the Ozma one is low hanging fruit because the mod who did the ban said in precise language that it was being done in an effort to control the narrative
That’s not at all what he said. He said, more or less, that Ozma had indicated that he was deliberately trying to control the narrative. Specifically, he said he was seeking out anti-Biden stories and posting them as a sort of semi-automated process, just as many as he could find, to bring “balance” or something along those lines to the narrative. He wasn’t all that concerned with whether the stories were true – just “which side” of the narrative they supported.
Like I said, I actually don’t agree with that being a good reason for banning him, although I do agree he should have been banned. To be honest I think the design of a lot of Lemmy’s systems, moderation included, is just fundamentally broken. If someone wants to come in and manipulate the narrative (which again was what ozma specifically said he was trying to do), there’s not any good way to prevent them, which is a problem.
Also like I said I think if you study this objectively you will see that mod abuse works the opposite of the way you’re thinking that it does. I think the vast majority of mods that are trying to manipulate the narrative are ones most people haven’t heard of, that are quietly finding reasons to ban anyone who argues too loudly with return2ozma or whatever. But I’m happy to see the data. Personally, after having looked at the way the systems fit together and how people try to abuse them on both sides of the user/moderator divide, and done a certain amount of your same type of numerical analysis, I think the right thing to do is more or less to just throw a lot of the core concepts away (or, maybe better, layer some better core concepts on top of them and bring moderation back to its role as just keeping the porn / spam away and try to depend on higher-level constructs to keep debates on track.)
But it would be important to getting a complete picture to also look at someones posts and maybe try and look at how that impacts narratives.
IDK if you really need to do this. You’re welcome to, but I feel like instead of spending any significant time trying to prove any particular way that the existing systems are broken, just accepting that they (in particular the “mods are gods” model) are broken, and trying to make something better, might be a better way.
I thought today partly because of this conversation about making a politics community which was something along the lines of:
This community works differently to how most politics communities work. It has strict rules designed to facilitate productive discussion. You can be rude, to a point, but you can’t participate in bad faith:
If you claim someone said something they didn’t say, that’s a temp ban.
If you make a factual claim but then aren’t interested in backing it up, that’s a temp ban.
If you’re asked one or two reasonable questions about what you said, and you’re still talking but you’re pretending the questions didn’t happen, that’s a temp ban.
The idea is to make the discussion productive. Let’s see how it works. Maybe this is a fool’s errand but IDK how any set of moderation could be worse than lemmy.world.
Other misc rules:
Reliable sources only.
No image / video posts.
Self posts for discussion are fine.
No personal insults.
No racism / transphobia / related bigotry.
In that world, you’d be able to ban return2ozma the first time he posted an article about how Biden did some horrifying thing that he objectively didn’t do, and someone asked about it in the comments, and ozma said “IDK I’m just trying to bring balance” and posted 5 more articles. For me, I would vastly prefer that over the current moderation structure where it is sort of arbitrary rules and the comments are mostly a bad faith free-for-all where the mods’ actions don’t really do all that much beyond keeping obvious death threats and things away.
I think the vast majority of mods that are trying to manipulate the narrative are ones most people haven’t heard of, that are quietly finding reasons to ban anyone who argues too loudly with return2ozma or whatever.
A big part of this is about power dynamics. Moderators are in a position of power, return2ozma has only the power of their rhetoric, their prominence, and the support of the community. The power dynamic is important. But we can deal with that when we’re writing.
“Good move, they were a clown and pointing out that they were arguing entirely in bad faith is correct.”
“Dude thank God”
“My take is the dude just filled the board with unrelenting misery.”
“I think I agree more with the spam angle than the “only bad news” angle.”
“I blocked him quite a while ago. Poll after poll after poll were filling up my feed at one point. Fuck that shit. You sir, may fuck off.”
I can’t rightly tell if you are legitimately this bad at remembering / perceiving what is happening on Lemmy, is why you’re giving me this whole alternate history where with the power of his rhetoric, he was trying to bring light to the darkness, and the mods just wouldn’t allow it so they could shape the narrative, but it’s seeming less and less likely that this is innocent mistakenness on your part the longer I talk to you about it.
They aren’t a mod. They don’t have power in the relationship. Just straight up.
Mods have a degree of power and control in the relationship that Ozma doesn’t have; and you are giving me an excellent example of how they can use that power to structure and control a narrative.
Mods have a power that a user/ participant will never have.
And the example you are providing is a perfect example of what I want to highlight. The mods used their power to create the impression of a specific narrative, and you bought it. Other voices, objecting to this, were actively being suppressed in this very thread. But the mods have the power in the relationship, so you see at the top the comments you are highlighting: this is exactly the kind of abuse of power I intend to highlight. And your perceptions of what you think was happening is the exact effect I’m interesting in documenting.
And the key here, is that, in-spite of their power, reality has a way of coming around. Ozma was “right” in the sense that when history was finally written, they’re on the right side of it, and Jordan is on the wrong side. Jordan won the narrative battle, but lost the narrative war. Jordan’s ability to control and manage that narrative is perfectly on display in those top comments, but now, the narrative has shifted towards the narrative that Ozma was trying to construct and deliver.
More broadly, everyone is always trying to construct these kinds of narratives. You are trying to construct a narrative. I’m trying to construct a narrative. Ozma is trying to construct a narrative. Jordan is trying to construct a narrative. But only has Jordan has the ability to drop a ban hammer. That’s the critical difference. Thats the power dynamic that is present.
Edit, to put a finer point on it.
Say in this thread the community is 90:10 in agreement with the ban. Lets say today that people would be 40:60 in favor of a ban. That’s would be a 50 point swing in Ozma’s favor.
The mods used their power to create the impression of a specific narrative, and you bought it.
Everyone knows I always obey what the mods want to shape, as the narrative. Especially Jordan.
Ozma was “right” in the sense that when history was finally written, they’re on the right side of it, and Jordan is on the wrong side. Jordan won the narrative battle, but lost the narrative war. Jordan’s ability to control and manage that narrative is perfectly on display in those top comments, but now, the narrative has shifted towards the narrative that Ozma was trying to construct and deliver.
If you accept a whole bunch of reframings of things into other things, then yes, this makes perfect sense. For example, you might say that because ozma can’t say his viewpoint 15 times a day, but only as many times a day as other people who are posting a variety of viewpoints including criticism of the Democrats, that means his viewpoint was suppressed, on purpose because Jordan bans any constructive criticism of the Democrats, and so on.
I can’t really add anything to what I’ve said already. You’re welcome to have the interpretation you like of what happened. It sounds like you’re pretty attached to your current one.
Sorry, did something I said sound like “I’d like to have an extended debate about this with you?” I think I’ve laid out pretty clearly how I feel about it and why at this point.
I’m not stopping you from laying out your thing, you can still say it. I feel like it’ll probably just be a reiteration of what you already said, which is why I don’t really want to go back and forth about it, I got your point already and I felt like I said my thing in turn. But sure, go ahead.
That’s not at all what he said. He said, more or less, that Ozma had indicated that he was deliberately trying to control the narrative. Specifically, he said he was seeking out anti-Biden stories and posting them as a sort of semi-automated process, just as many as he could find, to bring “balance” or something along those lines to the narrative. He wasn’t all that concerned with whether the stories were true – just “which side” of the narrative they supported.
Like I said, I actually don’t agree with that being a good reason for banning him, although I do agree he should have been banned. To be honest I think the design of a lot of Lemmy’s systems, moderation included, is just fundamentally broken. If someone wants to come in and manipulate the narrative (which again was what ozma specifically said he was trying to do), there’s not any good way to prevent them, which is a problem.
Also like I said I think if you study this objectively you will see that mod abuse works the opposite of the way you’re thinking that it does. I think the vast majority of mods that are trying to manipulate the narrative are ones most people haven’t heard of, that are quietly finding reasons to ban anyone who argues too loudly with return2ozma or whatever. But I’m happy to see the data. Personally, after having looked at the way the systems fit together and how people try to abuse them on both sides of the user/moderator divide, and done a certain amount of your same type of numerical analysis, I think the right thing to do is more or less to just throw a lot of the core concepts away (or, maybe better, layer some better core concepts on top of them and bring moderation back to its role as just keeping the porn / spam away and try to depend on higher-level constructs to keep debates on track.)
IDK if you really need to do this. You’re welcome to, but I feel like instead of spending any significant time trying to prove any particular way that the existing systems are broken, just accepting that they (in particular the “mods are gods” model) are broken, and trying to make something better, might be a better way.
I thought today partly because of this conversation about making a politics community which was something along the lines of:
This community works differently to how most politics communities work. It has strict rules designed to facilitate productive discussion. You can be rude, to a point, but you can’t participate in bad faith:
The idea is to make the discussion productive. Let’s see how it works. Maybe this is a fool’s errand but IDK how any set of moderation could be worse than lemmy.world.
Other misc rules:
In that world, you’d be able to ban return2ozma the first time he posted an article about how Biden did some horrifying thing that he objectively didn’t do, and someone asked about it in the comments, and ozma said “IDK I’m just trying to bring balance” and posted 5 more articles. For me, I would vastly prefer that over the current moderation structure where it is sort of arbitrary rules and the comments are mostly a bad faith free-for-all where the mods’ actions don’t really do all that much beyond keeping obvious death threats and things away.
Can you sense the salt in my overall feelings lol
A big part of this is about power dynamics. Moderators are in a position of power, return2ozma has only the power of their rhetoric, their prominence, and the support of the community. The power dynamic is important. But we can deal with that when we’re writing.
The fuck are you smoking?
https://lemmy.world/post/16224102
Top replies:
I can’t rightly tell if you are legitimately this bad at remembering / perceiving what is happening on Lemmy, is why you’re giving me this whole alternate history where with the power of his rhetoric, he was trying to bring light to the darkness, and the mods just wouldn’t allow it so they could shape the narrative, but it’s seeming less and less likely that this is innocent mistakenness on your part the longer I talk to you about it.
They aren’t a mod. They don’t have power in the relationship. Just straight up.
Mods have a degree of power and control in the relationship that Ozma doesn’t have; and you are giving me an excellent example of how they can use that power to structure and control a narrative.
Mods have a power that a user/ participant will never have.
And the example you are providing is a perfect example of what I want to highlight. The mods used their power to create the impression of a specific narrative, and you bought it. Other voices, objecting to this, were actively being suppressed in this very thread. But the mods have the power in the relationship, so you see at the top the comments you are highlighting: this is exactly the kind of abuse of power I intend to highlight. And your perceptions of what you think was happening is the exact effect I’m interesting in documenting.
And the key here, is that, in-spite of their power, reality has a way of coming around. Ozma was “right” in the sense that when history was finally written, they’re on the right side of it, and Jordan is on the wrong side. Jordan won the narrative battle, but lost the narrative war. Jordan’s ability to control and manage that narrative is perfectly on display in those top comments, but now, the narrative has shifted towards the narrative that Ozma was trying to construct and deliver.
More broadly, everyone is always trying to construct these kinds of narratives. You are trying to construct a narrative. I’m trying to construct a narrative. Ozma is trying to construct a narrative. Jordan is trying to construct a narrative. But only has Jordan has the ability to drop a ban hammer. That’s the critical difference. Thats the power dynamic that is present.
Edit, to put a finer point on it.
Say in this thread the community is 90:10 in agreement with the ban. Lets say today that people would be 40:60 in favor of a ban. That’s would be a 50 point swing in Ozma’s favor.
Everyone knows I always obey what the mods want to shape, as the narrative. Especially Jordan.
If you accept a whole bunch of reframings of things into other things, then yes, this makes perfect sense. For example, you might say that because ozma can’t say his viewpoint 15 times a day, but only as many times a day as other people who are posting a variety of viewpoints including criticism of the Democrats, that means his viewpoint was suppressed, on purpose because Jordan bans any constructive criticism of the Democrats, and so on.
I can’t really add anything to what I’ve said already. You’re welcome to have the interpretation you like of what happened. It sounds like you’re pretty attached to your current one.
Okay, but you can at least agree that mods have a form of power that user/participants dont?
Sorry, did something I said sound like “I’d like to have an extended debate about this with you?” I think I’ve laid out pretty clearly how I feel about it and why at this point.
Lol. We get to the rub of the matter and you want to take your ball and go home.
I’m not stopping you from laying out your thing, you can still say it. I feel like it’ll probably just be a reiteration of what you already said, which is why I don’t really want to go back and forth about it, I got your point already and I felt like I said my thing in turn. But sure, go ahead.