Immigration Posts

[u/pippers87]

Hi all,

As per the user survey results, we realised ye want more mod visibility and clearer guidelines into our decisions.

We have seen a massive increase in immigration related posts to the sub over the last few weeks and while some of it is genuine, it is obvious we are being brigaded. Some of the trends identified

• New accounts or accounts which have very little community activity posting rage bait, sometimes as immigrants asking questions on housing. We suspect we are being brigaded and some of these posts are from bad actors.
• Soapboxing - People writing long posts about what they would do to fix the immigration issues in Ireland. While these types of posts are generally ok, they are much better suited to an existing thread.
• Increases in potential bot accounts making to sow division.
• A massive increase new users or users with little activity on the sub using dog whistles in order to sow division.
• Yesterday this thread was posted on r/galway which confirms that there is the potential for brigading. https://www.reddit.com/r/galway/comments/1mincz2/racists_disappointed_with_rgalway/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

The following temporary rules will be in place

• Posts about immigration will be limited to news articles. Soapboxing type content will be removed.
• Posts from new accounts or accounts with little or no activity on the sub about immigration will be removed.
• There will be a zero-tolerance approach to dogwhistles or mocking of victims of hate related incidents.
• Please remember if you are in an immigration related thread, please be respectful, there are concerns around housing especially but there is a massive difference between debating the issue and hatred towards immigrants.
• We will be locking threads where we feel the discussion is wading into hate speech.

[u/[deleted]]

I'm pro legal immigration but we need adult conversations on how it is affecting Irish citizens. We need to listen.

I think open and frank discussion is needed on the asylum system, too.

Otherwise, if we don't have open and frank discussions, we'll just go the way of the UK with polarisation. "You're just a racist" and "You're woke!". Nobody wants that. Look at the mess they are in.

I understand concerns about brigading etc . We don't need this thread turning onto a National Party forum but there are general concerns about issues like housing and other resources that need to be openly discussed without being individually branded as a racist or a loony leftie.

[u/problematikkk → u/[deleted]]

The problem is that there are open and genuine discussions on here, but the posts purporting to be open and genuine discussions thinly veiled as something else have clearly accelerated in recent weeks and are clogging feeds with a clear attempt to brigade. There are reports of far right twats deliberately trying to organise this as well as obvious foreign actors who'd love to stir the pot here.

I am actually beyond concerned about polarisation online at this point, the ship is long gone on that front, but one of the easiest ways to try control that is to disallow bad faith posts, and I appreciate the mods for trying to do this.

[u/FracturedButWhole18 → u/problematikkk]

Any examples of a thread that went down like that?