> They just try to keep explicitly political material from being posted on their site - from any point of view.
Right that is what they claim in their guidelines but in practice this is very untrue. American left progressive material generally does fine on the site, both from the rule moderation perspective and community sentiment.
> Fun fact: that’s called “they don’t want you around”. You’re being vibe checked out.
It's funny, in your attempt to sarcastically sneer in your comment you just tried to build a strawman of my political opinions in your head.
Regardless the easiest way for them to settle this would to say it explicitly. "We strongly believe in left social justice values and that informs our moderation and the content we allow on the site." That's all the guidelines would need to make it clear to everyone what's going on. Instead they do this gaslighting dance where they never explicitly say their political position but instead enforce it by enforcing the rules more harshly on those they politically disagree with. They could instead point to this guideline to moderate or flag content they politically disagree with. It's upfront and clear.
The Internet as it is is subject to a huge amount of context collapse. Moreover tech people are more likely than the average person to have lower EQ. Using unrelated moderation rules to fight political battles is a fairly negative thing in my opinion. Being clear about what you allow and disallow does everyone a service and level sets expectations.
There are some very smart people on that site that only contribute there(although some are old slashdotters from back in the day) so it is a shame.
I get the impression by watching the community that interacting with them is basically impossible as a normal person.
Someone gets an invite, has productive technical discussions, eventually says something that doesn't align exactly with their religion(and we're talking really obscure stuff here) and he gets swiftly and permanently banned possibly bringing the person who invited him down with him as well.
It's easy to state this, almost as easy as to find a specific entry in the modlog proving it. If you want, I can do the grunt work if you cite a specific username.
It has already been mentioned that banned users' "ban-worthy" comments are censored.
I'd have to run an operation on lobste.rs in order to make a point and then maybe the non-representative examples I do capture are of people actually going crazy.
HN hides "dead" comments for unregistered users but at least registration is open.
This way I can know that some user was unknowingly making ill-informed claims about the extent of the contributions of the author of the linked project to certain products as opposed to any of the worst-case assumptions one could make from the replies.
> [censored]. Oh, you know who also [censored]? [censored]? Exactly!
I'm a member of the site since 2017, read almost every comment (it's not that much), and have a habit of saving "spicy" threads before mods arrive. So there's a pretty good chance I can recover more background than what's available now.
I don’t know your particular political affiliations. But it also doesn’t matter. Being asked to leave is not being gaslit. Being asked to leave is not abusive. This Weaponized therapy speak is exhausting.
It’s called “freedom of association”. Again, they built a community for themselves. They don’t need to cater to people like you or me if they don’t want to.
And they’re not.
You’re not owed or entitled to some sort of clear moderation guideline. You’re not owed or entitled to having a good experience on that website.
You're so pugnacious in your replies that I'm not sure it's worth replying to you, but I'll do so anyway. My guess is if you respond you'll sneer at me again but let's see.
If the site said "The rules are: pushcx's homies get gas and haters get ass" then I'd have no expectations of fairness or clear guidelines. But that's not the site. It has a set of guidelines. It has flagging capabilities along with categories you can use to indicate why the content you flag is flag worthy. It has a mod log where moderator actions are performed publicly. This gives the impression to many users that the site cares about a semblance of fairness and tries to separate rules from mere passions. The reason why I find Lobsters so annoying is because of that disconnect. The site gives this impression of rules, guidelines, and moderation philosophy. But in effect it's just the sounding board of the admin and some mods. Obviously as you so caustically try to reiterate they are free to associate like this (and I'm freely speaking about how much I dislike it while freely associating on another site), but that doesn't stop people from disliking it.
Thing is, I’m not being “pugnacious”. I think I’m being very straightforward and just telling you that your assumptions about your relationship to them are fundamentally wrong!
Of course you’re allowed to dislike it!
I think your criticism has a point of validity to it, but also a serious level of entitlement that you expect some sort of “customer service” from them - such as a menu of expectations or norms that you were expected to follow.
I’m not sneering at you because you’re being excluded, I’m sneering at your assumption that you have some sort of relationship with these moderators or the community such that they have to respect or cater to you.
Frankly, as someone who has run a community, it’s a lot of work and there’s a lot of people who just de facto expect you to give them a level of service that they have come to expect from social media _companies_, that frankly, they’re not entitled to.
Right that is what they claim in their guidelines but in practice this is very untrue. American left progressive material generally does fine on the site, both from the rule moderation perspective and community sentiment.
> Fun fact: that’s called “they don’t want you around”. You’re being vibe checked out.
It's funny, in your attempt to sarcastically sneer in your comment you just tried to build a strawman of my political opinions in your head.
Regardless the easiest way for them to settle this would to say it explicitly. "We strongly believe in left social justice values and that informs our moderation and the content we allow on the site." That's all the guidelines would need to make it clear to everyone what's going on. Instead they do this gaslighting dance where they never explicitly say their political position but instead enforce it by enforcing the rules more harshly on those they politically disagree with. They could instead point to this guideline to moderate or flag content they politically disagree with. It's upfront and clear.
The Internet as it is is subject to a huge amount of context collapse. Moreover tech people are more likely than the average person to have lower EQ. Using unrelated moderation rules to fight political battles is a fairly negative thing in my opinion. Being clear about what you allow and disallow does everyone a service and level sets expectations.