That’s fair.

Like I said, I think this is a borderline case. The comment in question could be concisely expressing a political viewpoint about your posting and how it relates to a growing movement in American politics to give harsh criticism to Democratic politicians in ways that, intentionally or not, give aid and comfort to a takeover of the system by elements that are an existential threat to everybody in the US, on every side. Or, it could be just content-free hostility. It’s hard to tell, and since the poster in general is a certified non-jerk, I erred on the side of leaving it. But I can understand the other side of it, absolutely.

A handful of people gave me reports that your postings were “unpleasant,” which I objected to in order to protect your right to say what you want. I feel the same way about someone who has a generally good posting record coming in and being Zionist or leaving a bluntly rude comment about the topic of an article.

I get it. You’re not wrong. I think it might be worth me adding an entry to the FAQ, along the lines of:

Q: This isn’t pleasant!

A: “Pleasant” was the wrong word. People will sometimes say things you find unpleasant, potentially more so than on Lemmy usually, since the human moderation is lighter. That’s by design. Many Lemmy communities contain a large amount of content which is “polite” or “civil” but which in the aggregate is detracting significantly from the experience. I do plan to allow content which is offensive, up to a certain point, as long as it doesn’t become a dominant force.

The theory is that we’re all adults, and we can handle an occasional rude comment or viewpoint we don’t like. If someone is a habitual line-stepper, then they will get escorted to the door, but part of the whole point is that the good actors can be free of a moderator looking over their shoulder on every comment deciding whether or not they’re allowed to say it.

That’s not to mean this is a “free speech” community. If content that’s offensive for the sake of offensiveness starts to proliferate, then I’ll probably put rules into place to address it. But you will find content that is not “pleasant.”

What do you think?

If someone walks up to an American cop who’s engaged in watching a protest, not otherwise doing anything, and yells, “fuck you,” that’s easy to interpret as a statement about policing and freedom of assembly in America. It’s not personal to the cop. It’s protected.

If someone is walking around handing out flyers about how the Democrats are a cult, and someone takes a look at the flyer, looks up, and yells, “fuck you,” that’s easy to interpret as a statement about the message the flyer is sending. I don’t think it’s personal to the person handing out flyers. If it proceeded from there into insulting the person directly or threatening them, or anything like that, it would become a personal attack, but as is, I thought it was easy to interpret as a reaction directed at the message you’re sending, not the beginning of an interpersonal conflict.

I’m not using “protected political speech” as any kind of criterion. I’m saying that in general, I would like to let people say what they want to say, and in particular to give extra leeway where speaking hostility to a person in power, and it didn’t seem like a clear personal attack, so I decided to leave it.

Let’s call it /c/jerks and cut right to the chase. /s

I think /c/politics may have been better. “Pleasant” is only confusing everybody.

I don’t understand, is the bot operating in pleasantpolitics, progressivepolitics, and lemmy.world politics? Multiple?

The bot reads a large number of communities to form its decisions, including those. It only actively moderates !pleasantpolitics@slrpnk.net.

I’m not trying to defeat the purpose for a bot or anything, but those who would welcome a second - and final - trump administration can expect some pushback as I have no interest in harboring some fediverse version of The_Donald or whatever tankie equivalent there is. I would be happy to avoid those if that was the intent for any of the above.

Is this community coming across as a The_Donald equivalent?

Pushback is fine and encouraged. I intended for people to be able to talk to each other, whether or not it’s friendly.

There just doesn’t seem to be a community for it at present other than progressivepolitics or politicalmemes. Opinion pieces, one-off comment screenshots, or anything that isn’t directly a mainstream article or “funny” is hard to find a home for. Politics requires an article with a verbatim title, news requires same with a mainstream source - those are the only ones I’ve seen with more than 50 subscribers.

Yes. The moderation model on political Lemmy is strange to me. I think we can let people post, and kick out the obvious trolls and bad actors, and leave the rest of the people to sort it out, because we’re not jerks. The incredible list of rules and procedures for being allowed by the moderators to post, in most communities, applied to the jerks and the normals alike, doesn’t seem to line up very well with what will create a good community.

Fwiw the “fuck you” was directed at the Grauniad article, which “joe biden’s cold heart” is inflammatory to start, regardless of how it tried - and failed - to spin it in the body of the article. Firstly it’s not true, secondly it’s been shown in a “major” publication to not be the case (WaPo or NYT, i forget), thirdly “gEnOSiDe jOe” is a russian-troll-farm-like tactic to depress turnout, and lastly the actual existence of American democracy is very literally at stake in this election and the article is intentionally oblivious to that. I stand by the “fuck you”, it is deserved, appropriate, and all things considered, tame compared to the offense.

That was how I decided to interpret it, which is why I left it up. Can you see how it could be interpreted as personal to the poster and short on details, though?

I think everyone has a hair trigger right now on this topic. The article was inflammatory. Your response was inflammatory. In most of political Lemmy, that spirals into people giving short hostile responses to each other, and it spills out across the comments and creates a giant hostile spiral. That didn’t happen here, but I am trying to keep a close eye on how things are working.

Say what you want.

That said, if defense of democracy or an understanding of American politics in one of these communities is intended to not transgress ‘politeness’ as determined by downvotes, I’ll try to participate accordingly. It may ultimately just mean I avoid the community, but that too is okay if that’s the requirement.

I think I need to rename the community to something like “asshole politics.” It’s supposed to be useful. It’s not supposed to be friendly or need to be pleasant. All I was saying in the DM to you was that I thought what you said was potentially too short and hostile to be as useful as it could be, not that I as a moderator was telling you you weren’t allowed to do it.

Yes. This is what @Five@slrpnk.net is calling group four, and I agree that it’s a problem.

It might work for me to manually moderate lazy or combative comments, but that does enter into a dynamic where I’m manually deciding which comments are good enough to stay and which aren’t. I want to avoid doing that.

I do agree with you. The comments on that post aren’t great.

Really? I am surprised. I agree with your categories, but when I examine the comments sections, it looks like the removal of group one is moving people from group four into group three, and giving them space to talk with each other and disagree without the entire environment being so combative that it becomes impossible to do so.

The final comments section example is not ideal, but it’s also not an echo chamber. The lemmy.ml version of the comments section is better, which is a problem, but none of the users from the lemmy.ml comments are banned in !pleasantpolitics@slrpnk.net, so I think the problem is cultural and not technical. I do agree with the need to protect the minority opinions from getting ganged up on by group four, but outside that one post I don’t see it happening at all, and everyone’s still welcome to say what they want.

There’s also a key distinction within group two. Users who post only opinions that are in group two are likely to be banned. The users for which I disagree with the bot’s decision almost all fit into this category. There is a large group, however, that can post opinions in group two alongside a healthy amount of positive engagement on other topics. I convinced myself that the result was okay, since most of the users that I looked at, I had to admit seemed to be engaging almost exclusively according to their chosen single issue or group of issues, and not with a balanced set of views of which some were popular and some not.

I do worry about this issue. I keep waiting for someone to bring up a specific user that is, for example, in group two, who is being banned even though their engagement is a clear net positive for the community. But so far, I’ve unearthed far more of those and fretted about them than anyone has sent to me. At the end of the day, I decided that aiming for perfection was impossible, and that as long as the comments seem to display a diversity of opinion and positive engagement, that was good enough to be a place to start.

Can you think of a good post to bait group four into coming in and overwhelming the comments? Or do you think these existing test cases are already showing that? It would be difficult for this approach to totally prevent that problem, without a lot of moderator intervention to enforce a productiveness standard for each comment, but gathering data about the problem can still be a good thing.

I wish that I had chosen a different name. “Pleasant” gives people the wrong idea. You’re supposed to be exposed to viewpoints you think are unpleasant, as long as you can agree not to be a jerk about it when you talk about them.

I agree. It’s working well at what I intended it to be, in my opinion, but the name is flat-out wrong at this point.

I made a post with my evaluation of the bot’s ability to create a space where people can disagree without being horrible about it. I think it’s succeeding at that, and these contentious topics are a good test case, since it’s not meant to create a space for only pleasant topics. The name is misleading. I don’t know why I didn’t expect this, but I didn’t.

What do you think? I’m interesting in hearing feedback on how people are receiving the content they’re seeing here. If the bot is working in my opinion, but the result from the reader isn’t good, that’s an issue.

I made !pleasantpolitics@slrpnk.net to test a new moderation approach which is designed to filter out a lot of the crap. I think you should try posting some articles there, and see whether you see the same hyper-critical anti-Biden content. I think I know what you’re talking about, and I think the filtering bot will probably be able to detect and ban almost all of the users you’re talking about.

That didn’t take long.

Criticizing the foreign policy of the US can be done openly in every part of Lemmy that I’m aware of. it’s the majority viewpoint. The issue here is that you’re being a combative jerk about it.

You were supposed to be banned because of the overwhelming downvotes you’re getting. There are some technical problems with the bot’s classification of new accounts, so you’re still here. Ironically, it got held up because I was having issues getting it to be strict about new accounts without excluding dissenting opinions from people who were willing to be level-headed. Your viewpoint here is far from unpopular, but there are cases where someone’s expressing an opinion about veganism, or not voting, that really is unpopular, but they’re being level-headed enough that I don’t want them to be banned. It’s taking some time to get that determination right.

You can expect a ban as soon as I figure it out, because you’re being so obviously unproductive that the downvotes are universal. I just updated the FAQ, trying to find the right words, because I don’t think this is the last time this will come up.

It’s not hard to accumulate more weighted upvotes than downvotes. In the current configuration, 97% of the users on Lemmy manage to do it. If you are one of the 3%, it’s because the community consensus is that your content is more negative than positive.

The bot is not making its own decisions about you. The community is. If you are banned, it’s because you are being downvoted overwhelmingly. The viewpoint you are expressing is probably not the issue. The Lemmy community is very tolerant of a wide variety of views. Some people may disagree with you and you may find that oppressive, but the bot will not ban you simply because some users argue with you when you say certain things. Those users are allowed to have their view, just like you have yours.

If you find you are banned and you’re willing to hear suggestions about how to present your argument without everyone downvoting you, leave a comment. Reducing your downvotes will help the bot recognize you as reasonable, but it will also probably help you get your point across more successfully. In order for the bot to ban you, you have to be received overwhelmingly negatively by the community, which probably means you’re not convincing very many people of what you’re saying.

If you’re not willing to hear those suggestions and simply want to insist that it’s everyone else that is the problem, the bot is being evil to you, your free speech is being infringed, and I am a tyrant if I don’t let you into the community to annoy everybody, I would respectfully request that you take it somewhere else.

This usually only happens when threads hit the front page of the all feed and people that are not subscribed to the community see it, vote on it and start commenting in it (which then becomes a self-reinforcing system that pushes it further up the “hot” rating on the all feed).

This community is currently too new and small for that to happen.

I’ll wait until I can put in place the throwaway account sniping, and more testing, before I try to do much more to promote it. The wider level of attention from !newcommunities@lemmy.world seems to be a good test which the bot hasn’t caught up to be able to handle completely.

As for pro-Zionist comments… if they come from an account that is not only posting such and it isn’t outright genocide denial, I agree that it can stay up.

Yes, that user posts almost all normal content, with a tiny minority of unpopular but still “normal” political views, and a couple of posts that are openly Zionist. They’re nowhere near posting a majority of inflammatory content, and the comment wasn’t even that bad, it just seemed shocking because it was so pro-Israel, which usually doesn’t happen.

But this will likely need human intervention and can’t be left to the bot to decide.

I completely agree. I didn’t plan to have the bot replace human moderation, only provide another tool to automate one part of it.

Anyone who is breaking the few rules that do exist, I was planning to ban. I also just edited the sidebar to make it clear that comments must also follow the slrpnk rules.

I made this system because I, also, was concerned about the macro social implications.

Right now, the model in most communities is banning people with unpopular political opinions or who are uncivil. Anyone else can come in and do whatever they like, even if a big majority of the community has decided they’re doing more harm than good. Furthermore, when certain things get too unpleasant to deal with on any level anymore, big instances will defederate from each other completely. The macro social implications of that on the community are exactly why I want to try a different model, because that one doesn’t seem very good.

You seem to be convinced ahead of time that this system is going to censor opposing views, ignoring everything I’ve done to address the concern and indicate that it is a valid concern. Your concern is noted. If you see it censoring any opposing views, please let me know, because I don’t want it to do that either.

It’s difficult. A downvote from an account with no history does nothing. Your bot has to post a lot of content first to attract upvotes from genuine accounts. Then once you’ve accumulated some rank, you can start giving upvotes or downvotes in bulk to the accounts you want to manipulate. It’s impossible to completely prevent that, but you have to do it a lot to have an impact.

I think this model is more resistant to trickery than it would seem, but it’s not completely resistant. I do expect some amount of trickery that will then need counter-trickery. On the other hand, the problem of tricking the system also exists in the current moderation model. You don’t have to outwit the system to get your content posted or ban your enemy if it’s trivial to flood the comment section with your content from alt accounts and drown them out instead. I don’t know for sure that something like that is happening, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that was one reason why there are so many obnoxiously vocal people.

It could also be an attempt to probe which ways of having fun by being a jerk are still available here.

If it gets deleted, then it’s an illustration that all the people who are telling me that I’m creating an echo chamber are right, and they can complain.

If it doesn’t get deleted, it’s an open door for people who wants to have a “free speech safe space” for things that aren’t welcome anywhere else, indicating that they can come in and disrupt the conversation as much as they want to with topics that are more about stirring controversy than making progress, and that’s fun, too.

It should have been deleted, but only because it was posted by a throwaway account. The bot didn’t do its job, which I will fix, but in the meantime I’m leaving the topic alone and letting it run its course. If any.

You’re not banned or even close to it. The ban list is surprisingly lenient in terms of people’s differing political views. You have to habitually make enemies of a lot of the people in the comments, one way or another, with a big fraction of what you post. Most people don’t do that, wherever on the political spectrum they might fall.

Whether that’s a good idea or not remains to be seen. I had some surprises today.

Here are examples of things you got positive rank for, politics and argumentation:

• https://midwest.social/comment/10357782
• https://midwest.social/comment/10246105
• https://midwest.social/post/13347310

Here are examples of things you got negative rank for, not directly political interpersonal squabbling:

• https://midwest.social/comment/10412423
• https://midwest.social/comment/10413376
• https://midwest.social/comment/10432272

Maybe this is harsh, but I think this is a good decision by the bot. The first list is fine. Most of your political views are far from unpopular on Lemmy. The thing is that you post a lot more of the squabbling content than the political content. You said you’re being unpleasant on purpose, don’t plan to stop, and that people should probably block you. I feel okay about excluding that from this community.

If in the future you change your mind about how you want to converse, you can send a comment or DM. We can talk about it, make sure you’re not being targeted unfairly, but in the meantime this is completely fair.

Look at him, he’s so happy.

Maybe it should be Bernie smiling, instead? I didn’t want to be openly partisan.

Do you mind if I give some examples? What you’re saying is valid in the abstract, but I think pointing out concrete examples of what the bot is reacting to will shed some light on what I’m talking about.

I think it’s a good test.

1. They phrased it in deliberately inflammatory language, but there’s a strong case to be made that their underlying point is valid. If they had set it up and phrased it differently, it would be interesting to conduct a contentious discussion here and see if there’s any difference between how it looks in this community, and whether it goes off the rails, as opposed to in some more traditionally moderated community.
2. As it is, I can’t see anyone joining the discussion. Something about the way it’s phrased makes it guaranteed to drive people away and collect downvotes. That means it will be the first test of the throwaway account detection with post and comment deletion, which should kick in any minute now depending on when the post garners enough downvotes to activate it. I’m surprised it hasn’t yet, but it hasn’t.

OP, you’re not completely wrong, but you need to work on your delivery. Sorry. You probably have a ban incoming, but you can probably reverse it in a few days by participating outside this community with more normal content, and then try again without using the energy that sounds like you’re challenging the whole community to step outside with you and fight. DM me if you have questions.

I looked at the bot’s judgements about your user. The issue isn’t your politics. Anti-center or anti-Western politics are the majority view on Lemmy, and your posts about your political views get ranked positively. The problem is that somehow you wind up in long heated arguments with “centrists” which wander away from the topic and get personal, where you double down on bad behavior because you say that’s the tactic you want to employ to get your point across. That’s the content that’s getting ranked negatively, and often enough to overcome the weight of the positive content.

If Lemmy split into a silo that was the 98.6% of users that didn’t do that, and a silo of 1.4% of users that wanted to do that, I would be okay with that outcome. I completely agree with your concern in the abstract, but that’s not what’s happening here.