I am the mod that removed your post. I am always happy to talk about it. I do make mistakes and change my mind at times.
Yeah its a gray rule, no doubt about it, but the alternative is the comm flooded with everyone’s political hot take, which quickly drowns out lots of great posts.
Thanks for trying to keep the comm on topic.
I’ll spare you any “hot takes” in the future by no longer participating in your “community” all together. That way, I won’t have to deal with the thought police who rule over your shower thoughts.
I can understand that moderation is time-consuming, but it’s pretty absurd what you’re pulling. It’s nothing short of arbitrary censorship, because there’s nothing in the world that can’t be called “political” in one way or another
So, in short: Mission accomplished—another user silenced who was disrupting your addiction to entertainment with pesky remarks about reality.
Sorry, that wasn’t a jab at you.
Here are some of my thoughts if you are interested. Being on lemmy I assume we have similar values and in general agree on a lot, even if the implementation details are messy. I do try to balance all of the various thoughts i get about how showerthoughts should be moderated, and your thoughts are helpful to me.
From my perspective, if communities didnt have rules and enforcement to keep them on-topic then there wouldn’t be much point in having communities. They would all have the same content.
Whats “on-topic” is a hard judgement call sometimes. A “showerthought” is a pretty loose thing but i remember liking r/showerthoughts for the fun clever discoveries that people made about everyday life, and I assume that most of the subscribers to c/showerthoughts are thinking the same thing, but i dont know.
You are correct that it helped reduce the mod workload which I am trying to find a sustainable balance with. Its a catch 22 with politics because people become really impassioned which means people slip up and say inappropriate things, which means you need to take more mod actions, which makes more people angry at you which makes even more work… but if it makes people impassioned then maybe it means its the most important thing to be talking about…
I think the lemmy ecosystem has a lot of space for talking about politics, if people dont subscribe to those communities as heavily then thats another issue, but maybe not because the conversations can be more meaningful. When I browes lemmy i sort by new or scaled so that i can help build engagement in small communities that otherwise dont get much attention. Imdoingmypart.jpg
I have had my posts removed too and yeah i dont like it.
Thank you very much for the background information. And also for the time you spend moderating—that is truly commendable and is indeed very much needed.
Perhaps I should have reached out to you directly, but I was so outraged that I didn’t, especially since this wasn’t the first post of mine you’d removed for the same reason.
Well, looking at all the downvotes here, it seems your approach to “showerthoughts” is being liked and even vigorously defended by many.
As I said, I see it differently and consider it very dangerous to define community rules so broadly that they simply leave the decision of what’s allowed and what isn’t exclusively up to the moderators. In your case, this seems to be done with caution and reasonable consideration. Nevertheless, I believe that rules must be clearly defined and transparent from the outset so that it’s clear what to expect. Likewise, to ensure that decisions are not made purely on a whim.
As I said, I consider the “no politics” rule unsuitable for this, since there’s simply no such thing as a topic that might not be political to someone.
But since many here seem to see it quite differently, I’m probably wrong. Still, I simply can’t accept that it’s a lottery whether my posts will be allowed or not in a general community that doesn’t have a fixed topic.
Therefore, I have to accept the rules and just post elsewhere, where there is no such rule. I think that’s better for everyone, since my posts at your community only seem to lead to conflicts, which is certainly not my intention at all.
If you’d like, I’ll delete this post here right away, but it seems to me that it might be a good way to gather some more opinions on the rule in question.
Please let me know if you see it differently—in that case, I’ll delete this post here immediately.
Thank you for the understanding and I do agree with your position as well. I did solicit some input from others that share similar views to you, but i have been too lazy to take action on it.
If you have ideas for how to make the rules more objective while still allowing a space for more light hearted content to flourish, I would love to hear your thoughts. Even if they arent fully formed. A community like c/cat_pictures has an easier time of it i imagine.
Hmm, well, the moderation workload does need to remain reasonably manageable for you guys.
I can’t really judge that, of course, but perhaps you could identify specific topics from the modlog that have repeatedly caused problems in the past. For example, posts about political parties (such as the two U.S. parties or the far-right AfD in Germany, etc.), political movements like MAGA, politicians like Trump and his allies, wars (such as the current U.S.-Iran conflict), or technologies like LLMs.
You could also try surveying the community itself to identify such “controversial topics,” perhaps in a pinned post, where you could set a minimum number of upvotes per suggestion for a suggestion to be included.
I think this would yield a number of concrete examples that illustrate what is meant by “no politics.” The more examples there are, the clearer it would probably be.
A civilised discussion on the internet? Miss me with that nonsense - I’m here for mud slinging drama!
Yep, sorry. But hey, this thread definitely has its fair share of mudslinging. Hope you’re getting your money’s worth.
In addition to this not really being a showerthought, this post is not really a shitpost either
Well, you decided to post politics into a non-politics community, instead of a politics one. And now moderation drama into a shitpost community instead of a moderation drama one…
So the use of language is politcal now, apparently. Got it.
Can you name a single topic that isn’t political? And: How can you fail to see that such an indefinable rule is completely out of place in a free network? You must know that there are immeasurably wealthy people who have no qualms about buying their way to impose their worldview. How can you still believe it’s a good idea for many of the largest communities in the open Fediverse to establish rules that are so vague they not only make arbitrariness possible but actually encourage it?
Why aren’t you posting recipes for quiche?
I don’t care that I wandered into a shitposting thread about a powertrippingbastards threads about a shower thoughts thread. I want this thread to be about quiche.
So why aren’t you posting about quiche?
Quiche? You mean a food item that has eggs in it? That is both political and against some religions…
Where is a mod?
Don’t worry, the bots will take over here, too—with delicious meals that are very healthy.
Any day now…
The mods are two weeks away from obtaining nuclear capabilities
Mods:
Free /c/showerthoughts! ✊ end the oppression!
I think it’s more important for you to find topics that are not political. Chill.
If you can’t deal with the fediverse go back to Facebook. You’re sure to find enablers there
Doesn’t really seem like a shower thought tbh. Seems like soapboxing
It’s not even that hot of a take. In a tragic twist of irony, an llm could have written this post.
This would be better fitted for !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com but I’ll save you a little time: YDI
Thank you very much!
I wasn’t aware that this was such a big issue in the Fediverse that there are already dedicated communities discussing it.
Until now, I’d assumed the matter was somewhat settled since the larger communities on .ml now have an equivalent elsewhere. I’ve come across this problem several times elsewhere as well (the “no politics” rule, even though the post wasn’t political in any sense), but I guess I’m just completely out of the loop.
So it’s probably more a case of it being a different overlord (the U.S. instead of Russia).
I can only conclude from this that even platforms like Lemmy on the the Fediverse are controlled by billionaires. That might sound a bit like a conspiracy theory, but given their unscrupulousness, it seems all too likely to me.
Either way: for me, the matter is clear—you can’t express your opinion here either.
It’s disillusioning, but at least now I know how I need to conduct myself here.
you can’t express your opinion here
I’ve had this account for nearly a year and a half, and I’ve never had mod action taken against me. On my previous account, I only ever had 2 mod actions. I’m highly political and post regularly. My secret is that I pay attention to every community I’m looking at, and follow their rules. As an example, I’m gender fluid but generally identify with masc identities, so I never post or comment in !womensstuff@piefed.blahaj.zone. Following community rules is easy. Just don’t do those things. Whether you want it to be or not, gen-AI is absolutely a political topic right now, so it’s not really welcome in !showerthoughts@lemmy.world.
I’ve been banned from like 10 different communities once because I downvoted a post I didn’t like. The same mod just decided to ban me from everything they had the ability to.
Honestly, if you aren’t getting banned by Fascist or Tankies you are doing it wrong.
I think it’s more that I curate my feed to avoid them in the first place. I’ll read their rules, judge for myself, and decide if I want to interact with it. I report fascist shit and shut it down when I see it. I’ve never been banned for it. That’s a success in my judgement of the spaces I choose to participate in.
Fair
Personally, I stay away from the womens stuff community because it is so incredibly stupid to constantly whine about people coming in and commenting when you’re making a place that literally broadcasts your posts and comments in a way that invites others to come and comment. It’s no different than having a conversation on a busy street using bullhorns and then complaining about people joining in.
When some form of the fediverse can properly do closed communities with a whitelist, then I’ll happily head there.
GMAFB. There are PLENTY of communities where that topic can be discussed, but you chose one not meant for what is blatantly a political topic and are whining “censorship” when you naturally got rebuked. It’s very MAGAt-like behavior.
I actually saw that post on my feed, and was interested in reading it but it had been deleted by the time I got to it. Since it was still showing in my feed, I used that to get to your profile in hopes you’d re-posted it somewhere more appropriate, but instead you seem to have decided to play victim.
I’m honestly disappointed because I skimmed some of your posts & comments while I was there and liked what I saw. Hopefully this is just an aberration.
Well, I simply didn’t have the motivation anymore, so I didn’t take the time to look for a community where this post might not have been removed.
However, since I’ve often found myself starting to read a post and leaving a comment on it, only to discover that the post had been removed because of this arbitrary “no politics” rule, I thought I’d use this admittedly salty post to point out what kinds of posts are currently being removed in one of the largest Lemmy communities.
I think it’s important for people to be aware that a community whose name suggests it’s a place to share your thoughts with others is, in fact, a community where a kind of “thought police” decides—based on their own sensitivities—what people get to see and what they don’t. That’s exactly what this “no politics” rule amounts to, because any topic can be interpreted as political if you don’t have a clear definition of what “political” actually means.
I don’t understand how so many people can think it’s a good idea to give moderators a rule that allows them to remove posts at will. It’s like banning posts about mathematics in a physics community—it’s simply absurd.
It is a place to share your shower thoughts. You’d do better, I think, for trying to get a sense of what a community’s vibe is before participating.
And you’re not being silenced. Myself and plenty of other people refer to AI as devil technology built by demons, vampires, pedophiles, and republicans—but I repeat myself—on the daily. If I can evangelize about how AI is a cancer that needs to be cut out, then you can, too; you can do it in appropriate places.
I guess that rule is to prevent people from abusing that community for posting their hot takes. It’s a shame it was used against you, after all your take is luke warm at best…
Things as simple as A* pathfinding algorithms used for video game characters or simple if/else chains used to program tic/tac/toe games have been called AI for decades.
LLMs *are" a form of machine learning and artificial intelligence regardless of how shit they are
Edit: to make this more relevant to this post specifically, the OP post is clearly politically motivated whether or not it’s righteous
Whether or not the rule is fair might be debatable, but in the end, the mods have the final word and they decided that you violated this rule, and then acted accordingly. Either you try to get your ban reversed by contacting them, or you start your own community where the rules are more to your liking. Or you can also move on to other things and let this issue become a non-issue.
Seems reasonable to me. I am very much against the concentration of capital. But that is a major part of the socialist democrats platform. So yeah, your post was clearly political. The lemmy model is that mods choose what they want in a community. And since they are unpaid, that seems right. You want to say whatever you want, make your own.
The fact you are bothered by people calling the got new thing AI is weird. We have been calling a lot of hot new things in tech ai.
What grinds my gears is the less new thing no longer being called ai when it still is ai.
Ai is more than your sci-fi wifu.
AI is what ever a capitalist says it is.
You could have posted this comment on my post if it hadn’t been removed by the mods at ShowerThoughts because it was apparently too political—at least according to arbitrary Rule 3, which always comes into play whenever something is posted that the mods don’t like, or maybe even those who send them a little money… I have no idea how things work there, but in any case, there’s no way to have a debate on this issue.
You should probly migrate off .world, for starters, and maybe consider contributing to another version of the community that doesn’t have rules you don’t like, e.g., !showerthoughts@sh.itjust.works
Thanks for the heads-up! I guess that’s what I’ll do. It’s a shame that the largest communities, of all places, are censoring themselves like this.
Yes! Yes! RAAAGE against that machine!
I guess the next move is to make all the tech bros glasses rose-coloured.
Thinking about politics in the shower is illegal. Mentioning money is politics. Welcome back to reddit.
There’s a time & place for everything. As an obviously over the top, but hard to argue example: I wouldn’t go into a classroom of seven year-olds & start discussing pornography. Showerthoughts has always been known to be meant for light-hearted topics - it’s even mentioned in the community description, while political topics are explicitly against the rules. It’s not censorship to say something is inappropriate in certain contexts or situations - only if you’re prevented from saying it in situations where it’s perfectly apropos.
i wish there was a way to ‘mute’ instances and users which do not respect freedom of speech. If you shut down good faith speech from others, then i literally don’t care about anything else you have to say
Don’t worry, the bots will keep you well entertained. You don’t need to post anything at all; you can simply leave your comments and receive automated replies that fully take your feelings into account.
i got no problem getting rid of bots, it’s the audience of human NPCs which really concerns me, something which is aggravated by illiberal speech policies
