move from "moderating your communities"

to curating and cultivating communities that actually embody your points of unity.

treating all sides of the equation as correct and balanced means your ideological center of mass drifts towards the one that can just lie.

it takes at least twice as long to debunk vague lies as to state them, and people tend not to read explanations -- they're way longer than the accusation.

its so effective the right wing infiltration guides mention that if you're explaining, you're losing.

the ppl who can't stomach the ideas your mods think are as neutral as what ppl on the left have been pushing, leave. and then there are less ppl to point out the dogwhistles. and then the cycle repeats, until everything is dogwhistle with no one to point it out

the moderate stance will only be the correct one when the center is equitable. but right now, in the US and also a whole lot internationally, nowhere has that.

the idea that moderators must be moderate and treat both sides equally misses that one side wants at least overt jim crow back, they just use nicer words so you don't ban them

I'm unfit to be a moderator because I try and push the window left to make the people who are already pushing left look more reasonable compared to me.

but I will say all of the moderation I've seen and participated in is cowardly, not in enforcement (mods generally do their best) but in policy, because policy rarely talks about power imbalance, or that one on one with someone who will dismiss you is useless compared to public

you can't cultivate a community that's apolitical because "politics lead to drama", you have to cultivate a community that is aligned with the political views of the membership,at time of starting. or you'll justification creep all the way to armbands

sure, make the points of unity amendable, but stop using moderation and start actually cultivating what you want.

modeling enforcement on how the democrats do business will get you fascism faster than it did for the democrats

otherwise... you don't actually need to cater to the right. they have a freedom to speak, just not be heard, and you already know what questions they're just asking

and start pushing back on places that mod like this. because it sends messages of where it's unacceptable to recruit, if nothing else

but more importantly? I've never seen a group, class, community, company, nonprofit, or party, where the people they bent over backwards not to ban for being too edgey or reactionary or misogynist etc, outweighed the people they lost to keeping them and that environment

your actions send messages and they ring the loudest to the people most wanting to be involved in the logistics and social reproduction side of things

I've never seen an open source project, for example, ever succeed because of a right wing personality always wanting to push group chat boundaries

but I've seen countless ones fail due to members of oppressed groups dropping out because of those.

dealing with nazis can be scary due to threats, but that's all they are banking on. and they can't carry them out without supporters.

so don't, give them more places to recruit