News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
view the rest of the comments
Sockpuppetting? You have any indication of that?
We do. Admins found dozens of downvote alts and nuked them at the same time. Seems folks aren't content to just state their opinion and leave it at that, and instead they feel compelled to overwhelm the system to give the illusion of uniformity.
Props to the LW admin who uncovered and banned the vote manipulation ring. Its existence is troubling.
I did a vote audit of the Soliciting Feedback from the Mods thread, and none of the sock accounts that were banned three days ago voted on the post or the most highly upvoted or downvoted comments. If you don't believe me, I suggest asking an admin you trust to repeat the audit.
The outrage about the bot seems extremely organic, and any sockpuppetting going on is small compared to the overwhelming number of legitimate accounts casting votes that are apparent from the logs. The uniformity of the consensus does not appear to be artificial at all.
These people were specifically trying to get the bot removed? Must have hit quite a nerve. I know it was biased in favor of Israel, but it must have been even worse. That bot sucks so bad people make mass sockpuppet accounts just to tell you they want it gone
You're taking the wrong lesson from these findings.
I was joking. Just like you can't be seriously claiming there is no consensus that the bot sucks and that all the net downvotes for that bot are due to a small minority of sockpuppeteers?
I didn't claim there was no consensus, or that "all" the downvotes were sockpuppets. We have evidence that some of them were, which makes distilling the overall sentiment pretty difficult.
So based on your other comment, the "evidence" you're referring to here is merely that vote manipulation had occurred in some other community?
No, in this community. We were told that the admins found a vote manipulation ring in our threads. I don't have admin level access, so I have no idea where they voted for what.
Ok, but you did claim that you had evidence that some of the downvotes were sockpuppets, contrary to the analysis discussed in this comment.
Yeah, we were told they disrupted a downvote ring. I have no fucking idea where those accounts voted, except that we took vote totals with a grain of salt because we were in the dark. I'm frankly used to being bombarded with downvotes every time i comment in this community (edit: One person went out of their way to downvote each of my last 7 comments, for example.). So in my eyes, votes were (and continue to be) compromised, and we were informed about the ring while we were deliberating bot feedback. I tried to connect the dots with incomplete information because I'm not an admin. What else are you looking for here?
Well, the point I've been trying to make is that on balance, mods have been reluctant to engage with negative feedback, and I think this is a salient example.
I think you can imagine how, from the perspective of a community member, it would feel like you've started with the belief that the bot is good, and sought feedback in that context.
The erroneous assumption you've made regarding vote manipulation is a pretty clear example of that.
This is what I mean by users feeling as though their opinions have been dismissed.
I argued against the bot for a week. I hated the damn thing, and I pointed to the negative feedback as evidence in my discussions. I also held off on making sweeping assessments or making any rushed decisions because a vote manipulation ring was simultaneously uncovered, and we had no idea how deep the manipulation went. Could the feedback have been manipulated? No idea! Should we go by votes only? No idea!
I took the time to let the team read the feedback and discuss the costs and benefits, and in the end the votes were only part of the picture. Another part is the visceral commitment of a vocal minority to overwhelming the community with commentary (and reports) to such an extent that the people who are calm and supportive get drowned out and downvoted, along with anyone who happens to agree with them. Not entirely sure those folks have committed as much energy to downvoting every critical comment as was the case on the other side though.
The team took 12 days to work through disagreements (there were many) so we could come to a consensus position, and lo and behold, the bot is gone. The fact that the people who want the bot gone feel like they're being dismissed is flabbergasting to me. It's gone. Mission accomplished!
Ok mate. I appreciate you taking the time.
I get that everyone on the mod team seems well intentioned, and trying to navigate this situation as best they can as volunteers, with limited resources and limited control.