I've noticed as the communities around here have started to develop, there's been a dramatic uptick in racist posts. I don't believe this is an accident nor organic. I believe shills are the one largely posting racism as a method of keeping people out of these communities, as most 'normies' will see blatant racism and go right back to Reddit. The same has happened previously, with Voat and 4Chan being the biggest examples.
We need to fight this with logic and understanding. If you see a racist post, comment and encourage people to look past something as trivial as skin colour or race. I don't think we need censorship at all, that becomes a slippery slope of more and more censorship, but we shouldn't allow them to associate conspiracy theorists or any of these groups of people around here as racist, which is exactly what they're looking for.
While there will always be the occasional obvious shill trying to gaslight people and do false flag racism, that is usually quite rare.
Most complaints of racism I see are usually from sensitive lefties who see racists and nazis everywhere they look because they want an excuse to get offended and virtue signal.
Offensive content also acts as a filter, which can be very necessary to prevent a place like this from turning into Reddit. It's not necessarily a bad thing that some normies, who find something offensive, end up going back to Reddit.
The benefit that filters have on communities is highly underrated, but you can observe this in many different places on the internet if you pay enough attention. I can think of many examples of their benefits. Most of these kinds of filters are unintentional, but I also know of some which exist by design, due to active decisions made by people who know how to utilize them effectively.
I disagree. It's hard to believe these "filters" are beneficial. I think people like you prefer these communities stay a little more fringe, and while I get why, it's a different time. Censorship is at an all time high, and people are actually starting to notice. These communities could become a refuge for those seeking the truth. The extreme posts, including racists content, only keeps people them away.
Most people aren't even aware of the impact that different filters have on different sites and communities, let alone try to consider all the pros and cons associated with them.
Do you think it's a coincidence every place that has no filters naturally trends towards the gutter and becomes the same as every other place, with ever increasing censorship and mobs of brainwashed idiots from the hive mind shutting down all wrong thoughts?
Sullivan’s First Law was published in 1989: “All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.”
The correlation between normies and leftism is worse than ever today, which is why this phenomenon applies to virtually every single kind of community, regardless of how far removed from politics it should be.
This isn't my first rodeo. I've spent time in enough places on the internet over the past 2 decades to notice many such filters, and the effects they have, all on my own.
This goes for everything from extremely right-wing communities like Voat or 4chan, to many extremely centrist communities like Tom MacDonald's fan base.
Most filters come to existence by luck and natural selection. The only communities which survive are those which just happened to have suitable filters protecting them.
Sometimes people are smart enough to actively make use of filters though. I actually came across an interesting example of someone demonstrating deliberate use of a harmless filter only yesterday.