@ernest how do I report a Magazin on kbin.social ? There is a usere called “ps” who is posting to his own “antiwoke” Magazin on kbin.social. Please remove this and dont give them a chance to etablish them self on kbin.social. When I report his stuff it will go to him because he is the moderator of the magazin? Seems like a problem. Screenshot of the “antiwoke” Magazin /sub on kbin.social. 4 Headlines are visible, 2 exampels: “Time to reject the extrem trans lobby harming our society” “How to end wokeness” #Moderation #kbin #kbin.social 📎

edit: dont feed the troll, im shure ernest will delet them all when he sees this. report and move on.

  • Streisand effect for sure. There seems to be run of these types of posts in the fediverse lately. People don’t seem to realize that sometimes they’re better off letting these situations take their natural course (and die), and not intervene unless it grows beyond manageability.

    • The problem is that by that point it will have grown beyond manageability. You know the “Nazi bar” saying.

      There’s a bunch of people (who are Nazis) and they seem cool, quiet, well spoken, just having a drink. And they bring their friends and those guys are cool too. Then those guys bring their friends and those guys are less cool and now normal people don’t drink at the bar anymore and you look around and it’s a Nazi bar and you can’t make them leave or they’ll start causing “problems”. So. I’m all for just using the brutal hammer of censorship.

      It’s not a free speech platform and no one ever said it was.

        • Something else that occurred to me. If someone posted something that was pro-woke in /r/conservative or on Parler or any of those other apps, they’d get banned immediately. “Free Speech” only seems to be a concern when it’s right-wingers posting on left-leaning forums, never the reverse.

          I think that taking the free speech argument at face value in the present day just means you’re gullible.

          • I think hardcore conservatives simply don’t have an inherent sense of empathy. That’s why they don’t really care about the victims of a crime, disaster, etc. until it happens to them personally. They do not have the perspective to put themselves in another person’s shoes.

            It’s NOT an intelligence issue. It’s easy to write people off as stupid, but that’s not the case. For them, being unable to think with empathy is as natural as being unable to see infrared light.

            They’ve figured out that making themselves appear to be victims can sometimes make people listen, but they can’t fully explain why. That lack of understanding is why they don’t see the hypocrisy in banning people from their platforms, but then whining loudly when they’re treated the same way.

            This is all just guesswork, but it’s the best explanation I’ve been able to come up with that doesn’t make my head explode.

            • Cross out the “hardcore”, lack of empathy is very much a core part of conservatism no matter which side of conservatism, social | fiscal, you lean into and by how much. If you’re socially conservative you want every social aspect to stay as it is which proves inherently a lack of empathy. If you’re fiscally conservative you want monetary value to stay as is (in terms of inflation and cost-cutting etc.) no matter whom it hurts (as long as it doesn’t hurt you, of course).

              Which is why I personally think it actually is (also) an intelligence issue, because the people that are not socially conservative and only fiscally conservative usually vote for the party of big government and military spending ® which goes against anything fiscally conservative and as a “cool” side effect also proves to be detrimental to social values of different people and groups.

              You probably know the quote by George Carlin, as its a told tale as old as day. I think the quote nicely illustrates the voting game in the US.

          • Reminds me of a quote by Nazi minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels from 1935, after the Nazis took power:

            “Wenn unsere Gegner sagen: Ja, wir haben Euch doch früher die […] Freiheit der Meinung zugebilligt – –, ja, Ihr uns, das ist doch kein Beweis, daß wir das Euch auch tuen sollen! […] Daß Ihr das uns gegeben habt, – das ist ja ein Beweis dafür, wie dumm Ihr seid!”

            source

            Rough translation:

            “When our enemies say: But we’ve granted you […] freedom of opinion back in the day – –, well, yes, you granted it to us, but that is no proof that we should do likewise! […] The fact that you granted it to us, – that is only proof for how stupid you are!”

            For fascists at least talking about freedom of speech and the like is just another tool they try to wield in their quest to gain power, nothing else.

        • It depends on your definition of free speech, the US constitution does consider it part of free speech.

          The US constitution also considers free speech a right that protect a websites right not to repeat hate speech, not a users “right” to force a website to host their speech. In the constitutions view of the world free speech is protection against the government, not a tool to force other people to host your speech.

          • I really do not care about your constitution. I’m from Germany not the US.

            ‘“Germany places strict limits on speech and expression when it comes to right-wing extremism” or anything reminiscent of Nazism. Hate speech on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity also is banned in Germany.’

            And I think this is the way all countries should handle it. No need to defend people promoting hate speech by debating me or your definition of free speach, I do not adhere by it.

            Edit: I will wear 10A(ssholes’) downvote as a badge of honor, thank you!

            • I’m actually not from the US, I was just giving it as an example because it is the most famous one that unequivocally does include it.

              What I’m really saying is “free speech” isn’t really one thing. It means different things in different contexts. For instance the breadth of “free speech” you should allow in what you promise to repeat (that’s what hosting something is) is much smaller than the breadth of “free speech” that you should not think less of someone for saying is in turn much smaller than the breadth of “free speech” that you should not wield the power of government to punish. And people legitimately disagree on where each of those boundaries lie.

              I do think I missed the mark with the comment you replied to rereading it. I raised it because when someone says “It’s not a free speech platform and no one ever said it was” they are using the american republican-troll’s definition of free speech that means “anything but child porn”, and I think your reply was misunderstanding their comment as a result. But I don’t think I successfully conveyed my point.

      • True, agreed. I’m only commenting on the idea that these people or groups shouldn’t get free advertising when people find them. These posts that are blasting their way to the top of “hot” just like a trending news article are counter-productive. In the internet it’s better take actions for these things that are as invisible as possible.

      • I don’t disagree with the sentiment, but it will become impossible to accomplish, practically speaking, as the fediverse grows. There’s only so much that can be done with volunteers, and it’s not like armies of paid staffers work much better (as we’ve seen the major tech corps try to do).

        There is a sociological aspect to this, numerous studies have confirmed the effects of highlighting bad actors. There’s a copycat effect (as studies on mass shootings show) as well as what we call the Streisand effect. Both inadvertently encourage others to perpetuate the behaviour rather than serving to limit it.

          • Exactly. We agree? Thats what I said/mean. This post doesn’t ban them, it’s inadvertently advertising their content. There have been several post like this recently. While they may mean well they likely have the opposite effect.

          • Not at all. I think you’re conflating what I said with someone else. I’m only suggested we don’t inadvertently promote this content by creating a front-page post denouncing it.

            The point about it being impossible to accomplish is about perfection. It’s a wack-a-mole game. Since this content and people will always be there until found, it’s better to not give them more of an audience.

            No site will ever perfectly remove objectionable content. It’s one reason why the upvote downvote system is so valuable for a site like this.

            • You can’t avoid hate and hope it recedes. You have to take it directly head on and stomp it out immediately.

              If they decide to move elsewhere, then follow them there and continue rooting them out.

              Just “letting people decide” is useless and will only enable them to continue.

              • Agreed, I think you’re still conflating things I never said. Nothing was in the “let the people decide” vein.

                Thats why I think it’s better to silently remove them rather then making posts saying “look at this bad guy right there”.

            • I think the problem is that at the moment, the system is new enough that there’s no way to get this sort of content removed. Hence this front page post. It’s not about calling attention to the magazine, it’s about calling attention to the entire issue…

        • Where does this sentiment come from? Reddit for the most part already does this. Twitter before Elon showed up did this. Most modern sites already do this

          The only place I can think of where this is commonplace is 4chan, because they don’t moderate.

          Yes, highlighting bad actors over a course of time can be problematic. But the point in this case is the point out that we don’t have the tools to deal with said bad actor. The tools that other sites have. It’s not being said in vain, the goal is to make aware that something needs to be done so that people don’t even see the bad actor to bring attention to them.

          There is a purpose to the current efforts. I think everyone understands that constantly bringing attention to them will do no good, but the goal here is to bring attention to tools that are needed, so that it doesn’t happen again, or at the very least to this extent.

          • You’d might be conflating my comment with someone else? I’m not against moderating. I just think it’s a bad idea to blast these communities or users onto the front page when they’re found.

            No example has been able to squash out bad actors and unwanted content completely. That’s the impossible task I’m referring to. Neither volunteers, nor paid staff have accomplished this for any site. In all your example there are still areas flying under the radar.

            As such, it’s better to not inadvertently fan the flames when you find the fire, don’t make their soapbox bigger. Instead put it out quietly so it doesn’t harm anyone else.

            • Examples are good when trying to point out a problem actually exists and not have certain people trying to tone it down and make it not seem like as big a problem as it is, despite even the devs acknowledging there’s a problem.

              The final point is more tools are being worked on, the thread did do something, so trying to argue a point that would basically have prevented it just seems…poor taste.

              • Everything you’re talking is perception, friend. You chose to take my comment that way. The dev tools were being worked on long before this post.

                As I said before, I’m not making this up, the phenomenon is studied and the effect is proven.

        • I expect that instances will get more locked down, perhaps those of us on an instance can vouch for new users who might join, but I can’t see how a volunteer admin could police a million user instance. I used to run a 10k user discussion site and while that wasn’t a fulltime job it was still a giant pain in the ass at times. If we can get in a steady state where an instance has a core of active posters and lurkers then that seems better than infinite growth.

          That then surely leads to federated instances that each represent the tolerances of their admin(s) and they presumably federate or not with other instances with similar sensibilities.

          In the end the nazis will get their nazi instance and federate with likeminded types - they get defederated everywhere else and wont really be a problem (maybe for the FBI). (Though I’m not certain that all internet nazis truly are, i think there a group of trolls that get their kicks from being controversial and will get no joy by being surrounded by people who accept them)

          The problems are going to be in the gray areas. For example, the argument that trans people don’t deserve to exist… I find that abhorrent, but there are people who will happily say that on TV, and there are CEOs of $44B social networks that appear to agree. Some instances will tolerate that on the grounds of free speech and others will not, then the admins are left trying to decide what’s grounds for defederation.

          However in my limited experience, the thing that kills projects like this is too much navel gazing. There will always be some trolling and noise, but if the remaining users expend all their energy talking about it then the whole thing collapses in on itself. I feel like this is starting to happen on reddit where lots of subs are consumed by meta, but the best thing we can do here is get out and create active communities.

    • So here’s my issue here.

      This guy is clearly not a small issue. He’s being as loud and obnoxious as possible.

      If there’s nothing in place to deal with one huge troublemaker, what’s to stop a dozen who come to Kbin and start making hateful communities?

      My concern at this point is that Kbin itself gets defederated because the other instances don’t think it’s taking moderation seriously.

      • In what way is it a huge deal? In what way was it loud? (Until now)

        This person had a handful of heavily downvoted posts and interactions so they never made it to the “hot” or “active” pages.

        (Are we talking about the same person?)

        If you take a poll of everyone in this thread I would bet almost everyone hadn’t seen these posts or heard of the username.

        But now they have, with the help of this post.

        • Speaking for myself I’ve seen both 10A and ps making these comments. 10A has managed to amass at least -2732 downvotes, ps -653, that’s not a trivial amount of interaction. I came across an antiwoke post on the front page (I think just right after it was posted, so bad luck). And I’m holding off advocating people move to kbin until I see a moderating policy that results in banning them.

          • It sounds like you were viewing the “new” tab?The hot/active tabs on Kbin wouldn’t receive that content so early. It will always be a wackamole game, no platform will ever succeed 100%. Once there are more advanced moderation tools, I would suggest silently removing objectionable content or users.

            Also, I’ll have to disagree slightly, thats not a lot of interaction. This single post alone has over 300 upvotes since posted. The volume of either is simply an indication of how strongly people react.

            • It sounds like you were viewing the “new” tab?

              I don’t think so, but I couldn’t swear to it.

              thats not a lot of interaction

              Probably we just have different thresholds for a lot. People seeing hate 3000 times on the platform seems like a lot to me.

          • That’s exactly my point. Even when there are better moderating tools and the site admins have time to delete magazines, they will still pop-up faster then you can stop them. No site on the internet has ever fully solved this issue.

            Since that is the reality, by avoiding inadvertently promoting them before they’re removed, a site is much more efficient at managing the workload.

            Posts like this can have the unintended consequence of spawning more trolls or objectionable actors, this can and does actually make the site management harder.

            • I think with better moderation tools, it’s absolutely possible to silence hate speech. The modern sanitized internet has managed to do it with child porn, which was EVERYWHERE in the wild west days. It’s possible with motivation.

              Hate speech is profitable, so companies generally have a profit incentive to keep it around. The fediverse doesn’t.

    • Respectfully, I disagree. If you are running a bar and a nazi comes in with all their nazi periphranalia and orders a drink and behaves. You still kick them out. Because if you don’t the next time they will bring all their nazi friends and it will be much harder to kick them out and then your other patrons stop showing up because of all the nazis around and now you are running a nazi bar.

      Ban hate trolls. Ban them immediately. Because if that content festers on the site it will be much harder to ban later.