this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2024
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Fedigrow

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I noticed today an occurence of a user complaining about Lemmy being worse then Reddit. The modlogs shows how toxic they are. When this was pointed out, the user deletes their account

https://web.archive.org/web/20241217101003/https://sopuli.xyz/post/20276017?scrollToComments=true

Deleted account: https://kbin.melroy.org/u/Pyrin

This seems to address the question that comes up once in a while "a public modlog is only useful for mods" (https://feddit.org/post/4920887/3235141), while we can see from this example that it can also be useful for toxic users.

As you may know, [email protected] is a community dedicated to calling out power tripping mods.

Should we consider having a similar community for toxic users?

There is already [email protected], but I feel like the "lore" is more about large-scale events (like the cats wave recently) than specific users events.

Edit: Updated the title, and put the emphasis on creating a community to call out toxic users rather than "dunking" on the users that was banned.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

The problem is, you only would see the content that was removed. It is also extremely one sided. The modlog isn't what it was, and now they have removed legitimacy from it by removing the names of the mods and admins who did the enforcement, even though it was already relatively easy and straightforward to create a moderation alt. So you don't get the visibility of any moderator abuse either. There's also the fact that moderators and admins do lie.

A community dedicated to calling out power tripping mods exists because it affects everybody and there is no moderator of moderator decisions, save for admins who, if not part of the problem also have other problems to deal with. There is no power tripping user because users basically have no power. The counter to yepowertrippingbastards for users already exists, it's called being a moderator, and they get to "post" about it in a modlog where their and only their word gets posted, where they are allowed to do it anonymously under the cover of seeming but not actual unanimity, and where users don't get a chance to tell their side of the story. Mods also have their own internal groups to address concerns of problem users.

Having a public community about it both makes those moderators who participate seem even more insecure and would also be a source of drama as they try to create a new version of the modlog in community form while finding out communities are not homogeneous.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 hours ago

Should we consider having a similar community for toxic users?

I think that it's a bad idea because that community would become a pitchfork emporium. Users posting there would be a textbook example of users that we shouldn't want in the Fediverse: whiny, entitled, assumptive, passive aggressive. It's how the cookie crumbles with this sort of meta-community.

To avoid that, you'd need to restrict the scope and make it objective, like !yepowertrippinbastards does - that comm is only about mods/admins acting as such and abusing their power.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

1.) NOWHERE is worse than reddit mods. They can diaf.

B.) I love the modlog. Half the time I have to go "what the hell did I say to get deleted?!" and dredging it up to see what I said and the reason, which is usually "rule 5" or the like. I also like seeing deleted posts responding to mine that got deleted before I read them. Half the time they didn't say anything particularly bad towards me, just used a bad word or went off topic.

LASTLY.) Any changes that keep mods and admins out of dictatorial power is perfect. I got banned on Reddit for "being racist" because I called out criminals and some other jackasses were saying "black people" as the word "criminal" even though the crimes were in a predominantly white area so it was a bad assumption from the start. I have a black GF and my post history has ZERO racist comments or remarks. I asked the mod and they said it was because I was a racist like everyone else getting banned and blocked me and reported me for harassing them. I appealed it to the reddit admins, they did nothing and said the mod was in the right and i started getting banned in other subs for nonsense, only to find out from others they all share a couple mods...of note, this is how it went down, this isn't me editing the story in my favor, it was exactly that absurd and blatant...don't let Lemmy become THAT bullshit.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 15 hours ago

A community dedicated to getting mad at people will quickly become just as toxic, if not more so.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 14 hours ago (3 children)

Lemmy is worse than reddit though. Especially if you don't block .ml.

Though they have predictably gotten quieter now that the election is over.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

I'm not trolling about the elections these days, maybe that's because my frontpage isn't 100% trump-related spam. I don't care about the US, why should I be exposed to you people cultural imperialism? Keep that shit to yourself.

It was hillarious to see dumb americans astro-turfing the lemmyverse with their election bullcrap, only to be exposed to opinion from foreigners and then whining that everybody you don't like is a russian spy. Follow the western neo-lib line or get called Igor (yeah coz they're also racists).

But hey, count on the idiots to passively eat cold-war era propaganda.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

They do as the CCP demands.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 hours ago

Worldists are neoliberals genocide apologists, they censor as much shit as any "tankie" instance and if there was any justice the mods would be in jail.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Which is worse depends a lot on how much you weight each of their flaws. Personally I think that Lemmy still behaves better than Reddit, even considering that Lemmy behaviour is getting worse over time.

So, focusing solely on aspects where Lemmy is worse than Reddit, IMO:

  • witch hunting
  • intrusive soapboxing
  • bossing others around with uncalled advice
[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago

intrusive soapboxing

Wut dis

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Do we really need to do public shaming?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago (4 children)

You're not the first one to point it out, maybe I should remove this post.

To answer your question, as I said in another comment, I wanted to use this example for when people ask “how does a public modlog make Lemmy better than Reddit”, which is a question that comes up quite once in a while: https://feddit.org/post/4920887/3235141

We also public shame mods all the time on [email protected], no sure why potential trolls could not be called out too.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

the power tripping bastards community often goes off the rails and becomes a hate fest, many many many times, people just go there to relitigate and rage, and the brigading gets out of hand.

A few times we identify a real mod issue, but the current format is chaotic

[–] [email protected] 4 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Interesting.

While there are definitely issues sometimes (but then the mods of the community usually lock the threads), it's been quite useful to show how biased some moderation actions are sometimes performed.

It also allows to suggest alternatives. [email protected] definitely took off after a few reports about [email protected]

[–] [email protected] 3 points 23 hours ago

Sure, there is utility, but right now it is less about "did a mod follow the posted rules" and more about "do I agree with the rule".... which we have seen in the last week's news cycle, power tripping bastards has gotten super toxic.

The forum to moderate moderators needs strong moderation :)

[–] the_post_of_tom_joad 4 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

It'd need a heavy mod hand methinks, otherwise people'll just be forming gangs on a mf after they get butthurt inna argument. I don't have first-hand experience but i have been around the Internet a long time, figger there's probably a reason most places don't allow doxxing and it's not cuz "it's wrong" and more cuz it's "exhausting" to clean

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Name and shame is a good way to discourage bad behaviors

[–] [email protected] 4 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Doesn't seem that effective if they can just delete their account and start a new one.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 15 hours ago

sure but most won't immediately trust the comments/posts from a new account so the user has to attempt to build credibility again

Either way, this system ensures that fediverse instance you're on provides users with the best and worst of the admins' and moderators' logic & beliefs.

The fact that fediverse provides this system by default means that users will most likely migrate towards instances that they trust the most.

Toxic individuals will rarely disappear for good but the majority of users will most likely be those beneficial to themselves and others on the shared instance.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Public shaming has been an effective tool to combat destructive social behaviors for thousands of years.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Maybe when you immediately knew who was speaking, but ever since people started talking with anonymous accounts, I think this belief needs serious reconsideration.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's a great example of a toxic redditor coming to the fediverse hoping people would tolerate his behaviour, but surprise surprise:

we don't

...and gets banned lol.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago

They didn't even get banned (except from SJW, but that's only one instance), I think they just deleted their account

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago

This idea sounds conceptually similar to something like kiwifarms, which seems like a red flag imo

[–] [email protected] 10 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (7 children)

No

I don't think we need that kinda community anymore, pretty sure we already have similar community

I agree that some Lemmy users are annoying and as bad as Reddit. But, man, if you behave like that, you're no better lol, in fact worse.

I agree with @[email protected], I started using recently PieFed and even contributed to the code, and PieFed seems to have a good feature specific to this case, like reputation points (though I have a feeling this could also be abused?)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

Maybe instead of spending times creating community like that, how about we contribute on making high-quality content on the threadiverse?

That's what I attempt to do on [email protected] anyway

[–] [email protected] 4 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

This I disagree with, b/c BOTH activities are necessary to help the Fediverse thrive. As Blaze pointed out, there are many niche communities starting to form here, already a year and a half past the Rexodus, and yet even ONE (or two) toxic interactions is more likely to send someone away from here than the presence of one (or two) additional communities is likely to entice them to remain.

You are not wrong in that we DO need additional content and communities like that - so kudos on that one!:-) - but we ALSO need to decrease the toxicity level significantly, if we want to entice the less thick-skinned mainstream normal people (who don't use Arch Linux btw) to join us here.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

You don't have to ask, you can just create this community, as long as it abides by the instance's community guidelines, and see how it goes. But you will also have to live with the drama it creates, and that may far outlast the community well after it closes. I can already tell you, the moment this community begins getting tracking is the moment you will also see those problem users creating their own versions of it to dispel your claims with their own point of view. This will polarize instances even more by those that allow these types of communities and those that don't.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

If it's worth doing it may be worth some effort? But I suppose you are saying that the cost to effort ratio is too high? That does seem a good point: what is all that effort really gaining for anyone? If the goal is to educate people how to make use of the modlog, perhaps using accounts that have already deleted themselves so as to not call out anyone still active here, there are already communities for such generic Fediverse content.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I 100% agree with you that making the tone here a little more positive would be a huge benefit. But unfortunately, I think the proposed community would be likely to do the opposite. The reality seems to be that toxicity and social media go together to some extent, at least as they exist today. The only proven solution I’ve seen is heavy-handed moderation which is labor intensive and can have other downsides.

But I like the brainstorming nonetheless. Keep the ideas flowing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago

It definitely could go either way.

The toxicity needs to be discussed in order to deal, but what is the real benefit of doing that at the per-user level? To make a cross-instance blacklist? The affected users would just create an alt, plus what is "toxic" to some ("I want women to not be treated as people" is the epitome of grace and class to others - someFUCKINGhow?!).

A complicating factor is that currently, moderator reports aren't even federated across instances, and that won't be added until at least 0.20 as Nutomic put onto the Lemmy Roadmap. Not that it should either hinder or accelerate the need for such a community, just that it seems tangentially related?

I keep coming back to the idea of porn: should it not exist (no, I mean yes, I mean it should not be entirely banned, studies show that banning it at least correlates if not actually contributes to causing actual irl physical violence), or can it simply be labeled properly? The problem being that while the Fediverse does an excellent job of labeling NSFW content (and PieFed even adds a new category, on top of NSFW, for "gore"), it fails miserably at labeling most other things - e.g. you cannot criticize Russia, China, or North Korea on the infamous "community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers", which how would the latter have in any way implied the former, in its wording?

Making porn be "opt-in" makes it safe to visit the Fediverse even at work, without fear of being part of the company's "cost savings plan" (at least due to such a reason as this, assuming they even need a reason at all). Failing to label toxic users as toxic allows them to mix in amongst all the other users, with no distinction offered except to allow or deny, at which point the moderation requires effort to perform that task. Unless we try other ways?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

even contributed to the code

NOICE! Thank you for your service to this community:-).

PieFed seems to have a good feature specific to this case

Yeah, it's odd b/c on the one hand it has SO VERY MANY features that Lemmy lacks - such as categories of communities, hashtags in posts, YouTube video embedding, showing the community sidebar area for every post (not just on the community page), even on a mobile, and using radically (~25-fold) less mobile data to load 5x more posts at a time than Lemmy. Also, I just subscribed to a new community created last week, and like 2 seconds later it had already pulled in all the old posts.

On the other hand, PieFed lacks many of the more "foundational" feature sets, e.g. user tagging (so I just happened to see this, but the @[email protected] will not alert me to the tagging as you would expect & hope), and a good fraction of the time I get a Notification to something that I have no idea what it is - sometimes I cannot click it at all, sometimes it is from users that I've blocked, sometimes it is buried in the "continue thread" or whatever that is called where instead of showing the content on the page you have to click to go to some other page entirely (yet the Notifications refuses to follow that), or inside an auto-collapsed or even an auto-removed comment (but at the time that I replied to it, it had not yet been auto-removed, which is why I just turned that entire feature off). I am glad that you are helping bring it up to feature parity with Lemmy though!:-) It is such a fantastic project that I think will radically transform people's experiences on the Fediverse, by offering them tools that at this point I doubt that Lemmy ever will.

reputation points (though I have a feeling this could also be abused?)

And yes I do share that same worry. OTOH, people can already do it now, it's just that it takes far more effort, and for the most part the existing options are "block the account" or "nothing", or in certain Lemmy apps (I don't know which ones, maybe Connect or Sync b/c they seem more full-featured?) you can add your own custom label to the account like "hey this person is fun to talk to but don't ever bring up Hamas or YOU WILL BE SORRY". Probably more than one person has added "long-winded" to describe me:-). The beauty of that is that it allows people the CHOICE to do something other than the binary remove vs. retain, like they could read but not reply, or reply but not go into as much depth as they usually would, or like for a new account the content of their reply might be more explanatory than it would if they knew that someone had had an account here for more than a year. Knowledge is power:-). As such, it might be abused:-(. Then again, it might not?:-D

Since we are talking about merely placing labels next to a username - not like automatically blocking or hiding content from people (that capability does not exist... yet) - I don't worry so much about its potential for abuse at the current stage. But even if the stage were to be advanced - which it seems NOT ready yet atm, imho, but if it were more fully developed - then I should add: even the trolls might have more fun on the Fediverse that way, if the people most likely to respond negatively to them have hidden their content? Thereby leaving only those most likely to respond favorably to their antics.

So for me, it's not that it's a 100% bad thing, just that care must be taken in its further development. If the actual restrictions were quite narrow, and the mere labelling wider, that does not sound like a bad trade-off to me?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (3 children)

Gonna go out-of-topic from the post but I need this to get this off my chest:

Do you know what prompted me to contribute to PieFed's code?

Recently, a developer of Lemmy straight up posted a link to a website to a China propaganda in a community in my Lemmy instance. Yes, a propaganda.

Tbf, slrpnk.net receives a lot of China-related posts, and that's due to China out-competing other countries in many sectors (EV, for example), and in those post OP usually critical enough to acknowledge that while China achievement is good, the crimes Chinese government has done shouldn't be ignored.

But the post is different. From the domain name, the "About Us" section of the website, the bias in the article. Clearly this was posted with an ill intention. A developer of a platform uses the platform to spread propaganda. Disgusting

I downvoted said post, but I hesitated to call it out. Because, I'm gonna be honest--I'm genuinely scared of interacting with those kind of people. And I don't want to have a deep discussion about politics or propaganda anyway. I'm not that kind of person.

This made me realize, I also don't tell people I use fediverse or don't reach out to other forums to open a community in Lemmy. This is because the fediverse, or at least Lemmy have a bad reputation: tankie.

There is a saying in my country that says "One person ate jackfruit, everyone got the sap". The genocide deniers ate the jackfruit, and everyone got the sap. The genocide deniers ruined fediverse's name and everyone else got the consequence. I don't wanna recommend people to use softwares made by those terrible people, and I doubt most people want to use softwares that has a reputation of being a genocide deniers playgrounds.

Honestly OP from the link in the post (https://feddit.org/post/4920887) kind of made a good point.

At this point, I would prefer just quitting Lemmy altogether.

But I remembered, the fediverse is an open source effort. I use open source software a lot. I feel like I need to give back something. And I have a community that still needed moderating.

And recently I found PieFed that is still in early days but show some great promise. I happen to understand HTMX (I use it in my personal projects) and Python (I learned it way back in junior high). Seems perfect to me, so I contributed one.


Honestly, it feels kinda unfair to me that software made by a genocide deniers gets the funding, meanwhile a software made by a good person (PieFed) has to be a hobby project.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Why not mbin? Is it because PieFed is more reddit like?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

I actually liked kbin/mbin. I used it before moving to Lemmy. I just can't code in PHP (and I have had some trauma using it while doing internship)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 19 hours ago

A developer of a platform uses the platform to spread propaganda. Disgusting

Welcome to Lemmy. Now you know why a lot of people are hoping for Piefed to reach feature-parity with Lemmy.

Thank you for contributing to the codebase by the way

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 21 hours ago

@[email protected] because I'm not sure if PieFed can already mention user lol

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago

Bro looked in the mirror and got such a hard whiplash he astral-projected into a parallel universe where he's a paragon of virtue

[–] hmmm 8 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

LMFAO

Because your obnoxious obliviousness makes light on the idea of piracy. Like you expect it to hold your hand in every step of the way. Plus, I am overwhelmingly tired of people like you with that kind of attitude. You’re the kind of pirate that downloads and barely learns. The ones always asking if they need a VPN for the thousandth time when we’ve told you for the thousandth time and more, that you do. So, no, I do not have to treat you with kindness. Enjoy the block. Keep raining those petty downvotes of yours for all I care.

If someone is asking me about same Piracy Question. I am gonna tell them 1000 times. Because I was also noob at some point.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

Could be, but I also thinking about a specific community to call out bad faith users or trolls. Kind of [email protected] but for users

[–] [email protected] 6 points 23 hours ago

Na, what will it do apart from bringing trolls and other asshats more attention? Attention is what they want.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (8 children)

Fedigrow:

To discuss how to grow and manage communities / magazines on Lemmy, Mbin, Piefed and Sublinks

How is this post relevant to this community? You posted it here because you're a moderator so you know it won't be removed?

Dunking on someone who was (rightfully) banned isn't the kind of post that fosters good community interactions. The moderation system works, that's great. Can we not give more oxygen to the troll's commentary?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

I'm kind of upset that this 'toxic' person came from the same instance as I'm using. Most people I encounter on the local pages aren't bad folks.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 21 hours ago

Usually kbin.melroy.org users are nice indeed

[–] [email protected] 4 points 22 hours ago

I don't want to come off all self-righteous as in "PieFed has that already"... but OTOH it's relevant that, yeah, PieFed has something for that already.😄 It is described at https://join.piefed.social/2024/06/22/piefed-features-for-growing-healthy-communities/, and I think its way too sensitive atm, labeling users of comics in particular as potentially troublesome bc they post more than comment, but anyway it seems relevant here as an attempt to do what you are saying: to allow for some measure of an account's "reputation" across the Fediverse, similar to what those aforementioned communities do irt mods to let people know about stuff that they may find pertinent as they make decisions about what to do about it - like not post to certain communities and instead help others grow. In short it's a tool that helps shorten the learning curve rather than make each person have to do all that work all entirely on their own.

So someone downvotes twice as often as they upvote?

img

Someone has twice as many heavily-downvoted comments as positive or neutral? Also a paddling. It also helps provide additional choices beyond merely a moderator's power to "remove vs. allow" - one day a user could perhaps make their own thresholds, or like automatically collapse (to deemphasize, but while still retaining) a comment from such a user. Or not - I have some of that turned OFF at PieFed, but it's awesome that it's there if someone were to want that.

img

Someone has a brand-new account merely hours old? That's NOT a paddling, but it is worth its own unique icon to let recipients know that they are dealing with a newborn (ofc they could be an alt) who may not realize how the Fediverse works.

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