cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1119656

The [email protected] community on this instance thrived for a while and reached almost 19k subscribers very rapidly and it was very active.

Recently the Reddit mods of r/Android created another community with a few hundred members on another different instance where they are mods and that one was then astroturfed on c/android by a person seemingly unrelated to that community’s mods.

Apparently some discussions then took place between owners of both communities and the mods of [email protected] community then unilaterally closed the community, thus, according to their own sticky notice, succumbing to the flawed reasoning that the Reddit mods are “more experienced” and therefore the rightful representatives of an Android community.

I find this behavior sad and it just shouldn’t be allowed here for two reasons:

  • this sets the precedent for more Reddit mods to just come and claim “ownership” of communities by bullying existing ones into closing;
  • does not respect the almost 19k subscribers who didn’t even have a say in this, and especially those who had already expressed that they joined [email protected] because they did NOT want to be moderated by the old Reddit mods.

[email protected] needs to be reopened now and the mods removed since they expressed that they no longer want to moderate a community on lemmy.world.

  • trouser_mouse
    5•1 year ago

    Definitely time for a sleep!

    I have seen your other comments, and I think my issue is (hopefully obviously!) not at all with you, but it is the principle - the choice of multiple communities is being taken away.

    For what it is worth (not much) I think you wanting to take load off .world is great, and you patiently answer people’s questions and are polite and helpful. As I said, I don’t mean to be rude, but if this was happening to a community I was invested in I would be angry and rightly so I think (but to be clear I have never posted on Android, and really it is the principle).

    You are doing what seems to be a good job handling a tricky situation, although I think your server needs some clear policies and goals and server-level rules, clear information about funding and GDPR compliance etc. to help build trust. My personal opinion based on seeing one post is that Mike, on the other hand, is not handing this well at all - and comes across as very rude and really condescending and I have replied to his post saying this. Responses you have made compared to his are miles apart. That’s just my impression, and not meant as a personal attack. I would hope he can look at how you post and learn from it. Good luck with the moderation if recent responses are how he speaks to people!

    • ijeff
      4•1 year ago

      No rudeness felt here! I really do appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts. These conversations are important. A few thoughts:

      • I think we were all taken aback by some of the accusatory tone and misrepresentations in the Snoo’s posts and comments here and on the first submission. Mike and Devgard are quite reasonable and considerate folks, as you can see from their approach to this thread when they thought we had been trying to promote the new community in theirs.
      • In terms of instances, there’s no real difference when it comes to where the community is hosted. Users still login through their home instance and content is still propagated across the Fediverse (every single federated instance hosts a cached copy of that content). This is why there’s no effective difference to the end-user if an instance is relocated other than the URL becoming slightly longer (from lemmy.world/c/android to lemmy.world/c/[email protected]).
      • Ultimately, both teams needed help (moderation is currently significantly more tedious on Lemmy than Reddit) and using a specialized instance makes a lot of sense for the Fediverse. The alternative of leaving the older one open but less moderated would be worse considering the spam and scams already appearing (including those trying to recommend random apk files that are most assuredly malicious).
      • On the GDPR, I appreciate you raising this. There are some questions and challenges that remain for all of Lemmy itself considering how content is cached across instances by default. My understanding is that this hasn’t quite been settled for Mastodon either. A number of us are big fans of the GDPR, even those of us to whom it doesn’t directly apply (but we often still benefit when companies implement mechanisms to come into compliance). I personally intend to investigate how Lemmy handles purged content but we should have some basic language filled out soon.
      • On the instance operations, a lot of work has been done and continues toward scaling. That includes vertically (e.g., server resource specifications automatically increase and decrease as needed) and horizontally (e.g., automatically spin up separate server instances to share loads). Some of this is already in place, which has kept costs very reasonable. More is underway that should bring them down even more drastically and set it up well for higher traffic. It’s currently funded by Cole who has committed to us his willingness to do so - but there are many others among us willing to chip in funding and server resources. The plan is for everything about lemdro.id to be open source - including any to have any custom code and cost-saving techniques to be published on Github, as well as to have closed administrator chats be publicly visible. The aim is for long-term longevity that could outlive anyone currently involved.
      • trouser_mouse
        4•1 year ago

        Hope you managed to get a decent sleep!

        On GDPR, this is a thread from today: https://lemmy.world/post/1131665 - there is a helpful post to some other discussions. Just linking it as there are a few good observations made. Totally agree, there are seemingly a lot of challenges but I am not sure there is an appreciation of how easy it is for anyone to raise non-compliance and the consequences. I’m sure some people have a really good understanding, but I suspect some do not - especially given how vastly complex it is and the lack of urgency some people seem to treat it with.

        I feel like there is a lot to learn about how to manage community transitions / mergers / transfers etc as Lemmy grows.