideas are debatable, but there's no debating that we all deserve to live and to exist. But I've ever only encountered far too many people from the right openly calling for the opposite of that. My own existence to them is offensive and worthy of murder. I want to have no conversation with such people, but you seem to be willing to tolerate that for the sake of "just having a conversation".
No, they're usually just power tripping. When certain people get even a modicum of power, real or imagined, they become full-on dictators at superluminal velocities. There's some crossover with powerless people seeking revenge on the world at large (or any piece of it) for their misfortune or flights against them, real or imagined. I don't have any data on the ratios but my gut instinct wild-ass guess is that at least 25-33% fall into the tinpot tyrant category.
I imagine that phenomenon is similar to how super sheltered kids become the wildest teenagers/young adults (whichever age they are when they first get a taste of freedom.) Like how people with newfound freedom often party hard with it, people who've never been in a position of power before can easily take their new authority too far.
Totally not excusing it. It's not some inevitable "human nature" thing. There are good parents, teachers, and others in positions of authority that take their responsibility to others seriously. They're the ones that allow some modicum of function in society.
But those who seek power for its own sake are going to be ruthless about it. Then once someone has power, it's extremely difficult for them to let it go.
As a head CSR for my job : no mod I've ever seen is anything close to providing customer service and it's hilarious that you'd even think that in passing
You see us as customers, by your own words. So much for community. Trying to misplace and simplify the situation using this metaphor this way is basically also another way of justifying not even ostracization, but autocracies as communities.
Nope, I think curat3d spaces should be allowed to exsist. Suppression would only exist if you owned a space and it was being squelched by an outside organization.
So, purely hypothetically, you would be fine with a curator deleting / omitting a fact because it goes against the narrative they are driving?
Interesting… personally I’d before prefer (edit - damn predictive) to read a truth I disliked than to continue believing erroneous information; but that’s just me.
“The ultimate test of a society’s freedom is not how it treats its good, obedient, compliant citizens; it’s how it treats its dissidents.” - Glenn Greenwald
Okay, sure, but Greenwald's an absolute fascist-apologist piece of shit who only hides behind a liberal-libertarian veneer when it is convenient.
Past that, the problem you run into with dissent is that it is heavily predicated on whether you are willing to endorse the dissenters. The more alien a community's political views and activities, the less tolerant admins become. The cause of Luigi Mangione is the most notable one, as certain communities seem to reveal in cannonizing his image while others furiously scrub out anything but the most derogatory mention of his name.
How do you distinguish between the dissident Freedom Fighter and the dissident Terrorist? What do you perceive as the limit of tolerance towards the intolerant? What kind of advocacy is constructive and what is merely provocative or trollish?
When you've got a guy like Glenn paling around with Tucker Carlson and bemoaning the Woke Antifa Left one minute, then crying over their own community of MAGA Truthers getting deep sixed by the Deep State, it seems the very idea of legitimate "dissent" is predicated on whether you align with it or not.
Independent, Unencumbered Analysis and Investigative Reporting, Captive to No Dogma or Faction.
He criticizes the duopoly and the oligarchy, but I know those loyal to the duopoly tend to become tribal if people don't outright support one side and hate the other.
Glenn has proven himself as a journalist with his reporting of Edward Snowden and much more.
He does not fall into simplistic political groups, so I understand the frustration some political factions have with people like him.
Which people do you recommend if Glenn Greenwald does not meet your standards?
If you trust this person to tell you, and everybody else here, how to speak, then either your speech is worthless to you or this conversation is worthless to you.
Communities are not owned by moderators. They are built by those that participate. The primary fallacy I see is the idea that anyone can start a different community and that size and momentum are meaningless. That is simply not the case.
An authoritarian or very active mod, in any community with public participation is actively abusing those users when they act in opposition to the interests of the community. A visible mod is a bad mod. The job of mod is as a janitor acting in the interests of the community. If you care about authority or steering, you shouldn't be a mod or admin.
Nothing about being a mod is hard. You don't need to read every post or comment. All you do is setup the basic guidelines and trust the community to vote and flag bad stuff. The community will always flag the bad stuff. The only part that really matters is that you set yourself aside and really look into any flagged issue while giving the benefit of the doubt in absolutely every possible way one can imagine while never allowing bigotry type abuse. This is how to be a good mod, to be an invisible mod. The job is only to herd bad bots and sort the flags from others.
Moderation plays a big part in shaping the community. Are community guidlines not set by the mods? If there are people participating not following the guidlines they get squelched because they weren't following the rules agreed to by everyone participating in that community.
Those were a lot of different points. I think they’re important and I respect your view.
I‘m not sure though if I see it exactly the same:
ownership
i think this assumes a lot. You could of course start more communities and I did so. But of course your goal can be different.
authority
I agree, authority should not be important.
modding is easy
I dont think that is the case. Modding - especially good modding - is very hard, as you mentioned yourself. A mod needs enough restraint to take their ego out of the equation and needs to see when the community rules get broken and act accordingly. A lot of bad mods are too eager or too lax with bigotry.
only flagged content needs looking at
It needs to be looked at first and the rest is optional, yes. But a mod should definitely trust their gut and be an active part in the community they mod. Ideally under a different name though so to divide between mod stuff and non.
I think it's ok to be somewhat active in my community that way people at least see that there's a mod present and didn't abandon the community. I haven't had to ban anyone yet, but I did give two people a gentle warning because they had started to get off topic and argue, which is outside the scope of the group.