Why the hate for wisdom?

[Bring4th_Austin]

There's a lot going on in this thread to try to sift through. I'd love to be thorough in offering a personal response, but I regret that time constraints force me to be brief. There are a couple interesting things that are at the top of my list:

I'm not so much concerned about total deplatforming (total ban) as I am mods not allowing "politically incorrect" things to be said. If someone is banned, they can just create another account since that isn't something anyone has the power to actually stop.

Hopefully discussions don't actually end up getting pruned in that way, and people are still allowed to express their opinions.

I guess I'll just wait. If it gets too drastic, maybe it will be time for me to take my thoughts elsewhere (much to everyone's relief I'm sure).

I have some pretty strong opinions about free speech. I believe in it very strongly. I think it is a foundation of a society that honors personal liberties and am personally saddened to see the progressive left flirt with arguments against free speech. Any systemic mechanisms implemented to limit free speech for the sake of compassion will inevitably be turned against it.

Despite that, I do believe that it's impossible to allow complete freedom of expression on a platform like Bring4th and maintain the original intent of the community. Yes, perhaps it's hypocritical. But try this perspective on for size.

L/L Research, via Bring4th, provides a platform for discussion. All posts made travel through a system maintained and provided by us (thanks to donors and amazing volunteers who help maintain it like Jade, Garry, and Steve E.). These forums are not provided on an obligatory basis. They are a service we offer as part of our mission. We offer them with a certain intent, and we reserve the right to maintain them in a way we see fits within that intent.

That is, in its own way, a right we claim as free expression, yes? It is a beautiful thing about the internet (in most countries). Anyone, for any reason, can create their own forum with their own intentions. In an ironic sense, claiming that a person or organization, by argument of ideals, shouldn't moderate their forums is a statement against that person's or organization's right to free expression.

I know that it's not that simple, but I don't think it's much more complicated. If someone wants to witness what the most minimal moderation can lead to, check out 4chan or voat. We very, very much do not want Bring4th to become anything like those places. I am not saying that those places shouldn't exist, but we don't want to provide it, and we are not obligated to.

It seems to me that internet culture is constantly shifting. The way ideas and attitudes spread is pretty impossible to get a handle on. It's fascinating to watch but alarming from the perspective of maintaining a forum community. Attempting to enforce a certain culture via moderation is certainly folly. But we can do our best to tend the garden. Currently, there are a lot of seeds scattering on the internet winds that we, as a mod team, feel would cause (and have caused) the forum culture to drift astray from the original intention.

We are imperfect. We're criticized for both being too lenient and too strict (though more commonly for being too lenient). We certainly are open to ideas and feedback, but we must reserve a certain level of authority to try our best to keep things in line with what we want. What that means necessarily adapts to the shifting winds and the needs of the moment. We don't like enforcing rules or silencing people. Speaking personally, it's antithetical to my very being. But unless a better method comes along (please hurry, social memory complex), we are stuck with this system.

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I'm responding to this not to argue or question the decision to ban speedforce. Although as an aside, before you were here Jade, there was one member, 3Dmonkey, who was quite an amusing character. He became argumentative and temper-tantrumy and he was banned. But as I look back on that, the difference between then and now is so markedly different. Emotions and anger and are so much higher now as reflected in these forums. I can't help speculating that this is a reflection of the state of the world, or maybe the state of transition.

You and I remember the emotional state of the forums back then very differently. In my mind, animosity on Bring4th has never been higher as when the meat-eating thread was a primary focus of the community.

L/L Research is growing all the time. We are a nonprofit which means that we are treading a thin line by allowing any sort of political discussion on the forums that are under the L/L umbrella.

That's an interesting statement. I'm curious why. Does it violate a nonprofit boundary or description of the nonprofit business?

There are rules about what we as a 501©3 can do or say regarding politics. The focus is primarily on specific candidates and elections themselves, but it's not limited to just that. It becomes a very tricky topic when Bring4th is a platform provided via L/L Research resources, hosting opinions of non-L/L agents. But that caution is coupled with a desire to keep our mission separated from political discourse and animosity in general. Political bias can create such vivid distortion in perception that we don't want to unduly influence interpretation or interest in the material by having it adjacent to political discussion on an official L/L Research platform.