Nord.pub[Meta] Posting comics from transphobic artists?
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GrailNow that this community has mods, I think we should come to something approaching a consensus on whether there should be a rule against posting “nice” comics from transphobic and other kinds of bigoted artists. People like Stonetoss and Jago who have a lot of innocent-looking relatable comics, but also post the most mean, bigoted propaganda.
And I’d like to present a third option besides yes and no: one might post comics from bigoted artists after removing the artist credit, if the mods think that’s a good compromise.
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I’ll voice in favor of a banlist for bigoted artists. Letting bigots and other hateful people in with “relatable” content just normalizes their hateful material, even playing into possibly intentional “onroading” on their part to their prejudiced platform. It also reinforces the idea that targets of that hate need to “play nice” if they’re not being targeted right then and there, and perpetuates the falsehood that these positions are a matter of “opinion” rather than an existential threat to the targeted.
A banlist would present a higher workload on the part of the mods, which is not something I feel can be demanded, but it would be helpful to have if the goal here is to create a welcoming environment.
MissesAutumnRains also brings up a good point (https://lemmy.ca/post/63256113/22736751) - Leaving it up to users to block bad content does nothing for new users who will have no such curation, and who will be left to assume the community is accepting of such content. Platforming hateful creators will silently push away those who find their content distasteful and entice users that agree with it to stay.
A mod in this thread stated that people already submit a lot of reports on Jago’s comics. With a banlist, mods wouldn’t need to spend time thinking and debating the issue every time a Jago comic is posted. They can just check if Jago is on the banlist. It might add up to less work overall.
Perhaps. I’m gonna leave that determination up to the people doing the work, though. I don’t think it’s fair to try and convince a volunteer that an additional rule is or isn’t too much work to manage.
I’d rather this place doesn’t turn into a Nazi bar, I’m in favor of banning hate
I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you.
So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, “no. get out.”
And the dude next to me says, “hey i’m not doing anything, i’m a paying customer.”
and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, “out. now.” and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed
Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, “you didn’t see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them.”
And i was like, ohok and he continues. “you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it’s always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don’t want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.
And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it’s too late because they’re entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.”
And i was like, “oh damn.”
and he said “yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people.”
And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven’t forgotten that at all.
- Michael B Tager
This.
I loved some of what was available on Reddit years ago. What really made me leave was exactly this problem, the fact that the same platform that allowed things I was interested in also allowed Nazi stuff, things like fatpeoplehate and jailbait. If you have a Nazi section of your bar and a pedo section of your bar it is a bar I don’t want to be in, it is a Nazi pedo bar.
Also, to be super clear, I am absolutely making the strong claim that fatpeoplehate was a Nazi subreddit along with jailbait. Nazis see people as less human when they don’t fit their narrow definitions of human, thus the term useless eaters. They also see women as breeding capacity without humanity and have strong tendencies towards younger and younger girls over time. These are solid links and part of the ideology, not incidental. If you have a Nazi bar it will be a pedo bar too, and they will also hate on people with disabilities and those who are lgbt+.
I’m about to drop a really hot take: The freedom to choose your body includes the freedom to choose to be fat. Now, most people won’t understand why anyone would want to be fat, and that’s okay. You don’t have to understand something to accept it. But going around saying that wanting to be fat can only be a fetish or a mental disorder, like people say about being trans, is not acceptable. We’ve got a tremendous diversity of different people here on this planet Earth, and I think that’s a good thing, because it means I’m never gonna run out of interesting people to get to know.
100% agree. I actually fit this well. I am a tall and fairly muscled dude. My body responds well to keto and I can drop fat fairly easily. I choose to carry some extra weight because I prefer how people treat me at this weight. I am seen as less threatening and less likely to judge which are important things to me.
Also, replacing pants is so expensive. In this economy?
already is
Bigotry belongs in the bin. Denial of platform is nice too. Banned creator list feels appropriate
There are many comics in the world. Banning a handful of horrible creators won’t starve the community for content. It will create space for non-horrible artists.
Allowing the “nice” comics by horrible people just creates a funnel for people to click though and be exposed to hateful ideas.
If in several months the ban list has grown monstrous in size, we could revisit, but that seems unlikely.
It’s not book burning or censorship. The horrible creators remain entitled to host their own websites or their own instances.
Can you explain to me how censorship of problematic artists is not really censorship?
I have simply blocked a certain user who uploaded a lot of stuff I didn’t like. It was just one user uploading the same type of comic over and over.
I think the problem with this kind of thing is that a new user coming by doesn’t get the benefit of all those blocks you accumulate. For you, it’s a curated forum of comics. For them, it’s a stream of whatever content wholesale.
What that usually means is that users who don’t like it don’t stick around, and users that do, stay. That’s how communities slide in different directions.
At least with Stonetoss (the one I’m familiar with), if I’d seen their comics here when I came to the platform, I would have simply left because I am aware of what type of audience consumes that person’s comics. You can guess the type that sticks around.
Is that FelixCross?
I’m against censorship, but I’m pro for curated content. I would be happy to make a rule in which after reaching a certain amount of downvotes, a post has to be removed. I also think it is reasonable to ban someone if they consistently post content that keeps getting downvoted. This is no different than spamming or trolling.
PieFed has offered a full suite of these features for years now, as have some 3rd party apps.
e.g. not only does it offer automatic removal of content (posts or comments) based on downvotes, but it can alternatively collapse it based on a different, more lenient threshold, requiring an additional click to see it.
There are also keyword filters, and what I like most are the visual icons placed next to certain usernames - this does not “filter” their content but does let me see what I am getting into, so that I know e.g. that replying is probably not going to turn out like I may have hoped.
All of the above puts both the control and also the responsibility into the hands of the end-user, without requiring that a mod team constantly do extra work for other people. Which among other things will necessarily involve a delay before community rules can be applied.
I’m opposed to a ban except for the most outrageous stuff. Let people downvote what they don’t like.
I would say don’t supply transphobes with free exposure and would option for the third option. Though checking and controlling for the political views of each artist may be too much work to put onto the mod team and would have to be on the poster.
Personally I am also biased against transphobes and would love it, if they would not be posted at all.
Oh hey. Was Beep banned? Once it became clear they were just trolling and not simply an eccentric internet person I blocked them.
As for the question: If the comics themselves are not hateful or dog whistles for hate, I don’t see a problem with posting the comic by itself. Just don’t link to the artist’s personal sites to give them traffic and maybe include a note about them in the body of the post.
Their newest account is not banned, but their old one is.
lemmy.world/post/45480511 gives a better explanation as to why.
Edit: Link was being goofy
Hi! As of right now, here is my take on the situation: as long as the comics (and posters posting them) do not break the rules, they are allowed. If we were to ban content based on its creators, there probably would be a lot of content people would miss out on. Take for example Harry Potter. In my personal opinion, the author is a trash person, and I personally will no longer invest my time, effort, or money into their franchise. However, the stories and lore and fan base are still good. There is an actor who had a recurring (and popular) role in Star Trek: TNG (and a few episodes of Voyageur) who turned out to be a trash person. But, the memes and other content being posted about their roles are still funny and entertaining.
I guess what I am trying to say is that I feel that the content is not always a direct reflection of the bad values that their creators/portrayers may have. But, if the community as a whole wants to band together and downvote said content or petition for a new rule that includes a common identifier (i.e., artist name) in the title so it can be keyword filtered by individuals, I would certainly support those efforts. I am definitely not on the side of removing artist credit, even if the artist is not someone I like for whatever reason. They still deserve credit for their work; if anything, so as to ensure other people know who they are and what kind of work they produce.
And if you have other ideas for how we can address these types of situations, please keep them coming.
The difference is the creators in question aren’t the ones making that content. A webcomic about the world of Harry Potter created by someone else has levels of separation from the source material, but if JK started a webcomic, I would object to it being posted and promoted here.
Harry Potter has a character who is a slave who was freed, and then became an alcoholic. That’s what slave owners said would happen after abolition. I think Harry Potter is very much a reflection of the values of its creator. And she spends her royalties on donations to hate groups.
That said, I do want to read Trans Wizard Harriet Porber And The Bad Boy Parasaurolophus.
Minority populations do struggle with high rates of addiction because of trauma. It’s just not the argument bigots think it is.
I think on its own that makes sense, but without some blanket bans on known hateful artists, people are getting exposed to the innocuous works, and then looking up the artists to find a backlog of hateful content. And bad actors are free to limit test what extreme they can go to before any mod response.
The way I see it, if you as a user like a comic enough to research the artist, and you discover said artist holds values that are offensive to you, then you’ve learned something valuable. Plus, you get to make up your own mind whether you want to continue following said comic/artist. It is a fine line to walk as a mod (or person in power) to dictate what is and isn’t acceptable at any given moment. I learned this the other day when I posted updated rules re-enforcing the original “family friendly” intention. People were quick to point out that we are all adults here and should be given the option of choosing for themselves. And there will always be people who try to take advantage of the rules. I can’t say what will or won’t happen for hypothetical situations that haven’t happened yet, because I honestly do not know how I might respond until it happens. So for now, I am willing to give people leeway and go from there.
Or a person who liked the artist enough that they went to look for more views it under the context of “I like this artist” so they’re more likely to rationalize or defend the extreme or questionable positions and the community remains complicit in platforming hate.
That is literally the role of a mod?
I do like the idea of putting some sort of identifier in the post title, so I created a new post for discussion.
Wait, who was the Star Trek actor?
The one I was referring to is Dwight Schultz (Lt. Broccoli). There are other actors/actresses I’ve heard who have political ideologies opposite of mine. It’s been a disappointing year for me in that respect. 😅
I support this rule. If I see comics I enjoy I will often go look them up. It’s awful to dive into a new comic and find hateful content that I didn’t expect. Prohibiting comics from known hateful bigots would help avoid that.
Hello @Grail@multiverse.soulism.net, thank you for sticking around during our transitionary period with us new mods. Keep in note, Lemmy has a report function, and we do see the reports concerning artist’s like Jago and those who post these comics.
At the moment, the best thing you can do is Report them, and give a good explanation as to why they broke the rules.
Yes the report button is great and helps mods a lot, but the issue is that at the moment I don’t see any rule a comic would violate when it is as the op describes safe and relatable but made by an outspoken transphobe. The question seems to be do we need or want a rule against supporting transphobia indirectly by giving the artist free cloud. Because removing the artist name is a violation of the communities rules.
Fourth option: Just limit the comics posted to those that are not transphobic/racist/sexist/other shitty discrimination thing.
The author might have shitty views and maybe they expressed them, but as far as the rules go it would be better to just moderate the posted content than whether or not the artist also has shitty stuff that may or may not be current and relevant. I would rather the posters be encouraged to not post content from terrible people, but if an artist was fine until they suddenly exposed a shitty view does all of their prior work retroactively become problematic? If they were terrible two decades ago are they permanently terrible?
It is complex enough that the posted content being moderated instead of the artist’s non-posted content is a better approach in my opinion. I am definitely in favor of comments explaining an artist has other shitty art too, because that is good to know and might influence how posted art is interpreted, but it doesn’t mean everything the artist made is tainted.
No thank you to censorship.
I would prefer that the content is not censored by someone else’s moral compass. If it’s content by a transphobic or otherwise bigoted artist then let us know in the comments. Book burning is bad, no matter who is doing the burning. I would prefer to be educated than have someone else determine what is appropriate for me to view.
TL:DR I’m an adult: I’d rather choose for myself.
And as an trans adult I would rather not be exposed to it at all.
I don’t want a community that’s like 4Chan, I want some where that’s respectful and takes into consideration the wellbeing of its users without platforming hate artists.
I can respect that. I would suggest blocking the users that post the stuff you don’t want to see. I would prefer, though, that you educate me about why and how these artists are offensive to you. I can be a better ally if I understand. You gain nothing if I’m kept ignorant just because you say so. I also understand that you’re probably tired of having to defend yourself and explain yourself over and over again. I would guess that there’s an existential fatigue just trying to live in a society that seems to be offended by your very existence. I’m sorry. I try to call it out when I see it, but I don’t see it as often as I should and I think that hiding it, even comic strips, doesn’t help me to understand better. I need you, with lived experience, to point it out to me so I know what to look for.
It isn’t their job to educate you, in fact requesting that is putting that additional burden on someone who is already burdened by this bigotry.
It is really unfair to ask them to explain it so that you can be a better ally. If you want to be a better ally it is worth looking into it yourself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yAbQ-CaJXs
That is a good primer, but it is just one person’s perspective. If you search “stonetoss Nazi” or “stonetoss bigot” you will get tonnes of people explaining it in more detail.
Just to be super duper clear, I’m not dragging you here. I’m not saying “you suck for not knowing, you should know, and asking is just you being a bad person”. That would be silly and short sighted. I am saying that as a person who is not trans you are not experiencing the horror of anti trans bigotry all day every day and so you aren’t worn down by it. You surely have your own problems and they are real and hard, and so do trans people. It makes sense to listen when they speak about it and hear what they are saying, but asking them to spend their energy on your understanding is a different thing. You can spend your own energy on figuring it out and make yourself a better ally.
Thanks for explaining. It’s easy to be lazy when you don’t realise you’re being lazy. I appreciate you taking time to politely set me on the right path. I apologise if I caused any offence.
Not a worry. Now anyone else who has the same question will see your comment, my reply, and your graceful acceptance and hopefully follow your example. Somewhere out there on the internet in my turn in your shoes with someone else opening my eyes. I found it liberating to realise I could go find out myself rather than trusting a random internet stranger.
If you really want to learn about why certain art is offensive towards certain people, go look for that explanation yourself. There is plenty of information out there in general. Don’t put this workload on someone who just wants to scroll a bit, they are forced to explain themselves often enough already.
My bad. Thanks for explaining. I apologise for any offence.
All good, I realize now my comment reads a bit harsher than I meant it.
Nah. It’s OK. It wasn’t harsh. It was direct. It was a slap to the face that I needed. I was being lazy and making my education someone else’s problem. I am self aware enough to see when I’ve made a mistake, most of the time, and though my intentions were good, it’s really not anyone else’s job to educate me. I also hadn’t considered that the “lived experience” I was asking for could be traumatic to recall and relay. Like I said, I was being lazy. I make mistakes. I try to learn from them and be better.
I don’t think the defining/worst/significant thing about 4chan is inoffensive comics that are by people who have expressed offensive views, and I don’t really think you do either?
No, I think the worst thing is treating it as a “free speech” place instead of moderating what is shared there.
Which is fundamentally the approach being argued here.
There’s a chasm between “anything that’s not illegal in the USA” and “you can post non-hateful stuff regardless of what the author may otherwise have expressed.”
Human rights is not a moral issue. If hatred were an opinion worth platforming, Nazis would have built movements fighting for acceptance rather than trying to violently force their view upon us. The fight for equal rights by queer people has existed for 1000s of years because it’s an identity. It is endemic to our species and you can’t stamp out identity the way you can with hatred that hides in a deplorable subset of majority populations.
Right… But we’re talking about comic strips, not about slowing the march of the third reich.
Education is better than censorship. Let the comics get posted, then start the conversation in the comment section about why and how this comic, or artist, is oppressing minorities so that we can make up our own minds. Education is the weapon against oppression, not ignorance.
If you’re so arrogant to think that you can make that decision for me then I’m going to resist you. If you take away my freedom to choose then you’re just swapping out one form of oppression for another.
Arrogance is thinking you’re smarter than propaganda. You are not. Your position is reactive and oppositional and ripe for mind control tactics. You are so easy to manipulate, in fact, that in one paragraph I’m going to make your blood pressure rise and flow to your amygdala.
But the propaganda hits us whether we see stonetoss in the corner or not.
Banning comics from bigots in a lemmy community is not remotely similar to book burning.
I personally don’t care about who the comic comes from, as long as the comic itself is cute, relatable, funny, etc.
Consider this: Individual people are not atoms, but complex entities made of many parts. You know what’s also complex and made of many parts? The internet. Now certainly there’s some bullshit coming from the internet. Does that mean that you reject everything that comes from the internet? Probably not.
But it’s the same with an individual person.
After reading the comments here I have been convinced we should create a list of these artists, and none of their content is welcome in this community.
Main points being:
Nazis, racists, transphobes, homophobes are not welcome here under any context!
I’m happy to just skip the work of bigots, and have mostly blocked the users who routinely post that stuff.
That saif, if we’re going to remove credit with intent, i have a request:
let’s be clear and cedit “some random bigot”, so I’ll know i might not want to seek out the artist.
no. I have a block button if I don’t like how a person submits. why would I want this type of thing done at the community level? Ultimately its the federation so it won’t matter as there are other comic communities.
I have an RSS feed for my unfiltered comics.
I read here for the community.
I don’t use rss but I agree im here for community engagement but not for community censorship.
I don’t think propaganda is a matter of personal responsibility. I think we should protect other people from propaganda, not just ourselves.
See to you its propaganda. From your viewpoint. You should not be making that call for others. You are not protecting them you are inflicting your way of thinking on them. They are not defenseless. They can block for themselves. This for me comes down to a thing I have not talked about in a awhile but what I would like to see in the federation. I would like no defederation or unreversable domain blocking. Im fine if it blocks stuff by default but I should be able to go into my user config and turn off any of the default blocking. I, and others, should have 100% control of our experiences and it should not be dictated by others.
Wait so let’s say a bunch of pedophiles make a Lemmy instance at the url child.porn. If you have an account on My instance, and I’ve defederated child.porn, you want the option to override defederation and view their posts from My server?
sorry. the one exception to defederation (which can’t be reversed like blocking) is legal reasons.
What if it’s an ambiguous case where I think the content is illegal but you don’t?
The legality of content is not based on what one person thinks or another. It either is or isn’t but the domain owner ultimately has to make the call based on the coutnry they are in and their interpretation of the law.
I hate this book burning mentality. It’s not because the person is bad that the content is nessarly bad. Like, if war and peas’s author turned out to be transphobic, would that automatically turn all of their comics bad?
Although it doesn’t mean that hate and bigoted comics shouldn’t be banned. That part is the actual offensive part.
And removing credits is actually scummier than posting bigoted comics imo
For reference, this is not to shill those persons. I’m literally trans and bi. I’m actually concerned with what those are artists are against.
This isn’t book burning. This is more like we’re refusing to print and distribute more copies of their books for them.
You know, the books the Nazis burned were from the library of Magnus Herschfeld, the director of the Berlin Sexology Institute. He was gay, and much of the library was ABOUT queerness, and transgender studies.
The comics strips we’re talking about aren’t being destroyed. But a lot of trans people in the world are, and they risk themselves simply by being who they are.
That is more worthwhile than access to edgy comics on a public forum like this. Better that far-right stuff get blocked, than trans people getting burned.
It’s okay for a forum to have a political position. I’d prefer it to be left of center.
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personally don’t care what the content is. if it’s good content it’ll get upvoted. if it’s bad it’ll get downvoted.
set Autobot to prune anything with more than 100 downvotes. the end.
let the community figure out what’s good and bad. don’t put that evil on the mods. they have enough work dealing with shitty comments.
Ah yes let’s censor another community and create yet another safe space instead of acting like adults and simply ignoring content we disagree with.
On this day in the year of our lord 2026 let it be so! Self regulation doesnt stand a chance against the might of thoughtcrime censorship and virtue signaling!
/s grow up people. Don’t like stonetoss? Don’t read it. Scroll on. Don’t limit the rest of us because you never learned to control your own reactions.
Should we also make a banned book list and burn them publicly? /s
I think it would be more appropriate to have an autobot post context with evidence to author’s bigotry. Deplatforming just means when people get their content it will be without context and disclaimers warning about the author, and that’s worse than having the material on a here IMHO.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2214080120
Cool paper, how does it relate to Lemmy?
Please, instead of blocking individual posters, let us have tags. Tags are more reliable. We need to filter the content, not the persons.
Posting something hated universally is subject to be made into the rules, like Nazi stuff. But transphobic stuff is different. People have different values, or if you don’t like that, different preferences. Posting something transphobic, as long as it’s not harming the society, and only be self-expressing, that !shouldn’t be blocked. That’s his or her right to express the feeling or what he or she valued.
If you think I am wrong, please link to some examples here and I can elaborate if I think it’s appropriate. To get on the same page is hopefully the goal.
Even that is not “hated universally” (see neonazis and white supremacists). Do you also think we should be inclusive of racist stuff?
It is harming trans people, who are part of society.
mods here refuse to remove racist zionist genocider comments, I’m not surprised they are transphobic too