TOTW: Anarchist Moderation

As an anews regular I've seen a number of comments disappear over the years. Some are spam, some offer very little to the topic of discussion, others are trollish personal attacks, but many are simply just opinions not held by one of the anews moderators. Often times entire conversations will be wiped out after hours of effort by its participants.

While there is a brief and wishy-washy blub in the "About moderation" section of the 'About Us" page, most anews regulars, it seems, have just come to accept that whether a comment survives or not is entirely up to the whim or mood of the moderators that day.

If you were design how moderation would operate on an anarchist website or discussion forum how would you do it? Would you simply let anything go and shut it down if it turned into a channer wankfest? Would you draft and endless revise and be transparent about moderation policy? Would you simply state that it's your website and you'll do what you want and if people don't like it they can kick rocks? How do anarchist websites moderate discussion without being authoritarian?

What say you, anews anarchists?

[Thanks to anonymous for this guest Topic of the Week submission, please email thecollective@anarchistnews.org if you would like to submit a guest TOTW]

There are 105 Comments

what a garbage topic

who wasted time writing this

The email submission said it was written by your mom after she got done gargling my enormous balls.

oddly specific way for their mom to sign correspondence!

She a freak

websites, and moderation (whether in a panel, a forum, a comment section) are inherently authoritarian

the power the owners and the moderators of the site have can be used to achieved a desired effect, which may be fumbling to make it look like it's not an authoritarian exercise, but it can also be curating content and conversations, giving space to different narratives

the role of moderator in a conversation can help keep one person from talking over the other, but this act is not neutral, the whole framing is a form of governance

the ones most oppressed by the website are not the trolls which are suppressed, but all life-forms which suffer under the burden of its sprawling infrastructure, the whole of the internet and the computers which log in, the power grid, oil refineries, metal mines, etc.

it's power, you're referring to. not "inherent authoritarianism". they have power.

your last paragraph gives up the troll ghost but it's still an interesting point!

replace “power” with “governmental” if you wish. i still disagree with you on everything.

i also meant replace “authoritarian” with “governmental”. to be clear, i’m not for anti-authoritarian or democratic governance either, whatever form that may take

yeah ... you're against everything, I get it. not that it matters much if you don't have any power of your own

for example, the dubious power of complaint

"this act is not neutral, the whole framing is a form of governance"

It is neutral, as far as the principle is being applied to every loud mouth regarding who that is. Loud mouth, tho isn't neutral.

Great topic! How can we as anarchists even consider organising/rebuilding society (ancoms!), a community (ancoms!), a workplace (ansynds!) a dinner party (posties!), forest occupations (primmies!), robot/human orgies (c4ss!) ;-), etc, if we can't even figure out how to run a simple website? Makes you think.

It should be allowed to turn into a "channer wankfest" if that's what the community of users wants. The admins should replace this software with futaba and go all in. What's wrong with wankfests?

Is that even what the community members want though? It's certainly what the trolls and other folks who don't care for anarchists want.

I don't see what is wrong with removing racist trolls, or other pointless comments. This isn't being the police.

Furthermore, who has ever said that anarchism or even anarchy means that kind of free speech that classic liberals are advocating, or giving a platform to hate speech? I can't believe any noodlehead still can have this notion, in good faith.

I would like to address the other type of Moderation. They tell us that "all things in moderation" until we taste a little bit of their forbidden fruits and then we are labeled as evil. Moderation is anti-anarchy. Nothing in moderation! 100% everything all the time I say.

everything in moderation, including moderation

> Moderation is anti-anarchy.

Sure! Coz you just decided that this morning. Tell us more about it plz... your "arguments" must be a roller-coaster riiide, dipshit.

I've seen some off-topic snark stay up on this site while on-topic snark gets deleted. It's all so opaque, these esoteric rules/whims for moderation.

What makes a good comment section is on topic discussion with allowances for humor. Not sure how that gets decided except in a go-by-feel sort of way, but someone has to decide, and I don't think that is necessarily authoritarian.

Maybe anews needs to publish two lists for greater moderation transparency? I'll start. Modify as you like this is your time to participate, comrades.

List 1: Things That Will Get Your Comment Removed
* CP
* Links without context
* Positive comments about sworn enemies of thecollective
* Comments by Le Way or Keating

List 2: This That Are Funny.
* Infanticide
* William Gillis
* Political Assassinations
* Ancoms
* Feelings

This above the mental sickness you get from being way too much on the internet, on your Gentoo laptop.

Just because you are mad about the Anews anti-CP policy doess not mean you should disparage the freedom and efficiency of Gentoo Linux.

I prefer to watch the bad takes get dogpiled and stay up in most cases, but eh, it's fine to remove the obvious garbage

too little moderation and you get colonized by bigoted trolls
too much moderation and you don't get to hear whoever wrote this topic complaining about moderation in the comments

fuck "anews regulars" - this may come as a surprise but many people here don't spend all day on here and like to see more than two or three people circlejerking and crybullying in the comments when we do come here

so ... tell them to post more? that's how that works.

ngl, the idea of posting here with the somewhat high likelihood that it's going to be responded to by one of the small pool of terminally online, over-engaged peanut gallery of "regulars" is actually a disincentive. scrolling through overlong threads of back-and-forth about nothing between the same three people (or the same person talking to themselves) to try to find something worth reading sucks, it often buries any comments that might actually be worth engaging with and it's hard to think many people want to post when it's just gonna get lost in the noise or become part of it

all due respect but i see a pretty obvious problem with your reasoning there?

saying something like "its difficult or otherwise unpleasant so i don't really want to."

sure, that's fair enough but it automatically cedes the space. a race to the bottom, biggest troll wins by default!

it's like life or society or whatever maaan, troll evil prevails if good faith posters do nothing

*evil troll laughter*

NO MODS NO MASTERS! UNTIL THE LAST DISCORD MOD IS STRUNG UP BY THE ENTRAILS OF THE LAST WEBSITE ADMIN

Bring bakkk TRUMP so all 'em libuhrull sissies get flushed and Anews gets under better management!

I've thought about this very topic for some time. I wonder if there is some way to make a "democratic" moderation work. Something similar to upvotes/downvotes on raddle and reddit. Of course this system could easily be overcome by a "tyranny of the majority" with people making valid points having their comments deleted by a majority who disagrees. That makes me want to lean towards some form of digital consensus operation where comments are only deleted or edited after some form of discussion with each party involved. Even that seems pretty tedious and over convoluted though. Lastly I wonder if there could be some way of incorporating some kind of compassionate anarchy moderation system where if someone is impacted by something they can attempt to resolve the issue with others; I have no idea how this would work in a digital space.

You should check out the fediverse, which is essentially a federative version of twitter. This decentralized and opensource structure allows moderation to occur within communities as determined by the communities from my understanding. https://mastodon.social/about

I charmed the community on my masto instance with my good looks and knowledge and got moderator privs then aggressively moderated everyone for weeks because they're all dumb and ugly unless they hit my cashapp. It should work that way here too.

Purpose:

In an attempt to make space for marginalized people in our comments anews has an anti-oppression policy. We want to have a free and open exchange of ideas to better serve the goals of anarchism, and oppressive ideologies stand in direct opposition to this goal.

This policy sets us apart from other anarchist websites and other online anarchist communities. If you find these expectations too limiting you are free to associate with other communities.

"For me, democracy is about participatory parity. When a whole category of people is marginalized, and ends up unable to participate on an equal basis, that's oppression. Not some guy having to worry that for once in his life, he might be called out on his behavior. The measure of our success is the kind of climate we create and, if [the group] creates a climate that denies parity, then [the group] itself becomes a form of oppression. You want to create a racist organization? Fine, go ahead. You want to create a sexist organization? Fine, go ahead. But at least don't claim that you're doing it in the name of democracy!" - Zosera

Oppression is defined as any language or action that expresses, reinforces, upholds or sympathizes with any form of systemic social domination, including but not limited to: eugenics, patriarchy, cisnormativity, white supremacy, heteronormativity, capitalism, etc...

For the purpose of discussion, belief in systems of economic and political domination, i.e. capitalism or statism will be tolerated. This strategy should not be applied to combating authoritarian ideologies such as liberalism, libertarian-capitalism or state-socialism.

Abusive behavior includes but is not limited to stalking a user's family, calling in reactionary oogle brigades, etc.

The Strategy for Combating Oppression:

Community

Calling out oppressive behavior is the first line of defense. If this fails, or you are uncomfortable calling out oppressive behavior, please bring it to the attention of moderators by clicking the report link or messaging the moderators - keep in mind that any messages sent to the moderators through the "message the moderators" link in the side bar can be publicly discussed. You can send a message to an individual moderator if you want to remain anonymous. If you feel that the behavior is significant enough, feel free to make a post in the forums so the community can discuss the best course of action. We should be creative with our courses of action and not rely on banning or post removals.

Moderation

If a user continues with their oppressive behavior after being called out by a member of the community then they may be banned at the discretion of an individual mod. All bans are recorded in the forums and get their own thread for discussion. If the community disagrees with the legitimacy of a ban then the ban will be reversed. If a comment is bad enough, or a user looks bad enough based on their post history, then a discussion can be brought up on whether or not they should be banned without a second offense.

Comments are also deleted at the discretion of moderators. All deleted comments can be restored by the moderators.

It is up to the whole community to make sure that mods do not abuse their power. All mod actions are reversible and flagrant abuses of mod power will be dealt with by community consensus.

I really wish moderators would one day start to keep the Hakim Bey and other pedophile advocacy away from this site

you're still whining about this lol

give it up you prude, go to r/anarchism if you want a place that upholds good morals

i don't think it's about prudery. i think it's about a deep misunderstanding of (ie refusal to understand) what bey is talking about. there are some topics that are just too complicated/loaded for some people.

:(

Prune... Whining... Maybe I use that one next time we have (again) a case with some Hakim Bey fan boy abusing kids in anarchist circles.

maybe you work on your grammar and spelling the next time you post too?

Don't be an Anglophonecuck, 11:44. You know what they meant. Language rules is an prison.

"they"

sure, anon. go somewhere else, you prune

Prunes are good for healthy pooping. Something your pedo hero and you can surely appreciate.

Can someone explain what this comment is referring to? I know who Hakim Bey is but don't know about this issue.

You talking about my language skills in that way is just ridiculous and arrogant.

you not spending enough time here to know how to thread your replies but still complaining about the content is ridiculous and arrogant

Don't make such assumptions. Your behaviour is ridiculous no matter how much you post it here.

as a former antiwork moderator I'd say that moderation is not anarchist. Moderation means that you modify something, which is limiting the choice of a person to say something. Now again, you can say "haha houserules" and lame stuff, but I think that's just a diversion. If anything, the only thing I would probably delete is doxxing and obvious defamation like stuff that is researchable answered after 1 minute of searching.

Reddit moderation in general just sucks. You see too many power users, too many reposts, too many people mindlessly clicking similar sounding texts that they saw 1 week ago and less and less people actually talking about theory or even just linking to theory. The only reason I stayed "long" was because I felt an obligation to serve back to the community for the wonderful reading texts I could read by anarchists like Alexander Berkman.

... that's not very persuasive. "anarchist" means never modifying anything? what a shame that would be, if it were true

If the moderators are going to cherry pick comments how about just turning off comments entirely? Works for CrimethInc and IGD who get a tonne more engagement and readership. They do write original content though. Maybe with fewer hours of comment moderation the moderators could write or make (wink wink) the news instead.

"Works for CrimethInc and IGD who get a tonne more engagement and readership. They do write original content though. "

Nice trolling brow. Mildly amusing. Great execution. Keep it up!

Since when is stating facts "trolling" brow? Are we so fearful of change that we must to alter truth? Perhaps that should be a Topic for the Weak?

Ok crypto-Nazi. That social Darwinism is showing.

Tell us more about your "FACTS & LOGIC". Like perhaps you mean comparative Alexa scores?

Meaningless. I can use Pewdiepie against both IGD, Submedia CrimethInc combined, and make them look like sorry losers. Ans btw this internet brat has been allowing AND using comments to get extra fame. In marketing it's called "feedback loops", and it works!

imagine spending so much time talking to yourself on here

pretty sad brow

There are at least three different brows talking here brow. Imagine thinking all brows are the same brow! Our differences are what make us beautiful brow.

"If you can lift more than one can of La Croix or use the words 'weak' or 'truth' you're a 'crypto-Nazi'" -09:56

Yes, Alexa stats are one way to quantify it sure. Does that upset you? Is using math and data analysis also social Darwinism?

It has long since lost its way and is in obvious decline(I call it anarchistsnooze) to the point where I ain’t as interested in showing up as much.

At least itsgoingdown(the toilet) knows what they are and who their activist puritan fans are. I think anews should be more 4chanesque when it comes to moderation. Some curation is of course necessary but @snooze is ridiculous at this point.

Some of us are waiting for the successor to what anews was back in 2004. In the meantime postleft reddit and other places will do.

Back in the early 00s when I invented what would become anarchist websites with comments I had the foresight to know that one day an egregore of immense edgelordery would come and shepherd us all to corporate websites like reddit (which I also invented I have the receipts) where anarch ego egregores would make the corporations money to run the machines to help spread anarch ego egregore-esq radical centrism. @snooze should simply create a subreddit and/or s-corp to maximize anarchy. Every egregore knows this.

"non sensoring"

Pun intended? Of course not, but LMAO anyway.

My God the brainworms!

"@snooz won't let me call people retarded anymore, this place sux"

aw sweetie, you can still post on /pol if you want to. i think moderation might be part of the reason 4chan is a haven for bigoted teens but maybe that's what you're pining for

You’ll find MAP discourse on the chans and I very much expect that to be part of a new emerging cybernetic radical discourse.

4chan is not synonymous with bigotry. The problem is the left got boring and culturally institutional. You’re seeing an obvious feedback on a site that is a place for naughty discourse. In time the Pedos will replace the Nazis on the Chans.

So what you're saying is that you're leaving anarchist websites entirely in favor of 4chanesq sites to pursue emergent cybernetic radical (centrist) discourse?

Well, OKAY GOODBYE, SirEinzige! Don't let the door of anarchy hit you on the way out but definitely do leave.

I’m also on post-left reddit. Might give Mastadon a chance who knows. It’s about my time and attention more then outright leaving. I’ll always have some level of appreciation for anews as I’ve communicated and evolved in ideas here over the years.

I’ll always stick around.

Like herpes? Well okay, SirHerp. Have fun on all the internets, I guess.

Finally, @News is having a discussion (sort of) about their moderation policies. As someone who has been permanently blocked from logging into this site to post under my own pseudonym, I would be interested to hear the @News moderators' reasons for that. I most definitely have never posted anything that could be classified as hate speech or an incitement to violence. What I have done is offer critiques and opinions that, apparently, the moderators didn't agree with, and chose to drop down the memory hole, rather than give other visitors a chance to read them. Oh, and I have also criticized and challenged these censorship policies themselves.

some of us remember when you said if your comments were unwanted then you'd leave.

funny how old men seem to forget their own decisions...

my favorite part was when this jackass admitted he didn't know hardly anything about ukrainian history and didn't see why that would be relevant to the choice of screen name

lol, didn't you create your own freeze peach zone so you wouldn't have to deal with people removing your terrible posts? how's that going?

what are these brows? eyebrows? maybe like our dearly departed cousins the Neanderthals, it's a reference to brow *ridges*, amirite?

First, learn to thread your comments. Only then you will understand, brow.

You mean eyebrow threading? Asking for a friend

Instead of the mods policing the conversation why not give users the ability to mute other users, including anon? This would incentivise users to sign up for accounts to maximize the chances that they're not muted. This user information also could then be sold on the darkweb by thecollective to stockpile drugs and munitions for the coming insurrection.
Anything else is just cop shit.

This basically happened a few years back... during a few-days experiment where only account-holders could comment. Giving everyone the power to mute others means roughly the same result; everyone will end up muting anon comments they don't like.

Anon posting is good to keep. Why? Coz Death of the Author.

I gor a well-known nick on this site and been visiting it for years. The main reason why I post as anon is for thoughts, reactions, etc to be free of any interpersonal bias, or judging the comments by the author. "Celebrity" brings a few shortcomings.

It's not the moderation it's the moderators. Pettiness and vindictiveness in the people who hold all the power do not make for anarchic environs.

anarchists are only heroic and self-denying, martyers to the cause, with senses of humor that appeal to everyone especially The People.

think soviet realism with a keyboard!

everyone knows this.

anon apparently does not know any actual anarchists ... how embarrassing!

no. just means you have a hippy disease now

I think every anews mod is doing a great job and shouldn't change a thing ever. This is a learning opportunity about how real anarchists do things and the people complaining should just be grateful.

the people complaining are showing how real anarchists do things too, tho?

Incorrect. Respect our authoritay!

I was banned for coining the term " Photogenic college girls holding AK47s " regarding the propaganda techniques of the Bookchin Rojava Tribe. How Stalin-esque can you get!?

The heavy-handed, anonymous censorship practiced on the @News site is a microcosm of a depressing and dangerous trend in Western society towards political tribalism and an anti-intellectual disdain and active hostility towards expression of even the mildest dissent from whatever the mainstream, politically-correct consensus of the moment is perceived to be. Any questioning, or any attempt to engage in rational discourse with those outside of the tribe is considered a betrayal of the highest order.

The "moderation" practiced on @News is no different from what is happening on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter, and in the end, it serves the interests of the ruling classes just as much. Years ago, when I used to post often on infoshop.org, the conversations were much more open, and much more interesting, than the arid environment one sees on this web site now. Creating a web page on my own proved more technically challenging than I expected, but I haven't given up on the idea. In the meantime, despite its huge limitations, this site seems to be the main public square for anarchists in North America, so I will still raise my voice here occasionally. The mindless anonymous insults are irrelevant to me, although I might enjoy them if they contained any spark of critical analysis or original thought.

Blocked

You sure love to posture as a victim, you fatuous bore - for someone who wants original thought you seem to be happy posting the same stock phrases about freeze peach and censorship over and over and over again. Maybe you're right, maybe posting sus information from sus websites and calling anarchists fascists for asking people to wear masks at events they are holding while calling fascists anarchists because they're mad about some of same stuff you don't like is the highest form of thoughtcrime, truly galaxy-brain shit.

"Creating a web page on my own proved more technically challenging than I expected" - okay lol, i'm sure it wasn't just the lack of engagement with yet another obscure haven for conspiracy thought, but then, you can't even thread your comments, so maybe that's true

there are plenty of places on the internet where anarchists talk and which have more engagement than this site, unfortunately for you I'd imagine they'd be just as hostile to you, not because you're spreading secret knowledge and they're all fascists upholding the new world order, and not just because you at some point went down the rabbit hole of not-anarchist conspiracy shit which is all you ever talk about, but because you're an obnoxious crank who doesn't know how to disagree with people without calling them fascists and whose hard-headedness is only made worse by his self-righteousness.

i know this type, the wheels in his head turn only for long, rambling stories about his misunderstood genius being wasted on us peasants and clueless dupes of "the system".

all i ever think when he finishes another diatribe is ... makhno ... why? WHY did he pick that name? WTF?! where is the through line!?

Yup. Now watch this comment get deleted in real time.

I’ll wait…

Well, its self-evident isn't it, that the last post before mine was 19hrs ago. Anarchs are abandoning @news!

There were plenty of comments in the past 19hrs but the mods just deleted them because power tripping authoritarians gonna power trip. Although you are still correct in that @news is a sinking ship.

Oh well, time to circle jerk somewhere else I guess :(

I've avoided commenting on this thread, but I want to chime in briefly to say that you are wrong. There were 6 comments that were unpublished yesterday. Two of them were "your mom" comments and one was LeWey sighing through writing a comment it appeared. The remaining 3 comments were spam posts by a user who has continually spammed the same comment over and over on the website.

I really want to know why you think it's okay to straight up lie like you know what's going on and be a total ass about everything? Actually... I don't. Perhaps a longer reply will clear up some of my thoughts on anonymous comments like yours and the anonymous guest who wrote this TOTW. BTW, on this entire thread, not a single comment was unpublished, so you can see all the chaos.

-thecollective_1.8

Truth is a spook, brow. Don't be a truthcuck. Lies are based anarchy. Your mom thinks so too. LeWay is an anews standard-bearer and he has earned the right for his sighs to be heard. Free LeWay!

'Tis a pity about eternal truths and logic, they have created a false perception of reality and made e eryone addicted to organization and order.

It's interesting that your "Nope" confirms 16:13's comment that the "last post before mine was 19hrs ago. Anarchs are abandoning @news!" Perhaps this is not the impression you wanted to leave when admitting the removal of comments and the abandonment of anews?

This does not dis-sway the point that anews is drying up due to heavy handed moderation. What it shows is you got 6 comments that were not substantive to the topic at hand. At this point you're only getting trolly comment types and having less contributes. The last time I chimed in for instance that caused a chain of 20 or so comments.

In regards to Makhno, my advice would be(among other things) just post more on post-left reddit. The mods there are ok and certainly nothing like the retards on (r)anarchism who are even worse then these mods. Those foohs are straight up maoist adjacent leftists.

"dis-sway"
"certainly nothing like the retards"
"Those foohs"

My god these jokes write themselves.

SirEinzige, love it or leave it! @news fuck yeah!
Your mom says, "hi."

and epic lack of self awareness implied by -

"the last time the noises from my butt trumpet caused 20 comments!!! self-evident greatness!" <--- exact quote

JUST LOOK AT THAT ENGAGEMENT. you're welcome @news!

*mic drop*

I often visit post-left reddit and find it has kindred anarchs who are totally beyond the old Marxist council authority. Very few deletions seem to occur compared to @news, and wingnuts are tolerated, I think because they contribute to the humor.

almost 90 comments, and maybe 2 or 3 that aren't insipid grammar school blather. that's a horribe - and unfortunately rather typical - signal to noise ratio. if i was thecorrective, i'd be asking myself what that says. if @news had even a reasonable amount of actual relevant content (ie, news of some sort), it would be much easier to ignore the comments entirely.

you are the noise, maybe you should ask yourself why you spend so much time creating noise

you also misspelled horrible

No u.

I just said some stuff about the related topic of intentional communities and the anarchist philosophy behind it and websites so they can get involved. Actual anarchy. It makes me sad. I also don't like when posts get made fun of.

hi anarkogardener - sorry you were taken by surprise but this comment or versions of it has been posted many times in the past, and has been consistently removed - it was only loosely related to the article it was posted under and we generally don't allow advertising in the comments section. if you want to submit something as a forum post that might be a better fit. You can also submit an article advertising your event and we'd be happy to add it to our calendar if it's an explicitly anarchist event.

The comment I wrote this reply to was deleted but it still applies to the topic. Now even more so. I hope the moderators actually consider what I am saying and don’t just delete it.

I don’t mean to be ageist but this is what happens when you have middle aged senior citizens and their lapdogs running infrastructure. They are out of touch with the milieu and they know it so they act out in authoritarian ways. The reddit subs are managed by younger anarchs who are less afraid to lose relevance or control. This is why it’s a better reflection of anarchy.

Anarchy is driven by the youth.

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