Hello fellow Lemmys. The mod team here at !news@lemmy.world has been in discussions about the best approach to ensure we stay unbiased with news during the U.S. Election Cycle.
While we can’t say “don’t point out flaws in candidates” - nor would we want to - we do believe that when you excessively post/comment/reply negative things in News about one person, instead of, say mixing it up about topics, this feels like you are using !news@lemmy.world as a propaganda machine.
While propaganda is a normal part of elections, by posting only one topic, about one person, you are abusing the NEWS community for politics, and this could even be seen as election interference. There are other communities that this would fit better.
Doing this will result in posts/comments being deleted (with the option to appeal, of course). Repeat offenders may see temporary bans. Keep doing after that, and you may reach our perma-ban list.
As of right now, this only apples to politics. We don’t plan to extend this to other areas, but that will change as needed.
Be like jeffw, not like return2ozma.
I get the underlying sentiment in a perfect world, but it isn’t like both candidates say and do horrible things multiple times per day and trying to strike some kind of balance seems like trying to ‘both sides’ the news.
If one person is posted aboit far more frequently, but by multiple people instead of just one, or two is that going to be ok?
We understand your concerns. Our goal is not to direct or manipulate the dialogue at all. In fact, this policy is specifically to prevent any individual user from manipulating the conversation. We understand that there will almost certainly be more newsworthy material about one candidate or issue.
It might help to clarify that ‘you’ is referring to a singular poster and if comments (frequently called posting) count. Both terms are pretty vague and could lead to stifling discussion.
Something like ‘when individuals start many posts’ and ‘excessively commenting about only one candidate’ would make it clearer that you are looking for more balanced participation among the members of the community, which I am understanding your goal to be.
Thanks for the feedback, that makes sense. It’s a shame English doesn’t distinguish between you singular and you plural.
i agree with every main comments posted here until now which are opposed to this policy of yours, at least about this part :
(…) we do believe that when you excessively post/comment/reply negative things in News about one person (… ((you are eligible to ban)) …)
i join my voice to other users here to say this policy should focus more on frequency of posts and quality of sources. (more emphasis should be put on explaining to us what here excessively means)
There should be no restriction of stating, in comments, the fact that one candidate is, for example, a convicted felon + rapist etc … if this is established as factual.
Trying to make the news “fair and balanced” or “both sides” sounds like a great way to enable fascism. If a candidate is going to continuely do/say things that are going to have a large impact on the country, then reporting on that should absolutely be shared without fear of a ban just because the “other side” hasn’t done enough negative to write about.
I understand not wanting to be filled with shit posting, but legit news sources should be the goal, not trying to balance reporting which IMHO sounds more like election interference.
Our goal is not to enforce any type of equal representation of candidates or issues. However, the articles should reflect equal newsworthiness, as you say.
The post sounds more like a limitation on negative press than a limit on poor sources. Might be a better idea to just temp-ban politics all together till after November, then nobody needs to try and interpret this post that doesn’t seem to align with what is being agreed with in comments.
Thank you for the input. We want to be as transparent as possible so people understand the expectations. This community has always allowed politics, although this is the first US presidential election cycle. If the community decides to make a change, that is always a possibility.
Of course it isn’t. Your goal is to stifle criticism of Biden from the left.
We know this started because a (presumably, leftist) user stated they only care to share negative content of Biden and were banned.
I hope posters consider posting non newsworthy political stuff to politics instead of here. Especially opinion pieces. Some just flood this community with politics, especially US politics, like there’s not tons of politics communities on lemmy. I appreciate the acknowledgement that this flood is occurring. Not everyone wants to drown in US politics when trying to see what’s happening in the world.
I will say that politics is often newsworthy and this community definitely has a US skew. Those things combined mean we do have a lot of US political content.
I acknowledge that a significant volume of the political content comes from a few specific posters (not gonna name them but I think you know at least one of them). That isn’t necessarily a problem, unless all of the content from a given user is about the same topic. That’s when it approaches propaganda and becomes problematic. Opinion pieces should go on politics-specific pages though, per Rule 6.
