So, I saw a report from one of my users. They reported:
https://ponder.cat/post/1594852/1813842
For the reason:
Unreasonable fighting with everyone in every simple post
I think that’s ridiculous, so I talked with them about it. Posting private communications is frowned upon I guess, but long story short, they weren’t receptive. I’ve decided to ban the account.
IMO the general culture on Lemmy is that users are entitled to their free account and everyone needs to be careful and circumspect about limiting that entitlement in any way, but I don’t see it that way. I don’t think it’s a requirement for me to provide hosting space for anyone who wants to use my stuff as a jumping-off point for abuse of Lemmy’s systems, and isn’t apologetic or receptive when I talk with them about not doing that. The fact that it’s in service of harassing FlyingSquid in particular is just icing on the cake, since my perception is that people like to harass him apparently for no legitimate reason at all (with this as an example).
AITA?
In this case, you were not the target of the reports, it was the community mods I guess?
But if the purposes of the account was trolling and even stalking of a single other account, that would rise to instance admin jurisdiction?
Edit: this is getting so confusing. Here looks to be the banned account. The instance sidebar rules state:
Emphasis mine. Where it gets really odd is that the post was to [email protected], and the target account likewise on Lemmy.world, and filing a report is not the same as a “personal attack”. So yeah I see what you mean now. The only reason this report ended up visible was bc it was originally posted by Cat on ponder.cat. However, if I think about how people from Hexbear use Lemmy.ml alt accounts (cough Cowbee cough) to attempt to escape from moderation of posts on other instances, I can see the appeal of an instance admin getting involved.
The banned account makes personal attacks against people all the time - though here, in this case, filing a single report was not itself an “attack”.
Essentially the person was banned for “general vibes” not matching the instance rules, though only noticed in the first place by filing this report.
Precisely. I know it’s a lot to ask since everyone’s volunteers, but I wish more instance admins would do something to address the issue when their users are openly being a pain in the ass. It’s not reasonable to ask every mod to click away an unlimited number of frivolous reports, every user to block every unapologetic asshole, every mod to individually figure out the complete list of who the fight-pickers are, and so on.
Exactly!
Lemmy already has quite the reputation for being a “Nazi bar”. To be clear, not with “actual Nazis”, but as e.g. Wikipedia defines that term:
By allowing / facilitation of “unlimited free speech” on the internet, we ironically end up with LESS freedom overall, when their freedom to speak trumps my own freedom to not have to listen. Worse, people (myself included) simply shut down rather than speak up when they would have to shout to get past all the noise…
And you are not at all impinging upon the banned person’s freedom to speak… elsewhere, including that same community on Lemmy.World. You are simply asserting your own rights to not have to listen to their whinging, drawing the line in the sand to cease future offenses, which will inevitably lead to more of the same from other people who will follow suit.
The success (or failure) of your entire instance depends on such decisions. And I for one think that this was an okay call. Some of us here might not have made it, though I am pretty sure that I personally would have, but far more importantly I think we should support your right to have made it, i.e. to uphold your own vision for your instance.
Yeah. The combination of near-total anonymity, and a culture of “everyone’s entitled to their free account which takes two seconds to make, and anyone who wants to remove them has to clear every conceivable hurdle of due process and benefit of the doubt” has laid some obvious groundwork for a pretty toxic environment. Then, add to that organized political fuckery and trolling, home-grown organic trolling, genuine sincere political views which are totally insane, and a moderation model which encourages the creation of little fiefdoms of unlimited power, and it’s a wonder that anything good ever happens here.
Personally, I think almost everyone had good intentions, and that’s why it generally works despite all of that. But the question should not be “why is Lemmy so toxic sometimes?” It should be “why is Lemmy ever not toxic given how its systems are constructed? How can we set things up so that the nontoxic majority can hang out with each other without having this bullshit impinge on them quite so frequently?”
I would guess a large part of the answer would be the Rexodus, which gave many of us a sense of a shared purpose and goal. We also were FAR more willing than usual to overlook a great deal of pain, since we knew that what we were coming from had even more in store from us back there, plus we were more hopeful back then that the tools would grow to make things even better. Which to some extent they have, while in other ways we’ve actively gotten worse.
For example Reddit mods are extremely often PTB, yet there is a modlog, and people can continue to post an already-started comment reply to someone, and even make new ones, which allows people to “finish” conversations that were already started, even if the post is no longer visible on the subreddit feed.
In contrast, Lemmy has the modlog, but people do not receive notifications for events, nor is there a way to ask why or advocate - the only realistic option would be a DM, except how do you do that when the modlog simply says “DM”, and often many mods disappear for months (to years) at a time, so really is someone supposed to simply DM all of the entire mod team at once? And then continue that conversation individually, rather than as a team?
This btw is one of the strengths of Discord iirc, where you can see who removed something, and again Reddit might not do that but instead offers far better in the form of the modmail. Our tools here really suck in that regard. Especially bc removed posts don’t say “removed”, but rather “check back later”. I’m not kidding btw - go and look at one, and you’ll see that text!
I’ve heard it said that among people of conscience, rules are hardly necessary. Think: Star Trek TNG or some such. The mere thought that one’s own actions could impact others negatively would generally be sufficient to halt the vast majority of negative behaviors. In contrast, among people lacking that, no set of rules will ever be sufficient. They simply won’t follow them, or will even find ways to abuse them to harm others, remaining just inside the protective barriers themselves while using the rules as a weapon against their opponents to “win” arguments at any cost.
Honestly, I think moderation + modlog + YPTB is a pretty good approximation of justice. It’s okay to hand people a good amount of power, as long as it’s aboveboard what they are doing with it, and people can raise the alarm and in extreme cases avoid the domain where they’re overstepping what they should be doing, if they’re overstepping what they should be doing.
I’ve actually noticed a substantial reduction in how much PTB there is, since this community came into being and became the default place to raise the issue and discuss it publicly if one of the moderators was out of line.
Overall yeah. I mean, even here the reports continue to flood in unabated about the admin practices of e.g. Lemmy.ml, to the point where db0 brought in a second mod to help deal with the drudgery of handling all the drama and mod reports. And people still don’t seem to know about Midwest.social. But this community does still help a lot:-).
Yeah. I feel like people are hip to lemmy.ml at this point, or every so often new people have to learn about it, but it’s fine. People can do weird stuff, as long as it’s generally understood that it’s weird and those are the people doing the weird stuff, and people can form their own reactions to it appropriately as they see fit.
To me, a lot more alarming is the little proliferation of communities on main instances “under the radar” with some of the propaganda accounts as moderators. I haven’t paid enough attention to know if it’s universal, but I know some of them have lemmy.ml-style “ban you for nice things about the Democrats” policies, but they are masquerading as normal politics communities, and getting quite a bit of traction since the last time I checked.
They’re all pretty near the overall front page of all communities on Lemmy. IDK what the answer is to that, but “let them have control of the conversation” doesn’t sound like it.
Good point
I would call some ways of requesting sanctions against another user an “attack”. You can’t get all insistent with the staff at the bar, that someone needs to be kicked out, and then get upset when you get kicked out because that’s messed up man.
You’re completely right that it was more about vibes than about violating a specific set of rules, but I also would consider accusing everything someone says of needing to be removed from the conversation to be a personal attack. It would be different if they were saying the reported comment, itself, was in any way objectionable.
Lol you might do that, but never underestimate what others are capable of! They will tell you full on to your face what you can and cannot do - bc apparently that has worked for them to have done so, in the past?
Here I was only trying to separate
our(edit: “out”) content vs. process: you did not ban someone merely bc of a single report that they made - doing so for ONE REPORT really would be a bit of a PTB situation. Instead, what that report brought to life (in the DMs) was content that you were not okay with, none of which you’ve shared here, but I’m willing to take your word for it and say that subject to the correctness of your interpretation there, then it sounds like an okay call to have made.I disagree somewhat that a SINGLE report counts as a full-on “attack” - a “jab” maybe, like taking a “swing” at someone, but not fully rising to a “fight”. Although… it’s not exactly a hug either, nor did it leave well enough alone: they did solidly take a stand on the subject, then it sounds like in the DMs they disrespected your authority, and the latter is what earned them the ban, not the former. Like on an “attack” scale of -10 to +10, filing one report seems like a +1, so no need to exaggerate its effect there, as it is closer to neutral than e.g. to flinging toxic comments that others would have to read (arguably it was more an “abuse” of the moderation system than an “attack” against FlyingSquid, though again: super low level).
Correct. I have nothing to do with the community, or the person being reported or the people handling the reports. I just saw the report because it originated from my instance.