There’s a new one suddenly popping up in my feed but obviously the reports are being “resolved” by the mods of that community. They suggested to me that I block their community but I will not because that is how you get a cesspit of an instance. How do we report disinformation communities straight to the admins?
Edit: the admins did remove the community in question so I’m going to take that as the official stance on disinformation communities and also assume that any type of community (right wing, left wing, or other) that are intentionally spreading disinformation will be removed. That makes me feel much better about the situation since this type of thing is pretty much guaranteed to pop up again.
This is a general-purpose instance on a decentralized platform that doesn’t have much of an algorithm. All of us here most likely run into things we don’t like or want to see, and as long as it’s not illegal I think things like this will still be allowed. You can always block communities and follow ones that you like to tailor what you see. If you’re looking for more specific content all around, I’d join an instance that’s more specific to the type of content you’re looking for
I’m new here so I don’t have much of a vote, but I have mixed feelings here. I like the idea of not blocking content, but at the same time I think a Vaccines community that is dedicated to spreading misinformation is not something healthy to have.
Yeah, it’s difficult. If it’s bots/automated posting, that very clearly goes against this instance’s policies.
I like being able to see the full picture, including false information, so removing communities in this way effectively steals that freedom from me.
Holy shitballs man, this is really who you want to be?
Dude, not cool.
You trying to have a conversation or are you trying to insult me?
It’s the same concept of destroying history or literature. The bad parts of history are just as valuable as the good parts of history. Destroying the bad destroys our ability to see the full picture and learn from it.
We’re talking about a community that is dedicated to posting misinformation and apparently trolling. It is very common for that kind of content and community to be explicitly forbidden in general purpose online communities because that isn’t general purpose content. This isn’t a matter of things people simply don’t want to see. It’s content that has proven to be problematic for any community that it infiltrates and generally results in a decline in quality and decorum.
I agree. The unfortunate reality is that the line between misinformation and opinion is very different from person to person—especially when it comes to politics. It’s easy to moderate and remove illegal content based on local laws of the country an instance resides in, but trying to moderate content from a single U.S. political party raises more questions and will take more volunteer manpower from admins. We would need to define as a community:
I still don’t think this is the right move. I joined the Fediverse because of the ability to post and consume content without any person or entity manually or automatically determining what I can and cannot see. I specifically chose this instance because of it’s relaxed policy on defederation. I value being able to see all content and be aware of everyone’s voice, even if it is blatantly false information or offensive.
I don’t think anyone is advocating for defederation, just upholding some base standards for discourse on communities directly hosted by this instance. If it was just a normal rightwing sub, I’d agree with you, but defending a blatant troll/disinformation sub is getting into “paradox of tolerance” territory for me personally.
Hell, the snowflakes banned me for making a single post warning another user not to feed the trolls. 😂
I have zero problem with staying federated with instances I vehemently disagree with. But I also have little desire to stay on one that "Free Speech"es itself into becoming a safe space for trolls and disinformation peddlers.