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How does banning actually work? (self.support)

submitted 9 months ago by Syrc to c/support

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So I was skimming again through the comments of a thread, and saw a comment with 42 upvotes, including mine, and no downvotes, as “removed by a mod”. I was curious about which comment was it and the reason, but looking at the modlog, the only action shown against that account is apparently a mod banning it from the site with reason “rape jokes are not tolerated here”. Looking at the account, its whole comment history has been nuked.

Now, I have numerous questions:

-Can mods ban people from the whole site? I thought only admins could do that?

-What does “banning from site” actually mean? Comments were deleted from every instance, does an admin (or mod) from one instance have such “power” over the others?

-I’m pretty sure I did NOT upvote a rape joke, is it really correct to nuke the entire comment history of an account just because of one violation? I’m afraid that could lead to a huge loss of content as the site progresses. Especially if simple mods can do that.

I can link to the specific account/comment if I get authorization, not sure if that’s allowed.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Mods can only ban within a community.

When you ban someone there’s an option to purge all of their data as well. This will federate out if the user is of the instance doing the ban+purge.

Whether it’s correct or not would depend on lots of factors.

[–] Syrc 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

But then why do some “banning from site” actions show up as done by mods in the modlog? Is it a visual issue and are those actually admins too?

[–] kersploosh 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

What you see in the modlog depends on your role.

If you are a regular user, or are not logged in, the modlog shows all actions as performed by "mod" regardless of who did it.
If you are a community moderator, you see who performed each action within your community. But you don't get that level of visibility in other communities or at the instance level (I think).
If you are an admin, you see everything: which user performed each removal or ban, in any community, on any federated instance.

The effect of bans and content removals depends on the actor's role.

As @[email protected] mentioned, community mods can only perform community bans.
Actions performed by an admin from a remote instance are local to that remote instance. A site ban means you can no longer interact with communities on that instance. If your posts/comments are "removed" they will be hidden from users on that instance but still be visible to users on other instances.
Actions performed by an admin on you home instance are global. If you are site banned, or your content is removed, those actions federate to other instances. You are effectively banned everywhere and your removed content is hidden from everyone. (Of course this assumes everything federates properly.)

[–] Syrc 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for confirming what willya said, that was definitely informative.

Your first point is incorrect, though. It’s true regular users can’t see the exact names of who performed the actions, but I still see a distinction between “mod” and “admin”. In fact, most “Banning from Site” actions are performed by “admins”. That’s why some of them being labeled as “mod” instead confused me.

[–] kersploosh 3 points 9 months ago

You are correct that my first point was incorrect. I just learned that the level of detail in the modlog is configurable and varies by instance. For example, if I look at literature.cafe all modlog actions are performed by "mod." On lemmy.world, though, some of those same actions are performed by "admin."