politics

Good move, they were a clown and pointing out that they were arguing entirely in bad faith is correct. They did it under the guise of being far-leftist, but as a far-leftist myself, I have a hard time believing it was for anything other than pissing people off. Hopefully they can go practice being happy instead of doom-posting on niche Internet forums.

Dude thank God

I won't pretend to know what the fully correct decision on stuff like this is; it's definitely complex bordering on impossible (among other reasons because I actually think it's good to have vocal easily-identifiable bad-faith accounts, because they tee up great conversations even if the original intent behind the post wasn't good and people are annoyed by it).

But that being said it seems crazy that some of these accounts are still allowed to post here freely, given what was in my view some pretty ironclad indication that they're not posting in good faith.

pointing out the valid problems Biden faces

So this touches on one of my key least favorite things about return2ozma -- I'd actually go well beyond what you saw in that one comment from him, and say that at this point, he's clearly not just pointing out valid problems. Posting negative polls is one thing, mostly completely fine. Everyone's got their viewpoint and allowed to post whatever view they want. But he'll also post specific assertions about Biden that objectively aren't true (marijuana policy being a good example), and then continue posting them after it's shown to him that they're not true -- all the while swearing that he's trying to help, just bringing up all this negative information because he really wants the Democrats to win, and so is giving constructive criticism so they can change course.

IDK man. That to me is very clear indication that he's lying about what he's trying to do, and being deliberately dishonest with what he posts. I think the posts I'm referring to were in some meme sub, not here, so maybe what you're saying about the content he posts specifically in [email protected] coming technically from reputable sources is a valid counter argument. IDK. Maybe. But to me, avowing "I am trying to help Biden" while posting objectively false criticism of him, and not really pretending it's any other way than that, is actually worse by quite a lot than avowing "I am here to post negative information about Biden." (not that that latter one is good...)

Like I say I'm not trying to weigh in on what the right answer is (either with ozma or the other similar accounts), because I don't really see a good right answer. Just tossing in my observations as a person who doesn't have to take the responsibility of trying to figure out how to handle it.

(@[email protected] - I feel a little unfair about posting this in a forum where you aren't allowed in to defend yourself; if you want to create a thread anywhere else with any response you want to make, I'll link to it from here so you can give your side of anything where you feel I've been inaccurate / unfair.)

He admitted to me, after I accused him, that he searches a news aggregator for "Biden" daily and posts the negative stuff he sees. I believe he said it was to hold dems accountable or something. That exchange was maybe a month or two back and might have been either here or on [email protected]

I think I agree more with the spam angle than the "only bad news" angle. As others have said it's fine to have a viewpoint and mainly share articles in line with that viewpoint. However doing it many times per day, every day, when the number of posts here is limited anyway, does impact the community.

In any case, the main thing is to be consistent and ideally make whatever the rule is very clear. And I would say this should be turned into an explicit rule or explanation under an existing rule.

Personally I just read what I want to, and if it seems bad faith, downvote and move on.

I blocked him quite a while ago.

Poll after poll after poll were filling up my feed at one point.

Fuck that shit. You sir, may fuck off.

Normally I'm not one to even entertain the thought of commenting on a political thread, but I feel it would be disingenuous to click the button without any feedback in this case. This decision leaves me with a large enough lack of confidence in the future moderation of this community(especially given we're in an election year) such that I can't in good faith leave it on my feed and I will be blocking this comm after this comment.

While I agree that Ozma deserved a ban for spam, the justification used for this is frankly appalling. Misrepresentation of bias as bad-faith, especially with the admission that largely good sources were used is unacceptable.

Look, I have zero illusions to how popular of a decision this is in this comm, and this isn't my instance so who the fuck cares what I think.

but

I have a very hard time seeing this as anything other than a disagreement over personal political tastes, rather than anything to do with a violation of some unwritten rule. Your comm already has rules regarding article quality, misinformation, and off-topic posts and comments that could be used as a justification here if it applied. If there was a problem with the volume of posts for which he was responsible (i think this is the legitimate concern here), then you could either call it spamming or there could easily be a rule added limiting the number of posts per day that applies globally and isn't reliant on subjective judgement.

I've been very vocal about my own political opinions, and have myself been accused of bad-faith trolling and of being a covert agent of some type or other. Speaking for myself, I think there's a pretty obvious bias (maybe preference is a more fair term) when it comes to the coverage and rhetoric about the upcoming election in the US specifically. There's legitimacy to the observation that inconvenient bad press about Biden is ignored/rationalized/dismissed on a 'lesser evil' and 'at all costs' political rationale that I (and I think ozma) tend to react negatively to. Breaking through the iron curtain of electoral politics to people who genuinely share political values (not all of them, mind you) sometimes involves repeated reminders and presentation of counter-partisan coverage. I personally appreciate ozma's contributions because often these posts and articles encourage real discussions about the limitations of this particular politician, and people like @[email protected] frequently jump in and provide nuanced dissection and context to what would otherwise be an easily dismissed issue.

This is not my instance so It's not up to my judgment what the right or wrong thing to do is here, but .world being an instance that has already de-federated with most others with louder left-leaning politics, the overton window has already been considerably narrowed. By removing the loudest dissenters (who are 'not wrong, just assholes'), you run the risk of warping reality for those who don't care enough to confront coverage they might find uncomfortable and might prefer a more quiet space to affirm their politics instead of being challenged. You're cultivating an echo chamber simply by cutting out the noise you find disagreeable. The goal of agitation is to get exactly those people to engage more so that we can move the overton window further left and accomplish more at the electoral level in the future. It isn't 'bad faith' to be motivated by that goal, it just might be unfair to people who are comfortable with where that window currently is and would rather not be challenged by it moving further left.

I'm ok with this, it was borderline spam with how many articles they managed to find and post all on the same theme.

Unsurprising to see the usual suspects agitating on this issue in the comments section.

I honestly don't know how I feel about this, other than that a temp ban is better than a perma-ban. Ozma is annoying as shit, but that's not a strong admittance of bad faith, even if it's obvious by his posting to anyone with functioning eyes. At the same time, he does nothing but continuously post this dreck, and a community necessarily must trim bad-faith actors to maintain itself. Otherwise you end up with a shithole like 4chan.

I don't know. I'm glad it's not my call.

That's what you call "bad faith engagement"?

Really?

The shitlib push to get everybody to snort your toxic and dangerous fallacious positivity in unison is starting to get really, really overt.

[if ALL you’re posting is negative, you may want to re-think your priorities. ]

It's okay to do that about a specific politician if that is your true opinion. However, it does seem like this person was arguing in bad faith by admitting he is aware things are not as bad as his posts seem.

To me this is not clearly explained in the rules. While I didn’t like the content in question, this seems overly heavy-handed for the situation.

Do you think this ban is fairly nonpartisan?

Would you also ban a user that only posts negative Trump stories and admits to that?

I agree r2o was getting to be a bit much, and the temp ban seems appropriate, but I'd want to see a policy like this applied fairly and evenly.

I didn't notice, but that's because I noticed the trend in thier posts awhile ago & decided to block them.

I checked my block list and already had this covered. I don't need that kind of shit in my life. But good on you for making it a better place for everyone. I 100% support banning folks just to make a board less miserable to visit. Both sides is good. Agenda is bad.

Kind of incredible someone can be banned for posting too many negative stories about Biden (and admitting they like posting them, I guess?) while the mods here ignore users that post comments denying that specific homophobic instances occurred. Happy Pride! 🥳

Theres a lot to break down here, but that seems like bullshit.

I only post negative comments about Biden. Am I gonna get banned for never saying anything nice about the president?

Bet you I would pretty much hate the vast majority of that user’s comments

Also I don’t want to see spam

With that context set, why am I posting?

Evaluating only the screenshot and nothing else, the struck text appeared inaccurate. Sharing my feedback to help hone practices going forward.

I'm sorry but how is that admitting bad faith? Feels more like just saying they're posting the negative because no one else is.

I'm sure that troll account will behave from now on /s

I generally agree with your reasoning. In a ranked choice world, they would likely have a candidate they would back, and support. I think many of us here would be happy to be in that world.

Reminder for everyone to vote every election, and local and state are super important, it's where you have a chance to get ranked choice in the discussion.

There are several commenters I would have blocked before r2o, especially if bad faith is the reasoning. But I appreciate the openness and the work put into moderating.