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.
I agree that while Lemmy looks like a far-left space, you have to consider why people that escaped Reddit and r/worldnews style of Hegelian vacuums came here. Reddit provides a neoliberal space, Raddle/Gab/chans (4chan et al) provide a far right safe space, and Lemmy provides a safe space as well.
People over there mass brigade and spout racist shit and do not rely on facts to prop up their agendas. None of this happens on Lemmy, because far left is one domain that largely does not consist of uneducated hypocrites, reactionaries, warmongerers or racists and believes in critical thinking just like some of the conservatives do.
The problem is, you will not see corrupt liberals or neocons leaving their bigotry or agendas at the door for a discussion, and will use every opportunity to leverage their agendas. This is what creates such massive friction. That does not mean to say far left people are some hermits, but I have seen more humanity, collective good and peace advocacy in this political space than anywhere else. And there is no honeymoon phase in political ideologies, so I am not dreaming either.
Instances, unless agree to rules mutually, cannot and should not federate with each other. It has massive consequences of destroying peace for the composed, silent users, and whoever wants chaos is the beneficiary party of such federations (often the far right warmongerer kind or a right libertarian or a neoliberal).
From what I saw, Voat became a far right thing, and QAnon stuff has poisoned half the American voter population. Allowing these kinds of propaganda liars, while seemingly great in utopia, is dangerous on Earth today, because we do not have a utopia. Society envisioned in a vacuum is meaningless unless you live in a vacuum.
Every “free speech” platform is simply a way for contemporary fascism to flourish, which is observed evidently again and again and again and again and again. It is why Mastodon had to ban National Socialism (Nazi) people from its main instance, which most instances do prefer.
It is a tougher problem than you or I can think. I wrote a small piece on it in December 2020. https://teddit.net/r/privatelife/comments/k7vngo/2020_special_the_good_the_bad_and_the_ugly_my/
I think you misspelt “echo chamber” as “safe space”.