Fuck. Russian bomb has hit Poland.

People can post what they want without you lecturing all and sundry like a school marm.
It is a forum - a chatting mechanism. No one here can launch WW3. Just saying

The irony - coming from someone who never stops lecturing and who last night was trying for some reason to convince us all that we were on the brink of armageddon and that anyone not running around crying that we're all doomed must be in denial.

@MissEstherDaniel

im pretty sure what I heard on the radio this morning was the Polish Leader saying

'you don't start a war by targeting a tractor'

Interesting that @Zuno has absolutely no posting history. Strange first thread to contribute to.

I name changed :)

Interestingly enough - that’s something that has been allowed on here for a very long time.

“I’m not going to respond to you”

Two minutes later: response.

No good can come from this churning of hysterical stuff - I'm off to do the ironing and sort out household chores. Keep calm and muddle on ...

I would imagine that is precisely what everyone is doing vera, continuing with their lives as before, why wouldn't they? Nothing has changed - and Nato will sort this out in their own time.

If I was Russian I would be pretty shit scared though. It must be a god awful place to live now, and not fair on the young people and children dragged in such a callous war in their name that will affect them long after Putin has keeled over.

I will 'preach' if you want to call it that, when some posters are deliberately winding up others to the point that others seem to be wetting themselves. It was OTT even by MN standards.

This is an Internet forum. Yes.

That still doesnt absolve personal responsibility of posters to not be flaming muppets and whip up mass anxiety where there is no need.

It is a community. Community members have a role to play to stop mass hysteria in situations like this. That's a shared responsibility. It's not assigned to any one member (s). Everyone has the opportunity to be the 'sensible one'. And yes, we should encourage sensibleness on the Internet cos there often isn't enough of it!

Equally, I do think social media moderators have a role to calm situations and not encourage click bait on certain subjects because of their own responsibilities.

Genuinely if it's at a point where MN think it merits a trigger warning on a political issue like that, it's also a thread where it NEEDS level heads and posters to push the level headedness to ease that anxiety. And equally MN should keep that in mind.

Free speech isn't about allowing everyone to say whatever they want in whatever way they want. Free speech as a concept is about allowing and encouraging public participation. This entails needing to encourage a culture of civil and responsible adult behaviour to voice an opinion. The emotional bit where you hype up a situation is not condusive to that. Free speech protections involve making sure harms are not done to participants or if there is a fear of that, debate is encouraged to measured and to be justified to a degree (even if there are differences of opinion). In this sense harassment (which might be illegal under certain circumstances) should not be allowed and steps taken to stop it (which is what MN try to do in fairness). Nor should other illegal or personally targeted attacks be allowed. The whole point, again, is the understanding and need to encourage proportionality. That does allow people to say things others don't want to hear, but it must also be justifiable and the intent not malicious.

Proportionality is about encouraging the identification of the nature of a problem. Not necessarily agreeing on the problem or solutions.

Dear old Elon is so far out of his depth on understanding the nuances of free speech its actually painful to watch (and I was critical of twitter moderation prior to his takeover)

You don't get to use a free speech get out of jail free card without explanation if there is a possible harm involved. The whole point of free speech is to encourage rationality and reductions of harm to society overall. That is its goal. To encourage understanding and general consensus even if you disagree on points.

Screaming WWIII is about to start and jumping up and down winding up others is debatable in terms of intent. MN could (and should) say something calming rather than stick a ruddy trigger warning or necessarily censor a lot of posts. The point is about reminding people that the forum culture shouldn't be to wind up others without proportional reasoning accompanying it at a sensitive moment. "We understand that some posters are concerned about the situation, but we would like to remind everyone to keep a level head and await further developments. If anyone is struggling to cope with this topic, we always encourage healthy social media breaks and to seek help if appropriate". Just take the tone down a notch... Rather than doing the exact opposite with a trigger warning ffs. (Remember all threads with a mn comment have it highlighted at the top of the page). And then go from there.

Genuinely if you think this is preaching, I couldn't give a flying fuck. Proportionality and reasoning is needed and every single poster should try and think about it at some point (and yes that includes me, cos I don't always get it right - but that's just it, everyone needs that reminder from time to time 'cos free speech')

Otherwise what will happen is we will get draconian laws / regulations to manage social media space which really will harm free speech and public power on really important issues.

And no one here benefits from that.

The phrase often used by newspapers on free speech is 'in the public interest'. Newspapers don't always get this right in how they do it, but the principle is a good starting point to consider generally on social media.

@worraliberty
@SquirrelSoShiny

& everyone else who posted about the trigger warning.

i agree it's totally unnecessary.

However, MNHQ are kind of stuck in a no win situation & it's probably easier & safer (business wise) to shove the warning on.

id love to know which 'posters' asked for one?? Like the original title wasn't warning enough?!?! 🙄🙄🙄

Oh and I like being annoying if it's a challenge to some of the utter lunacy that was being spouted last night.

Have you thought about having a break? Or seeking some support?

I am sorry I don't have time to read that long speech, but honestly just chill. People can say what they want, we don't need you to shut down free speech or become a self imposed moderator, but thanks anyway. It is all good red and breath.

RedToothbrush - well said!

Venetia - take your own advice perhaps?

No I'm perfectly fine. Thank you for checking on me.

I believe that there is a place for long posts on the Internet to convey complex ideas that 256 character posts often don't do justice to.

Its why I prefer MN over other social media.

Also, law of the internet: when you reply to a post, you are aware that the readership isn't exclusively just the person you've replied to. You are trying to convey a message to multiple people.

And you are kind of proving a few points to others too about intent.

@NoMichaelNo

if Clymene is a BOT, they've certainly been playing the long game 🤣🤣

you shouldn't just accuse those with different opinions of being a BOT.

Nothing we say or do is going to make a blind bit of difference though red

Nato will look at the evidence, and track the missile and it will become as clear as day where it came from, and ultimately a decision will be made with experts and world leaders on the best strategy. They won't be consulting us!

You know as well as I do that since the pandemic posters have suffered with anxiety and stress, of course some people will panic. It is normal to be worried about a despot with nuclear capacity. I don't think we should moderate people's alarm and their expression.

I think MNHQ were responding with the best of intentions, but I agree the title explained the thread very clearly but some people did seem very upset. So fair enough.

We should not police forums though, we are not Russia or China, people can say what they want even if you and I disagree with the content.

@RedToothBrush
👏👏👏

Zelensky has been an admirable leader throughout this war but his speed of which to try and stir up Article 5 and an international response is rather concerning.

It's easier to support him when large numbers of our nations lives are not at risk to war (I appreciate the heating vs eating also has implications on lives but not in the same numbers of all out war), he may find that support rapidly waning should he try to drag others further into it.

I can understand from his point if view why its desirable for him, the risks to his
country remain the same.

There appears to be a line of thought on this thread that rational behaviour and a considered response to this incident is akin to being anti- support for Ukraine, despite this seemingly being the approach that world leaders are taking, you know, those people who actually get to take part in the NATO consultation! Is the world in a position to have a knee jerk response to this- compounding global economic disaster, food insecurity, poverty and stalling on action to prevent environmental catastrophe? Expressing that cautionary note is hardly siding with the enemy, this is a complex situation that has no room for responses demonstrated on here last night- thank fuck is all I say!

Tbh, I probably sit somewhere on the fence on this.

There is often a need for intervention, imho. We don't always get the intervention right because we fail to understand and plan. I protested against the Iraq war because I didn't think there was sufficient thought given to how you exit the war. Power vacuums create their own problems. Saddam was clearly a threat, but there was a lack of foresight in terms of what happened next. Afghanistan was a car crash from beginning to end - and was driven by rage and a desire for revenge rather than rationality. It became an issue over sunk costs and the longer it went on the harder it became to leave. There was poor understanding of the cultural issues on the ground and promises made that the west had no intention of keeping. That was fundamentally wrong. Its interesting to watch back Rory Stewart's documentaries on Afghanistan which highlighted some of this years before the withdrawal.

Equally you have the Bosnian war and you can see how intervention was a positive thing (I don't think it being in Europe is a coincidence here. I think it means there was a better Western understanding of cultural problems). Indeed if anything, one of the issues was that there were incidents where the west didn't intervene where they should.

Then there's the Serbian war - there's a firm lesson there. Bombing civilian populations doesn't lend itself to making friends. The bombings of Belgrade and Nis carry heavy scars. Yet there is still a love of Europe and the US which is weird at the same time as a feeling of anti American imperialism.

My point is that intervention is sometimes needed, however we don't always understand the cultural stuff and we need to do better on that, and we need to think more on timing of exits and management of next steps, we need to do more to address things when they go wrong instead of sweeping it under the table to the degree we do.

And we also need to acknowledge that 'doing nothing' and not intervening is also not a neutral act without consequences.

Sometimes a lack of intervention is also a massive mistake which can have massive ramifications and harms.

I don't believe that allowing Russia to take over Ukraine would mean we or Ukrainian were safer.

The idea that wars are bad / good isn't helpful. Wars are messy and never satisfactory. Wars are always the result of failed diplomatic and political efforts. And thats where we need to aim to improve more than anything else.

How does the war in Ukraine end? This is a crucial issue. The reality is there are no good ends to any war. Even the much glorified WWII. That left millions under the direct and indirect control of Stalin who we knew to be murderous. And then there's the mess that is Israel and Palestine.

There will be no good ending to the Ukraine War. If Russia had taken it over, it would have been a death sentence for thousands in various ways. If Ukraine win, then there will be ramifications in Russia that go on for a long long time.

I wouldn't want to be the ones making these huge judgement calls.

The people who start wars are politicians. The people who suffer in wars are the masses
The people who win wars are politicians.
The people who lose everything in wars are the masses.

It would be nice to live in a world without war and it would be nice to be a pacificist. My aunt and uncle are Quakers and part of me would like to believe in their commitment to pacifism, but unfortunately I just think the world is too complex and too full of greed and exploitation and lack of respect for humanity to believe in it.

I think we are imperfect and we make unforgiveable mistakes. I also think that pretending we can merely turn our backs and walk away thinking it's not our issue is equally problematic.

MNHQ do not need & should not moderate these threads on the basis of 'content' (only the usual - personal attacks etc)

freedom of (non offensive) speech AND MNHQ have no more information than your average poster. It would be ludicrous if they started deleting posts due to content.

people don't have to read threads that negatively affect their mental health. Personal choice & responsibility.

or maybe you'd like to sensor the news & entire internet?!?!

@Zuno

my previous post was really aimed at you.

At the beginning of the war MN was submerged with bots flooding the forum with fake information, and even those posts didn't get deleted, and quite rightly so.

We can't be deleting, censoring and moderating anyone's post unless it is genuinely personal or offensive. It is up to people to use their critical thinking skills and question what they are reading and the motivation behind the post. If they can't do that, and challenge the fake news when they find it, they shouldn't be on here.

What exactly are we fighting for if it is not free speech, free thought and democracy?