this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2025
61 points (82.1% liked)

News

25286 readers
3744 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Posting this because no one else seems to want to, and it’s a discussion worth having outside of drama or personal conflicts. I’m undecided and can see both sides, but it’s important to address.

Potential benefits of a limit:

  • Frequent posters hold significant influence and could, in theory, push misinformation or propaganda (though I haven't seen evidence of this it’s a fair concern).
  • A community dominated by one or two voices might discourage new members from participating.
  • Encouraging quality over quantity could increase the value of individual posts.

Potential downsides of a limit:

  • Could reduce overall community engagement.
  • If set too low, it might discourage meaningful participation from well-intentioned members.
  • It could inadvertently encourage the (mis)use of alt accounts.

These are some pros/cons but certainly not all! I encourage more discussion below.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Skua@kbin.earth 18 points 7 hours ago (5 children)

!politics@lemmy.world had UniversalMonk in the run up to the American election. They have about 15 alts, posted an average of 16 articles a day just on the main account, and would pointedly refuse to engage with any discussion of the actual content of the article in the comments. They were banned for "Indiscriminate posting of duplicate stories from different sources to flood the channel."

That's not this community, of course, but I think it is proof enough that it's not an unreasonable concern for OP to have

[–] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 13 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (2 children)

I'll note that I consistently called out Monk to the point that multiple comments of mine lambasting them got deleted (the mods were just being fair and enforcing the rules consistently; hats off).

However, there are some points you've failed to take into account:

  1. (Most important) Monk posted to /c/politics at most about three times per day. This is realistically the bare minimum amount you'd want as a cap on posts per day. You can go back and check this for yourself; the overwhelming majority of their posts were on communities they created and moderated. Checking the month of September, the exception I saw to this was September 8th, where they posted four. This rule would have done absolutely nothing to deter their propaganda campaign.

  2. As your own comment notes, making alts is a trivial matter, especially assuming you're more subtle about the angle you're pushing than Monk was. That I was aware of Monk for months but knew and heard nothing about these purported alts is, to me, evidence of that.

  3. Every single post by Monk was heavily downvoted because everyone knew what they were doing.

  4. The main problem with Monk was their comments, wherein they would engage in essentially copy-pasting Gish gallop responses. The moderators knew banning Monk would've made the community healthier because of this exact behavior but refused to take action.

  5. Even if the problem had been the quantity of the posts to /c/politics (it wasn't), the moderators would've been able to use their discretion to ban Monk instead of a blanket ban on frequent posts.

TL;DR: Monk's problem on /c/politics had nothing to do with and could not have been stopped by such a rule proposed in the OP.

[–] DonaldJMusk@lemmy.today 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Great points! Have my upvote.

[–] Skua@kbin.earth 7 points 6 hours ago
[–] SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world 13 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

UM was a case for moderators to use their discretion, not a blanket ban for everyone who posts a lot.

There are a couple accounts that do a lot of heavy lifting for these communities in a fair and balanced way.

[–] DonaldJMusk@lemmy.today 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I still see him all over Lemmy.

That’s because your instance didn’t ban them.

I feel bad for them whenever they pop out of containment again but I really enjoyed their erotic friend fiction they would write.

[–] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 6 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

How would this rule prevent alts? Seems like it would encourage their use if anything

[–] spujb@lemmy.cafe 0 points 3 hours ago

This is an excellent point, added to the cons list in the body text

[–] aramis87@fedia.io 6 points 6 hours ago

It's not an unreasonable concern, no. But I'd rather the community be active and growing than address something that's not currently an issue.

[–] DonaldJMusk@lemmy.today 0 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

And now he just posts to other communities. Banning didn't do anything to stop him, while Trump still won. Banning him just spread him out even more. It's also very easy to just create new usernames. He probably has lots of alt usernames. So he can still post anywhere he wants to.

Banning did absolutely nothing to stop him. I still see his all over Lemmy. Welcome to the fediverse.