How to work this cool new feature! [Use it wisely — if you ban too many folks you might lose followers!]

Say goodbye timber and whitenat

Yes

This is the best explanation of a new feature I've ever seen! 😙👌

created by the person most likely to abuse it

This is the cowardice we can look forward to. Ask "Change my mind" and then delete and ban the replies.

The lesser stream owners who cannot defend their arguments will use this to turn their streams into echo chambers. This was predictable. It didn't even take very long.

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?

this behavior kills debate. The OP (of this meme) asked "change my mind" and then deleted my reply and banned me from his stream.

I predicted that he would do this earlier today, in the comments of this meme - just up there!

Wat stream

Lemme guess, politicsTOO

of course

Just what you always wanted - a way to silence any voice that dares to challenge nonsense within your safe spaces.

Violate stream rules, get banned — it’s simple.

Learn something about vaccines or don’t come. Anti-vaxxing is permitted almost everywhere else on Imgflip, to my knowledge.

So u banned him for having a different opinion. Y am i not suprised

Read the rule. Differences of opinion are allowed. Propaganda that flies in the face of reality isn’t.

But it was a specific opinion

You banned me for criticizing

Except you made a rule banning a specific opinion, then asked people to convince you otherwise.

Classy, just like your crush.

And from that, its easy to conclude that the information you presented did not actually succeed in convincing me otherwise.

So you're a liar too. Most people don't admit that so easily, or publicly, or without shame.

Bravo, liar.

Oh, and you didn't use that meme - you used the words "Change my mind" 5fvx2u.jpg (click to show)

The conceit of the phrase “change my mind” in memeland (whether paired with the Steven Crowder meme or not) is that the person’s mindframe is not actually subject to being changed. That’s what makes it ironic.

Do we really have to explain that joke? Lol!

Like I suggested in my rule about this — there are some things in life and in politics that I’m uncertain about. And that many of us should be more uncertain about, rather than clinging to dogma.

But vaccines aren’t one of them. The Covid vaccine is saving thousands of American lives every day. The pandemic is waning. It’s the reason we’re getting our lives and freedoms back.

Many people in countries around the world that haven’t administered even a single shot yet would kill for a dose.

Here in America, we’re awash in them, but there’s a substantial minority like you who refuse to take it.

If you and your family have already had Covid, it’s less important since you should still have those antibodies, but it’s still recommended.

And certainly normalizing the non-taking of it for those who could still benefit is reckless. 99+% of Americans dying today are unvaccinated. And at this point in the pandemic, they all could have been saved.

See, I’m not scared to debate your point. It has nothing to do with me living in an echo chamber, hopelessly triggered and unable to consider competing opinions.

So why did I delete your comment? Because we’ve concluded anti-vaccine propaganda is not appropriate for PoliticsTOO. We won’t allow it to be hijacked for the promotion of stupidity.

So, did the FDA secretly approve the vaccine? No, they didn't.
So, VAERS is wrongly reporting adverse reactions? Good to know. We should probably defund the HHS then.
So, the FDA completed long term studies? No, they didn't.

As far as the survival rate - there are plenty of sources that put it squarely in the 99% range....including the CDC.

https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/data-cdc-estimates-covid-19-mortality-rate/275-fc43f37f-6764-45e3-b615-123459f0082b

Propaganda - you seem to be well versed in it.

Yeah yeah, whatever. You asked "change my mind" and then banned me for having an non-approved opinion.

I would say that I was shocked to find that I was banned, but it was SO COMPLETELY EXPECTED that I'm surprised that you didn't ban me the nanosecond the option became available to you.

We actually did just the opposite — when this new feature came online, I extended a get-out-of-jail-free card (also known as a “jubilee”) to all previously-streambanned memers. That list actually wasn’t very long, half a dozen or less, and you weren’t on it nor even close to being on it.

Read more here: imgflip.com/i/5fhbfj

Say what you will about our modding at PoliticsTOO — I realize it’s not for everyone, nor does it try to be — but we have clear rules written in plain English which are fully capable of being cited in support of any mod action we take. And now that we have a way to give feedback to memers whose content is being modded, that’s what I aim to do. To cite our own rules and provide guidance on how the memer can comply with them next time. You won’t get that from most mods.

I know that our guidance notes can be screenshotted by disgruntled memers and twisted and used to frame us, but I don’t care. It’s still the right thing to do.

Criticizing your mods is easy - because they make it easy. How, oh hypocritical one, did this violate the TOS?

Well, you’ve provided no context. From the general tone of that one out-of-context comment I can surmise that you were likely trolling someone in a manner that is often allowed on politics stream, but generally isn’t on PoliticsTOO.

We have signs and signals everywhere that our content moderation is tougher than politics stream. The two streams are different and they’re different by design. Our users tend to come to politicsTOO because they find their experience in politics stream lacking in some way. If we ever became just like politics stream, then we’d lose the following we’ve built.

A stream for you, a stream for me. Imgflip empowers users to have the kind of experience they want.

From the evidence you’ve shown me, I can’t conclude our mod made any error.

I don't think "tougher" is an appropriate word to describe rules that ban all forms of communication and allow you to selectively enforce them.

Those are rules for the weak minded and the fragile, the everybody-gets-a-trophy mentality.

We don’t ban all forms of communication, or we wouldn’t have a stream. Cracking down too hard would drive everyone away. I feature memes on PoliticsTOO that I don’t personally agree with all the time.

Many of our members (myself included) don’t want right-wingers banned entirely. We just crave the kind of reality-based, respectful political communication that the politics stream and most of social media sorely lacks.

Sure you do - you're a known quantity. Biased, vindictive, predictable. I commented that you'd ban me from your stream 8 hours before you did it. How did I know? Because you can't handle anything that goes against your beliefs - you've had years on this site to hammer that fact into the minds of everyone you interact with. I knew that you would not be able to resist the temptation to silence your critics - and you did not disappoint.

It's precisely the reason I jumped on this meme, because it's in a stream that you DO NOT control, and therefor cannot ban me from. Everyone here gets to see both of your faces.

I think you’ll find plenty of examples where I’ve allowed people to criticize me, or Biden, or Democrats generally without taking mod action or flagging or whatnot.

It’s only a few topics that get me. Bigotry. Conspiracy theories. Blatant falsehoods. Those things are not to be confused with incisive criticism.

We can productively debate the macroeconomic causes of higher gas prices (for example) — but we can’t productively debate whether Obama was born in Kenya, or whether Trump actually won the 2020 election, or whether Covid vaccines are killing more people than the virus itself. All that crap is simply not true, and I’m not going to pretend that it is.

If the mods of this stream (which are frankly the mods of Imgflip) want to permit your anti-vaxxing here simply because it manages to stay within the bounds of civil discourse, as you’re not carelessly lacing your replies with gratuitous profanity and whatnot — that’s their call.

But we don’t have to agree.

Oh sure - but now you have a tool to use against them. Can you resist the urge? I have my doubts that you are in possession of not only the willpower to do so, but the character to do it.

Because it was slander against another Imgflip user. imgflip.com/i/5fn4ea
(commenter 1) Define "harassment."
(commenter 2) A post which features a middle finger gesture & calls people "mental midgets" for example.
WiseCracker: So, most of your comments then?

You attack conservatives all the time - how is that slander?

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4t0dx8.jpg (click to show)

Wow, you dug down to some of my oldest memes. Thank you for a fun walk down memory lane. To think that they are all still true today...

dug down? There are tools on the site that one can use to filter memes....you don't know how easy navigating this site is - and they made you a mod?

All those memes state general political points, and are grounded in some kind of actual observation about our political world.

This is a scene taken directly from the Jan. 6 riot, with no commentary attached. With a damning image like this, no commentary is needed, frankly. Yet we apply text to images like this anyway, because thats what memes are and that’s what memeing is.

None of those memes attack any specific memer of Imgflip. If you think that’s slander then it is you who are simply trying to shut down debate.

So now, not only can we not screenshot a meme or comment by a user without redacting their name (essentially freeing them from any responsibility to their own words and actions), but now we must not have an opinion on the motivations of another user, lest it be branded "slander"

You're going to single-handedly destroy this site. Users will be too frightened to interact, because if they do - they'll get a TOS strike. This is what your fragile ego is building, a temple to shelter the weak from scary scary words.

If all of Imgflip was run that way, you would have a point. It's not though. The main politics stream allows for both sides to have a place to post as long as ToS isn't violated. Posts are only disapproved and comments deleted there if they violate Imgflip ToS. ToS has remained constant and sitewide mods aren't going to take down images that don't violate any rules because a small minority of users don't like them. If they don't like the politics stream, there are other streams they can participate in like politicsTOO or conservatives that may cater more to their views or to a community-run alternative, or if you don't like any of those options, you can create your own stream. Even if leftists ideologues took over Imgflip and somehow replaced me and the other Community Mods with members from their own ranks, they would still be held accountable by the site owner and he wouldn't allow for them to wreak havoc on the community. Sloth and his team are free to mod their stream as they see fit, if people don't like what they are doing, then people will stop participating there and their stream will collapse. Just because one stream is making it clear they only want one side posting there doesn't mean the rest of the site will follow suit.

fair enough - I made my opinion/prediction known, I'll drop it

I find the idea that someone can destroy the site due to how they moderate a stream absolutely bizarre. Nobody is forced to participate in any stream they don't want to, there's plenty of other streams to participate in. And politicsTOO isn't alone when it comes to enforcing their viewpoint, similar streams like conservatives and Real_Politics also have their standards on what is allowable and what is not on their streams. You don't have to agree with them, but the fact is stream owners and moderators are free to mod their streams as they please as long as it doesn't violate ToS.

I've seen it happen on other sites. Moderation cracks down to appease the squeakiest wheels and users stop participating because everything gets deleted anyway.

I was part of a replacement moderator team on one site after the existing moderators formed a clique and the site was hemorrhaging users. The moderators were promoting their own content and the content of their friends while deleting competing or opposing content. The owner purged the bad blood and we tripled the user base.

I understand that each stream has their own rules, but I guarantee that conservative politics streams will be far more lenient than liberal politics streams. This will result in an imbalance - liberals will be able to post anywhere while conservatives will be relegated to only their own streams.

You’re right, there is not truly a “free speech right” on Imgflip, being a private site. It’s a well-known expression that has a habit of creeping in.

Better to say there are free speech “values” here. And they’re ranked pretty dang high on the list of things Imgflip values. But they are balanced out by a commitment to stop things like blatant harassment, violent content, porn (actual porn, i.e. nudity and sex acts), etc.

Racism, sexism, homophobia — those are also banned per site terms, but they’re also hotly-contested gray areas right now. Well-intentioned people disagree about whether content falls in that category, or what those things even are.

Yes, we do value free speech and debate on PoliticsTOO as well. But we draw the line in a different place than the mods of politics stream. And I personally believe it’s a misnomer to say “debate” can occur on a subject like Obama’s birthplace. The birth certificate was released. He was born in Hawaii, ergo was a natural-born U.S. citizen and eligible to be President. It’s public.

You either accept that reality or you don’t, and if you don’t, you fall deeper and deeper down a rabbit-hole in search of justifications for that belief. We will not platform such conspiracies.

If evidence later comes to light, like on the Wuhan Lab Covid origin story, that offers support to (or even proves) a thing that was once considered a conspiracy, then we’re subject to revising our stance. But not until there’s real evidence.

Whatever - you asked for debate and then deleted and banned anyone who dared to attempt to engage in debate. That was cowardly and shows that your true motivations aren't debate, but confirmation of your own beliefs. Everything I put into the comment that you deleted can be backed up by facts published by the CDC, FDA, and HHS - official government sites......but it's propaganda according to your fragile beliefs.

Like OP said, PoliticsTOO is just one stream. There are other streams with conservative political content guidelines, or even basically no content guidelines at all, like the main politics stream.

As long as your meme isn’t calling for death to XYZ person or group (which is a TOS violation everywhere), it’s typically allowed in politics, even if your opinion on politics happens to be an opinion on Minecraft — I’ve seen plenty of those cluttering up the feed.

PoliticsTOO serves as a place where liberal content can be readily found without users having to dig through dozens of right-wing or Minecraft memes to find it. End of the day, it’s simply content organization. Like a stream for dogs or cats. Do you go to the cats stream looking for dogs? No.

I mod a stream with no political content guidelines, Politics_Redux, although I typically am the only one there. (Harassment is still banned)

I contribute frequently to but I don’t even mod yet another stream, politics3, which is set for auto-approve and has no guidelines at all.

Being timered or even banned from just one stream on Imgflip isn’t a major impairment of your free speech rights.

Nobody said anything about free speech rights. The first amendment applies to government censorship, this site is privately owned.

Political debate, however, needs equal footing. If you want to pretend to welcome debate, and then delete/ban anyone who tries to debate you - don't expect to walk away smelling like a rose.

Hey thank you for chiming in!

Yes, putting that in its original context, I support that mod decision 100%.

Thanks for pointing this out - Your stream is 2 for 2:

2 different mods, deleting 2 different comments in direct reply to them. It's pathetic. Enjoy your echo chamber.

 "I extended a get-out-of-jail-free card (also known as a “jubilee”) to all previously-streambanned memers. " THAT IS ABSOLUTELY NOT TRUE
you banned me for two hours simply because I commented on your post and you said I had wrong information.
BANNED instead of discussed. Hence the power trip meme I posted that got me an 8 hour ban. Those being the two of aprox 10 times times I commented in politicsToo. And the ONLY two times I was banned.

You were not streambanned (meaning totally blackballed in perpetuity) prior to this feature being introduced. And you’re still not streambanned.

You were comment timered twice for violating our rules. 2 hour and 8 hour bans — rather low punishments.

Funny, the one you accused of having a "power trip" wasn't Sloth or me. You & two others coordinated an attack against our newest mod--who hasn't even had time to offend you yet. You appear to hate someone just for being associated with politicsTOO.

No, actually I didn't hate on them. So someone stating "don't make me do a big head" is ok, but me asking "power going to your head?" When they're talking about banning people for harrassment isnt? Good to know

The first comment was obviously a joke. Yours was part of a series of comments by 3 people ganging up on someone; your part was to take that joke & distort it into an insult.

You assume too much, princess