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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 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/1280891537451343873 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.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
So this is an idea we should apply, then? We have to worry about Stalinists as well as Nazis though, because Stalin killed more people than Hitler. So anyone espousing Soviet ideas like socialized medicine should be excommunicated as well, shouldn't they? But you can put a lot of harm down to the excesses of capitalism too. We could eject anyone expressing sympathies for that Adam Smith fellow as well. Or maybe this is rapidly getting out of hand.
- eropple 6y ago
  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.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    Motte and bailey. You're making an argument for ejecting people for memes and alleged dog whistles, not for being overt white supremacists. Political systems not tethered to the murder of millions present arguments for the existence of a statistical correlation between race and parental income that are legitimate and in good faith.
- NineStarPoint 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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.
0xBA5ED 6y ago
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.
- intended 6y ago
  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_ 6y ago
    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.
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  > 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 6y ago
    >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.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

So this is an idea we should apply, then? We have to worry about Stalinists as well as Nazis though, because Stalin killed more people than Hitler. So anyone espousing Soviet ideas like socialized medicine should be excommunicated as well, shouldn't they? But you can put a lot of harm down to the excesses of capitalism too. We could eject anyone expressing sympathies for that Adam Smith fellow as well. Or maybe this is rapidly getting out of hand.

eropple 6y ago
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.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  Motte and bailey. You're making an argument for ejecting people for memes and alleged dog whistles, not for being overt white supremacists. Political systems not tethered to the murder of millions present arguments for the existence of a statistical correlation between race and parental income that are legitimate and in good faith.
NineStarPoint 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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.

0xBA5ED 6y ago

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.

intended 6y ago
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_ 6y ago
  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.
UncleMeat 6y ago
> 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 6y ago
  >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.