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.
This is good modding.
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.
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.
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.
If the articles are news, they’re news. End of.
Let’s not pretend like this comm isn’t overrun with accounts that (rightfully) post articles that are only critical of conservative policies and politicians. Are you going to ban them for not also posting critical of liberals? Must they criticize leftists?
This will be entirely used in a one sided way to censor criticism of Biden. I think that’s obvious.
If you’re going to punish people for spamming only negative things because its basically propaganda I’d hope you do the same for people who only spam positive things for the same reason. Things don’t stop being propaganda simply because they are positive, and if you only focus on the negative culprits then you’re effectively enforcing one type of propaganda over the other.
