[MinusGix]

I think the issue is one of scale. Having non-perfect free-speech is fine on your usual forum site, and somewhat has to be used to ensure quality. While, at the absolutely massive scale that Reddit and other social media giants are at, they (in my view) should essentially have very little to no say in what content appears upon the site. Now, individual moderators for subreddits could be more stringent due to being sub-communities (and thus smaller).

This would allow high quality moderation that lets communities focus on topics without as much worry about free-speech issues. Essentially allowing the classic, 'Go build your own social media' be actually possible since the communities that may not like your content are sufficiently small.

[eropple]

This sounds good until you realize that we're dealing with literal-not-figurative fascists here. The world has figured out how to deal with a Nazi. I've linked this elsewhere in the thread, but it is worth understanding the lessons of this story deeply: https://twitter.com/IamRageSparkle/status/128089153745134387...

Say you're something anodyne, like /r/RomanHistory or something (I don't know if that's real). For obvious reasons, that is a topic that Western fascists really like; they're gonna come by, even if their "fascist hat" isn't on right that second. But that train's never late, that fascist hat goes on eventually. And the first fascist might be polite. So might his friends. And maybe you see a few off-color jokes that maybe you, as a slightly-but-not-heavily-invested mod, slap down--but those jokes are the way that they start to find each other. And meanwhile, as things grow? What often happens is that one of their more buttoned-up types ends up on your moderation team, because hey, they're Respected By The Community (and this happens in person, too, when it comes to groups and political entities; this is a very common foot-in-the-door tactic). And then it just grows from there. Maybe you've got the spine to "ruin everything" by kicking them out at this point, by cutting out the rot, but that's going to hurt and hmm, maybe it's best to just go along and get along, especially because any time you try to act against it, you've got those folks who pipe up about how Nazis should have freedom of speech too, even if you don't like their ideas...

...and now you have a fascist community.

"Strong moderation"--the bartender in that story telling the first fascist to get the hell out--is not something that can be even remotely taken for granted. You must insulate your systems against fascism because it is a hack of the system. The instinctual emotional attack it employs on a liberal order requires so much more work to stop than it does to continue that anywhere it can take root, it can strangle everything else. This is real, and this is what those coded "free speech ideals" are being weaponized to protect while it grows.

[0xBA5ED]

This is wrong on so many levels. You are encouraging witch hunts based on fear and paranoia. Moderation is about maintaining order, not slapping down baddies. You could argue that one leads to the other, but it's the difference in mindset that allows for effective moderation without the need for all that negativity.

[UncleMeat]

> Moderation is about maintaining order, not slapping down baddies.

That's the same thing.

I have several friends who are professors of medieval history. For various reasons, fascists are really interested in medieval european history and like to attend conferences as "independent scholars". They pass out propaganda and harass scholars who have the gall to do things like discuss women in medieval europe or any form of cultural transmission between europe and the islamic world. The solution has been to rip this stuff out. You can't have "order" in the conference where people are able to share actual scholarly work while free of harassment without "slapping down the fascists".

[0xBA5ED]

>That's the same thing

I disagree. You can enforce behavioral restrictions without reducing it to us vs them. It is about order and maintaining good relations. In the case of people disrupting your conference, you can have them removed for their behavior without resorting to name calling and framing it like you're "fighting fascists". It's like policing. If you reduce it to "catching bad guys", you won't get good police.

[UncleMeat]

Why is it always an expectation that people handle fascists with kid gloves?

Some racist asking questions at a panel about wild shit they read online is a waste of conference time. 20 racists asking questions at a panel about wild shit they read online ruins entire conferences. You need to nip that in the bud.

[eropple]

I assume you know this and the question was rhetorical, but in this case, you're being told to handle white supremacists with kid gloves because you're talking to a white supremacist. (Check the username, check his commentary history, he's just Another One Of Those.)

Occasionally they have useful idiots carving out their elbow room, but the heartening thing about 2020--maybe the only thing--is that there are ever fewer useful idiots, and instead rhetorical positions like this have to be taken up by folks who just don't hide their "power levels" the way they would need to for adequate opsec.

[intended]

Moderation is a mash up of several roles- I expect it to expand over time. One of those roles IS slapping baddies.

You are on the forum so long you figure out who is a repeat offender and who are the coordinates groups

[dsr_]

I moderate one fairly active and one very in-active discussion groups.

The actual work is very similar, only varying in quantity.

On both groups, there are regulars, regulars with known triggers, casuals who might become regulars, and flamers. The regulars with specific triggers can be progressively discouraged.

The flamers must be stopped hard, or else they dominate conversation for days or weeks, making everyone else unhappy. You can give them a second chance, but not a third.

[AnthonyMouse]

[flagged]

[eropple]

Political systems not tethered to the murder of millions present arguments for socialized medicine that are legitimate and in good faith.

No political system presents an argument for white supremacy that is legitimate and in good faith.

I hope this elaboration of the obvious is helpful.

[triceratops]

> So anyone espousing Soviet ideas like socialized medicine should be excommunicated as well

That's a Soviet idea? It seems national health insurance was first conceived in Imperial Germany[0] (which the Weimar Republic, then the Nazis continued), then adopted in Britain, then Imperial Russia (which presumably the Soviets continued). Get your facts straight.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_health_care#History

[AnthonyMouse]

Who is talking about where an idea originated? Many of these ideas predate written language. Nazis didn't invent racism either, are you trying to say that racism isn't a Nazi idea? The context is clearly that it's an idea associated with them.

[triceratops]

> The context is clearly that it's an idea associated with them.

Is it? Says who? The Soviets did a great many things. It doesn't mean all of them are "Soviet things". Nationalized healthcare predates the Soviets, still exists in nearly all capitalist countries in one form or another, and is viewed largely positively in each of those countries.

The Soviets had a powerful military and infamous police force. When you say "Soviet Russia" the average person will think "Red Army" and "KGB" before nationalized healthcare. Going by your logic are the military and police "socialist ideas"? They use government money to provide an equal level of service to all inhabitants of the nation - namely protecting and safeguarding them. Police and military obviously predate socialism/communism but the Soviets were renowned for them, so that makes them socialist ideas, right?

Comparing racism in Nazism - a core central tenet, and one that's actively harmful, to nationalized healthcare in communism - an incidental feature, mostly positive, and also found in nearly every capitalist country, is a strawman.

[N1H1L]

See that's the problem. It takes a hugely asymmetrical effort to counter obvious bullshit than to spew it.

[dragonwriter]

> Nationalized healthcare predates the Soviets

Where? In most of the Western countries that have it, it post-dates WWII, and corresponds to the replacement of capitalism in the relatively pure sense with the modern mixed economy, which is arguably more Marxist than the USSR and other “Communist” regimes based on Leninism and it's descendants.

[NineStarPoint]

Nazism isn’t just any philosophy that has harmed people though, it’s a philosophy based on the innate premise of harming people. There is a major difference between arguing for something that the other side believe will cause harm, and arguing for something that’s primary goal is to cause harm.

Or, put another way, saying its rapidly getting out of hand because you make assumptions about what else could be banned is the slippery slope fallacy. Saying what exactly constitutes unacceptable speech on a given platform just needs to be specifically defined.

[AnthonyMouse]

The original claim was that you have to preemptively eject anyone with even a weakly implied fascist sympathy because otherwise you'll soon be overrun with actual Nazis. No sense of irony in claiming that a counterargument is the slippery slope fallacy?

And the point I'm making isn't that you would eject all communists and capitalists in practice, it's that you would have to do so in a consistent application of that principle. It's a reductio ad absurdum. You can take anything and find a tenuous connection from there to something terrible, so arguing that we have to ban the anything because allowing it would enable an influx of people connected to the something terrible is ridiculous. Applied as a consistent principle it would require you to ban everything.

[eropple]

I am wary of continuing to feed the troll, but you understand that there's a difference of kind between a communist and a Stalinist, yes? Tankies can and should be bopped on sight, too. There is a crucial difference, in that they are not generally actively attempting to subvert the liberal order--they are disorganized and, tbh, generally not really capable of doing so--but they don't belong in decent company either.