• Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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    3 days ago

    To call hate speech and harassment “toxicity” downplays both issues.

    • spyd3r@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      I rather have a little toxicity than a bunch of overzealous moderators lording over the discourse.

      • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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        2 days ago

        If by “a little toxicity” you mean a little bit of aggressiveness, sarcasm, etc., I agree with you. It depends a lot on the community though - in some, allowing it will be counter-productive.

        If however you mean harassment and hate speech, as the author of the text, I strongly disagree. If the mod doesn’t curb down those things, they might not be “lording” over the discourse, but other users are - because

        • users shut each other up through harassment
        • hate speech silences whole groups, as they leave the community

        Another detail is that you don’t need to control the discourse to curb down harassment, since it’s only behavioural and not discursive in nature.

        So IMO when it comes to those two things the problem is not overzealous mods, but dumb ones not doing due diligence, who are a bit too eager to falsely accuse their own users to be voicing hate speech or harassing each other when it is not the case.

        [Sorry for the wall of text.]

    • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
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      3 days ago

      Wtf is “hate speech”?

      A: whatever those in control decide it is, used as a means of suppressing dissent.

      Just think about that for a bit. What if I controlled Bluesky and decided your description of “toxicity” was hate speech?

      • Windex007@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        The definition as taken to the courts in the USA is:

        “Hate speech is any form of expression through which speakers intend to vilify, humiliate, or incite hatred against a group or a class of persons on the basis of race, religion, skin color, sexual identity, gender identity, ethnicity, disability, or national origin.”

        It has more rigorous legal definitions in many other jurisdictions where hate speech is explicitly illegal.

        https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-319.html

        Canada for example.

        You characterizing toxicity and hate speech as being related isn’t a position taken even remotely seriously by anyone who actually write laws on the subject, and many have been written across the world.

        Broadly speaking, hate speech isn’t “being mean” in any legal definition… But that is what right-wing talking heads like to strawman it as.

        • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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          3 days ago

          Look up “woke”, “liberal”, ”facism”

          Or simply the evolution of “gay”

          I know values and meanings that i have come to understand and relate to those respective words. But you wont find a definite definition online.

          For every honest academic attempt there is a bad faith troll. Neither actually embodies a literary authority to enforce a meaning to words.

          Language is an emergent construct based on human interactions, all of us that use words are maintaining that fickle construct it in real time. Good and bad actors alike.

          • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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            3 days ago

            You’re reading too much into my “look it up”. It was basically “I’m not wasting my time with your rhetorical question”.

            I’m aware of what you’re explaining (semantic drift + polysemy), however neither is relevant here.