Hello I'm not a person who is affected by this community moderator but I'm posting on behalf of people who are, since they don't seem to know of this community yet. I attempted to reach some via DM but I'm not sure they'll respond. So I'm making this post since I feel this needs to be addressed.
Recently I was made aware of a community that appeared randomly on Lemmy.world. It seems to be a troll community given the type of content, but the reason I'm posting about it here specifically is that this mod seems to be banning anyone who points this out or goes against his narrative. Furthermore he is only using the autoremove on ban function, not removing any content the users have posted, which I believe is deliberate in attempt to prevent the content from showing up under the modlog and revealing the hypocrisy.
Some samples of comments:
Comment from: @[email protected]
Everything else you posted has been pretty cringe but what he fuck is up with this one, dude lol
comment from: @rain_[email protected]
free software is SLOWING DOWN tech advancement??????? WHAT???????
comment from: @rain_[email protected]
comment from: @the_[email protected]
First off, nice new community. I look forward to days of quality posts such as this./s
Second, how many Linux distros have this level of data collection, and what is their estimated market share?
Original comment link
All of these were retrieved from the API, even though they aren't included in the modlogs, I could've included more but it's kind of a time consuming process to look for them and retrieve them. Viewing removed comments is easier on Lemmy than it is on Reddit but it still isn't easy.
What do you guys think, does this seem like power-tripping? Also does this person's content seem like blatant troll content?
CC: @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]
People who's comments I mentioned, I CCed them so they know I did this on their behalf
Okay well they were banned from the instance for trolling. I think many people thought they clearly were doing so.
Certainly. But I never felt that way.
Technically, they were banned for: “constant attacks on other users, sealioning and general bad faith discussions and baseless accusations” which might be adjacent to trolling but I think is a more fair and objective description of their behavior.
The problem with trolling is that it’s usually not possible to identify with certainty because it depends on a person’s intent and state of mind. In your judgment Linkerbaan was trolling. In mine they weren’t. But who is right? There’s no way to be certain, it’s just a guess based on their behavior. That’s why I don’t think it should be used in moderation decisions. It’s just too subjective.
A user who constantly accuses anyone who disagrees with them of holding horrifying offensive views is a troll in my book. I think that's pretty reasonable.
But that's not what trolling means. Frankly, I'm starting to think this term is doing more harm than good in building more positive, informed, and respectful online communities. Trolling can theoretically be any type of behavior that another user doesn't like--but it has to be intended to cause those feelings. But as I said, we can't know each others intentions, and of course, bad actors are likely to lie about them. It's better to describe things in terms of objective actions a user took. The description you give here is a fine basis for a ban--but it's still not possible to say it was trolling.
The reason this bothers me is that many tightly regulated echo chambers, including some highlighted on this community, accusations of trolling are levied against anyone who doesn't toe the party line. Presentation of inconvenient or disliked facts may cause a negative emotional reaction--but that's not trolling unless the emotional reaction was the purpose of the interaction. I think at least some of the backlash against Linkeraan was due to their treatment of other users. But at least some was also because they were not willing to let people ignore the complicity of the US and the Democratic Party in the mass killings in Gaza. I think that's an important truth that risks being drowned out or silenced, but obviously it should be voiced in a way that is more respectful.
You cannot force me to adopt your definition of trolling, not that it would even matter what you called it.
Do you think we have a different definition? I honestly hadn’t considered that. What is your definition then?
Scroll up. I won't argue or defend my position as I think it's pretty reasonable and obvious to most
An example isn’t a definition but it doesn’t seem like you’re too interested in this conversation so I’ll leave it at that.