You may have noticed a distinct lack of return2ozma. This is due to their admitting, in a public comment, that their engagement here is in bad faith:
I'm sure there will be questions, let me see if I can address the most obvious ones:
- Can I still post negative stuff about Biden?
Absolutely! We have zero interest in running an echo chamber. However, if ALL you're posting is negative, you may want to re-think your priorities. You get out of the world what you put into it and all that.
- Why now?
Presumption of innocence. It may be my own fault, but I do try to think the best of people, and even though they were posting negative articles, they weren't necessarily WRONG. Biden's poll numbers, particularly in minority demographics ARE in the shitter. They are starting to get better, but he still has a hell of a hill to climb.
- Why a 30 day temp ban and not a permanent ban?
The articles return2ozma shared weren't bad, faked, or from some wing-nut bias site like "beforeitsnews.com", they were legitimate articles from established and respected news agencies, pointing out the valid problems Biden faces.
The problem was ONLY posting the negatives, over and over and then openly admitting that dishonest enagement is their purpose.
Had they all been bullshit articles? It would not have taken anywhere near this much time to lay the ban and it would have been permanent.
30 days seems enough time for them to re-think their strategery and come back to engage honestly.
I think I agree more with the spam angle than the "only bad news" angle. As others have said it's fine to have a viewpoint and mainly share articles in line with that viewpoint. However doing it many times per day, every day, when the number of posts here is limited anyway, does impact the community.
In any case, the main thing is to be consistent and ideally make whatever the rule is very clear. And I would say this should be turned into an explicit rule or explanation under an existing rule.
Personally I just read what I want to, and if it seems bad faith, downvote and move on.
i agree, jordanlund is opening themselves up for extra scrutiny with this.
spam and displaying signs of getting off on angering users (trolling) is absolutely a valid and nonpartisan reason for a ban. but as soon as the mods start citing actual politics (outside of clear examples of misinfo, which is not in play here) it gets dicey and accusations of bias pile up fast, which is exactly what we are seeing play out right in these comments.
A rate limit would make far more sense than whatever this is.
I was thinking of saying the same thing. I'm not sure the mod tools support it though.
Set up a script that tallies user submissions, and remove new ones that exceed the limit.
I'm not familiar with the mod tools but I find it hard to imagine you couldn't write a short little script that does that.