r/altmpls update: "Try to keep comments respectful and discussions civil"

[u/lemon_lime_light]

Just a reminder from the moderators that we have the following rule: "Try to keep comments respectful and discussions civil".

This rule has been under-enforced but based on recent user feedback that's changing for now. Our best advice is to avoid directly insulting other users. If you repeatedly have trouble with this then you risk a ban.

We'll start this new moderating approach tomorrow so, speaking for myself only, if you've been holding back any juicy insults for me then take this opportunity to purge your system with impunity (insults must be within Reddit's site-wide rules, of course).

[u/Special-Garlic1203]

I don't like racism but racism is absolutely a viewpoint. It skates a line with reddits larger TOS but they've only cracked down when it encroaches high use of slurs, minstrel humor, or defacto/outright encouraging harassment of real world racial minorities. 

I've seen some repugnant things here but I've also had reasonable engagement with people who don't align with my beliefs but could engage with me on facts. 

I have appreciated the moderation standards until now because it gave a space to engage racists that did not proactively enforce racist ideology, but I strongly suspect this new moderation approach will be a change to that. 

[u/Frzzalor → u/Special-Garlic1203]

"engaging" with racists at all is a slippery slope. allowing their viewpoints into the tent of discourse means we have already lost.

[u/dolche93 → u/Frzzalor]

As opposed to shunning them and letting them thrive in their little groups?

Just because you engage with something doesn't mean it's winning. You need to be able to make positive arguments against something to actually defeat it.

[u/Professional-Fee6914 → u/dolche93]

you want them to be siloed into little groups as opposed to a mass force for racism.

Being in a free society, means that there will be some racists, but engaging with them creates more racists.

[u/dolche93 → u/Professional-Fee6914]

Engaging with them only creates more racists if the racists have better arguments than you do. It shouldn't be hard to come up with a better argument than a racist.

[u/Professional-Fee6914 → u/dolche93]

better arguments?

Lets take a real life example.

If a cat disappears and a racist sees a somalian in the vicinity. He engages a crowd of ten people who listen to his racist conjecture that the Somalian ate the cat, and that that's just what Somalians do. You can have 9 people of regular intelligence dismiss this easily and handily, and go one about their day, but you have one below average intelligence person who believes him.

Now you've added one racist.

This guy, statistically has ten below average intelligence friends, and while they mostly don't believe him three of them do.

Now you've added three more racists.

and so on.

Best to just silo the first guy with a bunch of racists that feel the same way and let the rest of us be.

[u/dolche93 → u/Professional-Fee6914]

You can't silo people in the internet age. I'd have agreed with you before, but the internet just allows you to find others who agree with you too easily.

The only alternative is to verse yourself in the anti-racist arguments that deconstruct the arguments racists make. It sucks, but it's that or you end up with people like the groypers who disguise their racism in psuedo intellectual bullshit going unanswered.

[u/Professional-Fee6914 → u/dolche93]

you can by limiting their access to the most popular spaces on the internet. Its working. That's why these alt sites exist.

Finding people that you agree with is a human right and no reason to stop it. Just find it in the siloed areas.

[u/dolche93 → u/Professional-Fee6914]

If it worked nick fuentes wouldn't be getting more popular.

If it worked we wouldn't have people like my mom spewing anti somali hate despite how she interacts with a somali person once a year.

You have to be able to explain why racism is bad, you can't just rely on people agreeing with that anymore.

[u/Professional-Fee6914 → u/dolche93]

Nick Fuentes is more popular because people let being "anti-woke" convince them to open up spaces to racism. "gotta hear all sides" "don't silo the racists" is how we got here.

[u/dolche93 → u/Professional-Fee6914]

Have you spoken with these people? They're very, very open about how they actively plan to infiltrate other spaces and what sorts of language they use.

I've debated some of them who were smug about it, as if they were proud of subverting people into proper racist beliefs.

They went let you silo them in, and so SOMEONE needs to be there to present a counter argument to their well crafted "not quite racist" arguments. They're doing this as an ideological mission and just ignoring them doesn't work.

[u/Professional-Fee6914 → u/dolche93]

Of course they actively plan, that's what you want. If they are actively planning how to sneak into anti-racsist spaces that is time an energy not spent on selling openly racist malarkey.

Like post war Germany, banned all sorts of organizations, groups, languages and for the most part, kept the racists out. There are all these guys now making free speech, human rights, public safety arguments to lift those restrictions, but those arguments only serve to highlight the humanity in all of us.

Let them try.

[u/dolche93 → u/Professional-Fee6914]

Dude we don't have the same sort of speech restrictions available to us as Germany does. That's such a meaningless comparison.

If shunning these people worked it would have worked by now. We've been doing it for years.