Now that this community has mods, I think we should come to something approaching a consensus on whether there should be a rule against posting “nice” comics from transphobic and other kinds of bigoted artists. People like Stonetoss and Jago who have a lot of innocent-looking relatable comics, but also post the most mean, bigoted propaganda.
And I’d like to present a third option besides yes and no: one might post comics from bigoted artists after removing the artist credit, if the mods think that’s a good compromise.
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After reading the comments here I have been convinced we should create a list of these artists, and none of their content is welcome in this community.
Main points being:
- allowing their “nice” content creates a pipeline for users to their bigotry
- having it signals to new users we are ok with content from bigots
- it should make moderating easier because there is no need to deliberate what is ok by that creator
Nazis, racists, transphobes, homophobes are not welcome here under any context!
There are many comics in the world. Banning a handful of horrible creators won’t starve the community for content. It will create space for non-horrible artists.
Allowing the “nice” comics by horrible people just creates a funnel for people to click though and be exposed to hateful ideas.
If in several months the ban list has grown monstrous in size, we could revisit, but that seems unlikely.
It’s not book burning or censorship. The horrible creators remain entitled to host their own websites or their own instances.
Can you explain to me how censorship of problematic artists is not really censorship?
Will you write “I’m an idiot” on your forehead for me? If not, am I being censored? Why or why not? Should you be obligated to carry my message anywhere I desire?
Nobody should be obligated to parrot your mouth diarrhea, no. But that does not mean its okay for an entire community to discourage your mouth diarrhea simply for being distasteful.
That’s censorship, just in case you were having trouble identifying the concept we are discussing.
Nobody is obligated but the community is obligated?
Personal preference is not censorship. Banning an artist from an artistic community because the community can’t regulate their own emotions is censorship.
So the individuals running a forum cannot moderate the forum. It must be open to any and all content. Otherwise that is censorship, and bad.
Well, I infer from your tone you think censorship is always bad. Maybe you’re just splitting a hair about how in a sense content moderation is censorship.
because the community can’t regulate their own emotions is censorship.
The biggest eyeroll
My big problem with censorship is that it dulls the mind. Safe spaces do the same thing. If your thoughts and beliefs are never questioned, you can never grow as a person. Echo chambers are breeding grounds for ignorance. Our world is not tolerant of ignorance. Being unable to react appropriately to emotionally inflammatory bait makes us all weaker on an emotional level.
If you want to coddle yourself, make a safe space to do so. Don’t take an open forum and limit it to suit your preferences. The internet is infinite. Make a new space with your own rules.
Because a comics sub on Lemmy is not the government or a church or any other powerful organisation that has any reach beyond itself
It’s a small community of people who are allowed to decide not to welcome bigotry
Ohhhhh so when its just a few people its okay to ignore things they dont like. Quick, hid that info from billion dollar fossil fuel advocates! They must never know the power of ignoring inconvenient reality. Imagine how well they’d sleep at night
If I step into your group of friends one evening and start an unprompted 4 hour lecture on 17th Century Agriculture, would it be censorship if you asked me to leave?
Small communities are allowed to curate themselves. It’s not censorship without that power dynamic, and on some level you yourself must understand this since your go-to comparison was ‘billion dollar fossil fuel advocates’
Curating would require active moderation. This isnt a proposal for increased moderation, but a content based ban decided by which artists are or are not haram to your leftist sensibilities at any given time. Why should the lemmy.world instance of comicstrips be censored when you can make a new instance like “safestripsforgoodboysandgirls” instead of fucking over the larger community?
Why should the lemmy.world instance of comicstrips be censored when you can make a new instance like “safestripsforgoodboysandgirls” instead of fucking over the larger community?
If most people here are in favour of it, then that’s why.
And then you can leave and make a new instance with your preferred amount of bigotry
“If we don’t flood the front page with Nazi stuff, we’re as bad as the Nazis” was always my least favorite argument.
mods here refuse to remove racist zionist genocider comments, I’m not surprised they are transphobic too
no. I have a block button if I don’t like how a person submits. why would I want this type of thing done at the community level? Ultimately its the federation so it won’t matter as there are other comic communities.
why would I want this type of thing done at the community level?
I have an RSS feed for my unfiltered comics.
I read here for the community.
I don’t use rss but I agree im here for community engagement but not for community censorship.
I don’t think propaganda is a matter of personal responsibility. I think we should protect other people from propaganda, not just ourselves.
See to you its propaganda. From your viewpoint. You should not be making that call for others. You are not protecting them you are inflicting your way of thinking on them. They are not defenseless. They can block for themselves. This for me comes down to a thing I have not talked about in a awhile but what I would like to see in the federation. I would like no defederation or unreversable domain blocking. Im fine if it blocks stuff by default but I should be able to go into my user config and turn off any of the default blocking. I, and others, should have 100% control of our experiences and it should not be dictated by others.
They can block for themselves. This for me comes down to a thing I have not talked about in a awhile but what I would like to see in the federation. I would like no defederation or unreversable domain blocking.
This will never ever happen.
I don’t think its completely impossible but I totally realize its highly unlikely. never know though. that is the magic of community things as you never know who will take up something. imma peanut gallery though but it surprises me how many folks prefer some sort of on high authority over individual control on something like this. How can anarchist principles work if they can’t even work in 100% virtual and grass roots community endeavour?
It is 100% impossible lol. Rimu won’t do it. Lemmy devs won’t do it.
I don’t know them well enough to know that but they are not the alpha and the omega of all things free/libre or social media. Ten years ago I would not even imagine something like this is now would exist.
You can speculate another platform might come up that some hardcodes in it the impossibility to deplatform other instances, but all I’m saying is that Lemmy and Piefed will not do it.
But even then, it’s a stretch because the tools required to remove seriously illegal content are the part of the same tools that would function as defederation tools. So it probably can’t be hardcoded out.
Wait so let’s say a bunch of pedophiles make a Lemmy instance at the url child.porn. If you have an account on My instance, and I’ve defederated child.porn, you want the option to override defederation and view their posts from My server?
sorry. the one exception to defederation (which can’t be reversed like blocking) is legal reasons.
What if it’s an ambiguous case where I think the content is illegal but you don’t?
The legality of content is not based on what one person thinks or another. It either is or isn’t but the domain owner ultimately has to make the call based on the coutnry they are in and their interpretation of the law.
Well I’ll give you an example. My instance defederated fedinsfw because they have a community that’s called fauxbait. Faux jailbait. Faux child porn that looks like adult porn.
According to the laws of Australia, fake child porn is still child porn. So I defederated them. Some people agree, some people disagree. Do you think I have the right to make that call?
Now let’s say I decide that Hexbear’s habit of sending pictures of filthy porcine testicles to people they don’t like is harassment. Can I defederate them?
Let’s say I think lemmy.world has too much transphobia (because it’s the biggest instance and they don’t have enough mods), and that’s illegal hate speech. Can I defederate them?
Fun fact: lemmy.world hosts its servers in Nederland, where it’s illegal to promote illegal activity. Can they defederate dbzer0 for promoting piracy?
Fact is, every instance hosts illegal content. You’ve got an excuse for every single instance, except the tiny ones with next to no users. So I don’t go by laws. I go by My ethics. I think fedinsfw and Hexbear are too much. Lemmy.world has a lot of problems, but I think it’s as good as it is bad. Same for dbzer0. It’s an ethical judgement call. That’s what I use defederation for.
Bigotry belongs in the bin. Denial of platform is nice too. Banned creator list feels appropriate
I would prefer that the content is not censored by someone else’s moral compass. If it’s content by a transphobic or otherwise bigoted artist then let us know in the comments. Book burning is bad, no matter who is doing the burning. I would prefer to be educated than have someone else determine what is appropriate for me to view.
TL:DR I’m an adult: I’d rather choose for myself.
And as an trans adult I would rather not be exposed to it at all.
I don’t want a community that’s like 4Chan, I want some where that’s respectful and takes into consideration the wellbeing of its users without platforming hate artists.
I can respect that. I would suggest blocking the users that post the stuff you don’t want to see. I would prefer, though, that you educate me about why and how these artists are offensive to you. I can be a better ally if I understand. You gain nothing if I’m kept ignorant just because you say so. I also understand that you’re probably tired of having to defend yourself and explain yourself over and over again. I would guess that there’s an existential fatigue just trying to live in a society that seems to be offended by your very existence. I’m sorry. I try to call it out when I see it, but I don’t see it as often as I should and I think that hiding it, even comic strips, doesn’t help me to understand better. I need you, with lived experience, to point it out to me so I know what to look for.
I would prefer, though, that you educate me about why and how these artists are offensive to you
If you really want to learn about why certain art is offensive towards certain people, go look for that explanation yourself. There is plenty of information out there in general. Don’t put this workload on someone who just wants to scroll a bit, they are forced to explain themselves often enough already.
My bad. Thanks for explaining. I apologise for any offence.
All good, I realize now my comment reads a bit harsher than I meant it.
Nah. It’s OK. It wasn’t harsh. It was direct. It was a slap to the face that I needed. I was being lazy and making my education someone else’s problem. I am self aware enough to see when I’ve made a mistake, most of the time, and though my intentions were good, it’s really not anyone else’s job to educate me. I also hadn’t considered that the “lived experience” I was asking for could be traumatic to recall and relay. Like I said, I was being lazy. I make mistakes. I try to learn from them and be better.
Genuinely great attitude. Hope you have a nice day :)
It isn’t their job to educate you, in fact requesting that is putting that additional burden on someone who is already burdened by this bigotry.
It is really unfair to ask them to explain it so that you can be a better ally. If you want to be a better ally it is worth looking into it yourself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yAbQ-CaJXs
That is a good primer, but it is just one person’s perspective. If you search “stonetoss Nazi” or “stonetoss bigot” you will get tonnes of people explaining it in more detail.
Just to be super duper clear, I’m not dragging you here. I’m not saying “you suck for not knowing, you should know, and asking is just you being a bad person”. That would be silly and short sighted. I am saying that as a person who is not trans you are not experiencing the horror of anti trans bigotry all day every day and so you aren’t worn down by it. You surely have your own problems and they are real and hard, and so do trans people. It makes sense to listen when they speak about it and hear what they are saying, but asking them to spend their energy on your understanding is a different thing. You can spend your own energy on figuring it out and make yourself a better ally.
Thanks for explaining. It’s easy to be lazy when you don’t realise you’re being lazy. I appreciate you taking time to politely set me on the right path. I apologise if I caused any offence.
Not a worry. Now anyone else who has the same question will see your comment, my reply, and your graceful acceptance and hopefully follow your example. Somewhere out there on the internet in my turn in your shoes with someone else opening my eyes. I found it liberating to realise I could go find out myself rather than trusting a random internet stranger.
I don’t think the defining/worst/significant thing about 4chan is inoffensive comics that are by people who have expressed offensive views, and I don’t really think you do either?
No, I think the worst thing is treating it as a “free speech” place instead of moderating what is shared there.
Which is fundamentally the approach being argued here.
There’s a chasm between “anything that’s not illegal in the USA” and “you can post non-hateful stuff regardless of what the author may otherwise have expressed.”
Banning comics from bigots in a lemmy community is not remotely similar to book burning.
Human rights is not a moral issue. If hatred were an opinion worth platforming, Nazis would have built movements fighting for acceptance rather than trying to violently force their view upon us. The fight for equal rights by queer people has existed for 1000s of years because it’s an identity. It is endemic to our species and you can’t stamp out identity the way you can with hatred that hides in a deplorable subset of majority populations.
Right… But we’re talking about comic strips, not about slowing the march of the third reich.
Education is better than censorship. Let the comics get posted, then start the conversation in the comment section about why and how this comic, or artist, is oppressing minorities so that we can make up our own minds. Education is the weapon against oppression, not ignorance.
If you’re so arrogant to think that you can make that decision for me then I’m going to resist you. If you take away my freedom to choose then you’re just swapping out one form of oppression for another.
Arrogance is thinking you’re smarter than propaganda. You are not. Your position is reactive and oppositional and ripe for mind control tactics. You are so easy to manipulate, in fact, that in one paragraph I’m going to make your blood pressure rise and flow to your amygdala.
But the propaganda hits us whether we see stonetoss in the corner or not.
I’m opposed to a ban except for the most outrageous stuff. Let people downvote what they don’t like.
No thank you to censorship.
you can leave
If I leave, that doesn’t help me see the things you want to censor. If you leave, that does help you not see the things you don’t want to.
Weird.
I support this rule. If I see comics I enjoy I will often go look them up. It’s awful to dive into a new comic and find hateful content that I didn’t expect. Prohibiting comics from known hateful bigots would help avoid that.
Now that this community has mods
Oh hey. Was Beep banned? Once it became clear they were just trolling and not simply an eccentric internet person I blocked them.
As for the question: If the comics themselves are not hateful or dog whistles for hate, I don’t see a problem with posting the comic by itself. Just don’t link to the artist’s personal sites to give them traffic and maybe include a note about them in the body of the post.
Their newest account is not banned, but their old one is.
lemmy.world/post/45480511 gives a better explanation as to why.
Edit: Link was being goofy
I’m happy to just skip the work of bigots, and have mostly blocked the users who routinely post that stuff.
That saif, if we’re going to remove credit with intent, i have a request:
let’s be clear and cedit “some random bigot”, so I’ll know i might not want to seek out the artist.
Please, instead of blocking individual posters, let us have tags. Tags are more reliable. We need to filter the content, not the persons.
Posting something hated universally is subject to be made into the rules, like Nazi stuff. But transphobic stuff is different. People have different values, or if you don’t like that, different preferences. Posting something transphobic, as long as it’s not harming the society, and only be self-expressing, that !shouldn’t be blocked. That’s his or her right to express the feeling or what he or she valued.
If you think I am wrong, please link to some examples here and I can elaborate if I think it’s appropriate. To get on the same page is hopefully the goal.
posting something hated universally is subject to be made into the rules, like nazi stuff
Even that is not “hated universally” (see neonazis and white supremacists). Do you also think we should be inclusive of racist stuff?
as long as it’s not harming the society
It is harming trans people, who are part of society.
Hi! As of right now, here is my take on the situation: as long as the comics (and posters posting them) do not break the rules, they are allowed. If we were to ban content based on its creators, there probably would be a lot of content people would miss out on. Take for example Harry Potter. In my personal opinion, the author is a trash person, and I personally will no longer invest my time, effort, or money into their franchise. However, the stories and lore and fan base are still good. There is an actor who had a recurring (and popular) role in Star Trek: TNG (and a few episodes of Voyageur) who turned out to be a trash person. But, the memes and other content being posted about their roles are still funny and entertaining.
I guess what I am trying to say is that I feel that the content is not always a direct reflection of the bad values that their creators/portrayers may have. But, if the community as a whole wants to band together and downvote said content or petition for a new rule that includes a common identifier (i.e., artist name) in the title so it can be keyword filtered by individuals, I would certainly support those efforts. I am definitely not on the side of removing artist credit, even if the artist is not someone I like for whatever reason. They still deserve credit for their work; if anything, so as to ensure other people know who they are and what kind of work they produce.
And if you have other ideas for how we can address these types of situations, please keep them coming.
Take for example Harry Potter. In my personal opinion, the author is a trash person, and I personally will no longer invest my time, effort, or money into their franchise. However, the stories and lore and fan base are still good. There is an actor who had a recurring (and popular) role in Star Trek: TNG (and a few episodes of Voyageur) who turned out to be a trash person. But, the memes and other content being posted about their roles are still funny and entertaining.
The difference is the creators in question aren’t the ones making that content. A webcomic about the world of Harry Potter created by someone else has levels of separation from the source material, but if JK started a webcomic, I would object to it being posted and promoted here.
Harry Potter has a character who is a slave who was freed, and then became an alcoholic. That’s what slave owners said would happen after abolition. I think Harry Potter is very much a reflection of the values of its creator. And she spends her royalties on donations to hate groups.
That said, I do want to read Trans Wizard Harriet Porber And The Bad Boy Parasaurolophus.
Minority populations do struggle with high rates of addiction because of trauma. It’s just not the argument bigots think it is.
Wait, who was the Star Trek actor?
The one I was referring to is Dwight Schultz (Lt. Broccoli). There are other actors/actresses I’ve heard who have political ideologies opposite of mine. It’s been a disappointing year for me in that respect. 😅
I guess what I am trying to say is that I feel that the content is not always a direct reflection of the bad values that their creators/portrayers may have.
I think on its own that makes sense, but without some blanket bans on known hateful artists, people are getting exposed to the innocuous works, and then looking up the artists to find a backlog of hateful content. And bad actors are free to limit test what extreme they can go to before any mod response.
The way I see it, if you as a user like a comic enough to research the artist, and you discover said artist holds values that are offensive to you, then you’ve learned something valuable. Plus, you get to make up your own mind whether you want to continue following said comic/artist. It is a fine line to walk as a mod (or person in power) to dictate what is and isn’t acceptable at any given moment. I learned this the other day when I posted updated rules re-enforcing the original “family friendly” intention. People were quick to point out that we are all adults here and should be given the option of choosing for themselves. And there will always be people who try to take advantage of the rules. I can’t say what will or won’t happen for hypothetical situations that haven’t happened yet, because I honestly do not know how I might respond until it happens. So for now, I am willing to give people leeway and go from there.
The way I see it, if you as a user like a comic enough to research the artist, and you discover said artist holds values that are offensive to you, then you’ve learned something valuable. Plus, you get to make up your own mind whether you want to continue following said comic/artist.
Or a person who liked the artist enough that they went to look for more views it under the context of “I like this artist” so they’re more likely to rationalize or defend the extreme or questionable positions and the community remains complicit in platforming hate.
It is a fine line to walk as a mod (or person in power) to dictate what is and isn’t acceptable at any given moment.
That is literally the role of a mod?
I do like the idea of putting some sort of identifier in the post title, so I created a new post for discussion.
Hello @Grail@multiverse.soulism.net, thank you for sticking around during our transitionary period with us new mods. Keep in note, Lemmy has a report function, and we do see the reports concerning artist’s like Jago and those who post these comics.
At the moment, the best thing you can do is Report them, and give a good explanation as to why they broke the rules.
Yes the report button is great and helps mods a lot, but the issue is that at the moment I don’t see any rule a comic would violate when it is as the op describes safe and relatable but made by an outspoken transphobe. The question seems to be do we need or want a rule against supporting transphobia indirectly by giving the artist free cloud. Because removing the artist name is a violation of the communities rules.
Fourth option: Just limit the comics posted to those that are not transphobic/racist/sexist/other shitty discrimination thing.
The author might have shitty views and maybe they expressed them, but as far as the rules go it would be better to just moderate the posted content than whether or not the artist also has shitty stuff that may or may not be current and relevant. I would rather the posters be encouraged to not post content from terrible people, but if an artist was fine until they suddenly exposed a shitty view does all of their prior work retroactively become problematic? If they were terrible two decades ago are they permanently terrible?
It is complex enough that the posted content being moderated instead of the artist’s non-posted content is a better approach in my opinion. I am definitely in favor of comments explaining an artist has other shitty art too, because that is good to know and might influence how posted art is interpreted, but it doesn’t mean everything the artist made is tainted.
