I feel like this is technically a good thing in the grand scheme, but the fact that it's in response to the government trying to combat COVID and election misinformation makes me... uneasy, to say the least.
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.
This is a difficult topic to make my mind up tbh.
On one hand, it's good that the government isn't allowed to interfere with what people are allowed to post on social media. I mean, imagine if there's a wannabe dictator as POTUS in 2025, and he decides that all negative things about him on social media isn't allowed. Yeah, that should be avoided.
However, simultaneously allowing the government to interfere with social media could result into less misinformation, less conspiracy theories, and less bullshit on the internet.
Ultimately, I think a good compromise would be to appoint an independent department to manage misinformation on the internet, as long as this department is independent of politicians and/or social media companies themselves (so that there is no situation of self-regulation). Who would appoint the people to manage this department and on what criteria? No idea, it's difficult to judge who is allowed to decide what is 'true' or 'false'.
wannabe dictator as POTUS in 2025, and he decides that all negative things about him on social media isn’t allowed. Yeah, that should be avoided.
you should know by now that they wont enforce the rules for their favorite orange bunghole
The government notably didn't dictate anything social media companies HAD to allow or disallow, but rather ASKED. I'm fine with that, as they also do that with news agencies and have since the founding of the country for various reasons.
So long as a company retains the right to tell them to kick rocks, I don't see an overstepping of bounds here.