Hello fellow Lemmys. The mod team here at !news@lemmy.world has been in discussions about the best approach to ensure we stay unbiased with news during the U.S. Election Cycle.
While we can’t say “don’t point out flaws in candidates” - nor would we want to - we do believe that when you excessively post/comment/reply negative things in News about one person, instead of, say mixing it up about topics, this feels like you are using !news@lemmy.world as a propaganda machine.
While propaganda is a normal part of elections, by posting only one topic, about one person, you are abusing the NEWS community for politics, and this could even be seen as election interference. There are other communities that this would fit better.
Doing this will result in posts/comments being deleted (with the option to appeal, of course). Repeat offenders may see temporary bans. Keep doing after that, and you may reach our perma-ban list.
As of right now, this only apples to politics. We don’t plan to extend this to other areas, but that will change as needed.
If you’re going to punish people for spamming only negative things because its basically propaganda I’d hope you do the same for people who only spam positive things for the same reason. Things don’t stop being propaganda simply because they are positive, and if you only focus on the negative culprits then you’re effectively enforcing one type of propaganda over the other.
Yes, although we mention negative posts/comments as an example above, we will be keeping an eye out for all types of abuse.