ResetEra jannies are silencing pro Hamas posters, much seething and coping

Phew. We've made a sizeable dent in the reports, so I'll reopen this.

But first, let me explain a few things here.

• We really don't need to be going down the path of whether or not Hamas is a "legitimate terrorist organization." This is a question no one here is going to be able to answer, and it's just gonna go around in circles with everyone yelling at each other. It's not a competition to deterimine which side is "worse." As the prophet dril once said, "you do not...gotta hand it to [Hamas]." As evidenced by a lot of posts in this thread and elsewhere on the site, nuance is hard, and if you gotta cape for one shitty organization in order to justify your position, maybe rethink how you're going about this discussion.

• I don't know if you all have noticed, but the Israel/Palestine conflict is the biggest and most complicated event that has occurred during the life of this site. It's a conflict that people have been discussing for decades. We aren't gonna solve this here. We're all also not a bunch of foreign policy experts that have knowledge of every event that has happened leading up to this. So some people are going to come in with incomplete information - if you choose to inform them of something, feel free! Just maybe don't jump to "oh you support Hamas" or "oh you support genocide" as your initial reaction. If someone is JAQing off, then report it and we'll take care of it. The best we can hope for is that some users come out of this more educated on all of it than they were at first.

• There's clearly a massacre going on from the hands of the Israeli government/military. There was clearly a horrible attack by Hamas on 10/7. There are clearly people who support either side. There are conflicted people deciding how to reconcile preexisting beliefs with new information. Despite all of this, there is no excuse for antisemitism or islamophobia from anyone. Straight out. To that point though, criticizing the Israeli govt/military for their actions is not antisemitism, and criticizing Hamas for their actions is not Islamophobia. This should be a pretty simple concept, and while there are obviously bad actors out there trying to co-opt one side for their own bigotry (like far-right shitheads who actively hate Jews choosing to side with the pro-Palestinians in order to sow chaos), I think we can have a discussion here without having to go down that road. Obviously we'll be on the lookout for anyone doing that, but that's a very minor piece of what we deal with regarding this discussion.

• For those of you talking about us trying to stifle dissent towards Biden/Democrats, please. Feel free. I assume you're referring to us taking action against posts saying "Genocide Joe," which isn't due to the words themselves or the actions Biden is taking, it's to stop you all from boiling down whatever your thoughts are into some inflammatory, pithy nickname. Yeah, this site may lean more left than a lot of other large forums, but it's still a mix of moderates, liberals, progressives, and leftists, all of whom are primarily here to talk about video games. There's a perfectly reasonable discussion to be had regarding voting, and some people are viewing it from a "what if Trump wins" lens, and others are viewing it from a "I can't support Biden due to Gaza, etc." lens. The biggest rule we really have here, and honestly the base rule that affects a lot of other rules, is this: "don't be an butthole." If you can't get your point across without completely dismissing someone else (and to that point, if someone else is being an butthole, then...report them. It's that simple), you don't have to click the "Post" button.

Holy shit

Cool, but given that literally zero of the explanations provided in the post above can be applied at all to the specific ban of Nola (or Richter, among others) which was the cause of all of the moderation complain in the last few pages, I hope you don't mind but I'm going to read this as "nothing is changing, everyone in this thread needs to continue to carefully navigate unknown double standards".

Also I am personally curious how there are so many user reports in this thread that require lockdown to even handle, specially when the last 3-4 pages were focused on moderation criticism. Is it possible one or more individuals gaming the report system to try to get certain minorities/political ideologies banned from the forum? Impossible to know.

Anyway this is my last post on this derail (until the next ban). Back to the topic on hand.

You pressed the report button, we came.

I do not agree with this interpretation of events. There is a large difference between "wishing to shape every thread on biden/the election around not mentioning [I/P]" and not wanting literally all US politics threads to be derailed into "Genocide Joe" drive bys. We should be able to discuss student loan forgiveness, domestic policy, trans and LGBTQ issues in general, judicial appointees, etc. without having I/P dominate all talk.

No, I don't want any genocides. If the subject of a thread is contributing to or will contribute to a genocide, it should be fair game. For example, Trump's genocidal trans policies should be fair game in any thread about Trump. Nobody should be told that they can only discuss trans genocide in appropriate threads.

I don't have a genocide hierarchy. I want Trump to lose the election and I don't want trans people to experience genocide either. Why did you think I had a genocide hierarchy? How would you feel if trans genocide topics were contained in a single thread?

that's one too many

Imagine if Biden's positions were reversed. He is fantastic when it comes to Palestine (much better than Trump), but was just as bad as Trump when it came to genocidal trans policies.

Would you be happy to have a single thread to discuss the trans genocide? How would you feel if you watched people cheering on student loan relief being done by a guy contributing to the genocide of trans people?

it's this, combined with

• "greatest president of our lifetime"

• the absolutely heinous false dichotomy of framing concern over horrific mass executions with our tax dollars being a "privileged" stance, or worse yet pitted against the legislative erasure & genocide of trans folks, etc. you get told your solidarity and humanity/understanding of our connections to these people and actions are bad faith, led by bad actors, making you a "useful idiot" whose calls to stop the weapon shipments equate support for trump

• the go-to condescension of "trump would make this worse" with no explanation of how that could be, no concern for the bloodshed of the last 7 months

• endless bemoaning of the discomfort of genocide "infecting every thread" - a not-so-quiet get back to your corner demand, often knowing full well elements of moderation will back that call - only to see mass reporting done here

all this done in service of a fervent zionist who quite clearly had no red line. the DNC sees the writing on the wall with the swing state protest votes, with the student encampments & growing demos - they're not pushing to move things online for no reason. he could stop this, but chooses not to - and so many liberals feel their energy is better used online preemptively vote shaming and finger-wagging at folks rather than joining the multitude of efforts to do what we were told would happen after he took power years ago: hold this admin accountable, push him left etc.

guess which "side" of this horror is expected to walk tightropes and abide this week's new restrictions, or be browbeat into silence? we could fill a page with all the folks threadbanned/perm'd from here for besmirching biden, the NYT etc, yet apparently none of that is worth addressing

Tons more like this in the thread. video games?