this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
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I was permabanned from [email protected] for pointing out (quite rudely, tbf) that some of the accounts had been recycling transparently laughable propaganda. E.g. they had said elsewhere that they were upset that Biden had undone Trump's insulin price cap, and now they were showing up trotting out some somewhat more subtle talking points (you know the ones...)
would be interested to hear you elaborate on this.
Dude I would fuckin LOVE to. Spending extensive time whining about moderation decisions is rarely productive, but I was definitely a little salty about it and I'm happy to discuss. Disclaimer; I'm aware that I was being a cockhead at certain points during the thread, which certainly factored into the decision, but also some of my perfectly reasonable comments were being deleted and a lot of people who were way more (and are way more consistently) cockheads didn't earn a permaban for it. It remains sort of a curious moderation decision to me.
Here's the thread. There was quite a lot of discussion in it about the presence of shills clearly distorting the discussion. I'll reproduce some of the threads including restored versions of comments that were deleted by mods (you can verify all of this on the modlog.)
I'll indicate deleted comments with a strikethrough.
That's a weird removal, no? Reason given was "stalking."
I'll have to reply to myself to talk more about the stalking; I'm meeting the character limit. Ask me if I'm still salty about these events. 🙂
I think the assertion was that I was following around particular users and posting hostile comments... which, I was doing the second thing, not the first. Here's a relevant exchange that deals with the removal more directly (from this thread during the same unit of moderation action):
Removed ("stalking") and permaban. I reached out to the mod and said hey I can see I was being a dick (it happens sometimes), but I wasn't stalking and what's up with this permaban. No response.
Just as a random additional data point, here's a post of mine that was also removed from the same threads:
Removed, civility
Reading through all that, I’d have to say I’m on your side, as I don’t really see evidence of “stalking”.
I reported an account for stalking once on politicalmemes that got permabanned, but thats because in the three minutes after I replied to them, they went out of their way to comment insults on random posts of mine from MONTHS ago.
The same memes over and over “both sides are bad don’t vote” usually decently downvoted but still appears in my feed just the same are really annoying on c/politicalmemes, so I really get where you’re coming from.
I have to note its a funny coincidence that I couldn’t find your original thread as turns out the account you are arguing had been previously blocked by me.
Yeah. Which users are the bad users is generally blatantly obvious, I feel like.
It is wild to me that there's such a consensus among the "normal users" about certain things (MBFC bot is bad, the shills are a problem, which users are the shills), and such an opposite consensus among the mods. IDK where even this "mod versus user" mentality came from (on both sides, honestly -- part of the reason I try not to complain about moderation is, WTF, they're all volunteers doing an important job and it's impossible for any human to be perfectly patient and evenhanded when dealing with the tide of nonsense they put up with in order to create a good space for conversation.) But it is still very weird to me that there's a visible "mod viewpoint" and "community participant viewpoint" and that they are different from each other.
Yep. I’m very confused though because the tolerance towards tankies makes me think the mods are further “left” (authoritarian left) then the userbase, but then the MBFC bot makes me think the opposite.
I really, really, doubt there are actual shills on Lemmy. People that hire those types of people don’t know we exist.
But there are lots of weird people with weird beliefs about politics.
I am also confused by why there would be organized shills on Lemmy. But to me the evidence is pretty clear (e.g. an account that's super into talking about US politics that one day uses $5.000.000 with decimal points to separate thousands in a number, and people ask hey what's up with that are you not from the US? and they get hostile and pretend not to understand the question) (e.g. a strong correlation between accounts that say "Democrat party" and that want you not to vote for the Democrats claiming to come from a left wing point of view) (things like that).
IDK, there are a few tens of thousands of people on Lemmy; maybe it makes sense to allocate a single person from a troll farm to run a bunch of accounts. I have no idea. It also seems weird to me, I get what you're saying, but to me it does seem clear that quite a few of them are here.
There are lots of foreign people who take an interest in US politics, I don’t think that’s sufficient evidence personally.
But it’s really hard to prove or disprove anyone is a shill so who knows.
Yeah, that part makes perfect sense. Getting hostile and pretending not to understand the question is what seemed more damning to me about it.
You’re right that there’s no way to know for sure. But to me the circumstantial evidence is very strong.
Yeah I didn’t comment on that because I’d have to see the whole context to make an assessment. I’ve definitely been known to respond with hostility when accused of being a shill (though that rarely happens since my views don’t line up very well with any authoritarian groups that tend to be behind these efforts). So I could see a sarcasm or willfully playing dumb being mistaken for a different kind of obfuscation.
Here's the context for the thousands separator thing. They seem willfully committed to pretending not to understand the question or realize why it might be something someone would ask about, in a way that seems like a very unlikely way for a non-shill user to respond. To me.
Here's another one where the user is posting a pretty steady tide of propaganda (like, literally, videos from channels which are featured on rt.com) and not wanting to answer questions about what they're posting. I get that the questions aren't phrased real friendly-like, but they're not like random or senseless questions, and the user doesn't seem fazed at all by them or interested at all in the idea of demonstrating that they're posting in good faith.
I think it’s more likely that these are just weird people with weird posting habits. It’s totally plausible that there is a foreigner or immigrant who has a passionate interest in Palestinian topics and they didn’t want to engage with those questions which are phrased in a very hostile manner. Playing dumb is sometimes a fun way to respond to hostile people honestly. Drives them crazy.
But sure, they could be a shill. I can’t prove they’re not. I personally doubt it.
It might be specific to political communities? I haven't seen this in other communities, be it as a mod or a standard user
Yeah, it totally is. That's what I mean. You don't see like an animal pictures community where the mods are like "NO MORE FOXES that is the rule" and the users get all confused like "but... bro half the pictures are porcupines, can we do something about that, no one thinks it's too many foxes and anyway we like fox pictures" and the mods say "like all of you I am concerned and fearful to think sometimes that I might be in a community with too many porcupines, but I can assure you that it's not true" or anything like that.
My analogy is very bad but hopefully the point comes across
It does, no worries ha ha
I think the mod v. user viewpoint is why moderators are so cagey and timid about banning the Usual Suspects. I remember when mods actually followed through and temp banned one of them (iirc it was givesomefucks?) and pretty much all of Lemmy lost their collective shit. If you just read that one thread, you'd have left with the impression that Lemmy mods were a bunch of far-right, protofascist, power tripping assholes hellbent on silencing dissent.
The lesson I took from that episode is that Lemmy has a sizable, vocal minority that either agrees with what the Usual Suspects are saying, or at minimum don't think it's banworthy. They might also think there needs to be a bright line rule violation (and either don't recognize or don't care that every good troll is well-versed in skirting the rules and gently pushing the line, but almost never clearly steps over them).
Yeah, 100% agree
This part I think is the key portion