this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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Uh, @[email protected] .. what's up with the banning going on in this thread? I noticed on a.lemmy.org that someone was labeled "banned" and their comment was simply "Ight, I’m out"
The mod note was "Let us help you".
There are more similarly weak (spiteful?) bans that certainly don't seem to be at a standard for a ban. "Litterally 1984" was another one. Is that all it takes to be banned here?
Edit: Many (all?) the users I referenced as banned are now unbanned from the site, but now banned from this community.
The "ight I'm out" ban note was.... hm. Not a great look. Comes across as petty and vindictive.
There are worse, imo.
user @snake posted:
and was banned for:
Definitely not a great look.
Lemmy.world admins, I am truly asking you to please reflect on how bad this looks. It honestly makes you seem like you can't handle criticism and if people get that vibe they will use it to absolutely fuck with you. I know from my own personal experience. I understand that you're volunteers but this is a step in a very bad direction that will only serve to cause more issues.
Agree.
This decisions seems emotionally driven. That will not work on the internet.
You created rules. Use your rules to make your decisions. Don't use your emotions.
It won't only bring the site into disarray, it will bring you moderators and your emotional states into disarray.
Make your rules as black and white as poasible. where grayness raises, create new rules.
Can someone please post this stuff on lemmy world in its own thread? This needs to be brought to attention.
The people responsible for this need to then either concede that they have done wrong, leave or otherwise be made to leave.
Ehhhh… the other two comment/bans seem a tad vindictive. This on the other had seems to have a different tone to me. It’s thinly veiled criticism and almost feels like a threat, especially if someone has been DDOSing your server for weeks.
In context of the admin post they responded to, it just seems like a logical suggestion (not demand). I don't agree that the admins should hand over control, but I also don't see how suggesting it warrants a ban.
How fuckin childish.
Are you paying anything for this service? No. It has costs to maintain while they’re shouldering that on their own and giving you this service for free.
Get over yourself. The entire point of the fediverse is that anyone can host an instance. You can spin up a little free instance yourself and federate or defederate/block anything you see fit.
Why don’t you? I’m gonna guess because you want a low effort, free service to get your scrolling fix. In which case, they’re right. Go to a different instance that suits your values more. If you want an instance that won’t defederate or block others unless absolutely necessary, go join Lemm.ee. They federate with basically everyone and don’t block hardly anything.
And, Lemmy world is federated with them. So you won’t lose a single thing here if you move there.
Is it really childish to quote what someone else said and question it? Seems like quite an overreaction on your behalf to be honest.
Where I moderate, even implied death threats are a zero-warnings bannable offense.
I'm not here to defend that guy, but since you offered this stance, what do you think about JFK's quote
Is that an "implied" death threat?
This isn't a gotcha; I'm just curious at your personal opinion.
It's not. Where are you going with this argument?
Precisely nowhere-- I have seen that quote get people banned for advocating violence, and I think that's pretty crazy; I semi-randomly ask people who moderate this question. I promise there's no gotcha here.
What about a "Four Boxes" reference?
I had to look up what that even is, because I haven't encountered that one before. (me not being US-American)
I cannot make a call on a reference to a quote brought forth on an unspecified subject without context.
In regards to JFK - yes that would count as advocating violence in a very generalised sense. But without context, again, I am not able to make a call, whether a ban on someone making the quote is justified or not. In general, moderation policy also falls under freedom of expression. Consequently, freedom of speech is not a claimable right against non-governmental agents. It's a thing that a lot of people seem to selectively overlook when advocating for what would actually be better described as "Anarchy of speech".
Please don't misunderstand. Even the government (US, in my case) doesn't have unrestricted free speech, and that's a good thing. We agree here. I even would say that the line as it is currently set in America is "too broad" and that we need to tweak it down a bit. We fail to acknowledge that stochastic terrorism is a thing, in our speech laws, and it essentially makes it completely legal to do as long as you remain sufficiently coded/vague.
If you don't mind humoring me one more time, feel free to weigh in on my questions, again, but assuming the quotes were both made in context; that is to say, JFK quote for a scenario where peaceful revolution was being restricted, and four boxes (which, in my mind, comes a little too close to the line) in a scenario where people were losing their ability to weigh in on their government actions via speech, voting, and juries.
I can't seem to articulate, even to myself, why the JFK quote is generally (in my mind) considered non-violent, but the four boxes one (again, in my mind) is more threatening. I'm hoping random internet polling will lead to some insight. haha
No problem, it's nice to have a level-headed exchange amidst an ongoing tornado of sewage :)
So, I can try to empathize with either side (mods and users) for each of the two quotes, and there might be scenarios where one is completely right and one is wrong. But as an outsider to the kind of debates where these quotes are commonly used, I simply don't have the cultural understanding to help much with answering your question. Sorry.
Drawing the arch back to my initial statement: There are several levels of escalation present between utilising famous people quotes to make a general point and trying to dodge around community rules by veiling direct threats to a specified (inferred from context) group. I am of the opinion that the guillotine-comment I replied to is definitely stepping over the line and only remains standing, because right now additional enforcement of rules is (probably) not going to improve the weather situation mentioned above.
That's fair. How does hyperbole factor into this, do you think. I hesitate to say anything that might appear to be defending the comment above, but considering the context (banning people for weak reasons) it seems pretty certain that the user doesn't actually mean to imply that banning people from some somewhat obscure website for a poor reason should result in death by beheading.
I'm personally of the mind that "it was just hyperbole, bro" isn't an excuse-- or maybe only very narrowly so-- but what are your thoughts? Is the bannable offense the specific phrase, or the intent of the user?
(I enjoyed this, but now is the last statement from me, because me needing to spend my attention on other things)
User intention can rarely be discerned, not at all reliable or even viable in a public free4all. So, only phrasing and context from previous comments can be considered. Hyperbole (sarcasm, irony and other rhetorical devices) can and will always be taken at face value by someone. They will also be brought in as excuses for breaking rules. Sometimes a mod might be patient enough to engage a person and asking for clarification, but usually it is not worth it and disciplinary action must be taken or some future troll will actually be even correct when complaining about inconsistent moderation.
That's also fair. Thanks for the discussion!
I hope that this demonstrates to people that the oppressive reddit behaviour is not confined to special individuals (such running major social media sites), but is a systematic occurance in online forums. Simply switching from one toxically moderated space to another is not a solution. But this is where the strength of ActivityPub/fediverse lies: we are able to leave for another server while still using the same fundamental service and being able to interact with the same content as before. I would recommend startrek.website as a new or second home for those who wish to migrate.
I'm probably being overly cynical, but I have a pretty unflattering option of volunteer moderators and the type of people that seek out such seemingly thankless positions-- and their motivations for doing so. I know this might seem-- bizarre-- considering where I am posting this, but I think it nonetheless.
I like lemmy because there's a modlog to see these things. I do not believe that these users would be unbanned if it hadn't been noticed in the modlog. And it appears they're unbanned from the sitewide ban, but still banned in the community. Not sure what sense that makes.
If your instance gets big enough, you'll also have to deal with petty tyrants seeking out positions of petty power.
Just wondering and looking at the mod log for one admin and maybe I am crazy but are they unbanning and rebaning users? (Keep in mind it goes new on top):
They're unbanning them from a sitewide ban and then immediately banning them from the lemmyworld community.
What in the hell?
Seems kinda petty even for backpedalling. I get that some of these users might be right awful but it does not pay to play right into these peoples arguments.
I don't disagree.
That's very interesting, thank you for highlighting this. Edit: how are you seeing the bans? The link seems to be to a website sales platform.
I am very interested to see the justification for that ban - it seems extremely heavy handed.
For me, the exact same heavy handed, take it or leave it, attitude of the reddit admins is exactly what made me decide to leave that platform and come here instead.
The mod note is not encouraging.
Click the mod log txt at the bottom of the site, you can then sort by action or user making changes.
I think some of this instance's admins are not onboard with the rest. Too many cooks in the kitchen.
Well the radio silence on it sure seems like they're circling the wagons to protect an admin that clearly isn't emotionally mature enough to be in such a position.
The next Reddit/Lemmy is going to be ran by AI lol, us humans are too easily corrupted by power
Yeahhhh, please leave reddit (they still run ads there for this instance) for lemmy.
I guess they wanted people to feel at home?