Comment on A rant on left-wing online infighting
Rentlar@lemmy.ca 2 weeks agoI appreciate the perspective, I understand and totally support the moderation policy of beehaw and blahaj zone. I do think it is good to have a tough stance and a no-tolerance policy of bigotry, abusers and jerks against the group you are trying to create a safe place to discuss for. Though I don’t know what you mean by defender here.
What I’m trying to get at though, is the assumptions and jumps to conclusions that people make in policy discussions. I recognize this can come from real trauma inflicted on people in past interactions, that prevents real progress towards helpful solutions. Other replies have provided good examples.
We do need to root out problematic behaviour, but we also have to re-discover solidarity if the aim is to form a political bloc or movement that can accomplish things. I posit that creating and maintaing a safe space is an equally valid but not quite the same aim–one needs more focus on reducing infighting than the other.
StarlightDust@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
I’m not particularly experienced in online moderation, especially in managing serious issues in those spaces, so I would have to ask a friend about it, though I think the space she manages has different rules to her own views from what she has said. I doubt that the same issues that I am talking about occur as frequently though. The internet is much more anonymous and its full of trolls. I actually think its much harder to cultivate a culture online. I don’t really think that anyone is actively changing their mind through anonymous online discussion. The idea of that being a thing was part of an astroturfing campaign to normalise shitty views.
IRL, I work with others from all over the left and I tend to be someone who is responsible for the emotional labour of accountability. You can’t physically completely ban people from a scene without convincing as many people as possible not to hang out with them. You can ban them from chats easily enough, but people will cause a stink if you don’t “use proper channels” and the worst predators will still show up to events anyway. Most of the time garden variety bigotry doesn’t become enough of an issue to do that. Usually that only becomes an issue when someone starts hounding marginalised people and/or attending far-right events. People will often confront each other over bigotry before whisper networks develop but imo gossip is a really healthy way of keeping check.
What I mean is that prioritizing reducing infighting means that people within a community aren’t familiar with raising issues, which means speaking out isn’t normalized. It replicates the patriarchy on a smaller scale.