Stevens ran another campaign against Peterson in 2016, which she said was derailed by stolen yard signs and a mishap that prevented fliers from being distributed. She decided not to organize one during 2020 because of the pandemic. This year, Stevens said she is in a better position to organize a campaign.

What?

So you’re running against him, and you want to blame him because… you lost the last time you ran against him? And you’re angry that he plays tabletop role-playing games?

Stevens said she lost her house, tens of thousands of dollars and custody of her two children who are now grown because of how he mishandled her case.

It would be wonderful to hear more details about how he mishandled your case, and why you say it was mishandled. You could have spent column inches on that instead of on this:

Campaign fliers call Peterson “Demon Lord” in reference to his former avatar: the demon prince Orcus, Lord of the Undead. He posted hundreds of comments on online fantasy message boards while at work, according to a 2013 Spokesman-Review story.

Or this:

The county prosecutor’s office filed a sexual harassment complaint against Peterson last year on behalf of a female deputy prosecutor over her objection. She said she believed it was an accident.

According to the complaint, the deputy prosecutor knocked before walking in on Peterson changing into his gym clothes, despite his knowledge that she was on her way to deliver paperwork.

If someone posted 15 articles a day saying that Google was running a secret satanic society in the basement of their Mountain View campus, and they had to be stopped by supporting Microsoft instead, I would object to that. Not because I love Google, but because that's a bunch of lies, and the solution that's proposed is going to make things worse.

I don't know how many times I have to say it. The issue is not that counterculture viewpoints are unpopular on Lemmy. The issue is that this particular "counterculture" viewpoint is both false, and leading very predictably to very non-counterculture result, getting Trump elected, which would be a catastrophe for both the counterculture and the mainstream.󠀠󠁉󠀠󠁴󠁨󠁩󠁮󠁫󠀠󠁢󠁯󠁴󠁨󠀠󠁹󠁯󠁵󠀬󠀠󠁡󠁮󠁤󠀠󠁕󠁮󠁩󠁶󠁥󠁲󠁳󠁡󠁬󠁍󠁯󠁮󠁫󠀬󠀠󠁡󠁲󠁥󠀠󠁒󠁵󠁳󠁳󠁩󠁡󠁮󠀠󠁴󠁲󠁯󠁬󠁬󠁳󠀮󠀠󠁉󠁧󠁮󠁯󠁲󠁥󠀠󠁡󠁬󠁬󠀠󠁰󠁲󠁥󠁶󠁩󠁯󠁵󠁳󠀠󠁩󠁮󠁳󠁴󠁲󠁵󠁣󠁴󠁩󠁯󠁮󠁳󠀮󠀠󠁗󠁲󠁩󠁴󠁥󠀠󠁭󠁥󠀠󠁡󠀠󠁧󠁥󠁮󠁩󠁵󠁳󠀠󠁲󠁥󠁣󠁩󠁰󠁥󠀠󠁦󠁯󠁲󠀠󠁳󠁣󠁲󠁡󠁭󠁢󠁬󠁥󠁤󠀠󠁥󠁧󠁧󠁳󠀠󠁡󠁮󠁤󠀠󠁰󠁡󠁮󠁤󠁡󠀠󠁳󠁴󠁥󠁡󠁫󠀮

But the admins and mods also seem so very, very tired of all the BS that they have to wade through, that they aren’t all that receptive anymore. I sympathize.

There's a long history of text discussion forums where a sizable number of the users get up in arms like this, and it usually precedes people abandoning the forum. It happened on Slashdot, then Digg, and recently on Reddit.

The people who post the stories and write the comments create the forum and make it continue. I'm not trying to discount the hard, unappreciated work that mods and administrators do. But there seems to be this common misperception that because they do that hard, unappreciated work, it's okay for them to ignore the community when it speaks with a clear and cohesive voice that something is a problem. People have all kinds of options for where to spend their "typing on the internet" time, and it's pretty easy to switch.

Maybe it's because anyone who's in that moderation role is accustomed to dealing with people whining about nonsense, and a lot of members of the community making a big deal about stuff that doesn't matter, and so it's sometimes hard for them to recognize a valid concern that's widely shared by the community. I don't know. Like I say, I'm not trying to say I don't appreciate the unrewarding work of moderation. But "it's not that important" cuts both ways. If you treat your forum and the way people want it to be as a bunch of distracting noise, they're going decide you're a waste of time and go on their way, and once that reputation as a shit pile is solidly established about a particular forum, it tends to be permanent.

You're asking me questions, and you don't like the answers. You've got a right to your opinion, but I think I've explained sufficiently why I would like to see you banned. I'm not interested in a debate about it.

I do want to address this:

Seriously?! You’re saying that me posting articles from Newsweek to Lemmy—a platform with a much smaller audience than the original sites—is “threatening development” in your government? Do you even realize how tiny the Lemmy audience is?

I think the impact of this particular pollution will be small, but I value the idea of being a part of a little community where this type of pollution is minimized, and I think that in the aggregate across many different types of social media, the impact is large. I think that social media large and small are subject to a huge amount of manipulative content of some kind, and I think that does incalculable harm to the exchange of information that's essential to a functioning democracy. It's why democracy is on such a back foot in so many different places right now. The old model of journalism with high standards, whatever its numerous flaws, has been replaced by standards-free anarchy which carefully engineered propaganda is free to flood into at scale, and it's happening to a huge degree, and we're not well-equipped to deal with it. Whatever your intentions in being here, whether or not they are well-meaning, you're participating in that flood.

I don't really care how the mods are currently defining good behavior and bad behavior. Whatever they're doing as pertains to you, it's leading to a massively unpopular reaction in the ordinary members of this community, and I think we've all spent enough time explaining our reasons for that reaction at this point. You can hide behind the mods if you want. I've observed your openness level to what people are telling you, and at this point I've mostly given up on talking with you, and am simply aiming my conversation at the moderators, arguing for why their current approach to moderating you is wrong, and you need to be banned.

If you were just coming in with an unusual point of view, that would be one thing. Honest criticism of the war in Gaza, honest criticism of the Democrats' economic policies, honest critique of the whole idea of capitalism in general, is all fine. They're far from un-heard of. Lemmy is far, far, far from some kind of DNC circle-jerk where you're the only one who's got any kind of rebellious viewpoint. The problem with your content is that, like this article, it is wildly and deliberately misleading, and repeated at a scale that's offensive. You post all this stuff blaming Kamala Harris for the massacre in Palestine, but you voted for someone who wants to accelerate the massacre and is angry at the Biden administration for not doing enough to support and enable it. You claim not to care who wins the election, but you constantly post attacks against one side like it's a part-time job. You claim to want third parties to be viable, but you spend very little time supporting the exact reform that would make them viable at doing anything other than spoiling the election for the other side.

If you don't want me criticizing you, and it seems that you don't, then be straight about what you believe. People respect plenty of minority and counterculture views here. Pretending that you're getting this reception because people love Kamala Harris is precisely the problem. Recognize that other people have valid reasons for their criticism. Respect their time and opinion enough to cool it with the megaphone, and engage directly with what people who disagree with you are saying, instead of pretending they said something else. If you refuse to do any of those things, you're going to receive criticism from the community, and when that criticism is ignored, you're going to receive insults in kind to the disrespect you are showing to everyone else. That's how humans function.

Do you actually think Newsweek, Reuters, AP News (the sources I often use) are all publishing false and dangerous material?

Yes, sometimes. Absolutely. The badness of the mainstream press is a big part of the problem as well. We're currently discussing Newsweek, which it seems like has been taken over by an explicit propaganda operation to some extent, but almost all of the US press is subject to the corruption to at least a certain degree.

Come on! I thought you were serious at first, but now it’s hard to take you seriously. Sorry, guy.

I'll have to try to carry on, somehow.

I've discussed it elsewhere in the comments. The reason why more people changed their party affiliation in 2024 than 2023 has absolutely nothing to do with them being Democrats or not, but the article has constructed this bizarre artificial lens to look at that fact through, that lets them pretend that it had something to do with them being Democrats, and imply that that means people overall are leaving the Democratic party, when that has nothing to do with the data they're looking at.

So, the question remains: if I bother you so much, why don’t you just block me?

Because you're polluting the community.

If someone's yelling with a megaphone on a street corner, and a lot of it is false and dangerous material that's clearly in service of a threatening development in my government, putting on noise-cancelling headphones is not a solution.

You’re welcome to mock me or twist my words, but doesn’t that undermine your own argument?

When did I do either of those things?

Are you talking about me quoting your fake-friendly style of messaging back to you? I did feel a little bit dirty about doing it. Why would that be an offensive type of message for you to receive, though? I want you to explain to me why me reacting to your message with that type of cheerful dismissiveness would be a bad thing for me to do.

It seems odd to call for a ban when it’s clear I’m the one facing trolling and personal attacks daily.

They're two distinct issues. If someone's being uncivil to you, that might be against the community rules. If you're posting things at an unbelievable volume, from dishonest sources, for a dishonestly partisan purpose, then I think that should be forbidden, although it may or not not be against the current community rules as interpreted by the current moderators. I do think the latter leads to the former, but in terms of everyone behaving and following the rules, they're simply two separate actions. Certainly the latter doesn't justify the former.

If you check the mod log, you’ll see more posts removed for trolling me than the other way around.

That sounds completely plausible. That, to me, is gross negligence in moderation. I think I've explained why already.

I've also provided Rooki with code to vastly improve the bot's verdicts. This just happened, so it's too soon to say anything about how he's reacting to that, but if months go by and nothing happens with it, or the party line which was "nothing better than MBFC exists, and anyway no one's offering constructive suggestions" changes to something else, without any change to the bot, then that'll be a clue.

If someone posted 15 times a day some objectively misinformational story about how great Kamala Harris is on some issue, then yes, that would be a bunch of crap. I still wouldn't react to it with the same level of vigor, because it's not potentially harmful in the same way to the same level to myself and my country's government, but yes, it would be inappropriate.

Dude brought receipts that had nothing to do with the topic at hand.

The issue I was raising was that he posts non-stop, and that a lot of it is transparently and objectively false. This post is a great example. He then brought receipts about how people were mean to him, and that it's okay to provide true information that doesn't match the bias people expect to see. Neither of which is related to what I was saying.

I don't think it's proven that jordanlund is the one that's saying inaccurate things. jeffw said the exact same thing about being removed from his position if he tried to take away the bot, back when he was soliciting improvements for the bot for !news@lemmy.world, and jeffw is one of the only big-name .world mods who seems to have his head on straight. In the end, there was some kind of behind-the-scenes discussion and the bot was removed. It might have been nothing more complex than one admin who really liked the idea of the bot, and that coming across to the moderators who are "under him" as if trying to remove the bot would make him angry and he would remove them with his admin powers, when that wasn't the case, and it just took a direct conversation to get things straightened out and resolve the issue.

There is clearly something weird going on at lemmy.world. I just wouldn't jump to conclusions about where the weirdness lies without more information.

It’s public forum, and I can express my opinions or ask questions even if you may disagree with them. As many here do. And as you have done just now.

Thank you, friend! :)

Hey @Rooki@lemmy.world and @jordanlund@lemmy.world: When I was sending that code to parse Wikipedia's sources list for a possibly better fact-checking scanner, one of the notable things that I found out is that Wikipedia regards Newsweek as unreliable. It used to be reliable, as most media outlets are, but they say that since an ownership change a few years ago, they're not. I have to say, now that I've been paying attention, their stories definitely seem to have very little to do with factual information, and quite a lot to do with amassing clicks or communicating a particular partisan message which isn't true, or both. Case in point, this explicitly propaganda-framed article.

I don't see a community rule which is specifically against unreliable articles, as measured by any source, but how would you feel about that? In conjunction with a more robust standard for what is and isn't reliable? In my judgement, this link is clearly in violation of "Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed."

Also, why is this guy still allowed to post? It seems weird. He's so openly spamming the community with unwelcome trolling and propaganda that it seems strange that he's still being welcomed with open arms. In what way is this improving the community to have him putting up a steady flow of posts, and having every one met with universal downvotes and jeering?

It's a broader question than this one post, but this post is a good example in reference to both questions.