I’ve been guilty of that a time or two over there 
Even with some arguments that I thought were perfectly rational 
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Many Monzo forum topics were politically oriented. Particularly due to Monzo’s corporate fondness for social engineering (eg “eliminating our diversity debt”).
Try expressing centrist/right-of-centre opinions in such an environment and you’ll inevitably flagged by other members (not for breaking guidelines, but simply because others disagree with your opinions).
It’s how the mod team handle such spurious flagging that makes the difference between a healthy inclusive forum, and a hostile echo chamber.
Unfortunately Monzo mods and their community manager made the mistake of aligning themselves politically, and using the flags as an excuse to boot members expressing opinions that didn’t fit the groupthink.
This emboldened a number of very nasty trolls on that forum. I witnessed accounts spring up specifically to personally target me (using my wife’s face as an avatar). My company information was selectively doxxed in order to try to paint me as a failing business. The mods took far too long to remove such posts, and many abusive accounts were allowed to stay.
I now stay well clear of that forum and would advise anyone with right-of-centre leanings to do likewise.
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Do trust levels have any impact on negating the chance you’ll be silenced by the flagging?
I ask, because although the Monzo community does suffer from a very clear flagging issue, I’ve never been unjustly targeted by it, I think. So I’m not sure if the flagging issue is too politically charged. Politically, I’m mostly indifferent besides the few issues I care about, and despite harbouring values that would be reminiscent of left-leaning politics, my indifferences have often been construed as very right wing ideals. I can be very blunt sometimes. Yet I’ve never been unjustly flagged for that.
Black Lives Matter as an example, is a movement I care deeply about. But I fear progress is moving us backwards towards segregation and exclusion, and when I highlight those concerns I’m branded racist and told my opinion doesn’t matter because people have drawn the assumption that I’m not black. Yet I’ve never been flagged for that.
The only time I recall personally having my posts flagged was well over a year ago when I had a completely off topic spat with @anon98763397. But those flags were deserved, I think.
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Even coral crew can be flagged! I’ve seen it happen a few times. Very rare, but it has happened.
My question is more about whether it requires a greater volume of flags to hide posts by higher trust levels.
I have flagged CC a few times, normally when they continue a conversation after they’ve locked it to the rest of us
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I hope in all honesty, we never have to stoop so low on this forum to have any sort of flagging system such as they have on the Monzo forum. As I said before, it’s insane over there and so unbelievably abused, it just makes anyone reading through the threads wonder why the forum administrators would allow such a thing to happen in the first place.
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One hundred percent
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I’m not sure that’s true. If it were, FTT would still be around.
To be honest FTT had quietened down from what I can see - there weren’t that many posts on a day-to-day basis. Historically there does seem to have been some grief that Liam got, no denying that, not sure how much of that was recent.
What seemed to be the ‘straw the broke the camels back’ is that Liam did something a few of the members didn’t like and didn’t seem to like being questioned on it - so much so that he closed the forum rather than just taking the banner down.
His choice, obviously, but I don’t think it’s a reflection on whether the community at large is capable of being largely self-moderating.
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It was definitely down to other reasons. I admit, and I was guilty of it myself, but there was a bit of Monzo bashing, but I aimed it squarely at the forum as a whole, never individuals.
Generally though, FTT was very well self policed and other issues aside, I enjoyed the forum.
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I can flag posts by @Dan, who although is a mod, he’s the same trust level (4). I’d guess you could flag this post by me if you wanted to. But I would hazard a guess that it would even come back to me to review my own post - not sure?
Flags received/given are recorded and do affect the levels in some shape or form. You need to have below a certain number of flags received to be moved up the next level automatically.
Discourse has quite a good blog post on this which is worth looking at - Understanding Discourse Trust Levels
It’s worth noting that we can change the limits though, but to date, the only one we’ve changed relates to the number of new posts and likes in a day
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Now that’s something I’d like to get printed on a flag or made into an app icon!
Yeah what was that all about? Normally when posts are removed, there a place where the post used to be showing that it’s been sent to a Removed Posts thread.
But I just watched posts appear and then just disappear in front of my eyes, two minutes before the thread got locked.
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6 topics have been locked on Monzo in just the last 15 minutes. Is that some sort of record?
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This one has wound me up.
Closed due to off topic posts? Maybe one or two near the start, but the conversation had long moved on and was entirely discussing the topic at hand.
Staff are available… okay who?! No one seems to take responsibility for the coral crew or even bother to acknowledge folks when they raise these issues.
I smell a hint of dishonesty in the reasoning here. Given how many times it was removed silently prior to an actual discussion able to take place, and the faintest of issues was used to justify it. Threads have stayed open with much worse. Threads don’t get closed when naysayers get bullied by the regulars. In fact it gets lapped up and some of the coral crew join in.
I’ll of course raise this, as instructed. What little good it will do.
To be fair, in the other locked threads they’re trying to mitigate someone who is a clear troll/spammer.
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Meanwhile over at Monzo
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I’ve logged out for the last time and requested account deletion.
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Something about that article must’ve really hit a nerve for them to react that strongly…
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It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, but what do I know 