Can you imagine ml or hexbear adopting this rule though? I think it depends on the type of community. If it’s a “safe space” type community then I think it’s fine to keep out the dissenters. Eg I often remove right wing comments in lefty memes because it’s supposed to be a space for memes, not people shouting at each other. Likewise, if someone starts ranting about the evils of piracy in c/piracy then they are getting a community ban. But a US politics community has to be tolerant of alternate viewpoints, because of the nature of the community. That’s why it took a while to ban linkerbaan. He wasn’t banned for his politics though, more because of the way he treated other users in such a hostile way all the time, even people who mostly agreed with him.

I don’t think you want to create an expectation that communities have to be logical and open to reasoned debate. That’s a lot of work to enforce

That’s some horse blinders my friend. Most of the folks in that sub just scream at cars and God forbid a truck.

YDI. You know fire burns but stuck your hand in it all the same.

OK! Short version:

1. Idiocy and misinformation are a vicious cycle: idiocy breeds misinformation, and misinformation makes people more likely to accept idiocy.
2. Misinformation can harm people - both the individual accepting it, and the ones interacting with that individual.
3. The community in question promotes both things for a specific topic, and because of #1 it’s encouraging that vicious cycle.

Long version:

What I called “idiocy” and “misinformation” there can be rephrased as “not thinking rationally” and “incorrect and/or harmful beliefs” respectively.

Thinking rationally is doing things like this:

• asking yourself “is this true?” before you believe in some claim;
• acknowledging that sometimes you simply don’t know, or you are not certain of something;
• telling apart what you want to be true from what you think to be true;
• not oversimplifying situations;
• not accepting fallacious reasoning as if it was valid; et cetera.

Thinking rationally is essential to prevent you from holding incorrect and/or harmful beliefs - because, if you have access to good and true information, and use rationality on it, your conclusions will be consistently good and true too. But only if you think rationally.

(Programmers’ analogy: if your algorithm is rubbish, then no good input saves you from getting rubbish output.)

And what you believe on has a huge impact, on both you and the people interacting with you. In some this is clear; for example, someone who believes that “all white mushrooms are safe to eat!” might get someone eating a death cap, or even eat one themself. Or, for more realistic examples:

• The peak of the COVID pandemics had people touting ivermectin as a cure for COVID (it is not) - and plenty people didn’t seek actual treatment because of that, making the disease worse for themselves and the pandemic worse for everyone.
• Political beliefs affect whom you vote on, so they’ll affect public policies, and you might end with a muppet in power that will do everything to make your life miserable (and their pockets full).
• Some people are literally persecuted and killed due to this sort of belief. Cue to the historical witch hunts.

Someone might say “isn’t this overblown in this case? It’s just a community against Looniks and freewarez!”. Well, no, it isn’t overblown. Our lives revolve around software in the XXI century, like it or not - it’s a data centre used by the hospital, it’s your morning news, it’s someone spying on you, it’s a country spying on another… all those involve software - sometimes libre software, always some sort of operating system.

But even if we disregard the above, the fact that someone is promoting lack of rational thinking (what I called “idiocy”) and incorrect beliefs (what I called “misinformation”) is bound to get people used to those things as if they were OK. Thinking rationally is not just an “I did it once, so I’m good to go”. It’s a lot like brushing your teeth - you need to create some habit to avoid the associated [mind / mouth] problems and have good [mental / buccal] hygiene.

As such, I do not think that we should give this community a free pass. Even if it’s a troll community, as both DraconicNEO and me believe it to be, it’s still promoting misinformation and idiocy, and should be handled as such.