A few days ago I made a post to gauge this community’s opinion on whether it should allow nice comics by bigoted artists. I think we have a consensus.
The majority of comments were very in support of banning comics by artists like Stonetoss and Jago. I heard from queer people who said they’d feel safer if the rules were changed. A lot of people were concerned about this community becoming a “Nazi bar”, the comment expressing that feeling got a LOT of upvotes.
The people against the change had two main arguments: anti-censorship, and personal responsibility. A few people equated active moderation practices with book burning. Nearly all of these “against” comments were downvoted or ratiod, and tended to have a lot of arguments underneath them, while the “pro” comments went uncontested.
On the internet, 10% of people will disagree with just about anything. With that in mind, I think we’ve reached a consensus. The community wants a rule change so that users can’t post inoffensive comics by bigoted artists.
That means no more Jago comics. I see a lot of people in the comments under the Jago posts, getting angry and saying they want this rule change. People aren’t happy with the user who’s posting all the Jago comics.
Mods, this is what we want. Please change the rules and get Jago’s comics outta here.
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Locking this for right now, this thread has gotten out of hand. Edit: unlocked. Please behave.
I’m not sure we need to keep adding rules just for one artist. if the consensus is to ban Jago comics for their content, then that seems like a good decision.
however “bigoted” seems to mean a wide variety of different things now. and it seems that some people are ok with some darker forms of humor than others.
jago is well known for making comics specifically to try and piss people off. but I feel that dark humor should not be banned.
I preferred the simpler times where it was a simple downvote and move on. Those artists will probably get ratioed anyways and the posts will be sunk.
Witch-Hunt mentality is kinda a lame way to go about things.
Didn’t see the other post, but it is never proper to censor someone just because someone doesn’t like something they said. Remove individual cartoons that are offensive, don’t censor people.
what if they were comics by hitler
I think we’d all rather Hitler had remained an artist, no?
I saw these Comics and I don’t like them. Medium joke on juicy pictures. But I was like: “A free internet has to be able to handle things like this”
The people who really want racist/sexist/etc comics are free to make their own instance or community. This is the fediverse. There’s no government with guns or CEO to lock it down.
If that stuff makes for a better community, it will do just fine. I expect it won’t.
One of the things right-wingers push for is the idea that they’re normal and healthy, and everyone else is deficient. Like everything else from the right, it’s projection.
Its inclusion does lead to a Nazi Bar situation as more of that material gets posted, that crowd grows, then the place becomes hostile to the original founders.
A blanket ‘bigoted artists’ rule is ripe for banning based on someone’s entire history, like firing James Gunn for bad jokes in old tweets.
Instead I would prefer to ban individual artists based on their art. So I fully support banning Jago comics because all the ones I remember are based on anti LGBTQ+ or sexist stereotypes. Not because they are bigoted, but because their content is. No idea who stonetoss is, but if their content is similar then I would also favor banning them.
No purity tests though.
I’m fully for this. I’d rather have a clear ban list where every addition is thoroughly discussed.
Forcing mods to make constant judgement calls is though on them and might lead to arguments where they find themselves stuck in the middle.
Yeah I think this is the most important thing, as long as community discussion drives the content of the ban list, it’s all good.
The argument of censorship is bullshit. If a comic is made to discriminate, it is basic decency to get rid of it. If an author makes themselves known by being discriminatory, no platform that cares about user safety and having a non-toxic community needs to get rid of them. It’s as simple as that.
When you refuse that kind of “censorship”, you are only making it clear that you like making this place unsafe for the people being attacked. Which makes you a piece of shit in my book.
So yeah, let’s just ban these things that have no reason to exist, let alone on lemmy.
They have plenty of spaces of their own to post and like the content we don’t want here. They feel a need to spread it though, to harm others because at the basis of it all, that’s what they want to do whether they realize it or not.
let them whine and cry about being “censored,” canceled, banned, etc. everyone is free to say whatever they want, everyone is also free to take what someone says and throw it out the window.
the consistent widespread tolerance of intolerance is a huge reason the world is on fire right now
It is really sad that now, when someone mentions “freedom of speech” I automatically see it as a red flag, despite freedom of speech being a good thing. Nazis really mess up everything.
Freedom of Speech only means that the government cannot censor you.
It has nothing to do with what businesses, individuals, groups, or anyone else does.
When the United States runs a social media, then they can argue that all they want there.
That is just the US legal definition and it is very flawed.
Freedom of speech, more broadly, is the ability to express an opinion without fear of retaliation. This implies constraints on social organizations of all sizes.
Freedom of speech should also be compatible with the paradox of intolerance (unless intolerance is chosen to be socially accepted), which implies censorship at many levels.
The only caution with that is, private companies have a LOT of power and control right now. Easy to argue they shouldn’t, of course.
An example might be Visa enforcing “content guidelines” on any paid content on Steam providing NSFW games. Like, say, any game that acknowledges gay people exist. Payment processors and similar companies have claimed that’s a freedom of speech stance.
But yes, we can definitely keep it simple in forum communities constantly under human enforcement.
I agree, and It’s all because of the distorted form of freedom of speech they have in USA, we generally don’t have that problem in European democracies.
For instance FOX News is simply illegal by European standards, because they lie and distort reality.France unfortunately has billionaire-backed C-News which is the same flavor as Fox-news.
Maybe similar flavor, but they can’t possibly be as bad, because much of what FOX does would be illegal.
In Europe it is still there, far right extremists love to complain about cancel culture, about being censored, etc.
But yeah, they generally prefer to sue for defamation when someone criticises them
In online spaces there also seems to be this wierd thinking of “if it isn’t illegal you have to accept it”.
Yes, which is really stupid, some people seem to think that freedom of expression means that sites have to allow their stupidity. Which is far from the case.
i look at it as “yea, you can put up your nazi flag. but if you put it on my property, it’s going in the firepit and getting torched”
I don’t really care either way as I just browse this place casually (not that I support bigotry), but I can’t believe how many community outrage posts like this that this community has received in the past week or two. You’d think we were in a community dedicated to much more serious topics not one dedicated to ‘Sunday comics.’
Not caring is supporting bigotry.
“I don’t support nazis, I just don’t care if they conquer the world” is not really a good sentence to say.
Not caring is supporting bigotry.
I agree with you
“I don’t support nazis, I just don’t care if they conquer the world” is not really a good sentence to say.
You know, part of the problem with situations like this conversation, I feel, is that it’s always Nazis. It ends up being a cliche that, when something else happens, like the US starting to literally follow similar trends that led to the actual nazi party, it’s already something people are tired of hearing and it hurts the message.
They end up not taking this seriously (because web comics, even shitty bigoted ones, are not as serious as what happened in nazi Germany) and then the other claim doesn’t get taken seriously because “everything’s Nazis with you people”.
Just a thought i had when reading this.
This comes from the fact that there’s less and less space between actual nazis and “just far-right extremists”.
And I think people don’t really see a point anymore in trying to find a difference, me included.
Not caring is supporting bigotry.
No, it’s just not involving myself in internet drama.
“I don’t support nazis, I just don’t care if they conquer the world” is not really a good sentence to say.
You might have a point if we were actually talking about Nazis or someone like Trump and his ilk, but no were talking about some person with little influence who creates comics and posts them to this little community. I’m assuming this is about the guy who has all the thirsty looking comics with women in their underwear that someone claimed didn’t support LGBT but didn’t elaborate further? Forgive me for not joining in the tribalism and drawing my line in the sand over this egregious act.
The fact that you have to immediately rely on exaggerated appeals to emotion in order to even make your point should be a sign that you’re going a little overboard.
So for you, discrimination and fascism should only be fought against when on a gigantic scale? As long as it’s not the president of a country, you don’t care?
“My neighbour is insulting black people in the street but you know, it’s just a little racial slur a few times per day, it’s not like it’s actual Hitler living next to me, so I don’t care”
How does that kind of logic even make sense?
I don’t know why there are so many enlightened centrists on lemmy lately but it’s really gross.
Can you actually point to the discrimination and fascism being posted here? You keep having to rely on hypotheticals and unrelated situations as your argument and have yet to make a single reference to the actual situation occurring here, all while acting like we’re somehow pro-Nazi or pro-slavery if we don’t automatically conform to your viewpoint.
https://lemmy.world/post/45557825
Here’s an example.
https://lemmy.world/post/45513297
Here’s another.
This user in particular is one of the main issues of this community, most of their posts are like that.
But I know that you’re just asking for an example to try to attack it, and there’s not really any point, because if you don’t see the problem from that link, a conversation cannot do enough.
I know that you’re just asking for an example to try to attack it, and there’s not really any point
Oh, you know that do you? There’s no point in devoting a single word in any of your dozen+ comments here to explain a position that you apparently feel so strongly about, while calling others “Nazis” for not automatically siding with you and your moral righteousness
if you don’t see the problem from that link, a conversation cannot do enough.
Apparently you don’t see the problem either since you can’t seem to articulate it even once. You seem entirely reliant on logical fallacies, Nazis, and fascism to manipulate others into falling in line with whatever feeling you happen to be feeling about something. This is the same toxic bullshit that gave us things like the Satanic panic and the drug war and it’s incredibly gross.
You are seriously unhinged if you think either or these strips is an example of discrimination.
No. Support is support, and not caring is not caring. Redefining words won’t change the outcome on the ground.
Apathy is an oppressor’s greatest weapon.
You may not think you’re supporting them, but silence is complicity. And if you’re complicit with it, you tacitly support it, otherwise you’d have an opinion on it.
If you are standing by when an oppressor is oppressing, then you are participating in it.
Accepting the idea that being passive is neutral, is a horrible moral stance that is always advantaging the oppressors.
If it is your stance, you are participating in letting the oppressors do whatever they want, which is supporting them.
There’s a reason why you can be condemned for seeing someone getting attacked and doing nothing. This “neutral” stance has been known to be a piece of shit stance for centuries.
If you are standing by when an oppressor is oppressing, then you are participating in it.
That is not what participation means. Redefining yet more words won’t change the outcome on the ground either.
There’s a reason why you can be condemned for seeing someone getting attacked and doing nothing. This “neutral” stance has been known to be a piece of shit stance for centuries.
This would seem to be the “duty to rescue”. But there is no universal duty to rescue recognised in law - because there is no such duty recognised universally by people either. And where it is recognised, the punishment for failing to carry it out is less than the punishment for putting someone in harm’s way, or harming them yourself.
This is, in fact, a very good way of seeing that “neutrality is aggression” is a minority, and wrong, belief.
You seem to be conflating legality with morality.
It being legal is a good suggestion that society hasn’t decided it’s on the same moral level as things that society has decided to make illegal. At any rate, the unviersal statement ‘This “neutral” stance has been known to be a piece of shit stance for centuries’ is wrong on this basis. If it were so obvious, so known, then, yes, I do think it would be illegal.
So according to your logic, if you walk past someone being raped or murdered and you don’t give a shit and move on, it’s completely fine, because you’re just being neutral? You would consider that not helping the victim, doesn’t help the aggressor?
How do you even manage to convince yourself of such a logic?
No, it is not “completely fine” but it is not morally equivalent to committing the rape, and there are justified reasons for doing nothing: e.g. you cannot physically intervene, and are scared of the cops and so unwilling to call them.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing
I agree with the quote, but I take umbrage with it being used in this context.
There’s nothing to be gained by forcing people to act in ways that they do not wish to act, or to think in ways that they do not wish to think.
The way you’re using that quote is basically saying, “Agree with me, and think the way I tell you to think, or you’re a bad person”.
That is evil, and people of good conscience should not agree with you. It is better to allow you to think that they are a bad person rather than to allow you to have control over their morality.
Is bigotry not evil by your standards?
A, you’ve missed the point completely. B, you’re moving the goalposts. And C, you’re forgetting the possible charitable view of things in that a person who is not aware of the original artist’s bigotry finding something that they posted funny and sharing it with other people.
There’s nothing to be gained by forcing people to act in ways that they do not wish to act, or to think in ways that they do not wish to think.
In context of the conversation, you’re saying there’s nothing to be gained by banning comics from racist artists.
The way you’re using that quote is basically saying, “Agree with me, and think the way I tell you to think, or you’re a bad person”.
You sure? Because in response to your statement saying you don’t have an opinion (ie, you’re doing nothing), it means that you’re allowing bad to happen due to apathy (that’s assuming you see yourself as a good person, if you’re not, disregard).
That is evil, and people of good conscience should not agree with you.
One of these days I’m going to create /c/selfawarewolves…
Twist yourself up like a pretzel all you want, but at least listen to what you’re saying and think about it for more than 5 seconds. Because you’re supporting people who spread bigotry by arguing against banning them, and trying to take the moral high ground.
OK?
The quote highlights that passive inaction is as dangerous as active malice. It encourages taking a stand against wrongdoing rather than remaining neutral.
But it isn’t as dangerous as active malice. Punching someone in the face is more dangerous than watching someone punch another in the face.
Perhaps learning how to block authors you don’t care for would help the people that feel unsafe due to a comic being posted.
I have no comment currently for what will happen regarding bigot artists, I’m not the top mod.
However, please stop making META posts when you made one about the same topic just a few days ago. If the comments on this get out of hand I will lock the thread for civilities sake. Please wait for us to make an announcement about such things, it may take some time.
However, please stop making META posts when you made one about the same topic just a few days ago. If the comments on this get out of hand I will lock the thread for civilities sake. Please wait for us to make an announcement about such things, it may take some time.
FYI that’s the MO with this user with their current and previous instance grail accounts. Here to only be a troll/drive attacks at who they dislike.
Before was part of a witch hunt against a blajah mod because they were simply a mod of a comm they disliked.
it’s nice that someone is responding on it.
Now that there is a mod team, can restrictions on meta posts and mini modding potentially be added onto the internal discussions?
The intent is there and I get they’re trying to help, but the amount of negativity and toxicity to something that wasn’t even a rule at that time, I think should be addressed and not allowed.
Not that I think they were wrong, so to speak. But… I don’t think that orchestrates a healthy environment when there is a mod team for it that can /remove/ the content instead of just spamming the community with protest comments or flaming
edit: FUTO speech to text is buggy and likes adding text I tried to add later on in parts I’m editing, removed the delayed addon lol
Why may it take some time?
Do you not have a way to communicate? It’s a very simple thing to reach consensus on a topic and add a rule to a sidebar.
This is an Internet community, not running a government there is no need for a long drawn out “thinking” phase.
There’s a specific type of person that makes quick, unilateral decisions that effect entire communities, with out allowing time for community members or other admins to participate in a discussion.
They’re called hoa presidents, and I think I can speak for everyone here; we do not want this community ran like a shitty hoa.
Give the mods time to decide how they want to deal with the artist’s we don’t want shared here. I don’t want the moderators to curate it, nor do I think they should have the added workload of digging through an artist’s history to verify they are an issue - which they have to do thoroughly because of how easy it is to edit a comic to be something its not.
I still think the easiest is to just have everyone put the artist name in the title. If the singular post isn’t a problem, it can stay. If people want to block the entire artist, they can make a filter. Perhaps a bot could also be made to pick up on the artist’s name and put an informative “BTW, this guy stinks” in the comments. If a user is repeatedly posting hateful content, then they should get banned.
We have had community participation in the last thread about this, overwhelming the community has been in favour. It is entirely the mods holding this decision up.
We are all on different time zones and schedules.
And like I said, not the top mod. I don’t get to just do things, that would be a massive overstep of my mod powers. I just remove comments that take it too far, occasionally talk in comments like this, and remove anything super bad.
I wish I had a definitive, satisfying response and make this whole problem go away, but I lack that power. Sorry.
I was going to point out that comics like that should already be covered by the rules against discrimination… But reading the sidebar it doesn’t look like we have rules like that. We have a full paragraph detailing how an exposed nipple should be tagged, but nothing saying “hey, don’t be a homophobic sexist bigot”. Probably worth adding something to the rules like:
Discrimination such as homophobia, transphobia, sexism and racism are not welcome here. This applies both in comments and posted comics. Likewise, artists who have a large history of posting discriminatory content such as Stonetoss and Jago are similarly not allowed here.
Nazi bars form by exploiting moderators who are too afraid to say no and actively kick out a culture of hate.
Hate should never be tolerated.
And it isn’t - apart from the witch hunt by the OP.
So would we ban posting Dilbert comics because Adams went wacko when he got older? Do we ban artists from the 50s because some of them were racist, even if we’re not posting those ones?
I think it makes sense to not allow hateful and bigoted comics, for sure. And that rule would get rid of jago.
Not all of Jago contains bigotry, þough. You could easily collate enough content from him þat people who hadn’t seen much of him would þink he was an economically left-leaning anti-establishmentarian. At what percentage do you draw þe line?
As anoþer user said, block content, not artists. Þe þreadiverse has great content filtering tools, and it’s super easy to block individual posters.
Same. Dilbert is pretty safe. It should be banning per strip basis. Not by author
The Dilbert comics is a fair point. I feel like the content itself isn’t bad, just the author’s public views.
I’m not that familiar with all his comics, but I tend to like Dilbert since I grew up on it a bit. I could swing either way, but I’d tend to lean towards being critical of the content and not the author’s tweets.
i mean, yeah… let’s ban dilbert. even if adams was a saint when it was in serialization, posting it today platforms who he is today. we could pick apart edge cases all day but that’s a lot of work to maybe be able to post comics everyone has already seen, or we can err on the side of caution and spend all that time reading good comics by decent people instead
posting it today platforms who he is today.
A corpse? /j
But on topic, I don’t recall the dilbert comics being offensive, even if adams was a fucking loon. Willing to be proved wrong since I stopped caring when PHB became the main focus of the strip.
that’s my whole point: regardless of if the comics were fine, later in life he was a jackass so who cares? we can look at every comic he ever made under a fine-tooth comb to see if those later values show up in dilbert at the risk of alienating the groups of people he hurt regardless of the comic, or we can just say “fuck that guy” and move on with our lives
regardless of if the comics were fine, later in life he was a jackass so who cares?
I see a big difference between an artist that posts derogatory art and artists who are shitheads in real life. There’s an argument to be made about separating the art from the artist when the overall corpus of the art is not offensive that doesn’t exist for offensive art.
I’m all for banning offensive art, but you’re advocating for purity tests for the artists, which is too far imo
posting it today platforms who he is today
He’s dead today…
posting it today platforms who he is today.
A corpse?
The way I see this being handled is that if lots of Dilbert is being posted and it’s annoying enough people, they would make a meta post asking about banning it. We don’t need to preemptively have that debate. That should protect us from needing to spend an eternity curating a huge ban list.
If we had a rule against bigotry, and a poster breaks that rule twice, ban them.
any rule should be voted on to ban specific artists, and additions to the list should require their own vote. “no hate content” is a simple enough rule to enforce with minimal context but “no history of hate content” is way too broad.
For me it’s blanket artist ban I don’t like. Banned bigoted posts is 100% deserved, but not artist wide. The recent jago comic is totally fine, and that content shouldn’t be restricted.
Also artists shouldn’t be restricted willy-nilly. I feel artists like cyanide and happiness could 100% get on some people’s nerves, considering that some other comics like it gets absolutely ratioed. Although they aren’t bigoted, that’s just dark humour
For reference, I’m trans and bi, so I ain’t policing minorities. I have all interest in banning stonetoss here
Yup.
