I don’t wanna dive super deep into this, but ever since the news broke it feels like this place has become a hub for shit-flinging from literally everybody about the topic. Sure, I’ve seen some nuanced opinions and some people attempting to have a normal human conversation, but I just dislike people using this particular instance as the “place to be” to continue this endless flame war. Isn’t this counter to the goals of the instance? How many of us come here to argue like children about geopolitics?
Plus, a lot of the people I’ve seen pointlessly arguing about this have accounts from other instances… I’ve even seen one person post on their beehaw account, get flak for it, then switch to kbin for no reason.
And at the risk of sounding too conspiratorial, something definitely seems off about a lot of these comments. Maybe it’s how a lot just seem to be infodumping. I dunno.
It’s only been a few days. Maybe it’ll simmer down. But I don’t like the direction this is going.
Edit: I’m not recommending we censor political discussion, however in this particular instance I would say it’s wise to take a step back and think about what we say to each other
I just avoid those conversations completely. It’s a nightmarish situation, with a long, complicated history. Many opinions are uninformed, and I don’t think I have anything of value to add.
If someone truly thinks their opinion on the situation can be summed up in a meme, they need to really look more into it. It is much more complicated than a simple view at it, which is why I take a step back and just show empathy to all of the Innocents.
This instance is explicitly about being good to people, so it makes sense that a conflict will be very divisive when everyone but the civilians are being bad.
This isn’t some psyop against Beehaw to try to disrupt our ethos; this a major world event where we’re watching the mass slaughter of innocent men, women, and children.
People here are also likely more sensitive than most to settler-colonialist and imperialist violence.
I have seen a few people who are clearly trying to turn it into “x side good”, usually because they have dehumanized the other side, but that’s maybe been 3 posters I’ve seen, and they’re the same ones in each thread. And as much as that sucks, I don’t think we need to ban them, we can handle their anger with sympathy.
Exactly this.
Remember when Ukraine-Russian war was brand new? It was difficult to find news articles that weren’t talking about it. There’s tons of parallels here. All the articles, all the misinformation, propaganda. It’s very easy to get caught up it in all.
I’m glad these discussions are taking place on Beehaw. This is why I made an account here. To see people have discussions about hard topics with the rule to be friendly. It’s very easy to dehumanize the poster on the other side of the computer when you can’t see their face. This is a place that fosters a culture that stops that.
Only big difference between Ukraine and Israel is most people were still on Reddit for Ukraine. I still remember the absolute heartbreaking story from twox of a woman asking for advice about how to live in this new conflict area when soldiers were raping and killing women. She and her family were terrified to go to the store. She gave an update, and then we never heard from her. We can only assume what happened. (Assuming the story was real). We are now hearing these stories from Israel-Palestine.
FYI to users: there is now a megathread on this topic so it doesn’t dominate the front page for the next week and to just make things generally more convenient for everyone. please make liberal use of the thread, thanks
Indeed, but maybe it’s a chance to be exemplary, by spreading moderate and compassionate words (for all victims, on both sides).
My only concern is the mental health of the fellow beeples who chose this instance because they needed a bubble of kindness, far for the cruel real world.
I do get what you mean, but I would prefer that people do talk about it here where they believe it’s a safer environment to discuss views than being exposed to a bunch of toxicity about it elsewhere as they try to make sense of how they feel about what is happening.
I have been reading a lot the last few days. I have seen a lot of pretty ignorant and awful comments, but also a great many that are spot on and some just brilliant. I think all things considered, the admins are doing a great job of allowing people to discuss this without just ban-hammering at first sight anything that is a bit tricky. (Creating the megathread is good move though, so thanks for that by the way…).
For my part, as someone who is now 58 yrs old, the situation in Israel feels like more of history repeating itself over and over. I have spent my entire life watching this kind of news play out. I have also lost many close friends from university who were Israeli and who were Palestinian; many of those had lost their entire families in either the war in Syria or in Lebanon. I had a lot of friends at AUB for example who never came back; During the Gulf War, I was still overseas and had armed soldiers on my campus escorting Israeli faculty for fear they might be attacked since we had received bomb threats at our campus for being “Jew lovers”… I share all that to say that I have some very, very strong opinions on what is happening.
But so do a lot of people here. How can you not?
I still think we are capable of having civil discussions and helping each other through living this moment in time. We have a far easier task doing that bit than anyone else directly experiencing the war and all which that implies.
Think it is just that the situation is so incredibly upsetting, very prominent in the media and with no sense that even a vaguely ok remedy is coming anytime soon.
So it is natural that emotions run high, that people then speak about it in harsh terms and that this gives rise to considerable tensions. It is after all, a particularly bitter and lengthy conflict, and I think it maybe takes a special kind of individual to discuss it with gentleness, balance & empathy.
Generally avoiding conversing myself, and may need to stop reading conversations too. Just have to keep telling myself that though being informed about the world is good, reading opinions doesn’t actually help those experiencing the horror on the ground, nor their loved ones elsewhere, so it is ok to avoid.
No, I think the response has been very level headed conversation actually. There’s been a lot of focus on Israel simply because of the absolute support they initially got. But I think the discussions have been productive.
I disagree, most of the longer discussions I saw were mostly two people talking past each other.
I think most longer discussions are like that regardless. But most conversations that I have seen have been short and informative. Especially now that people have been able to process a bit.
Maybe we’re just seeing different posts? There’s one on c/world news right now where the OP is arguing with everybody who disagrees in pretty bad faith. Am I just seeing that because I’m on Jerboa? It’s still posted on beehaw from what I can tell
Which post? There’s the evacuation one on c/news on Beehaw which got a bit heated. It has a couple of bad faith comments by the OP. But even then most of the discussion seems to be good faith, even when they’re strongly disagreeing.
I don’t see a world news community on Beehaw. Just news and USnews. Do you mind sharing the post or the community+server?
(Also for the record, I use Connect. But I don’t know if it makes a difference.)
I definitely recommend looking into OP’s position on dead civilians, from their past comment history.
I don’t want to take a side in this but I just find those comments thoroughly reprehensible.
The OP clearly crossed from “acceptable” civilian casualties to actively rooting for civilian casualties. In this case the mods would be justified blocking them.
But I’m also happy to see that overall they’re not voted up.
Thanks. Yeah, World News is just News. So I was a bit confused. I assume they were talking about the evacuation post. It looks like the OP is making a lot of inflammatory comments there and in other posts. But most of them aren’t voted on and not very visible.
I think the issue might be wanting the mods to weed out some of these types. At one point they’re even warmongering a bit. But the rest of the conversation seems overall fine.
We’re keeping an eye on it.
I don’t see a world news community on Beehaw. Just news and USnews.
I think News was designated a world news community around the time the mods created the USnews.
I knew something like this would eventually happen on Beehaw. Very happy I blocked the news instances to protect my mental health.
It’s disappointing to see so many people, not from beehaw, advocate for violence. I think it’s a subject that’s going to attract a lot of toxic people. And we’re seeing some of that here.
I’m super confused by this post. It’s on everyone’s mind and all over any media, of course people are talking about it. No doubt it will simmer down, or be replaced by the next huge geopolitical event. I don’t see an issue, and am unclear on what this post is even about. What are you wanting to happen?
I want people to be nice, which is the foundational rule of the instance.
I simply don’t think that this particular topic is helping people do that
Ahh ok, well I guess ostriches are nice to each other.
I’m not stupid. You’re referencing ostriches “burying their head in the sand,” typically used to mean somebody is willfully ignoring things. If you seriously think that’s what I’m trying to get across after all I’ve written about it, then I just cannot help you understand.
For me, in the context of this particular kind of topic where people are being slaughtered whole sale and where I profoundly disagree with some people’s stance, niceness is expressed by me remaining focused on the issue and not turning it into an exchange of insults.
It’s an ugly subject, and there are people defending some very ugly behavior, mostly out of ignorance, so I’m going to speak out and likely be angry when certain beliefs are expressed.
I don’t know that there’s a way to honestly confront this topic without some level of anger, but as long as it doesn’t rise to the level of hatred I think that will have to do in terms of niceness. That or the topic gets surpressed by the devs entirely, which would be a valid thing to want in this kind of community, even though I personally think it’s better to have the discussion, heated though it might be.
So do you want to ban the topic then? What do you suggest?
I use Voyager, but am assuming this isn’t an app feature, but a Lemmy feature.
Under Blocks & Filters, there is a Keyword filter.
I would suggest anyone trying to avoid the topic add related keywords to your filter. If something comes up after that, examine it, determine why it made it past your filter, and add necessary additional words if needed.
Of course it is major world news, so if you want to see updated news about it in your feed, that’s not doable, but people don’t have to read the comment thread.
I am an Apollo Reddit migrate, and to allow my wife to function, I had an extensive keyword filter in place for her, anything relating to violence (shootings, sexual assault), politics (mentions of certain politicians, or political topics), horror stuff, sexual content, and words she finds generally offensive. It really made such a difference for her, whereas she could never function in such a social platform (without affecting her mental well being) without those filters.
The key feature I am waiting for is the ability of users to block/filter whole instances/servers on their own, as that would allow participating in more difficult nuanced topics like this, while mass filtering communities whose user base one finds to behave badly, or be generally offensive/trollish.
At the current moment, filtering is an app feature and isn’t built into Lemmy itself unfortunately. Lemmy natively lets you block communities and users, but that’s about it (with instance filtering coming up in the next version).
No…why do you dislike it ?
I just wrote why??
Maybe it’s harming OP’s mental health?
I don’t really worry about these things… It’s easy to move to another instance on Lemmy. We never had that opinion before Lemmy, to be able to switch to some instance where there is no drama. Now we do.
Is there a way to take your block list and subscriptions with you when you move?
You might have to do the pen and paper method.
Not the paper! Gaaah!
RIP trees.
On the one hand, yeah, that kinda discussion is gross and there are definitely bad actors playing both sides against each other just to make everyone angry.
On the other hand, it also really pisses me off when moderators come in with the heavy handed kid gloves and delete everything.
