[D] Is NS a safe space for leftists?

[Ethel mermania]

You're an academic type?

Yes.

But back to the thread topic: the OP doesn't seem to have chipped in to the thread for quite a while. Should we consider this issue resolved?

I did not know that, one day you will have to tell us what you academic about.

And no, the horse is still breathing, gotta beat it way more for this site.

[Woldoina]

Question is. Is NS a safe space for RIGHTISTS?

[Ethel mermania]

Question is. Is NS a safe space for RIGHTISTS?

no.

[Devionsa]

Embarrassing thread, Glorious Honk Honk.

Take a *** warning for flaming. ***

Sorry, I forgot. It is still embarrassing though.

[Fyrn-Gestreon]

Question is. Is NS a safe space for RIGHTISTS?

The number of clashes I've seen between monarchists and socialists tells me no.

[Nakena]

No. Altough they tend in general to get better around with the rules than rightists.

They also were in general far more effective and efficient to create their own safe spaces on this website. Whereas the rightists often failed at doing so.

[Lord Dominator]

Nationstates mechanically is designed explicitly biased to libertarian ideals

What site are you on that it's biased towards Libertarians?

[Fyrn-Gestreon]

Nationstates mechanically is designed explicitly biased to libertarian ideals

What site are you on that it's biased towards Libertarians?

Someone's clearly never had their charmlessness hit the roof after passing a minor deregulatory reform lol

[Nakena]

Nationstates mechanically is designed explicitly biased to libertarian ideals

What site are you on that it's biased towards Libertarians?

The original game mechanics are. If you max out all states you become an anarcho-capitalist anarchy.

[Western Theram]

i mean i do happen to notice alot of leftists but as far as i can tell this site has been pretty non biased. i mean i got a warning for saying "acab" once but i kinda deserved it since i didn't elaborate my opinion and just said the acronym and nothing more. if you don't break the rules you should be fine

[Lord Dominator]

What site are you on that it's biased towards Libertarians?

The original game mechanics are. If you max out all states you become an anarcho-capitalist anarchy.

I'm not sure I see the bias in having a system wherein maxing out the freedom stats results in no government (particular emphasis on the political freedom one) - even by name alone, there are plenty of other government types from the freedom trio of stats that represent reasonably 'good' outcomes.

[VlaRiSsiA]

Ah yes, GHK, aka Dennis Prager at it again.

[Woldoina]

As a conseritive I dont feel its a safe space for rightists. Just saying im a conseritive on ANY discusion thread gets me bashed around by communist leftists. The leftists are fine. If fascism gets cracked down opon why doesnt communism? NS is biased to leftists and coseritives are bashed around, conemed and then forgotton...

[VlaRiSsiA]

As a conseritive I dont feel its a safe space for rightists. Just saying im a conseritive on ANY discusion thread gets me bashed around by communist leftists. The leftists are fine. If fascism gets cracked down opon why doesnt communism? NS is biased to leftists and coseritives are bashed around, conemed and then forgotton...

Nationstates isn't a safe space for anyone. Max Berry made NS as a simulation game, not for gOmMuNisT pRopAGaNdA. He doesn't really have control over NSG, since this site was made for nation role-playing, not just general discussion. Sure, you can argue that the mods are biased towards one side or another, but that doesn't make this whole site a 'leftist circlejerk'. OP was way too vague, which is why everyone is criticizing him. Not some sort of 'lEfT wINg cOnSPiraCy'.

[Byzconia]

As a conseritive I dont feel its a safe space for rightists. Just saying im a conseritive on ANY discusion thread gets me bashed around by communist leftists.

Oh no, people who disagree with you ideologically, disagree with you ideologically? The horror!

The leftists are fine.

"Fine" as in..?

If fascism gets cracked down opon why doesnt communism?

Where are you seeing "fascism" getting cracked down on? We literally have at least one user on this site is openly fascist (Republica Fascista Sociale Italiana) and seems to get along just fine.

NS is biased to leftists

No, it's biased to people who follow the rules.

and coseritives are bashed around, conemed and then forgotton...

Dude, get over it. The site isn't "biased" because leftists are allowed to voice their disagreements with you, that's just how open dialogue works. If it's too much for you, put them on your Foe list. It's really not that complicated.

[Aeritai]

As a conseritive I dont feel its a safe space for rightists. Just saying im a conseritive on ANY discusion thread gets me bashed around by communist leftists. The leftists are fine. If fascism gets cracked down opon why doesnt communism? NS is biased to leftists and coseritives are bashed around, conemed and then forgotton...

There have been times that leftist got warned and banned though...

[Exalted Inquellian State]

As a conseritive I dont feel its a safe space for rightists. Just saying im a conseritive on ANY discusion thread gets me bashed around by communist leftists.

Oh no, people who disagree with you ideologically, disagree with you ideologically? The horror!

The leftists are fine.

"Fine" as in..?

If fascism gets cracked down opon why doesnt communism?

Where are you seeing "fascism" getting cracked down on? We literally have at least one user on this site is openly fascist (Republica Fascista Sociale Italiana) and seems to get along just fine.

NS is biased to leftists

No, it's biased to people who follow the rules.

and coseritives are bashed around, conemed and then forgotton...

Dude, get over it. The site isn't "biased" because leftists are allowed to voice their disagreements with you, that's just how open dialogue works. If it's too much for you, put them on your Foe list. It's really not that complicated.

RFSI Isn't racist. Saiwana is considered racist, but he gets frequently bashed by everyone and was ban hammered a few times. And there's a t least two tankies here who say the USSR was democratic.

[Sicilian Imperial-Capitalist Empire]

After getting warned/banned more than once by Moderation for the "crime" of unintentionally offending leftists, and especially after reading Page's sig,

Welcome to NationStates, a safe space for fascists so long as they express their murderous ideology euphemistically. Leftists who hurt their feelings will be banned.

...I just had to respond with this discussion thread. Is NS a safe space for leftists? Should Moderation do more to rule based on facts rather than feelings?

TL;DR answer: Absolutely.

Some leftists have argued that NS is actually a safe space for fascists and that it's actually leftists who are being "unjustly" censored for trolling (in some cases, literally clear-cut, all-x-are-y trolling, e.g. ACAB, which many leftists magically think it's okay to say and which I myself have reported on multiple occasions). Given that NS seems to be overwhelmingly dominated by radical leftists, and given the sheer amount of hate I've been roundly subjected to by leftists, particularly in the months and weeks leading up to the 2020 U.S. Election, as well as a number of unjust warnings and bans against my name by Moderation, I take strong exception to this extraordinary claim, a claim that reeks very strongly of an unfounded and highly ironic victim mentality on the part of the Left. I'm strongly inclined to believe the reverse is true, only substitute "fascists" with liberals, moderates, conservatives and centrists.

A site that is dominated by leftist, openly, unironically, and shamelessly communist and Marxist users is conducive to the creation of numerous, de facto safe spaces and echo chambers on NSG such as MAGAthread, the U.S. Election thread, and the U.S. BLM riots thread, to name a few, with liberal and conservative players exceedingly far and few in between. It is also conducive to a highly toxic environment that lends itself to bad-faith, leftist dogpiling, gaslighting, defamatory smear campaigns and character assassinations, and sustained harassment across multiple threads of non-leftist players such as myself. Hardly a safe space for fascists, real or imagined, if you ask me. Literally no one likes fascists, but everyone just adores communists and Marxists.

Moderation has stated in its Election sticky that given the demographic supremacy of leftist players on NS, they would do more to correct for any leftist bias in reporting by trawling the past ten pages of a thread or so. Yet leftist sensibilities are apparently considered so sacrosanct by Moderation that it directly affects how they rule on certain posts:

TIL that condoning self-defense, calling for illegal immigrants to be decisively rounded up and deported by law enforcement (one-day ban for "covid misinfo" was downgraded to a warning for "trolling" on appeal), and calling Arab/Islamic culture's compatibility with liberal, democratic values into question are all now actionable offenses. Sarcastically referring to Islam as a "religion of peace" is trolling too because god only knows why. Insulting the King of Thailand and expressing political dissent in the strongest of terms is also considered "trolling".

I'm beginning to think this is less about combating "trolling" and "hate speech" and more about appeasing the delicate sensitivities of radical leftists, Muslims, and authoritarians (right-wing and left-wing) alike irrespective of Moderation's actual intentions. I find the second example regarding my ban (revised to a warning) for decrying illegal immigration to be particularly suspicious given some of the strongly-worded responses to my post from the usual suspects, the sudden, unexpected spate of reports against me, and their openly stated wish that I be removed from this site for expressing opinions they happen to disagree with. I got roundly singled out by leftists and swiftly banned, initially for "covid misinfo", subsequently downgraded to a warning for "trolling" on appeal (a possible instance of moving the goalposts?), by Moderation while I was AFK for inadvertently hurting their delicate feelings when all I was doing was canvassing for a political candidate on U.S. Election Day and attempting in vain to alter the outcome of that election.

I can't help but suspect there was a certain degree of appeasement involved on the part of Moderation and they were under tremendous, albeit unjustified, pressure to act against me while I was helplessly AFK and blissfully unaware of my situation. I also can't help but suspect that this naked attempt by leftists to get me banned may have been possibly coordinated given how much hate I've gotten from them these past couple of months. I'm concerned that this and other reports against myself and others could be politically motivated.

That's just the most egregious example I can think of. Leftists whose feelings have been injured have gone as far as to get certain players they disagree with banned from the site for the mere "crime" of wrongthink rather than for any actual instance of trolling or bigotry, and at least one of them (not naming names) has said so openly. They do this even on the flimsiest of pretexts, such as "covid misinformation" that turns out not to actually be misinformation at all, but facts verified by reputable news sources (and rightly upheld as such on appeal), at which point the goalpost abruptly shifts to "trolling". (To be fair, the covid misinfo rule has also been wrongly applied to a left-wing player (and overturned on appeal) on at least one occasion, but that's for a different thread.)

These leftists are attempting to enforce cancel culture on this very site with mixed results. They cannot and should not be allowed to succeed under any circumstances. I hope Moderation takes note of this disturbing trend, NS avoids the same fate as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other spineless tech companies, and Max Barry takes a firm stand against this communist red terror that's currently playing out both online and IRL, in America, Europe, and Hong Kong.

We liberals and conservatives are the ones being routinely censored for our opinions, not leftists. I, for one, am willing to play my part, no matter how small, to push back against this rising tide of political censorship even if it means fighting a losing battle and being vastly outnumbered on this site. I will not go gently into that good night. No surrender.

To be clear, I'm not accusing the mods of deliberately singling out certain players based solely on their social or political views or of having some kind of nefarious agenda. My criticism isn't intended in bad faith. Leftists do get warned and banned too, and Moderation's refusal to budge on ACAB is commendable despite them creating an entire discussion thread on Moderation demanding special exemptions and preferential treatment for themselves while pretending to be the victims of "systemic injustice" like they typically do for certain groups of people IRL under a thin veneer of "social justice" because they got warned for all-x-are-y trolling. But aside from that rare exception to the rule, I would argue that NS is skewed in favor of leftists, not against them.

So I turn the question over to NSers. Is NS a safe space for leftists? Should Moderation do more to rule based on facts rather than feelings?

Saying there's some sort of grand conspiracy against you and your fellow "liberals and conservatives" is definitely not helping your case, and arguably makes you look just a little crazy.

Anyways, I've seen plenty of moderation posts and, as far as I can tell, there doesn't really seem to be any political bias. Sure, the mods make mistakes (I mean they're humans, they probably will), but that's no indicator of any political bias. Hell, you're assuming the mods are leftist by accusing them of having such sympathies, but the reality is that neither you nor I know the political beliefs of the mods as a whole. At the end of the day, NationStates is just a fun game made by Max Barry to promote his books and have some fun events. No more, no less.

That is all I need to say on this matter, good day NSM.

[Glorious Hong Kong]

How is insulting Vajiralongkorn against site rules? Does NS have servers in Bangkok?

Like I said, it isn't about his ideals or opinions, but for breaking site rules. His post definitely breaks the [PG-13] rule of this site, as well as admitting to willingly violating the laws in his country (which would constitute "Seeking Help with Illegal Activities"), and promoting the idea that it should be okay to say thing such as "the Holocaust should have happened, and we'll do it again" (slightly murkier on this one, but it is hard not to interpret his post that way when you look at his aim).

Has nothing to do with his hatred for Vajiralongkorn, but rather the way in which he expressed it.

I think you need to read the site rules again. Swear words are considered PG-13. I did not break that rule in any possible way. I've also spoken critically of the HK and Chinese governments, including in that very post. In case you weren't paying attention, the HK National Security Law applies to every single person on this planet no matter what country they reside in or what their nationality is. I fail to see what illegal "help" I was seeking. By your logic, I and most of the players on the Hong Kong thread would've been banned, DEATed, and DOSed by this point because we dared to call out the CCP and Carrie Lam's bullshit openly and repeatedly, which is explicitly against the law in HK and the entire world.

And do you honestly think I believe that Jews should be exterminated all over again? Really? I'm a ZIONIST ffs. If you had read my posting history, you would've known this. I don't know about you, but the guy who reported me is a known pro-CCP sympathizer, so it's pretty clear what the motive of the report was. Both you and him have willfully misinterpreted my post in the worst possible light.

Insulting Thai king is illegal in Thailand, so any criticism of him could be classified as promoting illegal activity then, technically?

That's a little fuzzy, but most likely not, as he isn't directly saying that people should ignore censorship, but rather pointing out how terrible censorship is (as far as I understand it). He does, however, admit to breaking the laws of his own country, and actively shows he has no regrets about it. By site rules that's a punishable offense.

If it were me moderating, and he had simply expressed his hate for Vajiralongkorn and censorship, I definitely would not have taken action against him.

Read the rules again. It is not an actionable offense to "break the laws of my own country" by calling HK CE Carrie Lam all sorts of names in the book in response to her constant fuckery of Hong Kong and its citizens. If it is, then kindly tell the mods to delete all of my nations and permaban me from this site because I stand guilty as fucking charged.

So if I lived in Saudi Arabia and I encouraged people to publicly protest Islam, the mods would ban me for encouraging illegal activity?

Potentially, yes. Most likely they would issue a warning rather than an outright ban. Though a mod would probably be able to answer better than I.

That's...literally not how it works. If the mods did that, then they would be actively aiding and abetting in the repression of political and religious dissent in Saudi Arabia. They would be actively aiding and abetting in the persecution of atheists and homosexuals. And if that were the case, I wouldn't even be on this site, because I would be boycotting it in protest. Thankfully, this isn't the case and your assertions are untrue.

So is that why Glorious Hong Kong was warned? Because they live in Malaysia and they insult Islam and support Charlie Hebdo?

No, it was that plus going out of his way to break the [PG-13] rule, as well as the implications that people should be able to freely promote genocide. It adds up and tips the scales. If it was an isolated violation, they probably would not have been warned.

I was not "going out of my way" to violate PG-13. Seriously, where do you even get that idea? And why the hell would I or any civilized person living in the 21st century "freely promote genocide"? Can you not read even the slightest hint of irony in my post? Jesus fucking Christ.

Let's cut the snark, please.

There's nothing wrong with starting a discussion over whether forum moderation is biased for or against a specific perspective, and whether - in his words - Moderation should 'do more to rule based on facts rather than feelings'.

This doesn't mean that the rest of the player base, or indeed the Moderation team, need to agree with him; but he's perfectly entitled to start a discussion on the topic, and to invite others to engage with that discussion.

Snark is a perfectly reasonable reaction to what is essentially nonsense.


What's there to discuss here?
It's just another one of GHK's whines about non-existent oppression because he went over the line with his usual shtick a bunch of times and got in trouble for it.

And what lines would that be exactly? I only have two warnings to my name, and one of them was a "covid misinfo" ban that was downgraded on appeal the moment the mods realized I wasn't actually spreading misinformation about illegal immigrants and that your complete and total ignorance of the immigration and pandemic situation in my country coupled with your pre-existing prejudice against me led you to jump to all sorts of fantastical conclusions and disingenuously accuse me of being a racist and a fascist yet again. If you guys had known anything at all about the situation in my country, you wouldn't have jumped to report me for "spreading unequivocal misinformation" and successfully getting me banned. It took two appeals and four days just to get the ban retroactively downgraded to a warning. I hold you and your comrades directly responsible for this. One of you has openly expressed a desire to see me banned from this site, so don't even pretend my feelings have anything to do with it. You were simply looking for an excuse to follow through on your wishes. Your aim is to see me driven off this site altogether. That is a FACT.

The other warning is addressed elsewhere in this post.

There's no bias to discuss here. It's just them refusing to acknowledge that maybe they are the problem, rather than everyone else.

You realize simply calling me a racist, a fascist, a "pathological Sinophobe", a bigot, etc. over and over without evidence and across multiple threads is a form of flaming and harassment, right? You realize this is how several of your comrades got banned, right? Maybe it's you guys who are the problem, not me.

Meanwhile, the guy runs to the mods the second anyone even vaguely disagrees with him.
Which might not be relevant, but it is hilariously hypocritical.

You're the ones who just tried to get me banned, successfully, for stating a position on an issue that just happened to injure your feelings, but I'm the hypocrite snowflake who runs to the mods.

Just admit it. It's not about my feelings. It's about me having to tiptoe around your delicate leftist sensibilities for fear of getting warned or banned yet again. It's about your collective vendetta against me for wrongspeak. Your constant harassment and multiple reports against me are clearly politically motivated. It's pretty clear you want me gone from this site. Don't even try to hide it. I have not even seen other centrist or conservative players being singled out in the particularly aggressive manner that I've been singled out, particularly the moment I officially came out in support of Donald Trump. Y'all seem to really have it out for me for some reason. And you wonder why exactly I feel the way I do about the Left in the first place.

A safe space for me, but not for thee.

Yes, NationStates absolutely is a safe space for you and your comrades. One that involves dogpiling, flaming, harassing, gaslighting, and even reporting anyone you disagree with. One that involves giving yourselves a collective pat on the back every time a "right-wing" player "gets owned". One in which leftists constitute the majority of the site's users. God forbid if I ever get doxxed and outed IRL for my views by people like you simply because you strongly dislike what I have to say and you suddenly decide on an arbitrary whim to "cancel" me. I would most likely be rotting away in a prison cell for 10+ years for "sedition" for "insulting Islam" or some such nonsense. Just think about that for a moment. And that's Malaysia. Don't even get me started on Hong Kong. I have even more I'd like to say about people like you, but that would actually constitute flaming and trolling, so I won't say it no matter how true I think it is.

NS Moderation does tend to favor and uphold socially progressive paradigms and perspectives on the whole. This is largely a reflection of the attitudes and Overton Window of internet-savvy persons under the age of forty. As a group, we're more likely to be affirming of the gender identities of transpeople, we're more likely to be accepting of same-sex relationships, we're more likely to be accepting of racial, ethnic, and religious groups that are dissimilar to us, etc. Some of that is built into our rules, and I actually would like to build some other common social values into the rules as well - at least around the issue that is currently under a moratorium. Additionally, as you stated, NS tends to be dominated by left-wing posters, though this is far less true now than it was when I joined the site. This leads to a higher frequency of right-wing trolling, flaming, and flamebaiting being reported, which in turn often leads to right-wingers self-destructing or rage-posting in a way that ensures future moderation of their behavior.

I'm not right-wing or conservative myself, and I don't hold many of the views about LGBT rights, abortion, and the rights of minorities that many on the hard right hold to the point of their views constituting trolling, yet I still get singled out by leftists for "racist trolling" anyway.

That said, beyond these implicit biases, the Moderation team makes a gallant effort of enforcing the rules equally and fairly. That's why people who write "ACAB" or who refer to Mitt Romney by the adorable moniker of "Mittens" get mod-smacked and why white nationalists can last on the site if they carefully adhere to the rules and state their opinions in a polite and somewhat watered-down way. For instance, while you can't outright say "black people are dumb" or "Jews run the world (I wish)", you can begin threads about IQ and racial disparities or Jewish privilege and power so long as you don't outright troll anyone. And both pretty much accomplish the same goal as being openly racist would. Please, please, please, don't start these threads. Because I'm not in the mood.

I agree that the mods are doing their best to apply the rules evenhandedly, but even then, the views and pressure from certain types of players leads them to skew their judgments in one direction or the other.

While I think Farn was a bit over-zealous on interpreting the remark about Rittenhouse's self-defense as advocating death, the language in it was more than a little baity, despite it basically recycling comments that both Gallo and I had made in previous threads. I'd have called it borderline - but I'm not a mod. Farn, on another day, might have called it borderline even. People are people after all. With regard to a lot of the others, they were far more overt about being COVID-19 misinformation or trolling/flamebaiting. I have argued, in the past, that more classical Islamic paradigms are not compatible with conventional conceptualizations of liberal democracy - because that's not built into the major madhhabs or even into the prevailing narrative about how society should be structured in much of the Dar as-Salaam. I haven't gotten warned or banned yet. Largely because I was talking about religions and philosophies rather than people.

So, I would argue, are some of the people who got smacked. They just happened to do so less eloquently than you have.

As has been stated semi-often, a lot rests not on what you're saying but on how you're saying it. I believe more conscientious reporting of left-wing posters by right-wing posters FOR ACTUAL RULES VIOLATIONS along with more careful consideration of how right-wingers compose posts would dramatically improve perceived imperfections and unfairness in how moderation functions.

Pretty much this. Still, the fact that I got warned simply because I happened to word my post about illegal immigration in such a way that was arbitrarily deemed to be highly offensive to leftists and therefore politically incorrect is very concerning to me. I'm not entirely sure which part of my post constituted trolling and the mods never answered my question. Should I have said illegal immigrants should be "tracked down" rather than "hunted down" and apprehended (by law enforcement)? How could my post have been worded differently to avoid getting smacked? I find that the line between civility and incivility can be rather arbitrary and subjective.

And must I always insert a disclaimer with links related to any claims about the coronavirus pandemic that I even remotely suspect leftists may take issue with out of ignorance or revenge or both? I find this patently ridiculous. The burden of proof should always fall on the accuser to prove their guilt, never the accused to prove their innocence. Already, the coronavirus misinformation rule has been abused for just this reason, as I knew it would from the very beginning, and I'm one of its casualties.

This is what cancel culture looks like in practice and this is something leftists are attempting to impose on this site. My ban (now overturned) for "covid misinfo" is solid proof of this. While NS is not entirely a safe space for leftists, and actual Nazis and fascists who express their opinions very carefully are allowed on this site, leftists seem to want to drive not just actual fascists, but also conservatives and centrists whom they have arbitrarily deemed to be racist and fascist such as myself, from the site.

This just brings me back to my original point about having to walk on leftist eggshells and NS being a leftist safe space.

Even beyond that, conversations and debates are far, far more friendly when you don't set out to antagonize the person across the table or lose your temper halfway through. And I have no idea why kindness and charity aren't more common on NSG given that most of us are in the same few age groups and have very similar hobbies. Just be nice to the Stalin fanboy, even if he probably eats buggers and has a tankie playlist on Spotify. Be nice to the eco-fash girl, even if she fantasizes about Linkola calling her "my little polar bear" and has some racist beliefs about the Swedes.

If only I had your degree of patience and understanding. Unfortunately, losing my temper is something that happens from time to time. I'm also not one to forgive and forget very easily. I have a very long-term memory that stretches back a lifetime.

condoning self-defense

There is a difference between condoning self-defense and talking about how cool it is that people you don't like got shot

He/she did not say it was cool. He/she said it was no major loss. Admittedly, this one may be a little borderline. I can't speak for them.

calling for illegal immigrants to be decisively rounded up and deported by law enforcement

There is a difference between calling for illegal immigrants to be deported, and spreading misinformation about a public health crisis

Except I wasn't spreading misinformation and I have multiple sources including local news reports from my country to prove it. The mods have ruled that I wasn't spreading misinformation and downgraded my ban on appeal, although I fail to see how my post constitutes trolling regardless.

calling Arab/Islamic culture's compatibility with liberal, democratic values into question

There is a difference between calling a culture's compatibility with ideas/values into question, and declaring an ethnic group to be incapable of ideas/values

Except, in this case, and in many cases, this is not what has happened, and yet players are warned anyway. The user in question clarified his post as referring to Arab culture, only for his clarification to be taken as "evidence" of trolling. I'm shocked to find that even referring to communism, not even a religion, as cancer, could very well be an actionable offense as well even though I would be attacking communism and not communists. Maybe just saying "fuck communism" could be a little spammy, but trolling? Come on.

Insulting the King of Thailand and expressing political dissent in the strongest of terms is also considered "trolling".

There is a difference between mocking countries' restrictions on freedom of speech and violating the rules of the forums

Which I would argue I did not do. You don't honestly believe I actually meant what I said when I wrote that the Holocaust should happen again, do you? I threw in plenty of obvious clues, yet some guy with known pro-CCP sympathies saw fit to report me anyway.

Sarcastically referring to Islam as a "religion of peace" is trolling too because god only knows why.

It turns out that having six years of that phrase primarily being used to troll in terror attack threads lowers the amount of leeway that people will get. Quite strange if you ask me.

A religion or ideology is being criticized, not a group of people. Harshly criticizing and mocking Islam and referring to it as a "religion of peace", especially in the wake of terror attacks perpetrated in its name, should absolutely be permitted just as referring to communism or feminism as cancer should absolutely be permitted. People may be protected from trolling, but ideas certainly shouldn't be. Countries, I would argue, fall somewhere in between. I don't know if "fuck the CCP" is considered trolling and I'm not willing to find out.

Nationstates mechanically is designed explicitly biased to libertarian ideals and the bias on the forums is pretty manageable if real and dependent on a per-moderator basis.

Nationstates isn't really biased towards the left. Rather it is biased towards a, in my opinion nonsensical, pseudo-academic front of "civility" that explicitly prevents leftists from generalizing Fascists hence the post you quoted. If I wanted to point out the ties of the protesters your particularly praising to Islamists burning churches in Syria and American far-right organizations as the Proud Boys I would have to choose my language far more carefully than you do when you criticize the left.

I sincerely think the bias your complaining about has a lot more to do with the larger amount of right-wingers and centrists on this platform.

I agree. In many cases, it isn't the ideals you express on the forums that gets you in trouble with moderation but rather how you express these ideals. Even with a "civil" front or rationale, homophobia, racism, and other forms of intolerance are acceptable on the forums and are not uncommon to encounter.

The line separating civility from incivility can be rather blurred IMO. My views on illegal immigration were apparently worded in an "uncivil" and "trolling" manner (I fail to see how) and I have been wrongly accused (and now vindicated by the mods) of "spreading unequivocal misinformation" about illegal immigration contributing to the spread of coronavirus in my country. It took two appeals and multiple links to local news reports to get my ban downgraded to a warning. I blame ignorance about Malaysia and leftist political correctness for this.

I find this kind of puritanical, authoritarian, cancel culture mindset that some of the leftist players have to be both stifling and untrustworthy. I feel roundly betrayed both IRL and online, and I have a HUGE problem with lies, gaslighting, betrayal, and a smug sense of moral superiority, condescension, and self-righteousness. NS per se isn't anti-free speech. Pro-cancel culture leftists who frequent this site and maliciously single out people like me are anti-free speech. The fact that they actually managed to get me banned on such a flimsy and groundless pretext as "covid misinformation" proves as much.

After getting warned/banned more than once by Moderation for the "crime" of unintentionally offending leftists, and especially after reading Page's sig,



...I just had to respond with this discussion thread. Is NS a safe space for leftists? Should Moderation do more to rule based on facts rather than feelings?

TL;DR answer: Absolutely.

Some leftists have argued that NS is actually a safe space for fascists and that it's actually leftists who are being "unjustly" censored for trolling (in some cases, literally clear-cut, all-x-are-y trolling, e.g. ACAB, which many leftists magically think it's okay to say and which I myself have reported on multiple occasions). Given that NS seems to be overwhelmingly dominated by radical leftists, and given the sheer amount of hate I've been roundly subjected to by leftists, particularly in the months and weeks leading up to the 2020 U.S. Election, as well as a number of unjust warnings and bans against my name by Moderation, I take strong exception to this extraordinary claim, a claim that reeks very strongly of an unfounded and highly ironic victim mentality on the part of the Left. I'm strongly inclined to believe the reverse is true, only substitute "fascists" with liberals, moderates, conservatives and centrists.

A site that is dominated by leftist, openly, unironically, and shamelessly communist and Marxist users is conducive to the creation of numerous, de facto safe spaces and echo chambers on NSG such as MAGAthread, the U.S. Election thread, and the U.S. BLM riots thread, to name a few, with liberal and conservative players exceedingly far and few in between. It is also conducive to a highly toxic environment that lends itself to bad-faith, leftist dogpiling, gaslighting, defamatory smear campaigns and character assassinations, and sustained harassment across multiple threads of non-leftist players such as myself. Hardly a safe space for fascists, real or imagined, if you ask me. Literally no one likes fascists, but everyone just adores communists and Marxists.

Moderation has stated in its Election sticky that given the demographic supremacy of leftist players on NS, they would do more to correct for any leftist bias in reporting by trawling the past ten pages of a thread or so. Yet leftist sensibilities are apparently considered so sacrosanct by Moderation that it directly affects how they rule on certain posts:

TIL that condoning self-defense, calling for illegal immigrants to be decisively rounded up and deported by law enforcement (one-day ban for "covid misinfo" was downgraded to a warning for "trolling" on appeal), and calling Arab/Islamic culture's compatibility with liberal, democratic values into question are all now actionable offenses. Sarcastically referring to Islam as a "religion of peace" is trolling too because god only knows why. Insulting the King of Thailand and expressing political dissent in the strongest of terms is also considered "trolling".

I'm beginning to think this is less about combating "trolling" and "hate speech" and more about appeasing the delicate sensitivities of radical leftists, Muslims, and authoritarians (right-wing and left-wing) alike irrespective of Moderation's actual intentions. I find the second example regarding my ban (revised to a warning) for decrying illegal immigration to be particularly suspicious given some of the strongly-worded responses to my post from the usual suspects, the sudden, unexpected spate of reports against me, and their openly stated wish that I be removed from this site for expressing opinions they happen to disagree with. I got roundly singled out by leftists and swiftly banned, initially for "covid misinfo", subsequently downgraded to a warning for "trolling" on appeal (a possible instance of moving the goalposts?), by Moderation while I was AFK for inadvertently hurting their delicate feelings when all I was doing was canvassing for a political candidate on U.S. Election Day and attempting in vain to alter the outcome of that election.

I can't help but suspect there was a certain degree of appeasement involved on the part of Moderation and they were under tremendous, albeit unjustified, pressure to act against me while I was helplessly AFK and blissfully unaware of my situation. I also can't help but suspect that this naked attempt by leftists to get me banned may have been possibly coordinated given how much hate I've gotten from them these past couple of months. I'm concerned that this and other reports against myself and others could be politically motivated.

That's just the most egregious example I can think of. Leftists whose feelings have been injured have gone as far as to get certain players they disagree with banned from the site for the mere "crime" of wrongthink rather than for any actual instance of trolling or bigotry, and at least one of them (not naming names) has said so openly. They do this even on the flimsiest of pretexts, such as "covid misinformation" that turns out not to actually be misinformation at all, but facts verified by reputable news sources (and rightly upheld as such on appeal), at which point the goalpost abruptly shifts to "trolling". (To be fair, the covid misinfo rule has also been wrongly applied to a left-wing player (and overturned on appeal) on at least one occasion, but that's for a different thread.)

These leftists are attempting to enforce cancel culture on this very site with mixed results. They cannot and should not be allowed to succeed under any circumstances. I hope Moderation takes note of this disturbing trend, NS avoids the same fate as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other spineless tech companies, and Max Barry takes a firm stand against this communist red terror that's currently playing out both online and IRL, in America, Europe, and Hong Kong.

We liberals and conservatives are the ones being routinely censored for our opinions, not leftists. I, for one, am willing to play my part, no matter how small, to push back against this rising tide of political censorship even if it means fighting a losing battle and being vastly outnumbered on this site. I will not go gently into that good night. No surrender.

To be clear, I'm not accusing the mods of deliberately singling out certain players based solely on their social or political views or of having some kind of nefarious agenda. My criticism isn't intended in bad faith. Leftists do get warned and banned too, and Moderation's refusal to budge on ACAB is commendable despite them creating an entire discussion thread on Moderation demanding special exemptions and preferential treatment for themselves while pretending to be the victims of "systemic injustice" like they typically do for certain groups of people IRL under a thin veneer of "social justice" because they got warned for all-x-are-y trolling. But aside from that rare exception to the rule, I would argue that NS is skewed in favor of leftists, not against them.

So I turn the question over to NSers. Is NS a safe space for leftists? Should Moderation do more to rule based on facts rather than feelings?

Saying there's some sort of grand conspiracy against you and your fellow "liberals and conservatives" is definitely not helping your case, and arguably makes you look just a little crazy.

Anyways, I've seen plenty of moderation posts and, as far as I can tell, there doesn't really seem to be any political bias. Sure, the mods make mistakes (I mean they're humans, they probably will), but that's no indicator of any political bias. Hell, you're assuming the mods are leftist by accusing them of having such sympathies, but the reality is that neither you nor I know the political beliefs of the mods. At the end of the day, NationStates is just a fun game made by Max Barry to promote his books and have some fun events. No more, no less.

That is all I need to say on this matter, good day NSM.

I'm not accusing the mods of being leftists, nor am I accusing them of willfully and deliberately collaborating with leftist players to get me banned from this site. I'm suggesting that they are under tremendous pressure from leftist players to get me banned from this site due to the left-skewed demographic. There's a big difference. While NS is not completely a leftist safe space, many leftist players seem to want to move it in that direction and implement cancel culture on their political opponents beginning with liberal dissidents such as myself who aren't even right-wing or conservative, let alone remotely racist or fascist. As soon as they're done with me, they will move on to the next player.

[Byzconia]

Oh no, people who disagree with you ideologically, disagree with you ideologically? The horror!


"Fine" as in..?


Where are you seeing "fascism" getting cracked down on? We literally have at least one user on this site is openly fascist (Republica Fascista Sociale Italiana) and seems to get along just fine.


No, it's biased to people who follow the rules.


Dude, get over it. The site isn't "biased" because leftists are allowed to voice their disagreements with you, that's just how open dialogue works. If it's too much for you, put them on your Foe list. It's really not that complicated.

RFSI Isn't racist. Saiwana is considered racist, but he gets frequently bashed by everyone and was ban hammered a few times. And there's a t least two tankies here who say the USSR was democratic.

Okay? No offense, but I really don't know what you're getting at here. RFSI's non-racism is probably one of the main reasons he hasn't been smacked down as often as one might think. Which kind of just demonstrates that the thing that gets you in trouble is racism rather than fascism.

[The Archregimancy]

Hell, you're assuming the mods are leftist by accusing them of having such sympathies, but the reality is that neither you nor I know the political beliefs of the mods.

Not entirely true.

Anyone who frequents the UK politics thread in NSG knows that I'm a member of a specific UK political party.

A couple of other members of the moderation team have also been open about their politics in different contexts.

However, other moderators deliberately choose to obscure their politics in order to avoid perceptions of bias.

It would, perhaps, be better to write 'neither you nor I know the political beliefs of the mods as a whole'. We have far more political diversity within the team than is commonly realised.

[Sicilian Imperial-Capitalist Empire]

Hell, you're assuming the mods are leftist by accusing them of having such sympathies, but the reality is that neither you nor I know the political beliefs of the mods.

Not entirely true.

Anyone who frequents the UK politics thread in NSG knows that I'm a member of a specific UK political party.

A couple of other members of the moderation team have also been open about their politics in different contexts.

However, other moderators deliberately choose to obscure their politics in order to avoid perceptions of bias.

It would, perhaps, be better to write 'neither you nor I know the political beliefs of the mods as a whole'. We have far more political diversity within the team than is commonly realised.

I definitely meant it like "mods as a whole," so will do.

[Fahran]

Some of us are over 50, he types primly.

This is true as well, she replies courteously, but all y'all are young at heart.

[Fahran]

Nationstates isn't really biased towards the left. Rather it is biased towards a, in my opinion nonsensical, pseudo-academic front of "civility" that explicitly prevents leftists from generalizing Fascists hence the post you quoted. If I wanted to point out the ties of the protesters your particularly praising to Islamists burning churches in Syria and American far-right organizations as the Proud Boys I would have to choose my language far more carefully than you do when you criticize the left.

Having referred to "pinkos as opposing any semblance of an agreeable and virtuous social order" in a jocular way on at least one occasion and gotten an informal warning for my trouble, I can confirm that NS Moderation takes a pretty consistent line against generalizing any group in a negative way - at least when the language behind it is intended to rile people up rather than make a serious argument. And civility isn't pseudo-academic. It's a prerequisite to any pluralistic society where we aren't nasty and cruel to one another while shouting utter nonsense at one another instead of conversing. If you want to get rid of pluralism, that's fine. I suggest Jewish theocracy as an alternative.

[Kexholm Karelia]

There are also some very clear disinformation/troll accounts, you know, whenever a thread gets made about the CCP, a bunch of accounts that just happened to be created that exact day jump in and start defending China