3 yr. ago • 71%

Does Lemmy have a stance on anti-vaccine or election denialism?

I've been seeing some concerning trends whereby anti-vaxx posts are defended as "free speech" and a growing number of users with "Trump Won" sentiments.

Is there going to be a stance taken on this? Or are we going to lose this community, like so many others, to propaganda and hatred?

10 comments

I def don't want this instance to be full of the reactionary anti-vaxx spam you see on the "free speech" reddit alts (which we are not a free speech instance obvi). Regardless of how their views differ, their hyper-individualized plague-spreading ethos is not welcome here. I've found they either don't think covid exists, or it isn't dangerous, and even if it is, its better that grandma die on the freedom altar... more important than lives, is their Freedom ^TM. This captures it:

At the same time we should allow discussion as long as its respectful, especially on things like efficacy of various measures taken, specific vaccines, etc. I think its entirely pointless because I greatly doubt we have any epidemiologists here, but I guess that's what some people like to spend their time on.

I banned @trumpwon@lemmy.ml btw yesterday I think.

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- Good catch, I instantly pointed that out.
  
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  It doesn't seem to matter. I've seen 3 posts today, all with an admin telling people not to report anti-vax posts because there's no rule.
  
  "Lemmy, a community of liberal privacy and FOSS enthusiasts..."
  
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We dont have any site rules on those topics, so its not a reason for ban/removal on its own. There is also no rule about misinformation, because it can be very hard to determine what falls under that label.

I think if someone is clearly spreading false information, it should be easy enough for any user to debunk it using actual facts. That way mods can focus on their actual task (ensure that people behave well), instead of turning into some kind of "fact checkers". Besides, everyone can learn something from such discussions.

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- Adding to this, this comment NOT mean we endorse the posting of misinformation or that we personally agree with every post we don't remove, or even that all the admins agree on everything among themselves on how best to moderate. It just means that it can get messy trying to decipher what is misinformation and what isn't and we're not all-knowing, and that we trust the Lemmy community to respond with factual counterpoints to things they disagree with.
  
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  @AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml My feed today has been 1:5 posts about antivax, and almost every thread has had some sort of election denialism.
  
  If we don't take a stand now we're going to be the next Voat/Gab/what have you. I came here because I was promised Leftists, not liberals. Take a stand and do something about this before it becomes a rapidly dying community.
  
  Also, in re: "We can't disprove it", yeah no shit: you can't disprove anything. The burden is on the person making the claim, not the person refuting it. But keep shifting that burden to logical impossibility. If that's the moderation view here, you just solidified lemmy's future content.
  
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