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I have two objections.
First: Whether you as a moderator believe that an exemption exists is only superficially relevant to whether such an exemption is perceived as existing. Similar to the arguments that I used to get into with @ymeskhout about crime statistics and electioneering, whether or not a specific instance of tom-foolery would sway the result is a separate question issue from whether tom-foolery occurred. The fact is that there are a number of of somewhat prolific users here who have built a significant portion of their "brand identity" around a sneering contempt for the outgroup. Whether that outgroup it is Jews, Blacks, or MAGA is also only superficially relevant to the conversation.
For the record I would like to commend you for the pulling the trigger on @DaseindustriesLtd but the fact that his antics were tolerated for as long as they were is a big part of the problem. People notice that certain users (and I am trying to avoid publicly naming names but if you want me to I will DM you) seem to get treated with kid-gloves, they compare these users' treatment to that of prior luminaries, and they start to pattern match. One of the patterns that is easy to arrive at given the make up of both the forum and the moderation team is H1Bs looking out for other H1Bs, and that is where I feel like users like @KMC and @FiveHourMarathon are coming from.
Second: The issue as I see it is not whether or not people here were sympathetic to Charlie Kirk, or whether one or two people here said something dismissive. The issue is that dismissive comments were tolerated, or that if they did get moderated, it went un noticed. As I have said in prior posts on the subject I don't think it was Charles Sumner (the man in my profile pic) getting beaten half to death on the Senate Floor that undermined the norms against political violence and made the US Civil War inevitable. It was the fact that that "Moderates" from Sumner's own party (the Whigs) and his opponents in the Democratic party were seen as defending it. In an alternate history where Preston Brooks and Lawrence Keitt were immediately arrested and faced broad bi-partisan condemnation does a "backwoods radical" like Abraham Lincoln get elected? Does the question of "free states" vs "slave states" get resolved with more or less bloodshed than in our timeline? I don't know but I think it's worth considering.
@Amadan
To be clear, I don't think this is limited to Indians or to Jews. My feelings, as I've said before, is that at times:
I don't think the tone of what KMC said, though I find it wrong and stupid, would have caught any flack if he said it about Venezuelans or Somalians rather than about Indian academics. That includes me, of course, I objected to his vitriol against Amar because it's someone I knew personally and a type of person I've been close with in my life. As a result, I don't think KMC ought to be disciplined for it, or I think a lot of other discussion should be disciplined similarly.
Policing purely for tone and not content would mean that the death of the Ayatollah would be dealt with the same way as the death of Charlie Kirk, which I don't think is or really could be the case. We're always going to have a bias towards our friends.
And I'm going to call you on this, as I have done before, and ask you to show me anything even close to an apples-to-apples comparison.
I actually don't remember anyone posting here on the Motte who clocked as "hating white people or men." There have been some very leftist people with woke ideas about feminism or DEI. Those ideas did not catch them bans.
Yes, posting that Venezuelans are subhumans who deserve to die would get modded. I know we have modded people for getting too inflammatory about Somalians.
As for the Ayatollah, I suppose cheering for his death is vaguely similar to cheering for Charlie Kirk's murder, but only vaguely. There is a difference between cold blooded public murder and targeted killings of leaders during a war and the discourse around the Ayatollah was mostly about whether the war was justified, not whether the Ayatollah was a bad man who deserved to die.
Given that the war was "announced" and the Ayatollah was killed at home within ten minutes, I'd say they were pretty similar levels of cold-bloodedly killing a man who was just going about his day because the shooter thought that the man was evil. This feels like a distinction without a difference.
The most obvious would be various GrandBurdensomeCount personas, where his disdain is always treated as pathological or trolling. This isn't primarily an accusation against the mods, but the forum itself, it's not that you see an attack on white people and ban someone, it's that the tone of the conversation develops such that a ban is inevitable.
Even if I agreed with you, I am still waiting for examples of anyone on the Motte who was celebrating either Kirk or the Ayatollah's murder. Until you show me an actual example of our supposed bias, you're constructing biases you think we have and imagining how we might mod hypothetical posts based on them.
In either case, it would be more about the tone than the sentiment. Someone is allowed to say "I think the Ayatollah/Charlie Kirk was a bad person who deserved to die." Someone could even make an effort post about how either bombing national leaders or shooting provocative public figures is a good thing. Simply posting "I hate Charlie Kirk and I'm glad someone shot that fucker" probably would get modded. But no one did that to my knowledge.
You're just making up nonexistent apples to compare with nonexistent oranges.
He has been modded and banned, for exactly the same sort of rhetoric that got Dase banned.
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Your objection seems to be that people are allowed to say things you don't like.
We give a lot of leeway, but not infinite leeway. People can say they don't like Jews or they think ZOG rules the world. People can be dismissive about someone being killed.
"Lol glad he's dead" would probably have gotten a ban,. but expressing an opinion like "This is not a big deal" would not.
We try to be consistent and principled. We don't claim to be perfect.
Is this not the fundamental nature of all objections? If I liked something (or otherwise thought it was a good thing) I wouldn't be objecting to it would I? I feel like the reasoning behind my objections warrant more consideration than you are currently giving it.
To moderation? No, half of it is "People are allowed to say things I don't like" and half of it is "You won't allow me to say anything I like."
I am sure you do feel like your objections are legitimate and completely unlike the objections of everyone else we have to brush off because we won't moderate to their precise specifications (i.e., "allow speech I like and disallow speech I don't like").
...And I am sure you feel completely justified in dismissing my objections out of hand. Please try to understand that I am trying to help here. If you genuinely want this place to be a "place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases" you ought to be conscious of what I am trying to tell you. Again...
What do you propose?
I don't have any specific action items at this time, but again I am trying to avoid publicly naming names. What I am trying to do is get you to understand that users like @FiveHourMarathon are not just pulling their conclusions out of their ass the way you seem to have implied and as such you should be engaging with them, rather than snidely dismissing them.
I'm not asking for names, but if your objection is "I have a list of names of users I think get away with saying things other users cannot, " yes, I am going to dismiss your objections. If your objection is "I think people are allowed to say things about some groups of people that they cannot say about other groups," I am going to dismiss your objections. We've heard it, we've heard it many times, and whenever I make the mistake of asking for specifics, specific is what I get - not any kind of systematic bias, but some thread or poster in particular that grinds the complainer's gears.
You've already made multiple, objectively false claims about past discourse here. When I asked you "Where are all the people who were dehumanizing Charlie Kirk on the Motte?" you tell me that's not the point. The point is you "perceive " something something. Well, okay then. What are we supposed to do about that?
We are obviously capable of entertaining the possibility that we are biased or make bad calls sometimes. But I would require a very high level of evidence to be convinced of the very broad accusation you are making. Otherwise, yes, I dismiss it as "I would like moderation to be fine-tuned to my precise preferences."
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