I was going through the modlog today and found that this comment posted to lemmy.ml was simply removed for being “reactionary”.
Removed Comment What reform of France’s educational establishment would satisfy you? Should they move their weekends to Mondays and Tuesdays in order to avoid accidentally aligning with any religious practice’s day of rest? This is a ridiculous standard to hold any societal institution to. Because France’s dominant culture has been Christian for many years, its secular institutions of course have echoes of Christian practice within them - but this is not proof that they are Christian institutions. Education is good. Education should be given to every single person in society, and every person in it should have a right to receive a full secular education regardless of their parents’ opinion on the matter. And during the course of that education, class, ethnic, and religious differences between children should be minimized in order to socialize children into being tolerant, metropolitan citizens. reason: reactionary
That sounds like a perfectly respectable position to have, even if it may be a little controversial, but it is more constructive than divisive. I really like lemmy’s transparency in showing what was removed and why, but for the first time I’m seeing what looks like a summary removal of an urbane comment.
Am I the only one who is worried by that? Am I missing something here?
By the way, I’m not interested in debating the subject, there is plenty of debate in the original post, what I want to know is how any of you would frame this as decisively reactionary enough to throw out of a healthy debate when comparing with the flood of shitposting we see every day that doesn’t get struck down.
Wanted to check the original post but I’m getting a bad gateway error.
Out of context, there is nothing wrong with the comment. If I were the mod in charge, I probably wouldn’t have removed it. However there is a chance maybe it is overreacting to the previous reply, or that the user is looking for controversial discussions all over the post just to upset people.
Or perhaps the mod really is at fault here, silencing an exchange of opinions because they have a strong stance on one side of the argument.
Added context: the removed comment is from a hexbear, which I find even more ironic, because it was one of the more level-headed ones :)
If they were being reactionary on a lot of other comments in the post then removing all of their comments in the post can be understandable as a means to stop that user from interacting any further. I’m not saying that was exactly the case, but that is sometimes a reason mods remove comments that have nothing reproachable.
Which community was it? Mods moderate communities, admins admin instances. Just like on reddit, communities often have their own sets of rules. If the community has an anti-reactionary rule, then the removal would make sense. I don’t think hexbear admins enforce a strict sitewide rule from what I’ve seen, but I’m not really sure.
It was the worldnews@lemmy.ml but I’m not sure where it is because lemmy.ml does not seem to exist.
Oh, I misread, thanks for pointing that out. I don’t see it in the sidebar but I feel like I remember a mod or admin from somewhere stating that reactionary thought falls under the bigotry, propaganda, etc. rule. That’s what the modlog looks like too. Personally I would think it would be helpful to explicitly state it in the sidebar.
The reason it is reactionary is because it evaluates the education system from what exists now and looks at it from a reformist view, which is a process that normalizes the biases baked into the status quo, rather than evaluating from a perspective that critically addresses the goals of education. That’s certainly not the end of the world but I know some admins/mods are strict about not wanting their efforts to further platform it.
To answer your original question, you might consider asking the mods if they would describe the rules more thoroughly in the sidebar. That’s all I know of, at least.