If you approach things from a scientific perspective, the meaning of harassment is just “political speech I don’t like”. Some kinds of political speech, like protests and appeals, are important and should be allowed, but can easily be labelled harassment. Other kinds of political speech, like sexual harassment or hate speech, are bad. “Harassment” as a word isn’t a useful one. Two people having a fight are harassing each other, regardless of who’s right. We have created a society that hates political speech and welcomes the use of state and corporation violence to suppress dissenting politics.
I don’t say this from a place of callousness. I’ve been a victim of the most vicious harassment and it’s given me PTSD. And what I learned from the experience is, talented manipulators and people with social power will always benefit from being able to call political speech harassment.
harassment is just “political speech I don’t like”
Some communities on Lemmy have switched to calling it “misinformation”. As in: you provide links to reputable sources to support your point, and it’s “misinformation”.
Harassment seems to be more of a label for “too many people downvoted you, and you still dared to answer”.
Yeah, that’s better. Misinformation covers situations like defamation and many kinds of hate speech. Although there still needs to be a solution for stalking and sexual harassment, as long as it doesn’t overlap and outlaw protest or deplatforming.
If you approach things from a scientific perspective, the meaning of harassment is just “political speech I don’t like”. Some kinds of political speech, like protests and appeals, are important and should be allowed, but can easily be labelled harassment. Other kinds of political speech, like sexual harassment or hate speech, are bad. “Harassment” as a word isn’t a useful one. Two people having a fight are harassing each other, regardless of who’s right. We have created a society that hates political speech and welcomes the use of state and corporation violence to suppress dissenting politics.
I don’t say this from a place of callousness. I’ve been a victim of the most vicious harassment and it’s given me PTSD. And what I learned from the experience is, talented manipulators and people with social power will always benefit from being able to call political speech harassment.
Some communities on Lemmy have switched to calling it “misinformation”. As in: you provide links to reputable sources to support your point, and it’s “misinformation”.
Harassment seems to be more of a label for “too many people downvoted you, and you still dared to answer”.
That explains why a troll tried ban baiting me for “disinformation” when I said something they didn’t like.
Yeah, that’s better. Misinformation covers situations like defamation and many kinds of hate speech. Although there still needs to be a solution for stalking and sexual harassment, as long as it doesn’t overlap and outlaw protest or deplatforming.
Not really:
The difference is between “I don’t believe you, so you get banned” vs. “I think you’re trying to mislead people, so you get banned”.
Misinformation allows banning any information a mod believes to be “false”, for whatever reason, no matter the proof.
(PS: if any mod doesn’t agree with these definitions, they could remove this comment based on “misinformation”)