• 16 Posts
  • 21 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: August 18th, 2023

help-circle



  • I support opening up vote logs to moderators in their own communities. Voting records add useful context to the nature of the exchanges happening, eg. if two people are having a back and forth, but neither is downvoting the other, it contextualizes the disagreement as less hostile.

    I don’t think it’s a good idea to give every new user the burden of using that information responsibly. A minority would use it to retaliate, stalk, and harass, and there would be too many of them to reasonably hold them accountable.








  • I disagree, and that’s part of the reason I’m so strongly opposed to Lemmy.World’s use of Dave Van Zandt’s site in their bot. Fact-checking is an essential tool in fighting the waves of fake news polluting the public discourse. But if that fact-checking is partisan, then it only acerbates the problem of people divided on the basics of a shared reality.

    This is why a consortium of fact-checking institutions have joined together to form the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), and laid out a code of principles. You can find a list of signatories as well as vetted organizations on their website. You can read more about those principles here.

    MBFC is not a signatory to the IFCN code of principles. As a partisan organization, it violates the standards that journalists have recognized as essential to restoring trust in the veracity of the news. Partisan fact-checking sites are worse than no fact-checking at all. Just like how the proliferation of fake news undermines the authority of journalism, the growing popularity of a fact-checking site by a political hack like Dave M. Van Zandt undermines the authority of non-partisan fact-checking institutions in the public consciousness.



  • I agree, Pepe Escobar’s take in that opinion piece is complete garbage. It should be noted that it is an opinion piece with the sub text “The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

    Shutting down the entire journal because one columnist is a Putin apologist isn’t what the concept of a free press is about. I’d be less alarmed by mods shutting down a post of that columnist for genocide apology. It looks like it’s only one featured columnist out of five occasionally posting garbage like that, and the bulk of their focus is on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

    Alan Dershowitz, famous for his removed takes, has apologized for torture and genocide and continues to be frequently featured in The Boston Globe, Haaretz, and The Wall Street Journal. Since those sources are posted freely, it would be inconsistent to ban The Cradle over Pepe Escobar.