Saidit MetaWitness the abandonment of Saidit's principles by its own co-founder in the comments of this /s/whatever StoneToss comic post.

submitted by LithargoelKiA Old Guard from self.KotakuInAction

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[–]ClockworkFoolKiA Old Guard 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I take absolutely no position on the content of the 4-panel, nor any arguments or critiques with its OP no matter their positions on the topic, other than to point out how quickly Magnora7 drop-kicks his Pyramid of Debate ideals in order to avoid addressing the content and instead resorts to characterization attacks, and twists it back around to demanding that the OP address HIS argument, and accuses OP of changing the topic (which OP did not, Magnora7 himself did).

Honestly, mostly what I see there is two people determinedly arguing at cross purposes about what exactly they are allowed to argue about in terms of the pyramid of debate.

Mostly what I get out of the exchange is a reaffirmed belief that the concept of the POD is inherently naive.

But at least the guy doesn't seem to have gone any further than that. A petulant, passive aggressive argument between a site admin and someone who is almost certainly trolling to some degree is a refreshing change from the reddit standard which would have simply left a rhetorical smoking crater and the insistence that the crowd disperse.

I'm becoming concerned that Saidit may not adhere to its own high standards of debate.

Saidit's problem is that it's aiming for a utopian ideal. Cheeky sods, mischevious trolls and legitimate bad faith assholes will all complicate things for an endeavour like that, and the real question is how will Saidit evolve over time as it is challenged by those various types of people.

The specifics of a pointless argument over a "race realism" comic strip are relatively small fry in comparison.

[–]LithargoelKiA Old Guard[S] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I'm glad you brought all those points up, because they are what I've been personally leaning towards believing (the concept of the PoD is inherently naive, a passive-aggressive argument between a site admin [whom I believe is no longer engaging in good faith] and a user who is probably trolling to some degree [and therefore not engaging purely in good faith]). I'm loathe of opinion to Saidit's "insightful/fun" replacement of upvote/downvote, and would rather not have them at all, when per-user client-based "hide this post / ignore user" options might be better suited for those who would want to use them.

Utopian ideals are unrealistic ideals, I believe. Not to say they're not worth striving for in some cases, but a non-forum style reddit clone platform might do better in being truly neutral, excepting of course the few necessary rules like not allowing posting of content that will get it shut down by the feds, and letting the discussion chips fall where they may.

[–]ClockworkFoolKiA Old Guard 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The problem with starting a reddit, twitter or etc alternative of any kind, particularly if you care about free speech to any degree at all, is that sooner or later you are going to have to make hard decisions about bad faith users and genuine extremists.

I'm not sure there's an easy, painless or tidy solution to that kind of thing and I think what we see in the link is Saidit brushing up against that same inescapable problem.

We had plenty of issues with the same situation with KiA2 on reddit essentially. Being known as a more free speech version of KiA, we soon started attracting people who either wanted to abuse the relatively open, light touch rules for their own ends, wanted to fuck around just to annoy people or undermine the sub itself and some legitimate Stormfront types who would really rather have liked to drive out anyone other than people like themselves. Most of the latter ended up running aground on reddit's sitewide rules sooner or later, but all of the above types were there attempting to derail the sub in their own vision and all of them came with similar risk to what sites like Gab experienced, where they become overwhelmingly known as being a certain way to the point that it permanently stunted their growth and drove off normies.

What do you do about that kind of thing when the only rules that exist are rules you set, when you also claim to be pro free speech?

It's a genuinely tricky question. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out here, with Saidit's idealist bent.