Hey, I might be able to help you out here. I’m pretty sure this can be figured out if one has access to the underlying raw vote data. Which all instance admins do (more or less).
So running this SQL query on my pyfedi instance,
select user_name, sum(effect) from post_reply_vote v inner join “user” u on u.id = v.author_id group by user_name order by sum(effect) asc;
So this account is indeed the most downvoted (or at least the most downvoted that my instance knows about). Interestingly enough the MediaBiasFactChecker bot is the 2nd most downvoted instance.
Number 3 is a human afaik and shows up as -4147 so the margin between this account and the next most downvoted human is indeed a very large one.
So that number three spot is suspect to me too. I would’ve assumed a lot of users over time would have broken -4000. Also aren’t you the dude defending UM to me yesterday? What’s your deal?
Also aren’t you the dude defending UM to me yesterday? What’s your deal?
“Defending” is a bit strong.
I think these two comments explain it better than I did for myself last time around,
The response here is not about whether their behavior was socially acceptable, but whether it was an indication of a fake account being run by multiple people or a script or something.
Basically I was saying your stats, while useful, could be read in a way that did not quite support the “fake account being run by multiple people or a script or something” line of thinking, and that folks should use more critical thinking before making accusations like that.
I realize now that I may have come off snarky asking if /m/politics is leftist. The whole fediverse is, but what I was specifically asking was how we go about dealing with people whose opinions we disagree with.
Conservatives now are a minority in US politics (even though the Electoral College and overall makeup of the states distorts and amplifies their powers in getting to the White House and in the Senate, and gerrymandering doing the same for the House of Res) - but they are still a significant minority.
I kinda viewed it as a test, at least for myself. If I can’t even get along with a self proclaimed socialist who merely can’t give up the love of voting third party, what hope do I have with making peace with an actual conservative? And what happens if we can’t make peace as a country?
That’s why I was asking if /m/politics was open to engagement with conservative views (which no one answered).
I think it’s obvious I’ve thought a lot about this, if you have any context outside of these couple of comments here. Which if you’ve been noticing this user at all, you would have a lot more context… Mods addressed it here, for example.
In any case, the mods/admins finally decided that they agree with the extremely popular opinion you’re taking issue with. He’s permabanned now.
Their stated reason is a little confusing, because they mention dms specifically. That’s certainly true and I’ve been on the receiving end of that several times actually. Just a couple nights ago they were dming me, bragging hard about how great their life is and how they have tons of free time to post. Stuff like “I get to do whatever I want, allll day. My house is paid off, I have all day, so I can do that. My life is great!”
The modlog links to a rule that cites sealioning and trolling being not ok. So I suspect after the influx of complaints they got, they almost had trouble even picking a specific explanation. The dude was 100% trying to piss people off and succeeded many, many, thousands of times.
To address your criticism of my script, a couple days ago one of the mods told me explicitly they were using it as evidence when talking to admins about the issue. Another mod said a few of them were playing with it and finding it useful.
Two days later, dude is banned. So yeah, the remaining tides turned. I think the script was a large part of it. I’m certain he’ll be back with alts, so the script I wrote for problem users like this will likely come in handy moving forward.
I think it’s obvious I’ve thought a lot about this, if you have any context outside of these couple of comments here.
In fact, I could easily be missing additional context. I’ve always said I’m open to new evidence and changing my mind and opinion on that basis.
Which if you’ve been noticing this user at all, you would have a lot more context…
That’s probably it. I haven’t really put in the time and effort to follow this user around, see what he was posting in his own communities, etc.
Mods addressed it here, for example.
That I saw and responded to. For the record, I stated that
I agree with this.
That being the case, let’s dig in to see where between the two of us, where we actually disagree.
In any case, the mods/admins finally decided that they agree with the extremely popular opinion you’re taking issue with.
Their stated reason is a little confusing, because they mention dms specifically.
I’ve been on the receiving end of that several times actually. Just a couple nights ago they were dming me
In fact this is an example of context that I can’t see. For whatever reason that user didn’t bother with me so I was unaware of this until folks starting mentioning it happening in the post reporting the first ban. I definitely agree that this is inappropriate and permaban worthy.
the extremely popular opinion you’re taking issue with.
Again, for the record, the opinion that I took issue with was that evidence showed this was a bot account or a shared account. I can’t rule out that this is in fact the case, but I still don’t see the evidence for it. Instead, it looks to me that this was a guy who got a permaban because he was too much of a jerk and couldn’t be civil, leading him to eventually cross the line and break the TOS.
So I suspect after the influx of complaints they got, they almost had trouble even picking a specific explanation.
To me it seems the two bans were done by different folks (mods of a magazine vs admins of the instance) and had different reasons and evidence (temp ban in a magazine for duplicate post rule violation - for which your script, in identifying duplicates, would have been extremely helpful - vs permaban on the instance for violations in DMs - for which only the instance admins could confirm and verify).
Also worth repeating: I don’t disagree with either ban (though with the DMs I don’t have the knowledge or context, but I’m good with trusting the instance admins of lemmy.world in this case). I just believe the reasoning is different.
The dude was 100% trying to piss people off and succeeded many, many, thousands of times.
That again dives into the context that I didn’t have, like the DMs.
Looking at some of their threads, the trolling type behavior seemed directed at users who were already fairly antagonistic to them to begin with, then it turned in to trolling back and forth all the way down.
Which doesn’t justify it, but also explains why I’ve interacted a lot with that user and only once felt trolled. The user tried to be a mirror and reflect back what was given. Which is not appropriate social behaviour, but if we’re banning a user for that reason, we should be open about it.
The only other “trolling” they did just seemed to be being anti-Democratic when a lot of people don’t like that
If this was /c/democrats, that could definitely be considered trolling, but /c/politics isn’t organized as a fan club.
Now, I don’t mind if /m/politics becomes /c/democrats - I’m a lifelong democrat myself. But I also feel we should be open about these things. I shouldn’t be banned from /m/conservatives because of a hidden rule that I wasn’t not liberal enough in loving a universal basic income, for example.
Yeah this a wall of text. To be honest I can’t really spend my already limited time reading 15 paragraphs from someone who ignores relevant points I raise.
In this case, I addressed the ban reason given, and yet you try to argue more about it as though I didn’t. If you cared about more than disputing me, you might see that this was probably death by a million paper cuts.
TLDR to save you from a wall of text - we seem to agree on at least 99% and I’m not even sure what we’re disagreeing about anymore.
you might see that this was probably death by a million paper cuts.
Yes, I can easily see that being the case for that user.
Yeah this a wall of text. To be honest I can’t really spend my already limited time reading 15 paragraphs from someone who ignores relevant points I raise.
False premise? If you read it you’d have seen that I did not ignore those points but either agreed with or responded to each of them. Edit: So, while I certainly have no right to tell you what you should do with your time, perhaps it’s still possible that you can find a way to spend your “already limited time reading 15 paragraphs from someone [who acknowledges] relevant points” that you raised.
In this case, I addressed the ban reason given, and yet you try to argue more about it as though I didn’t.
So this is a bit odd. I disagreed with Monk on a lot, but I never felt that his responses to me ever became uncordial.
Between you and me, it sounds like we maybe agree on 95% or 99% of the points. And yet, somehow this convo seems to be the one taking a more unfriendly turn.
Anyways, I wasn’t arguing about the ban reason but attempting clarify that I was speaking against one particular thing w/o disagreeing with the rest.
If you cared about more than disputing me,
Sorry, I have a second wall of text you’d have to read. But in that I list out a lot of the different things I care about, and also the why.
Edit: I guess one might also ask why I spent so much time discussing this with you. Well, in fact, you’re exactly the type of person that the fediverse needs to be encouraging. Your script was useful, and I’m sure you’ll come up with many more greater and brilliant things as you spend more time on the fediverse. Basically, the fediverse needs you and more folks like you, so I was trying to turn around an engagement that might have started off the wrong foot around into a more positive one.
To address your criticism of my script, a couple days ago one of the mods told me explicitly they were using it as evidence when talking to admins about the issue.
And they saw it was evidence of a bot account or a shared account specifically? The numbers did show the guy submitting duplicate posts and such - which lead jordanlund to apply a temporary ban under rule 3 of that magazine as per https://lemm.ee/post/45466523
And I also apologize if I somehow implied that the script was not useful or worth it. While cautioning how the data should be interpreted, I generally support such efforts. I have no issue with your script.
Why would I look into my database and provide you with additional numbers or provide you info on how you could accomplish this on your own, if I was against this effort, against your script, or opposing you?
Two days later, dude is banned. So yeah, the remaining tides turned.
I think it’s more that additional context got revealed - as jordanlund pointed out, abusing DMs is a fast track to getting banned by the admins.
I think the script was a large part of it.
Agreed. Good data is important, and Lemmy in specific has a lack of good mod tools, so anything that can be done to address the gap is not only vitally important, but very necessary.
so the script I wrote for problem users like this will likely come in handy moving forward.
Absolutely.
I’m certain he’ll be back with alts,
On that note, I’d like to finish by explaining my own personal failings and why I might be a bit overly sensitive to someone getting banned without significant justification.
I first joined the fediverse after the API limits got announced on spez’s site. But at the same time, my main account was permanently banned. Do you know why?
I sure don’t. It came without warning and no one would response beyond the generic “look at our TOS to understand our rules”
I had alts that were unbanned so I could have continued, but I felt really unhappy with the lack of response. Ultimately I decided to delete all my alts and leave spez’s site for good.
Later, their legal team did contact me, but even after that, no reason for the ban was ever given.
If a user is banned, they should be told why. And the rules should be made clear upfront before they join. I agree with the reasons why Monk was both temp and perma banned. These rules were clearly visible up front. But there was never an explicit rule that folks who post on /m/politics should only post Dem posts. That should be added to the rulebar of that magazine if that’s going to be a rule going forward (and it’s a rule I’d have no trouble complying with, just to be clear).
So that number three spot is suspect to me too. I would’ve assumed a lot of users over time would have broken -4000.
There are two explanations that come to my mind.
I’ve only been running my own instance for a couple of months at this point, and so I only have the history from then on. Anything older and my instance wouldn’t know about it since it didn’t exist to receive that info.
The second one - we’re seeing changes now with the downvoting process. I personally use pyfedi ( flagship instance is at piefed.social ) - and pyfedi is, erm, opinionated. For example, by design, it automatically hides posts and comments in it’s UI if the downvotes are too negative (by default a score of -20 or greater, though this is configurable by the admin). Pyfedi also implemented anonymous downvoting, but users whose reputation are too low (based on how many downvotes they are getting) won’t be able to use this feature.
In short, being downvoted all the time is starting to bite. So my guess is that folks who do this might be changing accounts in order to avoid too negative a score in an attempt to avoid some of these consequences.
haha wow! Thanks for that. So apparently I could just run my own instance to get access to that data… cool, but raises questions. :/ Does it also federate more private data, like DMs?
This is a bit new to me, as I actually have never tried a DM since I started self-hosting an instance (and as far as I know, no one has tried to DM me).
But from https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/117834 it seems that DMs on Lemmy are indeed federated - albeit to the minimum required (your instance and the instance of the person you are DMing - so for example, with me being on a single user instance, I would never see these get federated over unless someone was trying to DM me). So they don’t get federated outward if DMs are going on between users on the same instance.
Fortunately that also points to a workaround - using Element.io and Matrix to send secure messages between users (when you don’t want even the instance admins or Element.io or Matrix admins to see the message contents).
My only experience sending DMs on the fediverse was with a kbin.social account, but from what I recall that was for local users only (so I could DM someone else who had a kbin.social account but not someone who had a mastodon.social account, for example).
Hey, I might be able to help you out here. I’m pretty sure this can be figured out if one has access to the underlying raw vote data. Which all instance admins do (more or less).
So running this SQL query on my pyfedi instance,
select user_name, sum(effect) from post_reply_vote v inner join “user” u on u.id = v.author_id group by user_name order by sum(effect) asc;
The first two rows,
UniversalMonk | -23315
MediaBiasFactChecker | -19231
So this account is indeed the most downvoted (or at least the most downvoted that my instance knows about). Interestingly enough the MediaBiasFactChecker bot is the 2nd most downvoted instance.
Number 3 is a human afaik and shows up as -4147 so the margin between this account and the next most downvoted human is indeed a very large one.
So that number three spot is suspect to me too. I would’ve assumed a lot of users over time would have broken -4000. Also aren’t you the dude defending UM to me yesterday? What’s your deal?
“Defending” is a bit strong.
I think these two comments explain it better than I did for myself last time around,
https://lemmy.world/comment/13011607
https://lemmy.world/comment/13010767
Basically I was saying your stats, while useful, could be read in a way that did not quite support the “fake account being run by multiple people or a script or something” line of thinking, and that folks should use more critical thinking before making accusations like that.
I realize now that I may have come off snarky asking if /m/politics is leftist. The whole fediverse is, but what I was specifically asking was how we go about dealing with people whose opinions we disagree with.
Conservatives now are a minority in US politics (even though the Electoral College and overall makeup of the states distorts and amplifies their powers in getting to the White House and in the Senate, and gerrymandering doing the same for the House of Res) - but they are still a significant minority.
I kinda viewed it as a test, at least for myself. If I can’t even get along with a self proclaimed socialist who merely can’t give up the love of voting third party, what hope do I have with making peace with an actual conservative? And what happens if we can’t make peace as a country?
That’s why I was asking if /m/politics was open to engagement with conservative views (which no one answered).
I think it’s obvious I’ve thought a lot about this, if you have any context outside of these couple of comments here. Which if you’ve been noticing this user at all, you would have a lot more context… Mods addressed it here, for example.
In any case, the mods/admins finally decided that they agree with the extremely popular opinion you’re taking issue with. He’s permabanned now.
Their stated reason is a little confusing, because they mention dms specifically. That’s certainly true and I’ve been on the receiving end of that several times actually. Just a couple nights ago they were dming me, bragging hard about how great their life is and how they have tons of free time to post. Stuff like “I get to do whatever I want, allll day. My house is paid off, I have all day, so I can do that. My life is great!”
The modlog links to a rule that cites sealioning and trolling being not ok. So I suspect after the influx of complaints they got, they almost had trouble even picking a specific explanation. The dude was 100% trying to piss people off and succeeded many, many, thousands of times.
To address your criticism of my script, a couple days ago one of the mods told me explicitly they were using it as evidence when talking to admins about the issue. Another mod said a few of them were playing with it and finding it useful.
Two days later, dude is banned. So yeah, the remaining tides turned. I think the script was a large part of it. I’m certain he’ll be back with alts, so the script I wrote for problem users like this will likely come in handy moving forward.
In fact, I could easily be missing additional context. I’ve always said I’m open to new evidence and changing my mind and opinion on that basis.
That’s probably it. I haven’t really put in the time and effort to follow this user around, see what he was posting in his own communities, etc.
That I saw and responded to. For the record, I stated that
That being the case, let’s dig in to see where between the two of us, where we actually disagree.
I hope you can see the contradiction between your two statements. User was banned because of harassing DMs as per the modlog you referenced, https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&userId=9454261
In fact this is an example of context that I can’t see. For whatever reason that user didn’t bother with me so I was unaware of this until folks starting mentioning it happening in the post reporting the first ban. I definitely agree that this is inappropriate and permaban worthy.
Again, for the record, the opinion that I took issue with was that evidence showed this was a bot account or a shared account. I can’t rule out that this is in fact the case, but I still don’t see the evidence for it. Instead, it looks to me that this was a guy who got a permaban because he was too much of a jerk and couldn’t be civil, leading him to eventually cross the line and break the TOS.
To me it seems the two bans were done by different folks (mods of a magazine vs admins of the instance) and had different reasons and evidence (temp ban in a magazine for duplicate post rule violation - for which your script, in identifying duplicates, would have been extremely helpful - vs permaban on the instance for violations in DMs - for which only the instance admins could confirm and verify).
I’ll point out again, the explanation did not reference https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/#bot-usage-and-guidelines suggesting that the admins did not think the user was a bot account.
Also worth repeating: I don’t disagree with either ban (though with the DMs I don’t have the knowledge or context, but I’m good with trusting the instance admins of lemmy.world in this case). I just believe the reasoning is different.
That again dives into the context that I didn’t have, like the DMs.
From what little I did see, I agreed with https://lemm.ee/post/45466523/15630878
Which doesn’t justify it, but also explains why I’ve interacted a lot with that user and only once felt trolled. The user tried to be a mirror and reflect back what was given. Which is not appropriate social behaviour, but if we’re banning a user for that reason, we should be open about it.
Also I agreed with https://lemm.ee/post/45466523/15631367
Now, I don’t mind if /m/politics becomes /c/democrats - I’m a lifelong democrat myself. But I also feel we should be open about these things. I shouldn’t be banned from /m/conservatives because of a hidden rule that I wasn’t not liberal enough in loving a universal basic income, for example.
Yeah this a wall of text. To be honest I can’t really spend my already limited time reading 15 paragraphs from someone who ignores relevant points I raise.
In this case, I addressed the ban reason given, and yet you try to argue more about it as though I didn’t. If you cared about more than disputing me, you might see that this was probably death by a million paper cuts.
TLDR to save you from a wall of text - we seem to agree on at least 99% and I’m not even sure what we’re disagreeing about anymore.
Yes, I can easily see that being the case for that user.
False premise? If you read it you’d have seen that I did not ignore those points but either agreed with or responded to each of them. Edit: So, while I certainly have no right to tell you what you should do with your time, perhaps it’s still possible that you can find a way to spend your “already limited time reading 15 paragraphs from someone [who acknowledges] relevant points” that you raised.
So this is a bit odd. I disagreed with Monk on a lot, but I never felt that his responses to me ever became uncordial.
Between you and me, it sounds like we maybe agree on 95% or 99% of the points. And yet, somehow this convo seems to be the one taking a more unfriendly turn.
Anyways, I wasn’t arguing about the ban reason but attempting clarify that I was speaking against one particular thing w/o disagreeing with the rest.
Sorry, I have a second wall of text you’d have to read. But in that I list out a lot of the different things I care about, and also the why.
Edit: I guess one might also ask why I spent so much time discussing this with you. Well, in fact, you’re exactly the type of person that the fediverse needs to be encouraging. Your script was useful, and I’m sure you’ll come up with many more greater and brilliant things as you spend more time on the fediverse. Basically, the fediverse needs you and more folks like you, so I was trying to turn around an engagement that might have started off the wrong foot around into a more positive one.
And they saw it was evidence of a bot account or a shared account specifically? The numbers did show the guy submitting duplicate posts and such - which lead jordanlund to apply a temporary ban under rule 3 of that magazine as per https://lemm.ee/post/45466523
And I also apologize if I somehow implied that the script was not useful or worth it. While cautioning how the data should be interpreted, I generally support such efforts. I have no issue with your script.
Why would I look into my database and provide you with additional numbers or provide you info on how you could accomplish this on your own, if I was against this effort, against your script, or opposing you?
I think it’s more that additional context got revealed - as jordanlund pointed out, abusing DMs is a fast track to getting banned by the admins.
Agreed. Good data is important, and Lemmy in specific has a lack of good mod tools, so anything that can be done to address the gap is not only vitally important, but very necessary.
Absolutely.
On that note, I’d like to finish by explaining my own personal failings and why I might be a bit overly sensitive to someone getting banned without significant justification.
I first joined the fediverse after the API limits got announced on spez’s site. But at the same time, my main account was permanently banned. Do you know why?
I sure don’t. It came without warning and no one would response beyond the generic “look at our TOS to understand our rules”
I had alts that were unbanned so I could have continued, but I felt really unhappy with the lack of response. Ultimately I decided to delete all my alts and leave spez’s site for good.
Later, their legal team did contact me, but even after that, no reason for the ban was ever given.
If a user is banned, they should be told why. And the rules should be made clear upfront before they join. I agree with the reasons why Monk was both temp and perma banned. These rules were clearly visible up front. But there was never an explicit rule that folks who post on /m/politics should only post Dem posts. That should be added to the rulebar of that magazine if that’s going to be a rule going forward (and it’s a rule I’d have no trouble complying with, just to be clear).
I just want what’s fair.
There are two explanations that come to my mind.
I’ve only been running my own instance for a couple of months at this point, and so I only have the history from then on. Anything older and my instance wouldn’t know about it since it didn’t exist to receive that info.
The second one - we’re seeing changes now with the downvoting process. I personally use pyfedi ( flagship instance is at piefed.social ) - and pyfedi is, erm, opinionated. For example, by design, it automatically hides posts and comments in it’s UI if the downvotes are too negative (by default a score of -20 or greater, though this is configurable by the admin). Pyfedi also implemented anonymous downvoting, but users whose reputation are too low (based on how many downvotes they are getting) won’t be able to use this feature.
In short, being downvoted all the time is starting to bite. So my guess is that folks who do this might be changing accounts in order to avoid too negative a score in an attempt to avoid some of these consequences.
haha wow! Thanks for that. So apparently I could just run my own instance to get access to that data… cool, but raises questions. :/ Does it also federate more private data, like DMs?
This is a bit new to me, as I actually have never tried a DM since I started self-hosting an instance (and as far as I know, no one has tried to DM me).
But from https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/117834 it seems that DMs on Lemmy are indeed federated - albeit to the minimum required (your instance and the instance of the person you are DMing - so for example, with me being on a single user instance, I would never see these get federated over unless someone was trying to DM me). So they don’t get federated outward if DMs are going on between users on the same instance.
Fortunately that also points to a workaround - using Element.io and Matrix to send secure messages between users (when you don’t want even the instance admins or Element.io or Matrix admins to see the message contents).
My only experience sending DMs on the fediverse was with a kbin.social account, but from what I recall that was for local users only (so I could DM someone else who had a kbin.social account but not someone who had a mastodon.social account, for example).