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Seeking to capture the moderation in order to restrict discussion to sources you like is weaponizing bad faith information. Because I absolutely do not at all believe that the people looking to do that are somehow "apolitical" and that their idea of what is and isn't an acceptable source has nothing to do with their political leanings. Either just argue that the moderation should favour your politics or argue that it's a free for all, because there is no middle ground. All decisions are political, all control is political, you cannot rules lawyer your way into a true takes only zone, the entire point of discussion and, indeed, democracy in general, is to achieve that, if there was a rules based approach that worked you wouldn't need those things.
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Feb 6, 2021 21:00
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Jarmak posted:Biased/crappy sources are one thing and they can be points of debate: "Why should we trust 'The Hill'?" is a valid point to be made in an arguement and doesn't mean that source needs to be moderated, but active disinformation outlets like the Washington Examiner, OANN, etc should be restricted to media literacy discussions or times when the fact a story is running is itself a story. To be clear I'm talking about sources like The Hill, that lean heavily on clickbait and hearsay, or something like Al Jazeera, which have a clear agenda but also provide coverage that can be difficult to otherwise get in English, not outright nonsense sources like OANN. The latter are easy to moderate. There are also issues like the New York Times, who have good factual articles but publish a ton of absolute garbage editorials.
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Feb 6, 2021 21:02
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fool of sound posted:To be clear I'm talking about sources like The Hill, that lean heavily on clickbait and hearsay, or something like Al Jazeera, which have a clear agenda but also provide coverage that can be difficult to otherwise get in English, not outright nonsense sources like OANN. The latter are easy to moderate. There are also issues like the New York Times, who have good factual articles but publish a ton of absolute garbage editorials. NYT is also has absolute poo poo for factual articles that quote IC ghouls on background and get caught publishing literal obvious lies when it happens to adhere to the day's marching orders to saber-rattle. All sources are up for debate.
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Feb 6, 2021 21:11
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OwlFancier posted:Seeking to capture the moderation in order to restrict discussion to sources you like is weaponizing bad faith information. Because I absolutely do not at all believe that the people looking to do that are somehow "apolitical" and that their idea of what is and isn't an acceptable source has nothing to do with their political leanings. This is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. This is how the well is poisoned in order to pave the way for disinformation: claim that everyone is acting in bad faith so who's really to know? See also "you can't trust any source", "fake news media", "everyone's lying, they're just the mainstream lies"
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Feb 6, 2021 21:11
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Jarmak posted:This is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. This is how the well is poisoned in order to pave the way for disinformation: claim that everyone is acting in bad faith so who's really to know? See also "you can't trust any source", "fake news media", "everyone's lying, they're just the mainstream lies"
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Feb 6, 2021 21:16
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Jarmak posted:This is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. This is how the well is poisoned in order to pave the way for disinformation: claim that everyone is acting in bad faith so who's really to know? See also "you can't trust any source", "fake news media", "everyone's lying, they're just the mainstream lies" The "bad faith" part is trying to pretend that decisions are not political, it is entirely possible to have good faith political takes that are wrong or right, but I do expect people to be aware that their takes are political, rather than pretending like they are not, that it is possible to have a somehow apolitical rule for what sources we can trust to eliminate the work of arguing about them. It is possible, even, to come to an agreement to eliminate the work of arguing about the sources, but you do that because everyone arguing agrees that they are not politically useful. It is still a political decision. If people want to sincerely advocate for lovely positions I am quite willing to entertain that, unless we can all agree to simply exclude some political positions from the forum, but I do not have any patience for failure to acknowledge that controlling sources via the power structures of the forum is itself a political act. As I said to begin with, I entirely agree that "mainstream" as a concept is an attempt to ignore the need to discuss the validity of the source, because "mainstream" is shorthand for "I do not need to discuss the validity of the source because it is implicitly accepted to be true, including its political bias" and this is why I have no desire to try to establish a "mainstream" set of sources that are permitted for use in argumentation. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Feb 6, 2021 |
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Feb 6, 2021 21:17
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There's a substantial difference between critiquing an article because of displayed bias or poor writing or analysis, and dismissing an article outright as false or deliberately misleading.
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Feb 6, 2021 21:18
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A Buttery Pastry posted:You do not have to act in bad faith to produce bad information. The stenographer style of journalism is not (necessarily) done in bad faith, but is essentially just a way to launder opinions into facts. Sure, but no source is 100% free from bad information. There is an important distinction between a source that has bad information despite it's efforts to be truthful, and source that is trying to push bad information. There's also a difference between a source possessing a bias and a source possessing an agenda. Big media outlets often have a structural bias toward the establishment for example, but this is different from an outlet like RT or Brietbart whose purpose is not to be informative, but rather to distort information in service of their larger goal.
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Feb 6, 2021 21:24
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Jarmak posted:I'm not trying to be an aggressive dick but this is fantastically missing the point. Bad sources are bad specifically because they intentionally mix facts in with disinformation and dishonest context in order to push a false narrative. Making you think they sometimes have something valuable to say is literally how propaganda outlets push disinformation in the public narrative: treating it as something worthy of individual analysis elevates the disinformation to something that's "up to debate" by literally, again, attempting to play themselves off as simply "not mainstream". Yes. This is precisely why Breitbart for example openly and blatantly attacks "mainstream media", because being non-mainstream is a virtue for them. OwlFancier posted:Seeking to capture the moderation in order to restrict discussion to sources you like is weaponizing bad faith information. Because I absolutely do not at all believe that the people looking to do that are somehow "apolitical" and that their idea of what is and isn't an acceptable source has nothing to do with their political leanings. Nah, the only bad faith that is going on here is openly accusing people of wanting to prevent bad sources from being posted simply on the basis that they disagree with what those sources are publishing.
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Feb 6, 2021 21:25
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If you want to convince me that you want to control sources with zero political intent whatsoever then I think the burden of proof is on you to do that, because literally nobody in history has yet managed it. Or perhaps more importantly, disregard intent, you need to demonstrate to me that it will not have that effect because regardless of what you want, restricting access to information based on control of a moderating authority structurally does produce political effects, that is literally what the supposed "freedom of the press" exists for.
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Feb 6, 2021 21:27
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OwlFancier posted:The "bad faith" part is trying to pretend that decisions are not political, it is entirely possible to have good faith political takes that are wrong or right, but I do expect people to be aware that their takes are political, rather than pretending like they are not, that it is possible to have a somehow apolitical rule for what sources we can trust to eliminate the work of arguing about them. It is possible, even, to come to an agreement to eliminate the work of arguing about the sources, but you do that because everyone arguing agrees that they are not politically useful. It is still a political decision. This is, again, a perfect example of the narrative outlets for disinformation push in order to groom their audience. Reality is a matter of political opinion, so who's really to say what's true?
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Feb 6, 2021 21:29
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OwlFancier posted:If you want to convince me that you want to control sources with zero political intent whatsoever then I think the burden of proof is on you to do that, because literally nobody in history has yet managed it. If the effect of restricting access to certain sources ends up being that we no longer get regularly subjected to anti-US propaganda from monstrous totalitarian regimes, I would be okay with that. That is the extent of my desires on this topic, personally. I can't speak for others.
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Feb 6, 2021 21:33
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Jarmak posted:Reality is a matter of political opinion, so who's really to say what's true? Yes, literally, it is. Even if we assume, as I like to, that there is a concrete reality which we can discern through application of reason, the process by which we do that is inherently political, our ideas, our experiences, our pre-understood assumptions and beliefs about how the world work create a political lens through which we interpret the things we see and go on to influence the theories and ideas we form of our own, and the ones we expound to others. There is no politically neutral arbiter of what is and isn't true, it is absurd to me to believe that there is one or could be one? And even if there was one, the question then becomes why has nobody plugged it in yet and solved politics forever with the undeniably true and correct take on everything? Politics is the process of projecting different conceptions of truth onto the world and the ways in which those conceptions conflict with each other, and it intersects, as all things do, with issues of power and money and belief and all the other poo poo floating around in our society. You can't just go "this is true, everything else is wrong, politics solved now", or you can but that's the position of a lunatic. And while there are plenty of lunatics out there I don't think I particularly want any of them to be setting the rules of the forum I post in. Slow News Day posted:If the effect of restricting access to certain sources ends up being that we no longer get regularly subjected to anti-US propaganda from monstrous totalitarian regimes, I would be okay with that. I do not care about whether anyone wants to be anti-us or anti-uk or whatever. I also don't care who wants to be that or why, if they can make a decent point that's good, if they can't they can't and I'm not going to listen to them, but the process of establishing whether they can make a good point or not is called "discussion" and it is allegedly what I am here to do. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Feb 6, 2021 |
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Feb 6, 2021 21:35
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Yeah that's fine, but this place is moderated by volunteers and this is more about finding a working standard that facilitates conversation generally and not about political epistemology abstracted to a completely theoretical 'what is objective political information?' extent.
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Feb 6, 2021 21:38
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OwlFancier posted:Yes, literally, it is. Even if we assume, as I like to, that there is a concrete reality which we can discern through application of reason, the process by which we do that is inherently political, our ideas, our experiences, our pre-understood assumptions and beliefs about how the world work create a political lens through which we interpret the things we see and go on to influence the theories and ideas we form of our own, and the ones we expound to others. I think this is the part where you take a huge hit from your bong and go "what even is truth, maaaan"
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Feb 6, 2021 21:38
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Jarmak posted:Sure, but no source is 100% free from bad information. There is an important distinction between a source that has bad information despite it's efforts to be truthful, and source that is trying to push bad information. To be clear, I am not arguing that they're all just the same, or that on average some outlets are not more factual than others, merely that ANY article or source must be interrogated. I very much get the feeling that some people here want to just blacklist "known propaganda outlets" without ever being forced to question establishment outlets, or even seeing others do the same. Thorn Wishes Talon posted:I think this is the part where you take a huge hit from your bong and go "what even is truth, maaaan"
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Feb 6, 2021 21:38
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fool of sound posted:To be clear I'm talking about sources like The Hill, that lean heavily on clickbait and hearsay, or something like Al Jazeera, which have a clear agenda but also provide coverage that can be difficult to otherwise get in English, not outright nonsense sources like OANN. The latter are easy to moderate. There are also issues like the New York Times, who have good factual articles but publish a ton of absolute garbage editorials. "mainstream" or "big" does nothing for helping evaluate a source. It's just a moral freight term, like "liberal", that can be used to attack or defend without getting into the details. Is the Malheur Enterprise "mainstream"? It doesn't matter. What matters is the degree of quality in the source. When this is the case it's useful to talk about the details of the information and its elements. The problem is that some sources are propaganda. At the level of the channel of information, they operate in bad faith. When this is the case there is no utility in using the source. Good information from the source will be available elsewhere, and it exists in that bad source only to harm further or future discourse. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Feb 6, 2021 |
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Feb 6, 2021 21:39
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A Buttery Pastry posted:OwlFancier is 100% correct. he can be correct, but because I don't think anyone tasked with moderating here neither wants to nor feels qualified to be some absolute arbiter of political objectivity, it's a lot easier to just disallow stuff that walks and swims and quacks like a propaganda duck
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Feb 6, 2021 21:43
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Why is that an important distinction? A "respected" news source who in good faith acts as a stenographer for someone intentionally trying to push bad information, due to the inherent structures bias of the media outlet they work for and the society they live in, is no more telling the truth or improving the reader's understanding of the world than the same reporter just making that exact same poo poo up. The difference between the two is largely whether they are or perceive themselves to be pro-status quo/establishment or not. Talking the actual material effect of their output, not whether one is more morally correct than the other. Stenography is an important, if unfortunate, part of news reporting. "Important Person X said Y" is factual information that should be part of the public record. That thing Y was complete bullshit is a separate issue. That is what analysis and opinion writing is for.
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Feb 6, 2021 21:45
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A Buttery Pastry posted:I very much get the feeling that some people here want to just blacklist "known propaganda outlets" without ever being forced to question establishment outlets, or even seeing others do the same. Mostly I'm sick of having to spend time debunking obvious bullshit that gets posted for the purposes of slamming in some awesome hot takes and then have people refer back to it as evidence for something 2 pages later. When it comes to lovely sources that aren't outright disinformation like Politico or The Hill, maybe they shouldn't be banned as sources but if someone keeps posting trash articles from trash sources as their primary contribution to the thread we can just call that lovely posting.
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Feb 6, 2021 21:48
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A Buttery Pastry posted:I very much get the feeling that some people here want to just blacklist "known propaganda outlets" without ever being forced to question establishment outlets, or even seeing others do the same. The objective reality is that USPol regularly, and I mean frequently, questions and shits on both mainstream outlets and specific journalists and authors. It is why we know Maggie Haberman is terrible, for example: because we have in fact questioned the veracity of her reporting, and the answers we found were less than ideal. Similarly, through the same mechanism, we have come to determine that The Hill regularly posts clickbait trash. What we don't want to have to do, however, is spend enormous amounts of time and energy tediously refuting sources like Russia Today, which hasbecome very good at mixing truth with fiction because it exists for the sole purpose of pushing propaganda. The reason we don't want to have to do it is because of this wonderful post Epinephrine made on page 2 (which everyone seems to have ignored): Epinephrine posted:While I agree that bad posting behavior is what needs to be moderated, posting misinformation, including hot takes on twitter that either misrepresent their source or spout bullshit about it, actively poisons debate in such a way that actively refuting bullshit often contributes to the problem. Debate and discussion doesn't help, it often hurts, and moderation is therefore necessary to stop it. Posting misinformation should be an automatic probe, full stop. The core phenomenon at play here is the backfire effect: the finding that refuting false information reinforces memory for the false information and, in the process, makes the falsehoods more likely to be believed by those who hear it. This isn't the only reason why lies and bullshit poison debate, but it's the most pernicious in my view. Thorn Wishes Talon fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Feb 6, 2021 |
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Feb 6, 2021 21:56
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Herstory Begins Now posted:he can be correct, but because I don't think anyone tasked with moderating here neither wants to nor feels qualified to be some absolute arbiter of political objectivity, it's a lot easier to just disallow stuff that walks and swims and quacks like a propaganda duck Deteriorata posted:Stenography is an important, if unfortunate, part of news reporting. "Important Person X said Y" is factual information that should be part of the public record. Thorn Wishes Talon posted:The objective reality is that USPol regularly, and I mean frequently, questions and shits on both mainstream outlets and specific journalists and authors. It is why we know Maggie Haberman is terrible, for example: because we have in fact questioned the veracity of her reporting, and the answers we found were less than ideal. Similarly, though the same mechanism, we have come to determine that The Hill regularly posts clickbait trash. Facts on the table, I am not generally a participant on USPOL threads, so I am not aware of the specific issues or level of garbage sourcing that happens there. I do have to have to engage though, because the (unsurprisingly) American bent of SA means your poo poo eventually rolls down on all us non-Americans. Mostly we try to keep to our own threads, but it wouldn't be the first time that an American thread issue was used as an argument for changing moderation among communities that do not need that kind of babysitting.
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Feb 6, 2021 22:15
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How about rather than a blacklist, more of a graylist - sources of agreed dubious integrity that if cited hold the poster to a higher standard. Like citing the New York Times for an article that turns out to be bogus is forgiven, but citing the Washington Times for a false news story gets you a probe. If the story is true, it doesn't matter what the source is. I'm not sure how enforceable that would be, I'm just spitballing.
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Feb 6, 2021 22:16
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If the effect you want is "don't post sources I don't like" with the intended consequence of "posters I don't like stop posting one way or another" then offloading the risk onto the poster I don't think is a very helpful compromise.
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Feb 6, 2021 22:18
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OwlFancier posted:If the effect you want is "don't post sources I don't like" with the intended consequence of "posters I don't like stop posting one way or another" then offloading the risk onto the poster I don't think is a very helpful compromise. The effect I want is "don't post bullshit" so the thread stays focused on things that are factually true. For example, if you post a story from a dubious news site that claims the Democrats are secretly plotting to destroy Social Security, you had better be right that they actually are.
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Feb 6, 2021 22:22
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Deteriorata posted:The effect I want is "don't post bullshit" so the thread stays focused on things that are factually true. but that exactly demonstrates the problem - A will post that, B will say it doesnt show any plotting and the actions described relate to something else, A will say that they know the plotting is happening and therefore the actions are the results of the plotting, B will repeat that there's neither plotting nor evidence of plotting, and that's the next 5 pages of the thread down the tubes but if either A or B gets probed they'll think its wildly unfair, and be right this is why the stenography style of journalism is actually critically important. If you get a democrat to say into a microphone "we're looking at all options for balancing the budget, everything is on the table" then you've got evidence they're secretly plotting to destroy social security and you dont have to read tea leaves. And if you're a propaganda outlet/liar and you make up a quote, people will refute your story in a much more concrete, believable way than refuting a tea-leaves story. Thorn Wishes Talon posted:The objective reality is that USPol regularly, and I mean frequently, questions and shits on both mainstream outlets and specific journalists and authors. It is why we know Maggie Haberman is terrible, for example: because we have in fact questioned the veracity of her reporting, and the answers we found were less than ideal.
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Feb 6, 2021 22:35
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awesmoe posted:people don't like maggie haberman because she's a woman who tweets badly That is one hell of a claim.
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Feb 6, 2021 22:37
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Slow News Day posted:That is one hell of a claim.
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Feb 6, 2021 22:40
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Beyond punishing people for lying about what a source claims or posting clickbait misleading garbage, I don’t think it’s the responsibility of moderators to police sources. The key to this, though, is to let people refute sources in real time. You are welcome to post something from RT and other posters are equally welcome to dunk on you for that. If you can’t defend your post then you’re going to get proverbially owned. Let the thread police itself.
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Feb 6, 2021 22:52
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awesmoe posted:people dont like maggie habberman disproportionately compared to everyone else in her role who is equally guilty of the sins of their profession because she's a woman who tweets badly People don't like Haberman because she spent four years humanizing Trump and his family, especially Jared and Ivanka, in an effort to maintain her access to them. You can argue that people dislike her more than other journalists who participate in access journalism. I don't know how you could prove that, but even if it is true, that is probably because they hate Trump, not because she's "a woman who tweets badly".
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Feb 6, 2021 22:52
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Like, trying to curate a list of “good” sources is going to require a level of moderation effort that frankly SA isn’t equipped for, and to be honest I don’t think USPol needs that level of scrutiny when it’s ok to post mybankruptcyfraudcrimes.text. If someone is posting stupid bullshit from the Epoch Times or whatever let posters tell them to gently caress off.
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Feb 6, 2021 22:55
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Aruan posted:Like, trying to curate a list of “good” sources is going to require a level of moderation effort that frankly SA isn’t equipped for, and to be honest I don’t think USPol needs that level of scrutiny when it’s ok to post mybankruptcyfraudcrimes.text. No, because those users don't gently caress off, and they bring friends. Moderation is actually required. Rules and norms actually matter.
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Feb 6, 2021 23:00
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Aruan posted:Like, trying to curate a list of “good” sources is going to require a level of moderation effort that frankly SA isn’t equipped for, and to be honest I don’t think USPol needs that level of scrutiny when it’s ok to post mybankruptcyfraudcrimes.text. Which is exactly the point of posting the lovely article in the first place. They're trolling, so getting a couple pages of "gently caress off" instead of meaningful discussion is what they're after.
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Feb 6, 2021 23:01
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Deteriorata posted:Which is exactly the point of posting the lovely article in the first place. They're trolling, so getting a couple pages of "gently caress off" instead of meaningful discussion is what they're after.
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Feb 6, 2021 23:04
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A Buttery Pastry posted:You don’t have to have a couple of pages. Like, the moment you see 2-3 of those replies you can just ignore it. "Just ignore it" is not a solution to brigading and attempted thread sabotage, and never has been. Because even if you ignore it, someone else won't, and it will result in pages of derail, and you'll be forced to skim through it to separate the wheat from the chaff. Maybe this doesn't happen in the threads you post in, but take it from me: it happens constantly in USPol.
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Feb 6, 2021 23:22
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Aruan posted:Beyond punishing people for lying about what a source claims or posting clickbait misleading garbage, I don’t think it’s the responsibility of moderators to police sources. The key to this, though, is to let people refute sources in real time. You are welcome to post something from RT and other posters are equally welcome to dunk on you for that. If you can’t defend your post then you’re going to get proverbially owned. Let the thread police itself. The problem with this is it promotes lazy posting while also feeds disinformation to lurkers/posters who only look at tweets/etc and do not follow discussions. For example, with that RT anti-Duss tweet, someone multiple pages later used a phrase from that tweet (Russian hawk). They were saying something to the effect of the US is ramping up interference in Russia's demostic policy because they're hiring Russian hawks like Duss. Luckily that poster engaged with others and admitted they just accepted that tweet at face value. They realized they were wrong about Duss somehow being more anti-Russian than the average politician. So my point is "self-moderation" will still have people absorb incorrect information. If you probe someone for a week or two, then they might think harder about posting the first tweet they see that supports their view.
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Feb 6, 2021 23:25
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Kalit posted:The problem with this is it promotes lazy posting while also feeds disinformation to lurkers/posters who only look at tweets/etc and do not follow discussions. For example, with that RT anti-Duss tweet, someone multiple pages later used a phrase from that tweet (Russian hawk). They were saying something to the effect of the US is ramping up interference in Russia's demostic policy because they're hiring Russian hawks like Duss. Sure, in a perfect would you could police content in this way, but it would require coming to a consensus on what are and aren’t good sources, which isn’t possible on a website with volunteer moderation and many posters who legitimately believe that RT is an excellent source. The challenge here is every time someone presents a source as an example of something that is inarguably propaganda that doesn’t have a place here, someone is happy to pipe up with “...wait a minute, I agree with what that says!” It’s the same discussion we’ve had in other contexts: there is too much ideological conflict to create a list of what is and isn’t ok to post without creating drama that, on its sum, will be far more distracting in a thread than just letting someone post RT and telling them to gently caress off. The key though is making it ok to say gently caress off.
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Feb 6, 2021 23:30
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A Buttery Pastry posted:You don’t have to have a couple of pages. Like, the moment you see 2-3 of those replies you can just ignore it. The issue is no one loving does. Derails from bad sources and poo poo articles that aren't actually real happen all the time and go for pages, get dropped for 1 then get brought back up and go for another 3. Or someone comes in to reinforce the troll just because and welp here's ten pages of bullshit that poo poo up the threads. That is dnd and sa at the current time. Because some people want to be assholes and post bs articles or tweets just to cause issues. That's what people here want to stop. It's not as simple as oh just don't post, there's people that refuse to do anything but post when they see something. Stopping the posting is praxis poo poo would do more to help this place but lol if that's gonna happen
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Feb 6, 2021 23:31
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Also I would argue that people lying about what a source says - when the source in question is from a bog standard US newspaper - is the far bigger problem then someone posting propaganda from questionable sources. He’ll, last night someone posted an out of context Biden quote from an upcoming a TV news interview to support their conclusion that Biden is against increasing the minimum wage. Can we consistently deal with that first before trying to create more rules?
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Feb 6, 2021 23:33
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If you don't like the predominant posting style of a thread perhaps you're just not a good fit for it? I find all of mine to be quite agreeable places.
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Feb 6, 2021 23:34
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