Forum - View topicForum moderation and white supremacists/neo nazi/etc
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musouka
Posts: 710 |
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Fascinating. A truly amazing article that has so much to say about the discussion we currently find ourselves in. I really liked the part where he sat calmly as KKK members made bad-faith arguments on his anime forums and his collected, reasonable rebuttals single-handedly changed all their minds. As it always does when people converse on the internet--and not in real life, where they are forced to acknowledge you as a fellow human being. |
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AbZeroNow
Posts: 519 |
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Yes, ban all Unite the Right" people & ban all Westboro Baptist people. Racism & homophobia are both inherantly toxic and you cannot say you want a forum free of toxicity and have these people. I have not posted on this forum in a long time, but Ban the Nazis tonight. |
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Mad_Scientist
 SubscriberModerator  Posts: 3011 |
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Well, this thread was actually about what was posted here. In the thread in question, the person admitted to being a white nationalist and attending white supremacist rallies here, on these forums. That said, the question of "well should someone be banned if they reveal that stuff in a place other than the forums?" has been brought up. And my answer is yes, because white supremacists and the like will always make the forums a toxic place. The fact of the matter is, there are a lot of people who constantly skirt the rules, who imply terrible offensive things without actually saying them outright, who suspiciously soapbox about certain issues. The mods are well aware of this I'm sure, and must be frustrated by users who aren't TECHNICALLY breaking the rules but are definitely at least pushing the spirit of them, and who do this for extended periods of time before probably eventually being banned or put on moderation. Well, someone like a white supremacist, someone who is motivated by hate, someone who has hatred as core to their ideology, will inevitably become such a problem poster. And so banning that person right away as soon as you identify them, rather than 1 year later after you've given them their 20th warning for off topic soapboxing about "forced diversity", will simply make the forums a better, less toxic place.
I'd say yes. The views of white supremacists and the Westboro Baptist Church are incredibly well known. These are not vague labels covering a diverse group of people with various conflicting views. They are synonymous with hate. Google image search Westboro Baptist Church and you get hundreds of photos of people holding signs saying "God Hates [slur]" and other variations of them. To announce oneself as a member of the Westboro Baptist Church is pretty much the same as saying you think "God hates [slur]". And it is similar for being a white supremacist. Like, the last "Unite the Right" rally literally resulted in a white supremacist murdering someone. At the rally they shouted Nazi slogans. Actual Nazi slogans. The founder of the rally went on Twitter and praised the murder that occurred, mocking and insulting the victim for being "fat" and saying the murder was "payback time". To declare oneself a member of that group, a participant in that rally, is to essentially say "I'm a terrorist." This is not hyperbole. Again, a white supremacist murdered someone at the last rally, and the founder of it praised it on Twitter. And someone announced that they are going to the anniversary of that rally. Like, I hesitate to bring up the comparison, but if someone declared themselves a member of ISIS, they'd be banned, right? Or what if someone says they're a proud member of the KKK? Would that be allowed as long as they don't say what precisely the KKK believes? And if simply saying they are a member of the KKK without elaborating further *is* allowed, can they include it in their username? Just thinking of this scenario, where people of color try to use these forums and keep on running into posts by users "ProudKKK" and "ILoveTheKKK" and it disturbs them so they report the users... and then get told that the users aren't actually violating any rule. Is that really what we want the ANN forums to be? Changing gears a bit, like I said in an earlier post, forum moderation policy is effectively a political statement, and statements have power and influence. Establishing a policy like I and some other people asking for will say to white supremacists "you're not welcome here." Which is again, a good thing. Right now, ANN has a weird, at wars with itself reputation. The site itself, or more precisely the editorial staff, has a reputation of being a fairly left leaning group of people, many of them LGBT, who despise racism, sexism, anti-lgbt hate, and so forth. The forums, on the other hand, have a reputation of being in perpetual conflict with the editorial, of hating the staff, of hating their political views, of constantly expressing barely concealed racist/sexist/anti-lgbt hate. And the problem is, a reputation like that, and the policies that allow it to happen in the first place, create a vicious spiral. Decent people are driven off the site by the concealed hatred. Terrible people hear through the grapevine that forums are a great way to harass reviewers you think are too progressive or who you don't like because they're trans or whatever. More terrible people show up. The forums become worse. More decent people leave as a result. The moderation policy allows this to happen, which sends the message to terrible people "you are welcome here" and to non terrible people "you're not welcome here". This attracts even more terrible people. More decent people give up and leave. The longer this happens, the stronger and more well known the messages gets. And so on. Given enough time, something like this can completely transform a forum and render it unrecognizable. By changing your forum policy, ANN can make a clear statement: "white supremacists, you are not welcome here. Marginalized folks targeted by white supremacists, you are welcome here." It won't instantly undo the damage that has happened to this forums, but this change in policy, and effective enforcement of it, will be a real start. And given time, it can start it's own spiral: a good one, where terrible people realize that they aren't welcome here and that steps are being actively taken to remove them, and then find that shitting up these boards just aren't as much fun anymore, and so start to leave, and so on. |
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Levitz9
 Posts: 1022 Location: Puerto Rico |
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We cannot, in good faith, continue the current course.
Yes, people who use alt-right language, even if they don't directly admit to espousing racist or sexist beliefs, are in support of that. We see that every time one of those people go onto their massive tirades in forum posts innumerable. Literally nobody else goes on and on about Cultural Descartism or nonsense like that. Mods have imposed bans on using perogatives against so-called Shonen-Jump-Weeklies, but terms like that one are simply used as work-arounds. Lemme rephrase that. We have people who will go the extra mile to use a term that, while not a slur, is definitely a sweeping, emotive and angry response at people who they disagree with, even when mods have banned the term. Any other forum I go to has rules against ban or rule evasion, maybe we should too? We cannot, in good faith, continue to espouse that "sharing opinions" needs to be protected when so many participants are acting in bad faith. Moreso, they're flagrantly wiping their rears with the "respect" part. I've seen people get smart with Zac of all people, Zac. The Editor-in-Chief of this site, your employee whose job it is to oversee this stuff. There are a number of LGBT employees here, and they've been subject to deadnaming and insults from these users. That stuff isn't right and we can't continue to support it because we need to "respect other people's opinions"! Food for thought: SomethingAwful has rules that this site should implement. First:
That looks like a big one. You're paying the people who work here. The least you can do is make them feel safe working here. Like I said, your employees are regularly disrespected by many toxic forum-goers. There shouldn't be any tolerance for that.
These toxic types like to rules-lawyer their way out of stuff. "Oh, I didn't *mean* to deadname you! I didn't know you were trans!", that kind of crap. No quarter. I'm Puerto Rican, okay? Latino--and Autistic, at that. So I'm already kinda scared with how things are going in the world. I was in Georgia when the elections happened, and I was scared to go around town because I was worried some red-capped person was going to give me a hard time. I live in the PDX now, but I'm still scared. Right when I moved here last year, a member of the alt-right killed a man in Portland's trains after harrassing a muslim woman. That could have been me. So, seeing all these alt-right dogwhistles? Yeah, that freaking scares me. And when I'm scared of a place, I don't go there. I love the columns here, this site has some of the best people working for it. But if I can't come to a discussion without seeing five people imply people like me are ruining the country... well, just sayin', don't complain when your traffic dies out. |
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Wingbeats
 Posts: 272 Location: Boise, Idaho |
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I'm someone who used to read through and post on anime threads, especially around preview guide fun and in series reviews of things I like.
However, I've dropped off entirely as of a few months ago....and it 100% had to do with me being disheartened at the repetitive rants where people are offended at use of the term "heteronormativity," or how crappy the reviewer's views are, or how "unobjective" the reviews are. (Since when are reviews of a thing objective anyways? Ah, that's a whole other discussion.) Since then, I've stopped reading comment threads entirely. It's just so tiring and toxic and I don't have the energy to try and counter these posts over and over again to talk about a thing. I'm a trans guy and I adore the ANN staff....I just get so tired of all the bashing. I just want to read and discuss anime as reviewed by people I respect. |
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horseradish
 SubscriberPosts: 574 Location: Bay Area |
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Please don't compromise with white supremacists and their ilk. Hate is antithetical to polite discussion; they are only respectful and considerate to their comrades or under pretenses when at a disadvantage. Just because they dress it up a little doesn't mean it isn't still ugly. If you don't slam the door in their faces every time they make their presence known, they will consider the forums a safe place to gather and scream their vitrol at every given opportunity towards other forum members, including staff. Staff who are members of the marginalized communities that aforementioned hate groups have targeted with violence.
The Talkback section has been a prime example of this provocative behavior. Tolerating hate is counteractive. People have limited patience and get to a certain point where they throw their exhausted hands up in the air and say "You know what? I'm outta here. I got better, more enjoyable things to do than confronting a prejudiced bigot. Have fun." Then they take their business elsewhere and leave the cesspool behind to fester.
If they did keep their political beliefs to themselves, we wouldn't know about those beliefs. This is the internet. You share what you're comfortable exposing, unless someone else does that for you. At best we'd have a vague, skeptical inkling about who they are. When someone outright says "Hey I'm a member of a hate group and I've participated in activities that champion our agenda", that doesn't leave much to the imagination anymore. |
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Emdykay
 Posts: 85 |
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So I kinda planned out a big post to respond to this, considering I was thinking of writing a similar piece to forum administration, but it looks like I can save people plenty of time by simply putting my signature under what Mad_Scientist wrote, so consider that done hereby.
I would like to add something regarding wether any hateful ideologies should be consequently banned or engaged: While I implicitly believe that banning and tabooization of such ideologies is merely fighting the symptomps and unless you engage those ideas and their holders you can not effectively subdue them, a forum is not a place where this can happen appropriately, especially the size of ANN. Any clash of sufficiently emotionally charged ideas, these most surely qualify, needs a tremendous amount of moderation and careful supervision. And a forum is by its nature too chaotic, fast moving and annonymous for this process. Assuming the moderators would be willing and capable to put up with the effort and, no blame intended, they absolutely don´t need to, again comparing the size to that and the activity of the mod staff, they never possibly could. Nevermind the fact that a not insignificant group of people were never intent on having an honest discussion or exchange of ideas in the first place. Crypto-fascist or similar individuals are targeting ANN specifically because it has a very inclusive and progressive view and approach and at the same time a very wide reach. It is important to realize that this circumstance makes ANN a target for this kind of people and by not counteracting those that try to hide in the masses and skirt the rules with their constant thread derailment and topic changes to discredit those views and values of ANN, risks the very existence of this place as what it stands for, by driving away ANNs intended audience while normalizing and introducing people to their ideas. So while banning and persecuting with a no-tolerance attitude of individuals who espouse hateful views might not be the idealistic approach in a more abstract effort to remove such sentiments, it is pragmatically the only applicable way for a forum to not work in those peoples favor. I think the sheer number of people who already noted their absence and departing the forum due to this is more proof than anyone needs. |
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Mad_Scientist
Subscriber Moderator Posts: 3011 |
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Another point I want to bring up (sorry for posting so extensively but this is an issue that really matters to me) is that the rules of the ANN forums were originally written quite a while ago (2002!), and I think were designed with a rather different view of what would be discussed here, and what arguments would occur.
The rules have been revised since 2002, but the biggest and most recent revision was largely a change in format and phrasing for additional clarity. The current first rule is this: "Above all else: Be Polite" Below that rule are some details, including how "harassing, slanderous, threatening, dangerous or illegal material will be removed from the forum by moderators", but the rules as written, do not even specifically ban hate speech. Before the latest rules revision, there was a line that "Abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening, sexually-charged, dangerous or illegal material will be removed from the forum by moderators." but "hateful" got removed in the revision. Now this seems to be an oversight, but I think the fact that this oversight occurred is telling, because it shows what the focus is on. Politeness. And in a different time, with different topics, that would be fine. The rules seem to be written under the idea that the most heated discussions here will be about things like "subs vs dubs" or "is Eva overrated". In arguments like these, there is no morally correct position. Neither side is a bad person for having their view. And so, in such an argument, if one person is being polite, and the other person is swearing at and insulting them, then it is the impolite person who is the problem, the impolite person who is making the forum toxic. You can easily AGREE with their position on Eva or whatever, and still understand that they are in the wrong, and need to be told to cut it out. But that's not the situation today. The arguments that are heating up the forums aren't about innocent things like subs vs dubs. When one person declares themself to be a white supremacist, and another person calls them a piece of excrement, who is really making the forum toxic? Who is really making other users feel uncomfortable or unsafe? It's not the impolite person, it's the white supremacist. "Politeness above all else" works when the arguments are innocent and there are no immoral positions in them. It works when it's "subs vs dubs". It does not work when the arguments change and become things like "are white people superior to black people?" and "should gay people have equal rights?", even if those arguments are only being implied through dogwhistles and other methods. Indeed, "politeness above all" can be actively harmful, because some people are very, very good at implying hateful things about marginalized folks without actually saying them. And then this makes the marginalized person feel defensive and attacked, and they get emotional, and lash out. And thus... they stop being polite, and find that they and only they have violated the rules and are facing moderation. That's why I think there needs to be a change in focus. Not "politeness", but perhaps "respect", with the acknowledgement that "respect" requires recognizing the basic humanity and rights of all people, and thus certain views cannot be part of a respectful conversation no matter how politely worded. |
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Chrono1000
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The fundamental problem with political correctness is that there will be no end to it. The line will be at white nationalists, than it will move to nationalists, than it will move to conservative values, than it will move to anyone that defends ecchi, and that line will just keep on moving.
Last edited by Chrono1000 on Fri Jun 29, 2018 6:28 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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AholePony
 Posts: 330 Location: Arizona |
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The best online communities I've been involved with ran on a "if you annoy us, or we don't like you, if we don't like what you said or say, you're gone" 0-tolerance moderation policy. The upshot of this the toxicity can disappear and the good times and laughs can seem endless. The downside (other than them going elsewhere to whine about how terrible you and your community are), is that you create your own little bubble surrounding yourself only with like minded community members. Everything has pros and cons, and for a big site like this the reputational risk may be significant and an echo chamber might not be a productive environment.
I will say that some of the current ANN staff has what is, in my opinion, a problem with soapboxing. It's not exactly constant, that's why I still visit every day and read dozens of reviews, but I want to know about anime, and anime things, not about how you can twist some thing that happened in a fictional show into a dissertation on all of the ills in our world. That just might be me. I use anime to get away from political and social issues as they relate to our world, personally, but I think it's worth a mention. I am very familiar with left-leaning ideals and the LBGT+ community (I can be PM'd for more details). I just feel like you can't ignore that some of the soapboxing (again, imo) causes issues on the forum. |
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鏡
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Giving no quarter to white supremacists is not a matter of political correctness, it's a matter of defining the category of things that are open to interpretation without reprisal. The humanity of individuals that are dehumanized by bigots needs to be established as unambiguously outside of that category, otherwise the humanity of community members who fall within the targeted demographics becomes a political question that one can sensibly deny. I glossed over it in my first post because I didn't think it needed to be explained or emphasized, but I feel like there are a lot of misconceptions about why being a white supremacist or tolerating white supremacist beliefs in your community is bad. It's not bad because those beliefs are offensive, or hateful, or politically incorrect, or uncivil. It's bad because the acceptance of the declaration of those beliefs as socially acceptable helps to effect the dehumanization of community members (dehumanization is the conceptual bedrock of bigotry, not hatred) who those beliefs target by rendering their humanity an object of discussion. When there are bigots in a community there can be no Hobbesian social contract between community members, where that denotes an agreement between equally rationally autonomous individuals to restrain themselves from mutual self-destruction, because the would-be signatories do not recognize one another as equally rationally autonomous. Bigotry is not "uncivil" or a "violation" of a social contract - it precludes the establishment of a social contract in the first place and lies fundamentally outside of any possible discourse between equals. Last edited by 鏡 on Fri Jun 22, 2018 10:51 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Mad_Scientist
Subscriber Moderator Posts: 3011 |
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That's because they're two different terms for the same thing, same with "alt right."
This is a false fear. There are some pretty clear and easy standards that can be made. I described one possible phrasing in an earlier post. "Posters who hate, or support or advocate for hate, of other people based on race, gender or gender identity, sexuality, class, age, or disability will be banned. Posters who attempt to skirt this rule through dogwhistles or other methods may also be banned or warned at the discretion of the moderators." Saying "I love America" or "Fanservice anime is the best" is hardly gonna fit into that category. The idea that banning white supremacists and similar posters will lead to some terrible slippery slope that will eventually ban anyone who likes sexy anime is false. |
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Levitz9
Posts: 1022 Location: Puerto Rico |
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That's the definition of a slippery slope. I mean, what, you think Theron Martin is gonna get banned by his coworkers because he likes Schoolgirl Milky Crisis? You think that his coworkers would be fine with that kind of unfair treatment when none of them have ever uttered so much as a word about each other's tastes? That's a rhetorical question, by the way. The line stops at people's wellbeing and safety. If you don't like that, there are other forums you can patronize. Also: for all the negative tone you've got towards AnimeFeminist? They're doing pretty damn great for themselves and have absolutely none of the problems that this board has. Not. A. One. |
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CatSword
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Perhaps a "don't ask, don't tell" policy would be appropriate? I'm sure there are some white supremacists, neo-Nazis, or people with other controversial opinions on this forum who simply don't feel the need to bring it up when discussing anime.
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horseradish
Subscriber Posts: 574 Location: Bay Area |
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