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1w ago

Community vote on banning X/Twitter links aka "Twitter in the shitter?"

UPDATE: Proposal approved, see https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/36484194 for policy change announcement.

Ahoy me hearties!

We were thinking this might be a good test run topic for instance voting in our !div0_governance@lemmy.dbzer0.com community. Please be patient with us if anything breaks or isn't working properly. Feedback is welcome.

The voting topic

Given the current political backdrop and recent video of Elon Musk performing clearly identifiable Nazi salutes at the Presidential inauguration, some communities have started banning all links to X/Twitter. A couple of examples I noticed yesterday:

The vote is on whether our instance should follow suit and implement an instance-wide ban on X/Twitter links in posts and comments.

I've noticed some people suggesting allowing screenshots to still be used (e.g. for memes). Feel free to drop a comment if you have an opinion on that.

How to vote

Simply upvote or downvote this post. The /0 Bot will automatically calculate and update a tally of votes every 15 mins or so according to the voting rules (so don’t expect instant updates). An upvote is counted in favour of the resolution. A downvote is counted as against the resolution.

Note regarding crossposting: please be aware that only votes on the original post in !div0_governance@lemmy.dbzer0.com will be counted.

When to vote

Voting starts as of now. We'll close voting once the flow of votes stops - not sure exactly when that will be yet, but I'd like to keep the topic open for at least 2 or 3 days (maybe a week?) to give everyone a chance to vote.

Who can vote

TLDR here is that anyone can vote, but your votes will be weighted differently depending if you are a financial supporter, local instance member or external instance member.

As discussed in the announcement post, the initial plan was that only stakeholders can vote and open threads. That now includes everyone who is supporting us with any monthly donation amount.

Voting rights have also been extended so that votes of other local instance members who otherwise have no voting rights will be accounted at a rate of 1/100 from a random sample of up to 1000 of their votes. This means that a vote can go up to max +/- 10 from local community votes and it’s a fractional count (i.e. +1.1, or -0.7) which should make the local community sentiment an excellent tiebreaker, without overwhelming the people who are directly supporting the instance. Furthermore, I decided to display the “outsider sentiment” which is votes from non-valid-voting users from other instances. The outsider sentiment is only flavour (“Positive”, “Negative” etc) and is disregarded from the total. This is just shown for reference of the outsider sentiment which I think might be useful.

What constitutes a successful vote on a topic?

We are totally open to debate on this. I was thinking for this topic, a 2/3 majority vote would be a good target to aim for so we can be certain the community vote represents a clear majority of our users' opinions.

My thinking here is that if some topics are split close to 50/50 then achieving a 51% vote for example does not produce a clear mandate and may simply cause unnecessary division.

Having said that, I acknowledge a 2/3 majority is an arbitrary choice, but unless we implement a more complex voting system hopefully it is "good enough" to indicate a clear majority. As mentioned previously, feedback is very welcome and we will review and make adjustments where necessary.

Community participation

I strongly encourage all our instance members as well as subscribers from different instances to vote on this topic. If we only get a small handful of votes it's not going to be very representative of overall sentiment. This is a test run, so if things don't work out in terms of participation we will re-assess and perhaps revisit the topic.#

159 comments

Note that while votes from stakeholders have more weight. However each stakeholder (i.e. anyone supporting us and MVPs
) can vouch for 2 others which will also give them a proper vote. Vouching can be done with a special PM to the bot .
So If you cannot support the instance financially, but feel you've been a valuable member of this instance nonetheless, please leave a comment and hopefully people will vouch for you. If this happens, your votes will be automatically counted on the next bot run.
PS: To see the vote tally, make sure you don't have @div0@lemmy.dbzer0.com (or all bots) blocked

Acknowledged governance topic opened by https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/u/flatworm7591

This is a simple majority vote. The current tally is as follows:
For:
(2),
(7),
(5),
(3),
(2),
(1)
Against:
Local Community: +2.6
Outsider sentiment: Very Positive
Total: +22.6
Percentage: 100.00%
This vote will complete in 2 days
Reminder that this is a pilot process and results of voting are not set in stone.

I do think, that screenshots have a place especially since they may also be older. I also think it would be a pain to police and maybe a bit too much censorship.

I would suggest that you set a fixed voting period in the future. This makes the process more transparent. Maybe a week or two in general for each decision. With a proper announcement prior, make a week or three day before coting may start.
- I wasn't sure how many votes we would get for this first vote, so wasn't sure how long to leave it open for. I left it at the default of 7 days. But we already have a good representative sample of local users. As of today we've had 269 local upvotes vs 20 downvotes so there's really no chance at this stage of a change to the result, especially since we only had a handful of extra votes since yesterday. We also need some agility to make decisions in a reasonable timeframe.
  Fortunately though, so long as we have an adequate sample size of our active users then we can be reasonably confident in the results, statistically speaking. But I'd like to make sure everyone who wants to vote gets a chance to vote, so I do like your idea of advanced notice :)

Honestly, links to xitter were annoying even before since it always tried to force me to create an account any time I clicked one. I'm fine with removing all links to anything Musk or Zuckerberg related.
- Even more so now that they block you from reading replies/threads nested below the linked post.

I'm quite new here (hello everyone!), but I think banning twitter links is in line with the community's principles, and it shows a level of solidarity with other communities and instances doing the same.
On a more practical note, I feel like there is a good chance if this movement becomes widespread enough, it will get some news coverage, which could increase awareness and help bring like minded individuals (and trolls probably, but I suspect that's nothing new) to the instance.
This seems like a largely symbolic gesture though, so I don't have an issue with screenshots.

tbh I upvoted before reading the whole thing, than took it back. I just want to see the final result without interacting

I'm for the ban of the links but not the screenshots. Screenshots without links will provide the content without giving an easy way to move the traffic there so it would be a positive change without hurting the activity on lemmy. Banning screenshots would add a lot to the modding workload as well which isn't great either regardless of if it's the mods taking care of it or the admins.

Ban the links, allow the screenshots.
Banning screenshots seems like it would both be more difficult, and less relevant to the core issue - ie not giving the chief Nazi any traffic for his propaganda money sink. Especially since there's over a decade's worth of twitter screenshots used in memes - would there be a cutoff date Twitter screenshots would be checked for, or would even ancient screenshots be banned? The former seems like a lot of effort for very little payoff, while the latter seems a bit silly.

I'll add myself to the flood of people agreeing that links should be scrubbed but not screenshots
Consume their content without feeding their ad dollars, fuck em
- It's really not just about the ad dollars. The idea is that even allowing screenshots of Xitter memes, is promoting this as a platform worth participating in.
  
  allowing screenshots of Xitter memes, is promoting this as a platform worth participating in.
  Yeah, kind of, but I feel like it clashes with the "information wants to be free" -sentiment. I view it the same as pirating a Disney movie in a sense

Another reason for banning Twitter links: If you aren't logged in, you can't actually see the discussion, so the link is useless and basically spam advertising to get a Twitter account. I've always been really annoyed seeing Twitter links for this reason and the fact that the platform is garbage in general. Duplicating the content in a screenshot or some other way is a way better option.
- Yes, as someone without a xitter account, the links are completely useless. Screenshots are stupid, but I can at least see them.

I saw one of those posts earlier and had a feeling it might come up here, glad it has.
Am for banning links, and also for allowing screenshots.
E: if something of value can only and exclusively be found on there, then I guess using a different front end to link it wouldn't be terrible, but in the same way people don't really link to truth social because there's nothing of value to link to there, I honestly can't see there being anything worth linking to that would be exclusively on xitter.

I'm on team ban the site, allow screenshots. The latter is against my better judgement, but there are some primary sources only attainable through those hellsites, and there seems to be no end to people willing to go and fetch those screenshots anyway...
This straight-forward, consent-of-the-governed thing is really doing it for me, and if we're going to have a culture, spitting on nazis is the one for me!
- [...] if we’re going to have a culture, spitting on nazis is the one for me!
  Right there with ya buddy.

I'll add to the mix: agree on banning the links but not screenshots
and allowing nitter links (!). since that platform pretty much denies most of the profit and respects privacy
mb a bot that provides nitter links automatically would be a good thing? (a general redirector would be cool as well. mb akin to the browser extension libredirect?)
- nitter
  Almost completely dead, but there's xcancel.com which somehow works. So, that's the option... for now.
  
  huh, I've just been using
  https://nitter.privacydev.net/
  but xcancel seems to be a working nitter instance too

while I think it should be discouraged to use Twitter at all, I don't think a ban on the links is the right move. sometimes, something may only be there, and allowing people to investigate it themselves via a link is important for transparency.
- Thanks for your comments. Indeed actually commenting with your perspective and not just voting is very valuable for such processes.

Really, I think that direct links should've been at least heavily discouraged if not banned outright the moment that Vichy Twitter started requiring an active login to follow them.
Now that Musk has dropped the last vestiges of his mask and revealed himself as a nazi, links absolutely should be banned. Nobody here should ever provide that nazi cesspit with even one single click.
The only thing Musk cares about more than imposing his warped vision on the world is money. He needs to be denied both.

So I'm super new to this instance, like literally applied last night new.
Personally, I'm happy that people are trying to ban x/twitter. The links suck to use if you don't have an account, and the platform is becoming increasingly toxic.
I do like the compromise of allowing screenshots too; however, I also am recognizing that there's a higher risk of faked screenshots leading to misinformation. I suspect there would be very little in truth, but hopefully it is at least worth considering.
- 95% of twitter screenshots are memes.
  But I think in case people want to share actual “news” (ie. statements from famous people/organisations that haven’t left twitter), an archive link would work well.
  (Also Welcome!)
- Welcome here!
  
  Thanks! I used reddit for years, then I went to lemmy.world after the whole migration stuff. I learned about db0 way back then due to my interests in piracy, but I had already created a .world account. I decided recently, that I should care more about where I am online and what I post there, so I've been slowly in the process of getting rid of all the shit social medias I've held onto for years. While I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with lemmy.world, I figured I should go all in on this move.

I won't vote as I'm not using this account as my main, but I just want to highlight the work to organize this vote. Impressive!
- I gave you the MVP because you do a lot of effort around the threadiverse as a whole not just for this instance. not to mention promoting our comms a lot, If you prefer that I MVP your external main, just tell me which one but we welcome your vote.
  
  You know what, I think I might use this account more for my meta alt. I really like how you all run the instance, and I might use the wiki the future, so let's give it a try!
- Why do you think I've been busting my ass for the past week

Ban links, but allow screenshots sounds good. That way we don't shut ourselves out of knowing whats up, but don't give any traffic to that shithole.

I'm all for banning Twitter and any Twitter front ends. Kinda like reddit, connections to Twitter will be counted by Twitter as views and helping them get more ad buys is not in our mutual interests.
Screenshots I think are okay since they aren't hosted on Twitter or link to Twitter. If people want to provide a source link, I think that'd be okay but only as part of the post body, not as a direct post link (if that makes sense).
I don't think I have a vote that counts but I voted for.

I'm in the "Ban links, Allow screenshots" camp but with some further thoughts.
@ShareMySims@lemmy.dbzer0.com compared xitter to turdth social and I think that's excellent precedent to draw further attention to. The reason to block xitter isn't (just) that Musk is a mask off nazi, but that any "information" sourced from that site must be treated as suspect. Little things such as the "like" count on posts we know are manipulated already, so the notion that a post is viral or popular on xitter (and thus worthy of drawing attention off-site to it) should be scrutinized. It's not social media, it's a propaganda engine.
That said, even with the EU (finally) fleeing the hell site and hopefully many users and (with their pressure, eventually, perhaps) some american companies and government departments.... even with that, there's some big names and funny people that post there and if someone wants to bring over a screenshot, I don't think that should be disallowed. Particularly since the POTUS and his cronies frequently air their vile thoughts there.
Likewise, I'm not totally against non-top-level links (so source links only in comments or post body) that are through some front-end, proxy, archive, or other means of preventing impressions from reaching the actual site. I think it's overly dogmatic to outright ban all connections to the xitter. Sometimes a plumber needs to know where to look when they're researching a problem.
Edit: On an unrelated note...
I'm very excited to see this kind of community discussion and vote occurring. Feels like a pretty solid consensus on this issue, but I'm looking forward to seeing this process play out for other decisions. I just moved to dbzer0 about a month ago and a big reason was to connect more with a like-minded community online. I've missed the golden age of the internet forum--and apparently I've also missed the golden age of the actual town forum as well!--so I find this whole "virtual anarchic democracy in action" quite thrilling!

Definitely think we should ban direct links

Boycotts are one of two real effective ways of killing monopolies. It’s like their kryptonite.
Any boycott against a facist corporate hegemony is a go from me.

Not voting as it's not my instance, just popping in to commend you on community focused decision making
- Feel free to vote btw, you don't affect the outcome but you can see your effect in the "outsider sentiment" row ;)
- Thanks pal :)

If this passes I think a good approach is to ban all links to twitter and to alternative frontends, and to ban screenshots etc. showcasing a characteristic look of twitter.
Screenshots of xcancel would be allowed (I think it is unrealistic telling the various themes appart from mastodon etc.), my main hope though is that it leads to people uploading files on lemmy and copying the text into the post/comment body, securing and dissociating the content, and also displacing twitter in search results.
All that with minor or no sourcing, at best a small "from twitter" somewhere.
- i’m sick of all the “memes” that are just screenshots of a tweet anyways… and was against twitter as a corporation before it was even x… now that the new owner has shown himself as absolutely a neo-nazi (he sure hinted at it for a while, especially when he endorsed the AFD)… but yes it should be a no-brainer to block that entirely.
  screenshots should be allowed when criticizing the poster, though… sometimes it’s good evidence for famous fascists telling on themselves… otherwise they should at least crop out all twitter icons, usernames and such…

I'm also on the "ban the links, not the screenshots" idea. Although if X users are still reposted outside of their own platform they'll never move from it. So I'm not very sure, who would have thought ?

Aye for banning links, keeping screenshots. To provide another argument, I would in a way prefer to have a way to know what's going on in the cesspit while visiting as little as possible. There's an argument to be made about not even looking, but someone has set this pot on the heat and I'd really like to know if it's going to boil over.

I'm new here, but still going to comment on the screenshots.
A: ban the links. B: I would say screenshots should be allowed since the point is to curb the traffic and anything in a distasteful screenshot could fall under other rules in general anyway.

Appreciate you and fuck nazis

I am all for it. Ban away.

I'm also in favour of banning links, but allowing screenshots. If source is absolutely needed, a nitter (or maybe archive?) one should be used.
I'm also in favour of the same for meta platforms and Reddit, as well as any paywalled articles
- Highly agreed on this... Decorum that links shouldn't lead imminently to privacy-screwing sites without cause.

Aye, in favor of banning links and stopping them from getting the traffic. I agree screenshots should be allowed.
Also providing support for 2/3 majority for changes.
I’m gonna state it now. I’m going to try to be more active in this community and make it home. I left the R site long ago, and I have to say I really like how this is going.
@div0@lemmy.dbzer0.com feel free to tap me if you think I can be useful for any of the work you have planned.
- The bot surely won't ask you for help 😅
  To answer your volunteering, are you you any good with js and frontends? I'm still looking for someone who can help us onboard the instance flairs onto the frontend itself
  
  I messed up the tagging, but looks like it still got your attention. Sent dm with a little more info.

I think direct links should be banned. Screenshots aren't great but we already don't have that much content across Lemmy as a whole so I think we should allow them for the foreseeable future.

While I personally detest most screenshot style content that isn't explicitly meme specific (ie: the content itself, like stupid sms shots), I can ignore most of these. I just don't think banning them is worth it with the modding reqs.
I vote ban links since this already matches my personal ethos. I've blocked Xitter at my router for a year+ now.
That said, I think perhaps there should be a process potentially to allow for a mod to override the ban for certain front end links on an ad-hoc basis, in case there's a valid useful situation where alternatives are lacking. Examples being natural disaster etc...
If a mod can pin a flag to posts somehow to allow, I'd start that way. This could well prove useless, but I prefer to be prepared if it's not a huge burden to accomplish.

I think banning those links makes sense, at this point that site just doesn't get along with the general spirit of this community. No strong opinion on whether to allow proxy links or images but maybe that's okay for people that just desperately need to reference that site for whatever reason.
In the grand scheme never really understood why people share those links to begin with, many of us don't have nor want an account on that site so it's not like we can follow those links anyway. No loss on my end.

I'm for banning any direct connection to Twitter/X or any front end thereof. Fuck that Nazi bastard. I'm not thrilled with screenshot but at least it doesn't directly monetize him. I get that screenshot can lead to misinformation, but it seems to me that the worst of Xitter is hate and misinformation anyway. By actually going on Xitter not only do you monetize and empower him more but you're exposed to more of the same. I'd be more approving of screenshots from before Muskrat took over.

One more for banning direct links, allowing screenshots (preferably anonymized, but that should be more discouraged than deleted).
To echo other comments, don't support that shitty platform. "Transparency" can be done by the individual through whatever means they find appropriate.
Thanks for bringing this up for a vote!
Edit: I'm all for an eventual full ban, btw. That spigot will run too foul, eventually.
- "Transparency" can be done by the individual through whatever means they find appropriate.
  
  That spigot will run too foul, eventually.
  well put

I agree on the ban, screenshots are fine if there isn't another source for the content. i also want to make people aware about this change.org petition for an EU-wide ban: https://www.change.org/p/ban-x-in-europe-elon-musk-must-be-stopped-in-eu

Im voting yes just because I dont want my feed clogged by twitter reposts

I'm all in on banning links, even if they go through an alternate front end. Engagement is engagement.
Let's keep the screenshots but encourage more Mastodon and Fediverse. BlueSky is good, imo, for now but how long until Jack wants those sweet Nazi dollars?

I have always voted with my feet as I feel that when it becomes pointless to participate then it becomes clear you just have to leave.
For me, the less attention is given to the platform, the sooner it dies, so let that shit go tits up!

Allow screenshots. "Important" people post crazy shit there, and it's nice to keep an eye on them from time to time.
I say allow links because I haven't noticed them as being too common, so it's not really a problem? I do avoid clicking on Xitter links though; IIRC they show an annoying login modal, then when you click that off, they only show the post with no context, so they're not very useful.

1/100 from a random sample of up to 1000 of their votes.
Whaa?
So votes are 0.01 of a vote?
100 users collectively have 1 vote? Like that?
- 1/100 for non-supporting, non-vouched and non-mvp users, yes. The linked threads explain it.
  
  1/100 seems extreme, I think a 1/2, 1/3 or even 1/4 of a vote, would be enough to minimize the possible effects of potential sockpuppeting.
  
  Maybe a simpler solution like giving a stronger per user voting power but putting the overall limit lower would make sense?
  Purely as an example and not suggestion, 1/50 voting power but limited at +/- 5 votes of max influence.
  Edit: Alternatively instead of putting a hard limit a soft limit where upvotes and downvotes past a certain amount have less influence in case posts gets viral. So upvotes in the amounts 1-100 would be counted as 1/50 of a vote and anything past 100 as 1/100 or 1/150 for example. (Again, an example and not suggestion on what the specific numbers should be.)

I'm all for attention attrition!

Fuck any site that requires an account/subscription to view content.
But fuck Elons shitty site the most. Full support for banning links.

I've never had a Twitter account so I vote get rid of it.

I think nitter/image links should be allowed, but direct links to twitter should be banned.

Would this also ban xcancel links?
- I think that's up for debate too. What are your thoughts?
  
  If denying them add revenue is one of the main reasons, using xcancel does that. I also get a small amount of satisfaction getting around the douchebag's best efforts to get people on his platform.
  I've never had a Twitter account so I've used xcancel, or it's predecessors, ever since they stopped letting people without an account see replies.

No on links, yes on screenshots.
I don't think we are doing much if any to amplify their message, but I think it's safest to watch their the fourth reich play out from a distance. As best we can.

Until when the vote is held? I want to support but I can't right now.
- I think we'll keep it open for a few days, no rush.

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$ man ascii | awk '/X$/ {print $7}' 88

I'm not going to vote because I don't have a strong feeling about the Xitter links, but I do have strong feelings about the logic (or IMO lack thereof) that's driving this. It's a slippery slope I think, and I invite others to consider the implications:
If this is about Leon, as stated in the OP, what makes Xitter deserving of a block, but not SpaceX or Tesla?
What amount of engagement will X be denied in reality (i.e. does this block achieve the intended effect)? Especially now that every tweet screenshot we see will have to be independently verified by ourselves...
If the slope slips (like here, and here, and here, for example) where is the line drawn? Will we proceed to ban Alphabet and Amazon properties too?
- I think this comment is worthy of some more discussion here. Here's a screenshot of one of gazby's links below because I think it's good for context:
  
  I agree it is a bit of a slippery slope and we need to be able to satisfactorily answer those types of questions. My initial responses below:
  If this is about Leon, as stated in the OP, what makes Xitter deserving of a block, but not SpaceX or Tesla?
  I do think Xitter is more worthy of a block relative to the others because it's literally become a right wing disinformation channel. What would it mean to block Tesla or SpaceX? They don't publish much content anyway and are not overtly political (apart from funding Musk).
  What amount of engagement will X be denied in reality (i.e. does this block achieve the intended effect)? Especially now that every tweet screenshot we see will have to be independently verified by ourselves…
  Probably not a great deal as I mainly see screenshots nowadays already, so it's more symbolic for sure.
  If the slope slips (like here, and here, and here, for example) where is the line drawn? Will we proceed to ban Alphabet and Amazon properties too?
  This is more concerning to me than the other questions. We definitely shouldn't start trying to ban everything we find distasteful, so I share your concern about having a clear line. For me personally, I draw the line at overt displays of Nazism and Xitter seems like an appropriate thing to boycott given its relationship to Musk. But I'll acknowledge it's more of a gut reaction than a carefully planned strategy :)

159 comments