• Re: Muzzling Flat Earthers - Would it be Possible?

    From Trey Hermiston@21:1/5 to Mike Van Pelt on Sun Jan 5 22:08:29 2025
    On Thu, 2 Jan 2025 00:50:50 -0000 (UTC)
    Mike Van Pelt <usenet@mikevanpelt.com> wrote:

    In article <58818b05dad7bf05897209b7131dafb17f080c4f@novabbs.org>,
    Trey Hermiston <nobody@email.invalid> wrote:
    It looks as if the flat earthers are trying to take over sci.astro.
    Since they reject accepted astrophysics the astronomy community could
    fight back to muzzle the flerfers.

    I set my newsreader to cancel all posts crossposted to the
    flat earth group. This is the first posting in ages that
    has not been auto-cancelled by this kill file setting.


    That is a viable personal strategy but my questions are about
    administratively halting the spread of flat earth ideas. How would
    flerfers be shut down at the institutional or protocol layers? At what
    point, and how, might action be taken to muzzle the flerfers?

    --
    Trey Hermiston

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Trey Hermiston@21:1/5 to All on Tue Dec 31 22:20:12 2024
    It looks as if the flat earthers are trying to take over sci.astro.
    Since they reject accepted astrophysics the astronomy community could
    fight back to muzzle the flerfers. No one that I know of in the
    astrophysics community wants to read their articles or watch their
    videos. Why should they be allowed to post flerf content here at all?

    It might be possible to stop the flerfers from propagating their ideas.
    What if Usenet were to change this newsgroup to a moderated group?
    Would that be a effective initial step toward quashing flat earth
    content?

    Moderation would empower a reputable, NASA-aware or science-approved
    moderator to reject posts by flat earthers in sci.astro. All flat earth arguments could be automatically rejected as spam.

    The policy could go further towards rejecting all flat earthers from
    being allowed to sign up for Usenet access. Usenet peers that allow
    flat earthers to post could be de-peered like is done with Mastodon.

    Peers like Dizum, Mixmin, Paganini, and Neodome could be de-peered
    entirely from Usenet since they allow anti-scientific and conspiracy
    content to propagate. Who would even miss those peers anyway?

    How would one propose such changes? Who would one need to contact to
    make it happen? What other actions might be taken? At what point does
    the astronomy community draw a line in the sand against anti-scientific
    content propagation?

    --
    Trey Hermiston

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Martian Niemoller@21:1/5 to Trey Hermiston on Wed Jan 1 05:33:12 2025
    On Tue, 31 Dec 2024 22:20:12 -0600
    Trey Hermiston <nobody@email.invalid> wrote:

    It looks as if the flat earthers are trying to take over sci.astro.
    Since they reject accepted astrophysics the astronomy community could
    fight back to muzzle the flerfers. No one that I know of in the
    astrophysics community wants to read their articles or watch their
    videos. Why should they be allowed to post flerf content here at all?

    It might be possible to stop the flerfers from propagating their
    ideas. What if Usenet were to change this newsgroup to a moderated
    group? Would that be a effective initial step toward quashing flat
    earth content?

    Moderation would empower a reputable, NASA-aware or science-approved moderator to reject posts by flat earthers in sci.astro. All flat
    earth arguments could be automatically rejected as spam.

    The policy could go further towards rejecting all flat earthers from
    being allowed to sign up for Usenet access. Usenet peers that allow
    flat earthers to post could be de-peered like is done with Mastodon.

    Peers like Dizum, Mixmin, Paganini, and Neodome could be de-peered
    entirely from Usenet since they allow anti-scientific and conspiracy
    content to propagate. Who would even miss those peers anyway?

    How would one propose such changes? Who would one need to contact to
    make it happen? What other actions might be taken? At what point does
    the astronomy community draw a line in the sand against
    anti-scientific content propagation?


    First they came for the creationists, and I did not speak out—because I
    was not a creationist.

    Then they came for the pro-lifers, and I did not speak out—because I
    was not a pro-lifer.

    Then they came for the Christians, and I did not speak out—because I
    was not a Christian.

    Then they came for the flat earthers, and I did not speak out—because I
    was not a flat earther.

    Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

    ~Martian Niemoller

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Mike Van Pelt@21:1/5 to nobody@email.invalid on Thu Jan 2 00:50:50 2025
    In article <58818b05dad7bf05897209b7131dafb17f080c4f@novabbs.org>,
    Trey Hermiston <nobody@email.invalid> wrote:
    It looks as if the flat earthers are trying to take over sci.astro.
    Since they reject accepted astrophysics the astronomy community could
    fight back to muzzle the flerfers.

    I set my newsreader to cancel all posts crossposted to the
    flat earth group. This is the first posting in ages that
    has not been auto-cancelled by this kill file setting.

    --
    Mike Van Pelt | "I don't advise it unless you're nuts."
    mvp at calweb.com | -- Ray Wilkinson, after riding out Hurricane
    KE6BVH | Ike on Surfside Beach in Galveston

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)