Elections Canada has released this resource with some common bits of false or misleading content about elections on social media: https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=res&dir=dis&document=index&lang=e
We plan on pinning this resource, and we are proposing the following rules:
- Posts or comments with inaccurate or misleading information from this list will be removed, and users are encouraged to report them
- Repeatedly posting such content will result in a ban from the community until April 28 (at a minimum)
So far we haven’t noticed any serious issues, but we want to get ahead of anything that might come up
Why would repeatedly posting electoral misinformation during an election only result in a ban until the election was over? I don’t think these people would become good actors just because the election ended.
I think some spreaders of misinformation are victims and not intentional bad actors. Banning them from legitimate communities only pushes them further from reality which is bad for our society. Telling the difference between useful idiots and bad actors is hard, so i think the general policy should be a warning and a ban until election day, and having the mods reserve the right to be harsher for clear bad actors.
There’s definitely people who unwittingly spread misinformation, but the rule wasn’t for people who just post once or twice, but people who have posted misinformation and been warned previously multiple times. That’s not a mistake at that point, that’s a pattern of behavior.
This is true, and we wouldn’t want to keep a bad actor around just because the election is over. I’ll change the wording to add ‘minimum’
We’re also working on updated guidelines, so there will be a bigger call for feedback like this once we have that together. Those guidelines will apply site wide and across the different platforms (pixelfed.ca for example). How we deal with misinformation is an important area that we want to get right
I imagine a “you can apply to be unbanned after April 28” could suffice. Almost certainly these folks (or bots?) will just disappear after the date and not bother to apply.
Not saying that we should do this - just that after April 28 matters less because most of the bad actors will almost certainly abandon their accounts after the election.
This was one of the things I really had a issue with on Reddit. People’s shitty comments would be removed constantly but the users were usually just warned or only given short bans.
The whole thing just made all the subs seems desperate for any type of engagement and the mods would continuosly complain about how much work it is but they created a system where they have to babysit a large portion of the user base.
Lemmy should show all the communities an account is banned on in the user pages.