Comic Strips

I'd rather this place doesn't turn into a Nazi bar, I'm in favor of banning hate

Bigotry belongs in the bin. Denial of platform is nice too. Banned creator list feels appropriate

I'll voice in favor of a banlist for bigoted artists. Letting bigots and other hateful people in with "relatable" content just normalizes their hateful material, even playing into possibly intentional "onroading" on their part to their prejudiced platform. It also reinforces the idea that targets of that hate need to "play nice" if they're not being targeted right then and there, and perpetuates the falsehood that these positions are a matter of "opinion" rather than an existential threat to the targeted.

A banlist would present a higher workload on the part of the mods, which is not something I feel can be demanded, but it would be helpful to have if the goal here is to create a welcoming environment.

MissesAutumnRains also brings up a good point (https://lemmy.ca/post/63256113/22736751) - Leaving it up to users to block bad content does nothing for new users who will have no such curation, and who will be left to assume the community is accepting of such content. Platforming hateful creators will silently push away those who find their content distasteful and entice users that agree with it to stay.

After reading the comments here I have been convinced we should create a list of these artists, and none of their content is welcome in this community.

Main points being:

• allowing their "nice" content creates a pipeline for users to their bigotry
• having it signals to new users we are ok with content from bigots
• it should make moderating easier because there is no need to deliberate what is ok by that creator

Nazis, racists, transphobes, homophobes are not welcome here under any context!

after removing the artist credit

Oh god, please not. This is a whole different can of worms that does not need to be opened in this particular discussion.

I would prefer that the content is not censored by someone else's moral compass. If it's content by a transphobic or otherwise bigoted artist then let us know in the comments. Book burning is bad, no matter who is doing the burning. I would prefer to be educated than have someone else determine what is appropriate for me to view.

TL:DR I'm an adult: I'd rather choose for myself.

I think if we require artist name in the title, people can easily filter it out.

Do not remove artist credit, people have the right to know who made the art. For the question of "can you separate art from the artist", everyone is going to have a different stance on it, and even then it may vary depending on the severity of the artist's action. Removing the artist credit removes people's autonomy in that regard.

It also opens the door for people to claim "Billy made one off hand joke 17 years ago, so now we must crop out all their credit because it's an advertisement".

Consistent rules will be best. Making exceptions and attempting to maintain a blacklist gets messy to manage and can get out of hand.

There are many comics in the world. Banning a handful of horrible creators won't starve the community for content. It will create space for non-horrible artists.

Allowing the "nice" comics by horrible people just creates a funnel for people to click though and be exposed to hateful ideas.

If in several months the ban list has grown monstrous in size, we could revisit, but that seems unlikely.

It's not book burning or censorship. The horrible creators remain entitled to host their own websites or their own instances.

Hi! As of right now, here is my take on the situation: as long as the comics (and posters posting them) do not break the rules, they are allowed. If we were to ban content based on its creators, there probably would be a lot of content people would miss out on. Take for example Harry Potter. In my personal opinion, the author is a trash person, and I personally will no longer invest my time, effort, or money into their franchise. However, the stories and lore and fan base are still good. There is an actor who had a recurring (and popular) role in Star Trek: TNG (and a few episodes of Voyageur) who turned out to be a trash person. But, the memes and other content being posted about their roles are still funny and entertaining.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I feel that the content is not always a direct reflection of the bad values that their creators/portrayers may have. But, if the community as a whole wants to band together and downvote said content or petition for a new rule that includes a common identifier (i.e., artist name) in the title so it can be keyword filtered by individuals, I would certainly support those efforts. I am definitely not on the side of removing artist credit, even if the artist is not someone I like for whatever reason. They still deserve credit for their work; if anything, so as to ensure other people know who they are and what kind of work they produce.

And if you have other ideas for how we can address these types of situations, please keep them coming.

Now that this community has mods

Oh hey. Was Beep banned? Once it became clear they were just trolling and not simply an eccentric internet person I blocked them.

As for the question: If the comics themselves are not hateful or dog whistles for hate, I don't see a problem with posting the comic by itself. Just don't link to the artist's personal sites to give them traffic and maybe include a note about them in the body of the post.

I'm opposed to a ban except for the most outrageous stuff. Let people downvote what they don't like.

I would say don’t supply transphobes with free exposure and would option for the third option. Though checking and controlling for the political views of each artist may be too much work to put onto the mod team and would have to be on the poster.

Personally I am also biased against transphobes and would love it, if they would not be posted at all.

We personally agree in removing their comics, though should never remove credits even to a bigoted artist. We personally would rather not like a comic and it’s from a transphobic bigot -a fellow trans person

Fourth option: Just limit the comics posted to those that are not transphobic/racist/sexist/other shitty discrimination thing.

The author might have shitty views and maybe they expressed them, but as far as the rules go it would be better to just moderate the posted content than whether or not the artist also has shitty stuff that may or may not be current and relevant. I would rather the posters be encouraged to not post content from terrible people, but if an artist was fine until they suddenly exposed a shitty view does all of their prior work retroactively become problematic? If they were terrible two decades ago are they permanently terrible?

It is complex enough that the posted content being moderated instead of the artist's non-posted content is a better approach in my opinion. I am definitely in favor of comments explaining an artist has other shitty art too, because that is good to know and might influence how posted art is interpreted, but it doesn't mean everything the artist made is tainted.

I support this rule. If I see comics I enjoy I will often go look them up. It’s awful to dive into a new comic and find hateful content that I didn’t expect. Prohibiting comics from known hateful bigots would help avoid that.

I'm against censorship, but I'm pro for curated content. I would be happy to make a rule in which after reaching a certain amount of downvotes, a post has to be removed. I also think it is reasonable to ban someone if they consistently post content that keeps getting downvoted. This is no different than spamming or trolling.

no. I have a block button if I don't like how a person submits. why would I want this type of thing done at the community level? Ultimately its the federation so it won't matter as there are other comic communities.

I hate this book burning mentality. It's not because the person is bad that the content is nessarly bad. Like, if war and peas's author turned out to be transphobic, would that automatically turn all of their comics bad?

Although it doesn't mean that hate and bigoted comics shouldn't be banned. That part is the actual offensive part.

And removing credits is actually scummier than posting bigoted comics imo

For reference, this is not to shill those persons. I'm literally trans and bi. I'm actually concerned with what those are artists are against.

I have simply blocked a certain user who uploaded a lot of stuff I didn't like. It was just one user uploading the same type of comic over and over.

No thank you to censorship.

Hello @Grail@multiverse.soulism.net, thank you for sticking around during our transitionary period with us new mods. Keep in note, Lemmy has a report function, and we do see the reports concerning artist's like Jago and those who post these comics.

At the moment, the best thing you can do is Report them, and give a good explanation as to why they broke the rules.

I personally don't care about who the comic comes from, as long as the comic itself is cute, relatable, funny, etc.

Consider this: Individual people are not atoms, but complex entities made of many parts. You know what's also complex and made of many parts? The internet. Now certainly there's some bullshit coming from the internet. Does that mean that you reject everything that comes from the internet? Probably not.

But it's the same with an individual person.

Anthropologists observe societies, writing about them dispassionately and adopting a non-interference, non-judgement policy.

At some point a group of academics decided they wanted to include moral discussions (particularly about their own society), on how things come to be a certain way, and how they could develop differently. Thus Sociology was born.

Anthropology still exists, Sociology eclipsed it, it didn't kill it. They're aspects of each other, not in competition.

This is the censorship debate in a nutshell. A community picks a side, and the other side is free to branch off. The choices here are: Comics can be anything, even 3D printed gun files, or porn! No limits! We're all here to just observe.

Or; we need to advocate some limits, some values. Some values are better for the world, and some are worse.

I believe the no-limits crowd have the less considered standpoint. No group is free from having standards and values. We already moderate, it's the nature of social groups with implicit rules and ideals.

In my opinion, we're here to do more than just observe the chaos. We adopt a stance. Improving the world as best we can. So we must decide what improves it, and what doesn't.

I don't think totally uncensored free speech improves the world. It still imposes a set of values that impact the world - even if advocates pretend that no choice has been made.