With that in mind, I was interested when Ms. Dzodan posted another text, this time on moderating comments: The troll is dead! Foxnewsification and the notion that all points of view are valuable. Again, I think that text makes several very good points:
I would venture that the internet troll took the first deathly blow in 2001 when hateful anti Islamic rhetoric became acceptable in most media. What was once brushed off as “trolling” became the standard. We saw the incendiary language get worse every day, certain slurs that were usually reserved for the back rooms of hateful sites repeated on news hours, commenting sections of news sites, blogs, etc. Any challenge to this bigotry used to be met with a chorus of “FREEDOM OF SPEECH!” utterances. As if every form of speech deserved a platform everywhere, as if it was the obligation of site moderators to allow any content without critical thinking. As if all content was equal.
As someone who runs two blogs whose comments sections are moderated, I wholeheartedly agree. I get my share of personal attacks, and judging from the behavior of one of my Pirate Party comrades in the social media recently, I made him very angry indeed when I refused to publish a series of long-winded comments he left on a piece in my Finnish-language blog. There was a simple reason for that decision: he offered no counter-arguments to what I wrote, except to claim either that I was lying or that I was expounding "feminist lies" and being irrational. That isn't a counterargument, that's a personal attack, and I'm under no obligation to publish those. My blogs aren't a discussion forum. The reason I moderate comments at all is because when I started writing about immigration and racism, my blogs started to overflow with nearly identical ideological commentary, mostly consisting of personal attacks and trolling, from Finland's organized racists and their "useful idiots". So I basically agree with Ms. Dzodan: not all points of view need to be aired on every forum.
However, because my comment had just been rejected on her blog, I approached Ms. Dzodan's piece a little more skeptically than I might otherwise have. In her lead-in, when she describes the kind of objectionable contents Tiger Beatdown receives, here's what she lists:
However, MatrixMansplainer is not alone. We got a whole bunch of them on the Black Pete post. People who would accuse me of racism against Dutch people; those who would inform me that I should fuck off to whichever hellhole I came from; those who would write 800+ word comments explaining the many ways I was wrong; privilege deniers; garden variety White supremacists; rape threatening dudes.
My boldface.
Wait a minute. Racism, white supremacism, threats of rape and... disagreeing at length?
She then goes on to compare comments like this (racist, violent and, um, long) directly to violence:
We created “safe spaces” with varying degrees of editorial control. However, I have to wonder why are not all news sites and major blogs made “safe”? If in any other environment, people felt systematically unsafe, we would demand immediate change and measures of protection. If a club, a venue, a public space allowed people to be subjected to violence without actually taking counter measures, such places would most likely be shut down due to public outcry. However, this is what our media does.
She then quotes a comments policy from another site, and I totally agree with the quote:
A variety of points of view is all to the good, but a mere opinion not backed up by facts, reasoning or analysis is unlikely to get through. Moreover, not all points of view are valuable.
And goes on:
“Not all points of view are valuable”. This needs to be repeated. Any point of view that actively seeks to alienate, oppress or bully someone does not deserve to be exposed.
I'd be totally okay with this, if only my comment hadn't been left unpublished and my counterargument been ignored. I've re-read it, and for the life of me, I can't figure out where I was seeking to alienate, oppress or bully anyone. If there's any uncertainty on this, I can say that I certainly wasn't trying to do any of those things.
All this puts a slightly new spin on something Ms. Dzodan said in the comments section to the post I was trying to comment on:
For this one piece, I’ll make one thing clear: I am not going to approve any comments that base their critique on the idea that I am speaking out of “ignorance” and that I have no clue of what I am talking about.
It is fine to disagree with me, but to pretend that you (generic you), as a commenter, hold the truth and I am misguided and ignorant is a form of violence.
So wait: if I think that on a given, specific topic, I'm right and Ms. Dzodan is wrong, then I'm committing a form of violence? And therefore, my viewpoint is one that doesn't deserve to be exposed? I'll be frank: I'm very ignorant on a large number of topics, and for almost all of those, there are people out there much, much better informed than I am. Therefore, when discussing one of those topics, it may in fact be true that I'm misguided and ignorant and the person I'm speaking to holds the truth. It's certainly happened to me! But it seems it, a priori, can't happen to Ms. Dzodan.
Do you really believe that disagreement is violence? Really?
The logical outcome of this, for Ms. Dzodan and her co-moderators, seems to be that no comments that disagree with her will be allowed. That isn't creating a safe space, that's creating a political echo chamber where only the like-minded are allowed to speak. Disturbingly, that's what the comments sections of Tiger Beatdown increasingly resemble: a dozen or two iterations of "Good post!", and no content. Certainly no disagreement, informed or otherwise.
That's a very depressing comments policy. Luckily, Ms. Dzodan offers those of us who have our comments deleted some advice:
One would expect that this MatrixMansplainer would have realized, after so many weeks, that his comments are not welcome since I have systematically trashed them.
I suppose I'll realize that, then.
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