so if you haven’t come across it, see here , here , here and here .
in short, one side says sources are pro-imperialist, the other side believes they’re legitimate sources. then there is one user thinking we have been targeted by troll farms, one accusing others of being conspiracy theorists and stuff like that. it’s one of the most unproductive arguements I’ve seen on Lemmy, something that looks like one those downvoted-to-oblivian threads on reddit. it’s just a mess.
I think we can do a few things to prevent such pointless fights in the future:
- my favoriate response would be creating a community of fact-checker Lemmurs. it’ll function similar to a wikipedia talk page, anyone can request a trial for an article shared on c/worldnews , then they will present evidence and sources to challenge the article, while the other side attempts to do the same. personal attacks, accusing of being a troll, asking for a call on jitsi to debate face to face (like seriously?!?!) will be forbidden. both sides will debate untill they reach an agreement. trying to go off-topic, bad faith arguements etc will be forbidden as well.
each time we reach a conclusion, a positive or negative point will be assigned to news source and to the person who posted it. best contributers who show the least bias will get a point as well. overtime it will help us to see if a source is really good or not.
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a much easier approch would be to let downvotes and upvotes decide the fate of each post. I understand that this is the whole point of lemmy and similar platforms, but right now we have the problem of each side using downvotes and upvotes like it’s a battle. posts about internet censoreship and tiny pigs are being downvoted because the person who posts them trusts the Guardian and other news outlets.
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we can limit the number of posts on c/worldnews to minimize the amount of personal attacks and arguements.
so what do you think? I personally think as more users come to lemmy, we’ll be dealling with more diverse opinions, and people might just engage in behaviors that harms the platform and benefits no one. this will be a real problem considering that Lemmy leans far-left. in my opinion having a fact-checking community will be neccessary if we don’t want fact-based communities turn into battlefields.
ps: am I going too far and overreacting? to be honest I don’t know xD I just think there’s no chance for productive political arguements if we can’t agree on the facts, and i see no point in what’s happening on c/worldnews right now.
Thanks for your self-aware and prosocial approach in this reply— although I’m sure that if a reader thinks genocide didn’t really happen, your designation of genocide-denial as gross wouldn’t really be seen as prosocial. But besides that, my point still stands. I’m sure having a post like this, dedicated, in a way, to you, could be discouraging.
Disclaimers…
I worry that, given the context of this thread, this makes it seem as if I’m a liberal/imperialist. I’m sure I haven’t adopted a critical-enough stance. I wish I had it, I genuinely wish I would read more Anwar Shaikh or Noam Chomsky, for example, especially if reading them and adopting a more critical stance still enables me to be kind and understanding in discussions. However, I also think I am currently able to be harshly critical of liberalism. I hope saying this makes it visible that I am open to reading about Nazis in NATO, as I am about Uyghur genocide.
Saying that also forces me to say that I don’t believe ‘the truth is in the middle’. That’s a fallacy. But these are two lines of discourse (Nazis in Nato and Uyghur genocide) that I think deserve my attention, given the stakes at hand, the sources presented, and my interests.
I’m not really sure where I’m going with that, but I guess I am defending myself preemptively from attacks that degrade discussion. How else would someone express their disagreement? I think kindness can help.
Why kindness and understanding are not hippy-dippy kumbaya, but strategic rhetorical tools
Why? Because, while I think cancel culture* signals a shift in values that are largely more inclusive and therefore positive, it can also backfire. It can convince those who are in the middle (1st rule of thumb) that the accusing/cancelling extreme is excessive, and side with the backfiring/conservative extreme.
What to do if not cancel? Swaying, showing how the world would be better if we thought or acted, not that way, but this way. Inglehart, the author who wrote the ‘backfire’ paper, also works with Welzel, who shows how education and the internet/interconnectivity are changing values around the world like never before. This shows that changes in values, and everything that that entails, is possible. In short amounts of time.
Disclaimer 2
And yet I’ve seen plenty of people in Lemmy making amazing contributions with super interesting articles or websites, posted in good faith and with the intent of teaching. I’m really glad to see this happening.
* I use “cancel culture”, but I’m not convinced that’s an appropriate way of describing the interactions OP is referring to. And yet it resembles what I’m trying to describe… Regardless, my point about backlash, those in the middle, and swaying still stands.
I could try to be ideal and try to be more rhetorically effective or ‘prosocial’ which is a word I just learnt. But when I post I usually just want to share how I’m feeling. Being overly ideal ends up being kind of fake and not really genuine, and those are genuine feelings that have value. Maybe I’m not making a net positive, but then if I changed there would be another taking my place.
But that’s why it interesting to see solutions for how to regulate and nudge content for everyone’s benefit. And conflict isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s engaging and all that. But I imagine people react to a type conflict which I also have to be honest about that I don’t enjoy.
And it’s been particularly upsetting getting comments calling formel primeminister of Norway and current general secretary of NATO a supporter of neo nazis. During his time as a primeminister we (Norway) experienced the most traumatizing event in Norway’s history (since world war 2 when nazi-germany attacked and occupied Norway). A right wing extremist bombed the government house (hoping to kill the current general secretary of NATO) and going to a summer camp hosted by the youth party of the party that (the general secretary of NATO) was leader of at the time where the terrorist shot and killed nearly a hundred politically active teenagers all trapped on a small island where the summercamp took place. The right-wing extremist accused the party for trying to implement communism through their social reforms as well as accusing them for trying to muslimize Norway.
Yeah, I think the main problem currently seems to be you’re trying to shout louder than the admins. Try to be more rhethorically defined, don’t throw ad hominems, be precise and not overgeneralising. Otherwise you’re just promoting that kind of behaviour as acceptable. Sure, the other side might attack you personally, but this is not a contest who’s first or who has the ultimate truth. Try to stick to the facts. Don’t shoot back, try to disarm.
You are right
Oof… you’re touching upon an issue I’ve discussed quite a bit with a group of friends: the tension between effective rhetoric and expressing your true inner feelings. We’ve had these discussions in the context of different types of asymmetrical power relationships, but we often talked about the experience of one of those friends who is gay.
My highschool friend
He grew up being constantly being bullied, including constant jabs from the very same friend-group. Yes, we were regressive, asshole brats; as you may imagine by my tone, this has changed quite a bit. Anyway, the thing is, we changed as a friend-group partly because of the incidentally (or not) inclusive media we consumed. We also changed partly because one of us who went overseas to a hyper-inclusive intentional community would systematically point out micro-aggressions. For example, when someone would say “Oh, he’s such a removed” to mean that someone is weak or fearful, this woke friend would badger them with deliberately nonchalant stuff like “Oh, how could you tell his sexuality based on [that behavior]?” or “Oh, I didn’t know he was into men”. Finally, we were able to change partly because none of us had our identities particularly tied to a regressive expression of a religion or some other ideology (with “ideology” defined in the broadest possible terms).
But that’s not the point. The point is that my friend hated the whole regressive behavior we had. And although he hinted at how he felt by brushing us off with “Alright, alright. Leave me alone”, back then he never expressed his emotions in terms of feeling alone, different, hated, fearful, even disgusting at times… Today he’s able to be more candid with us, and so are we. We can all talk frankly about being fearful of a declining romantic relationship, of having screwed up flirting, of the uncertainties and the shitty certainties aging, of being lost career-wise —you know, the total opposite of stereotypical cisgender men like James Bond.
But I can’t help but wonder whether my friend could’ve changed our regressive views by expressing his awful experience candidly. Honestly, I’m not sure it would’ve worked. We would’ve needed very different schemas to internalize his plight, schemas that we just didn’t have until much later. At the same time, his own experience, expressed strategically, could’ve created those inclusive schemas. But that rhetorical work, which is usually in the hands of capable artists and witty activists, would be too much to ask from a preteen.
My American friend
This is quite a different scenario to another, unrelated, friend. She grew up in a poor, white, and overwhelmingly Evangelical American city. She used to go by the Fox News discourse of the time, of which the most laughably absurd talking point was the whole “Obama, show us your birth certificate”. She ate that up… And her best friend didn’t. Her best friend sat down again and again to talk about these topics, showing her sources, asking critical questions. Eventually, my friend came around and she recognized how absurd her previous point of view was. Today, she’s incredibly grateful at the work her friend put into having her re-think her views.
My neighbors
A last example: my neighbors. They have a dog. It barks all the time. It’s left alone all the time. It’s had no training. The owners themselves told me they don’t like dogs. They have it because their son went overseas and left the dog home. The barking drives me crazy. I try to study and I just can’t think when his barking spouts begin… The law isn’t on my side either: I talked to a lawyer and the most that we can do is get the police to knock on their door and tell them to get their shit together. And so now, my daily life is navigating the tension between (1) wanting to yell in their face about how insensitive they are to leave the dog suffering all day long and how incredibly incompetent they are as owners, and (2) having to approach them with an effective solution. I’ve spent so many hours reading about dog-training, rhetorical tools, how humans change… ugh… it’s been a ride. And, by approaching them strategically, it has improved: now they give the dog walks daily (which is not really a solution to the barking, but at least it makes the dog’s day more interesting) and now they let the dog into the house when they’re not out working. But when they leave the house, so does the dog, and the barking begins…
This whole thing is not so structured, but I’m just trying to let you see where I see the tension between being candid and being strategic. My ideal solution would be to find ways being candid in a rhetorically effective way. But this puts the burden of work on the hands of those who are suffering… and that sucks. Yet I think it’s what I have to continue doing to fix the dog issue, among many other things I’m interested in changing in the world.