Because of admin interference with the content https://lemmy.ml/modlog/16033 and disciplinary actions we obviously can’t stay here.
We’ve set up shop on http://lemm.ee/c/collapse so please update your subscription if you intend to continue to follow this community.
At some point this community will be mothballed, unless @wabooti wants to continue taking care of it.
@eleitl and I have been members of the wider collapse community for quite awhile - since around 2009 for me. I am a member of multiple communities, each many times larger and more active than this one (although I’m particularly fond of the userbase here).
We’ve seen collapse communities prosper and we’ve seen them falter. The tension between users, mods, and admins is nearly a constant. Despite those tensions, more and more people join these spaces every year because they still find value in them. One of the common discussions that triggers these tensions is the Limits to Growth.
That conversation has been going on since '72 and it’s not about to stop. If this is an issue now then it will continue to be one moving forward. Personally I do think it’s something important to discuss (how could it not be?), I know many other Marxists who agree, and I believe that in most cases the community has successfully held these conversations while self-moderating (including the work of the mod team) against ecofascists and right-wing trolling, brigading, etc. Temporal population limits themselves have never been the primary focus of discussion, and as a moderator I would not allow that focus to develop because such myopia is not productive for understanding our holistic situation.
Many of us come from spaces that can generally handle these challenges to our consensus standard. Our much more frequent complaint (on other sites) is admin censorship over the merits of such things as introducing rent-seekers to guillotines. I don’t mean to say that opinion in these spaces are perfect but in my experience, far-right propaganda gets proliferated on more reactionary forums (such as the front page and climate change subreddits which are largely captured). The collapse channels in recent years, on the other hand, are where those talking points are often dunked on and resoundingly refuted. There is really no reason for propagandists to engage in a space where they will be countered with hard facts and numbers - we are the hardest marks of all!
As someone who has been on lemmy longer than most, I love the people here and I am interested in supporting an even better space for discussing collapse in the fediverse. I don’t want anyone to have to feel alone as they deal with a firehose of lies around sustainability, as I had to do for many years. My only real interest here is creating a safe space for people with both empathy and collapse-awareness.
Our current hosts are not entirely comfortable with the prospect of us navigating these complexities skillfully. From our brief discussions in the removed thread, it appears that they think we are already failing to do so. And that is their right as admins! It is certainly possible for low-quality collapse-related discussions to turn into genocidal echo chambers - I see them all the time lately in non-collapse-related forums - and while I trust in the community here, the admins are under no obligation to undertake that risk.
As developers, however, they gave us a graceful solution: Federation allows us to move to an instance that will be more comfortable hosting us. That reduces tensions for everyone. It’s a win for all parties involved as far as I can tell.
I appreciate our admins/devs. I am not particularly concerned about our differences of opinions from my side of things, but I also don’t want to give them headaches or create any more hard feelings - I’d rather just get out of their hair.
If anyone feels they got the short end of the deal, I encourage them to reach out and I will do whatever I can to make amends. I know that is not ideal, but it is what I can offer. I care more for the individual members of the collapse-aware community than I do for all of the clout in the world.
Gosh, what a write up.
But ok. Admins got uncomfortable and told the mods that if they disagree to just move elsewhere and that’s what’s happening.
eleitl does seem to one of the more frequent posters so I do get their cred but their responses leaves a lot to be desired and I’ll be interested to see how people move.
Because it wasn’t that necessary as of the moment. As the argument of population control is one I think not at all worth having for many of reasons, such as, you just can’t do much about it! And it will become reality easy enough if it becomes mandatory and that’s sad enough.
But I guess if we find ourselves truly not welcome here anymore than it seems we would just have to move with you guys.
I’ve often argued a similar line. This topic is notorious for bringing out bad-faith posters trying to shape the narrative. Sometimes it seems hardly worth discussing to me as well. Especially among redditors which is what I was used to for many years. But to not be able to discuss it at all is too much for me as a mod, especially when those who would take advantage of us discuss it freely.
My concern is that there are still different ways that this can all go down, and that we aren’t charting towards handling the crisis in a wise and humane manner. We’re basically blindly following capitalists into the void. And acting “naively” (following systemic biases) is not moral or ethical in our position. People are already dying of exposure today, in our local communities and around the world. It is the most disadvantaged that suffers most and it will continue to be that way unless something is changed.
Whatever works best for everyone involved.