I’ve been seeing some concerning trends whereby anti-vaxx posts are defended as “free speech” and a growing number of users with “Trump Won” sentiments.
Is there going to be a stance taken on this? Or are we going to lose this community, like so many others, to propaganda and hatred?
We dont have any site rules on those topics, so its not a reason for ban/removal on its own. There is also no rule about misinformation, because it can be very hard to determine what falls under that label.
I think if someone is clearly spreading false information, it should be easy enough for any user to debunk it using actual facts. That way mods can focus on their actual task (ensure that people behave well), instead of turning into some kind of “fact checkers”. Besides, everyone can learn something from such discussions.
Adding to this, this comment NOT mean we endorse the posting of misinformation or that we personally agree with every post we don’t remove, or even that all the admins agree on everything among themselves on how best to moderate. It just means that it can get messy trying to decipher what is misinformation and what isn’t and we’re not all-knowing, and that we trust the Lemmy community to respond with factual counterpoints to things they disagree with.
@AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml My feed today has been 1:5 posts about antivax, and almost every thread has had some sort of election denialism.
If we don’t take a stand now we’re going to be the next Voat/Gab/what have you. I came here because I was promised Leftists, not liberals. Take a stand and do something about this before it becomes a rapidly dying community.
Also, in re: “We can’t disprove it”, yeah no shit: you can’t disprove anything. The burden is on the person making the claim, not the person refuting it. But keep shifting that burden to logical impossibility. If that’s the moderation view here, you just solidified lemmy’s future content.
I welcome idiots to stick their necks out so long as we’re allowed to slap them with logic + downvotes. If we don’t let them do it openly, people on the fence or misinformed will not see the counterargument.
So the person reading the claim has the right to request proof before believing it, and they have the right to ignore the claim if proof isn’t provided, as well as the right not to engage with the claimant at all.
I disagree. A single post you don’t like shouldn’t change the rules for everyone. Try logging out and coming back later.