The Automated Ban List - Page 3124

On January 08 2021 03:13 Jealous wrote:
What exactly was bannable about that post? Seems like he simply listed his beliefs and approached a question in a civil manner, I don't get it.

Oh, I guess the "anti-antifa" means he's fascist, right? Lol...

On January 09 2021 01:46 LegalLord wrote:
To give a slightly more detailed comment since it's starting to look like people are interested in that:

It looks like, at the very least, Neb and I agree on that "wrong opinions" are moderated more harshly than "right opinions" whatever those opinions may be. Without getting too far into the specifics, I would say that the closer you are to the mainstream, the less "wrong" your opinions are in the eyes of a moderation staff that is largely in the political mainstream (by virtue of the fact that most people are). You simply do get away with a lot worse if you post badly while providing a popular take than if your opinion itself is also seen as objectionable. I think that by now, this point has been well-established over time.

While I don't speak for his argument, Danglars is not wrong to note that being in the right-wing is a substantial ban hazard these days. You could justify banning BerserkSword based on the previous history or one of those famous "sum of the badness" evaluations, you could do the same with Wegandi, and so on. When it's all done in short order all together, whatever the individual justifications, the larger trend looks suspiciously like cleaning house. Certainly something to be wary of.

As to DMCD's point on "rules-based moderation," that is also an old problem. It seems that the moderation staff's favored approach is to profess to be rules-based, but to reserve the right to be unpredictable and whimsical whenever either the ban decision is difficult to outwardly justify, or whenever an old Starcraft buddy of the moderation staff starts acting out in a way that would be otherwise extremely bannable. Sure, it's always possible to take an "our house, our rules - if you don't like it then leave" stance about this, but that trend of whimsy really undermines the rules-based approach that is an important aspect of good moderation.

Nothing new here, though - I feel like all of the above has been discussed to death in the past.

On January 09 2021 03:17 Danglars wrote:

I couldn't have said it better myself. And it has been discussed to death already, which is why breaking out the minutiae of relevant examples from both sides is like beating a dead horse.

On January 09 2021 02:46 Nevuk wrote:







I suspect this is the worst offense in his post. It implies he doesn't think there was anything wrong with the violence, at the minimum. Glorification of violence gets you banned on TL, especially against elected officials, (I think this is what got xdaunt finally banned?), and he was dancing right on the edge.

Combine that with moderation being a lot less tolerant of this sort of praise than they were in 2017, with BeserkSword apparently being a generally shitty poster all around (while xdaunt had at least contributed to the site at one point), and the anti-hate speech laws in most of europe and you can see why he had to go.

Note that the netherlands (where TL is based) literally has anti-hate speech laws against anything more explicit than what he said, and possibly that even fit what he already said.

(I'm more surprised Zeo only got two days, but he was just spreading a disproven conspiracy theory without praising violence).


Also, Faruko getting banned for 2 weeks was pretty funny due to the ban note - he mostly posts in a thread where 1 line shitposts are explicitly allowed lol (OOTGD on liquiddota). Didn't realize he had a long mod history aside from that though.

On January 09 2021 08:46 Jealous wrote:

I don't know, I certainly didn't interpret it that way. My interpretation was more in line with what I have seen framed elsewhere as an exaggeration of instability. In other words, the United States as a whole is remarkably stable, if we're looking big picture. An overwhelming margin of the population went about their days as if nothing happened at all; most of those affected were keyboard warriors, armchair political experts, etc. I found out about all of this happening through Facebook, which I check relatively infrequently, and mostly for notifications alone. If I hadn't gone on Facebook or Reddit, chances are my life would have continued entirely unaffected by this.

We have posters on these forums that seem to (at least to me) support a violent upheaval of the established order, but when such a violent upheaval attempt occurs, suddenly it's time to ban people. If it was the "scourge" comment, a poster was banned for calling a broad group of people either A. a whip used as an instrument of punishment, or B. a person or thing that causes great trouble or suffering (according to Google). Both of these potential definitions strike me as decidedly mild expressions. Meanwhile, other posters are ascribing mental health issues to others, more or less - which, as far as I was aware, was pretty taboo.

TLDR, I still am not really seeing what was ban-worthy about that post, even as a straw on the camel's back. I submit that I may still not be getting it, ignorant of all of the context surrounding it, poster's history, etc. However, as it stands, it really does seem that there is some weight to what is being suggested in that posters whose opinions are contrary to the majority liberal/leftist opinion of the site and its moderators are under greater scrutiny. If the moderation team as a whole is in agreement with Kwark's post on the previous page, then that would make a lot of sense.

On January 09 2021 03:22 KwarK wrote:

There are two possible explanations:
1. Right wing people aren't worse than the general population, the greater rate of moderation actions implies moderation bias.
2. Right wing people are worse than the general population, the greater rate of moderation implies even handed treatment applied to a disproportionately awful group.

It's 2.