this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2025
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Elections Canada has released this resource with some common bits of false or misleading content about elections on social media: https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=res&dir=dis&document=index&lang=e

~~We plan on pinning this resource, and we are proposing the following rules:~~

edit: Thank you for the feedback everyone, these adjusted rules will be enforced:

  • Posts or comments with inaccurate or misleading information from this list will be removed, and users are encouraged to report them
  • Repeatedly posting such content will result in a ban from the community until April 28 (at a minimum)

So far we haven't noticed any serious issues, but we want to get ahead of anything that might come up

You can also see these guides by the Government of Canada:

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Can this be unstickied now that the election has passed? My client doesn’t give me the option to hide announcements in some views.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

No worries, thank you!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Can we add a rule about not tolerating insults? Some users in this community have a really toxic attitude. This shouldn't be tolerated.

It's ok to disagree with someone and have an argument and debate, but it shouldn't immediately fall into gratuitous insults when someone has a different viewpoint than yours.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

That falls upon the Instance Rule #2: Be Civil, which applies to this entire instance

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

I think we can find a way to work that in to the updated rules for the community. I'll copy this into our notes for where we're working on those

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think we also need to remove brigading posts. I am new to lemmy so not sure how much brigading happens here.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

That's fair, can you link some of the posts? You can also DM me, or @[email protected]

There isn't much brigading since it gets dealt with, but it's not impossible

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I am new here. I ma basing my comment on observations I have seen in reddit. Please take my advice with the skepticism it requires as I don't understand how moderation in lemmy works.

My observations based on moderating subreddits have been to institute blanket bans on people who are active on extreme right subreddits and extreme left subreddits. This helps in clearing the brigading and steers conversations towards neutrality.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

We might need that in the future, but for now I think we have enough moderators to users to deal with brigading and bad faith arguments when it happens. So far users have been excellent about reporting it to us

I also don't love doing blanket bans based on participation alone. Sometimes people comment on content to call it out, and without following the thread carefully and being familiar with the topic, it's hard to tell who's arguing for what. That being said, if it's clear that someone is a problem in other communities, I think it makes sense for mods or admins to preemptively ban them.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Blanket bans have sometimes helped me in the past. Lemmy IMO is not at the scale where that would be necessary. A contextual evaluation can still work for lemmy. Your solution of moderating it individually is the right one in this case.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Man I am SO grateful that our election cycle is only a month long.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Cool beans I am all for it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

I'm 100% in favour of this

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Those are both good rules. I wouldn't be surprised to see information being weaponized more frequently as we get closer to the election.

They're also good rules in general, too. Misinformation should be removed and repeat offenders should be banned.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago

I fully support any effort to eliminate misinformation ahead of the election and to ban bad actors.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

My understanding is that this covers only disinformation about Elections Canada, not in general, like news about people, politicians, provinces, policies, institutions, etc…

I suggest to also pin + sidebar one of Canada's guides to identify and report disinformation.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

These are great, thank you! I can link them in this post as well as in our weekly threads.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

That sounds like a good idea to me. I'd say the first link is probably the best/most accessible single-page resource, but the third's "Learn More" section of links the most comprehensive overall -- it even directly links the first resource. Given the length of articles that get traction here, I think this is a community that can handle the comprehensive option.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

I think this would be a reasonable step to take. IMO it's better to have policies in place before things go sideways rather than try to implement things afterwards so kudos for this!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

strongly agree! there is so much trouble allready with misinformation, anything to help stop its spread helps

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Good luck to my northern neighbors. It's near impossible to stop the online shitnado.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Why would repeatedly posting electoral misinformation during an election only result in a ban until the election was over? I don't think these people would become good actors just because the election ended.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think some spreaders of misinformation are victims and not intentional bad actors. Banning them from legitimate communities only pushes them further from reality which is bad for our society. Telling the difference between useful idiots and bad actors is hard, so i think the general policy should be a warning and a ban until election day, and having the mods reserve the right to be harsher for clear bad actors.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

There's definitely people who unwittingly spread misinformation, but the rule wasn't for people who just post once or twice, but people who have posted misinformation and been warned previously multiple times. That's not a mistake at that point, that's a pattern of behavior.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

This was one of the things I really had a issue with on Reddit. People's shitty comments would be removed constantly but the users were usually just warned or only given short bans.

The whole thing just made all the subs seems desperate for any type of engagement and the mods would continuosly complain about how much work it is but they created a system where they have to babysit a large portion of the user base.

Lemmy should show all the communities an account is banned on in the user pages.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

This is true, and we wouldn't want to keep a bad actor around just because the election is over. I'll change the wording to add 'minimum'

We're also working on updated guidelines, so there will be a bigger call for feedback like this once we have that together. Those guidelines will apply site wide and across the different platforms (pixelfed.ca for example). How we deal with misinformation is an important area that we want to get right

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

I imagine a "you can apply to be unbanned after April 28" could suffice. Almost certainly these folks (or bots?) will just disappear after the date and not bother to apply.

Not saying that we should do this - just that after April 28 matters less because most of the bad actors will almost certainly abandon their accounts after the election.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Good timing as I remember back in the fall that there were some trolls brigading the instance defending their lord of Nechako Lakes.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

How about a reminder to not feed the trolls?

Edit: And maybe a pinned daily or weekly (depending on traffic) mega thread?

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 month ago

CANADA DOESNT NEED A SMALL pp

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

That seems like a good move.

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