this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2024
75 points (92.1% liked)

Ye Power Trippin' Bastards

206 readers
40 users here now

This is a community in the spirit of "Am I The Asshole" where people can post their own bans from lemmy or reddit or whatever and get some feedback from others whether the ban was justified or not.

Sometimes one just wants to be able to challenge the arguments some mod made and this could be the place for that.

Rules

Expect to receive feedback about your posts, they might even be negative.

Make sure you follow this instance's code of conduct. In other words we won't allow bellyaching about being sanctioned for hate speech or bigotry.

Some acronyms you might see.

Relevant comms

founded 2 months ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
75
Resolved: Was banned for 3 days from News seemingly for no reason, no message, nothing just found it scrolling through the modlog (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
48 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Edit: @[email protected] Contacted the moderator who did it on my behalf who admitted that this was a mistake, he sends his apologies. This incident though does highlight though the need for ban notifications as well as the need for a modmail system to contact community and site moderators.

I have left the post up with the original contents bellow as I feel it would be wrong to delete the post and rob people of the valuable information it contains, both in the post itself and in the comment section.

I messaged a mod from the community, not sure if that was the one who did it but this was weird. Not sure if it's power-tripping probably a mistake but it's certainly weird and seems like a knee jerk reaction since I didn't have activity in those last 10 days (I checked for votes too). Also no other bans in the modlog for "sock puppet account" so I don't even know why I would be singled out.

Why would someone think I was a sock puppet account? Because I have multiple accounts on different instances? Really weird...

Account is @[email protected], I didn't post from that account since I try to keep each account on each separate instance (helps prevent accidental vote manipulation).

all 49 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 50 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

I messaged a mod from the community, not sure if that was the one who did it but this was weird.

Lemmy really needs a modmail function. Playing mod roulette when asking questions is a fucking pain.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I agree, this is really stupid having to message mods individually. @[email protected] (maybe it was nutomic, I don't really remember right now) says it's because they don't want Lemmy to be a messaging platform, that mods should use external tools. I disagree. We need modmail and adminmail functions native to Lemmy, not needing to use funky bots or external tools.

We also need for bans to notify the people they're given to, otherwise it's as bad as shadowbans. I could've probably reached out about this days ago but I didn't even know it had happened, I don't look myself up in the modlog, I was looking to see if an unrelated incident had been actioned. Who knows when I would've found out if I hadn't been combing the modlog, weeks, months, would I have ever?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Bans do notify, I believe, if you're on the same instance as the community.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I don't think so, my account and the community in question are both on Lemmy.world and I never got any ban notification.

Edit, nope, doesn't notify. Just made a community on sh.itjust.works and banned my account there. The ban is shown in the sidebar but it doesn't give a notification when it happens, only indication when it is active.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Running as an admin on another platform, having a separate communication medium is extremely important.

I'd back them on this, just on good practices basis.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

I mean I don't think it's bad to have alternate platforms to reach out to people on, like having a Matrix room and a matrix account. But I do think that since the idea and spirit of Lemmy is to have many people host their own community instances, or even their own personal instances. That there needs to be some built-in tools for modmail and the like for those who would be more considered noobs in platform hosting. While there are many bigger instances which have set up these systems, there are also many that have not, and that complicates reaching admin teams when they need to be reached. Also for community mods, they can't be expected to host their own email modmail system for their communities, especially if they don't own the server.

That's why Modmail is important, not for use instead of the other tools but in addition to them. After all if you have modmail and other tools it's a redundancy, if you don't have modmail or other tools it's a big mess like what we have now.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

I might work on this. My implementation would be a simple backend route that simply messages all of the mods in a community (maybe with a [modmail] prefix as an indicator) Should be fairly simple. Like a bulk PM.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

That approach seems ineffective to me, you'd end up with situations where every mod wastes time responding to the same thing or where no mod responds at all because they assume someone else will handle it.

Imo a better starting point is a hidden text post which notifies mods of a community.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Yeah, but that increases the complexity. That was my first idea. If it is going to be more complex, then we can make a dedicated modmail page for the mods in a community. We possibly could reuse code from the report functionality. Actually, I'm sure the report system could be readjusted to just be a text from a user. The resolve function is perfect for mod assignments. Then the conversation between the modmail user and the mod can continue in the PMs.

edit: made a feature request regarding this: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/5110

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Modmail is much more of a gamble because you don't know if you potentially get the abusive mod on the other end, claiming to speak for the whole team.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Back on Reddit, the whole team saw modmail, even if another mod already responded to it. Also, I think the mod responses were visible to other mods.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

I guess that says a lot about the quality of Reddit mods then.

[–] Anon518 3 points 3 weeks ago

It used to be like that, but now a single reddit mod can archive any modmail, which generally prevents other mods from seeing it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Maybe unlike Reddit don't allow Mods to hide their responses to the user. That way if they are abusive or unfair user can take that and go snitch to the admins.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

It should connect you to whoever took the action. If you have relevant discussion or protest or clarification you should be able to get straight to the source.

[–] bestboyfriendintheworld 2 points 1 week ago

If you get banned from an instance, this won’t help. They delete the account outright and all its posts and founded communities.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

I got banned individually from every single community on an instance without a single notification. The reason given in the modlog was one word "lib".

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

gotta be .ml?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago

Midwest.social

[–] InEnduringGrowStrong 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Starting with 0.19.5, site bans also automatically create community bans from that instance's local communities.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Is that actually a native lemmy feature? I think some servers do it as a bot to clear content and prevent interaction but unless I understand correctly the issue of handling users interacting with local communities after receiving a site ban hasn't yet been addressed. It's been proposed here to add a table to federate site bans to communities but that seemingly hasn't been touched or implemented yet.

[–] InEnduringGrowStrong 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

It's in lemmy code since 0.19.5, kinda, but only triggers local community bans after a local site ban.
There's plenty of weird (to me) federation behavior.
Mostly... an instance admin cannot remove a comment from a local user if it's on a remote community. I mean... you can, but it doesn't federate to the remote community.

There's a few other things that are counterintuitive

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Yeah that is weird, an admin should be able to remove a local user's comments or posts even if they are on remote communities.

Also the automatically applying local bans after site ban seems like a very hacky workaround and doesn't work well when new communities are created since those won't have the person's ban in them. That's why I really hope they work on including site bans in communities, that way we just wouldn't need to worry about it.

[–] InEnduringGrowStrong 1 points 2 weeks ago

Thing is you can with a site ban with content removal.. but not by removing individual content

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It was an instance ban, I guess they did it because they do it for most instance bans because people who are instance banned can still interact with the community on other instances. Which to be fair, is a problem with how site bans are currently implemented in Lemmy still is a very weird and cryptic reason to ban someone though. Are Midwest.social right wing? They don't say they are right-wing but I know many self-proclaimed leftists who are actually right wing so it wouldn't surprise me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

IDK what they are. I don't even know what I said that got me banned, because I was never notified. I've only ever interacted with the community through their posts in the Everything feed. I'd say based on the overreaction, and the reason given, that the particular mod who banned me is right-wing, and power-tripping. I'm occasionally rude, and rarely serious, so it's possible I said something ban worthy, but I doubt it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Definitely seems like they might be right wing, and likely power-tripping. I'd suggest making a post here about it, bring more attention to the issue, at the very least it could help people know to stay away from those communities and possibly that instance as a whole.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I'm wondering if it was just because you have alts? But it's not against any rules to have alts afaik so long as you're not doing vote manipulation etc. And yours are clearly identifiable which is another point in your favour here. If you want me to reach out to the mod who banned you on your behalf, just let me know. They might not answer me, but it's maybe worth a shot.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

How can you tell that they have alts?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Just search by user for "Draconic" and they are all clearly labelled. Personally I don't really see the point of it, but I don't really see a problem with it either.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Catboy.agency lol

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It's a server run by a friend I met on Mastodon. I don't use it very much though because the Misskey forks (Sharkey included) tend to be quite resource heavy. Though I still do check up on it from time to time.

@[email protected]

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I refuse to believe it’s anything but a spy agency run by mutant cat boys

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

We might be, but we're also just a bunch of silly catboys UwU

@[email protected]

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

That’s how all the spy agencies start then shit gets real

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

That's true, I hope it doesn't come to that though. If we do though we'll at least be fighting for a good cause, the war against bigots and bigotry.

@[email protected]

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

Well the main reason was in the beginning I knew that servers might not last forever and I wanted to make sure I had backup accounts just in case, as well as for the purposes of negating possible federation issues (which I faced the moment I joined Lemmy.world). The more long term reason was that I thought in the future there might be a multi-account feature in Lemmy, so I wanted to have many accounts on Many different servers so I could so link them if and when that feature came into play. Looking back I'm not sure how likely it'll be to ever come, hopefully maybe, at the very least someone could develop a client which supports it.

On the Mastodon side it's simpler, I started on Mastodon.social, over time I grew to hate it because it was filled with spam, trolls, and very much limited by other servers, and I left and joined pawb.fun where a lot of the people I follow and want to follow are on. I joined dragonchat.org because pawb.fun was having outages and I still wanted to stay connected with some of my friends who were there. I joined chaos.social because I wanted a more general purpose non-furry instance to follow non-furry topics on, but still will not go back to mastodon.social. I believe I did make one on utter.online but I don't really know why.

I'm in social.sdf.org (Mastodon) and lemmy.sdf.org mainly because I'm an SDF member, though I've been a bit inactive lately. Haven't even really played on their Minecraft server. I should get back to doing that soon, I'm sure those guys miss me, and I left a lot unfinished there.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I think that could be helpful, I did also send a message to @[email protected] to hopefully get a lemmy.world admin response but I suppose you messaging the mod couldn't hurt. Maybe he might answer and clear things up quicker that way.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Ok np, I have messaged the mod who took the action.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Seems it was just an accident - mod sends his apologies.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

That's a relief. Glad it was an accident and not something I did.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Can you maybe edit the title with "Resolved" or something similar? It's nice to see good outcomes once in a while

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Sure thing, just edited it now. Also added some alt-text, I forgot to do that before.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

News comm going really crazy lately. Especially with having sudden new rules like you can't question mod actions in comments or ask why something was removed

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

We also have a rule that you cannot use an alt account to evade a temporary ban, which you did.