this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2025
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Ye Power Trippin' Bastards

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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.


Posting Guidelines

All posts should follow this basic structure:

  1. Which mods/admins were being Power Tripping Bastards?
  2. What sanction did they impose (e.g. community ban, instance ban, removed comment)?
  3. Provide a screenshot of the relevant modlog entry (don’t de-obfuscate mod names).
  4. Provide a screenshot and explanation of the cause of the sanction (e.g. the post/comment that was removed, or got you banned).
  5. Explain why you think its unfair and how you would like the situation to be remedied.

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.

YTPB matrix channel: For real-time discussions about bastards or to appeal mod actions in YPTB itself.


Some acronyms you might see.


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https://lemmy.ml/post/28111691/17749466

This is actually insane. Another user was criticizing the New Deal era and brought up a bunch of points, I commented refuting a bunch of their points but describing two of of them, Japanese Internment and the Red Scare, simply as "legitimate criticism."

@[email protected] responded "No they’re not. Those two things were caused by far greater international factors. Like, you know, the 2nd World War."

I cited a commission that found that internment was not caused by a legitimate threat posed by the Japanese but was rather caused by racism and hysteria, and that even Reagan agreed with that conclusion and signed a bill paying reparations to the victims.

Well then the mod responded that I was jumping to "inflammatory conclusions" and "personal attacks" because I assumed that when they said that criticism of internment is not legitimate it meant that they were defending internment. They continued to refuse to explain how else I was possibly supposed to interpret such a claim. I still have no idea. Apparently their stance is, "It's not legitimate to criticize the thing I oppose." If anyone can make sense of that, please enlighten me.

Since they refused to explain, I took a guess that maybe the misunderstanding was that they were interpreting "legitimate criticism" as "damning criticism," like that because a bad thing happened during that era, nothing good came of it at all. I made it clear that this was speculation and that any criticism of interpreting it that way only applied if that's what was happening.

The mod responded by permabanning me, removing all of my comments so they don't show in the modlog, and adding this:

Edit: the other commenter essentially proved that they were just baiting people into inflammatory discussion. They kept resorting to personal attacks and flip-flopped on their position solely to continue arguing. This behavior is not tolerated here. Please report such trolls in the future.

At literally no point did I "flip-flop" my position of "internment was bad, actually." Nor did I "bait" them, unless "criticizing internment is legitimate," is somehow "baiting" someone into saying "no it isn't." By far the most "inflammatory" thing that was said was when they said that criticism of internment was "not legitimate." The "personal attacks" I made were stating the fact that the position they had expressed was to the right of Reagan on the issue, and also making a quip about a .world mod defending the Red scare and Joseph McCarthy.

This seems to be a case of a clear case of PTB, the mod apparently misspoke but because they're a mod they can just ban people for calling them out instead of owning up to it.

Edit: My comments are still visible on kbin.earth (thank you @[email protected]) so I can provide screenshots:

:::spoiler screenshots

all 38 comments
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[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Interesting to see the "banned from community badge"

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

"criticized internment badge"

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago

They added it recently to the new Lemmy-UI version since it helps making it clear that someone has been banned from a community or an instance in their comments to make people aware before replying to them. It was something I suggested a while ago based on the Badges which used to be in the Liftoff Lemmy App (unfortunately now defunct).

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago (1 children)

The entire chain is still visible on my instance, so maybe there has been some kind of technical error in the moderation tools? https://kbin.earth/m/[email protected]/t/1148463/TIL-About-the-Smoot-Hawley-Act-Which-was-the-20-Across/comment/5979684#entry-comment-5979684

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago
[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago

Since several people are saying, "it's impossible to weigh in without seeing what was posted," I'd like to invite @[email protected] to say if anything I described was not accurate and also explain why they mass removed my comments instead of at least leaving them up in the modlog.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

The mod responded by permabanning me, removing all of my comments so they don’t show in the modlog

A mod can only hide posts and comments. Only an instance admin can use the purge function, but even then that leaves an entry in the modlog indicating that something has been purged for accountability.

The only case where I could see the comments being removed and not showing in the modlog is when a mod use the option to remove content when banning, but it's still technically in the DB.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

The entry in the modlog just shows I was banned and accuses me of "baiting," but none of my comments are visible.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago (1 children)

If a mod checks the box that says "also remove user content" when banning someone, any comments and posts by the user being banned, get removed.

In this case the removals do not get their own separate entries in the modlog.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Sometimes it's possible to see deleted comments as an admin of a different instance, but it seems it's not possible in this case either.

[–] southsamurai 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

With no screen shots of the removed comments, this comes down to ifs.

if the mod's reason for the ban in the mod log is accurate, it's YDI.

If your take of things is accurate, it's at least clueless mod, probably PTB.

Rule 5 of that community requires some degree of personal judgement on exactly what is and isn't baiting, so it isn't necessarily power tripping to be wrong in that judgment. So, they could have been wrong in their determination without it being them just swinging mod dick, and it looks like that's what happened here, based purely on the rest of the thread that's visible.

Not knowing the exact wording used in your comments makes it hard to make a clear estimation though, so that's all I got.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

With no screen shots of the removed comments, this comes down to ifs.

And who's fault is that? They made my comments totally inaccessible. Am I supposed to screenshot everything I post in case it gets arbitrarily mass removed?

The fact that they didn't even leave my comments up in the modlog reflects worse, not better on them. That sort of thing should be reserved for clear cut cases. The modlog exists for a reason. We can see where the mod replied to my calling internment and the red scare "legitimate criticism" with "no they're not," frankly, I don't think they deserve the benefit of the doubt after that. If anything, that should be removed, and I'd be justified being much harsher about it than I actually was.

[–] southsamurai 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Didn't say it was your fault, I'm just saying it makes it difficult.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Screenshots have now been added to the post, turns out they're visible on kbin.

[–] southsamurai 10 points 4 days ago

Ouch, yeah, that clinches it.

PTB.

That was an interpersonal misunderstanding that got twisted into ban. Not just a removal, and not even a temp ban.

That's just someone swinging mod dick because they can.

I wanna give the benefit of the doubt, but the way the conversation went, they even said It was a misunderstanding, then changed their mind.

Even if you were pulling shit elsewhere, I can't see evidence of it in your user history, so it makes the claim of you baiting habitually dubious. I kinda doubt you went amd scrubbed your user history, soooo, PTB, yeah.

Thanks for putting in the extra effort for a solid evaluation here. Not everyone does. It isn't a requirement, but it really does make it easier to get a good feel of events when it's possible

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago

That person is a bootlicker lol

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

Impossible to provide any opinion without seeing what was actually said. Is there actually a way to remove comments completely from the modlog? I did not think so.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Yes, it's reserved for cases like CSAM or discussions where the mods know they would look bad.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Actually I think it happens automatically with the 'remove data' option enabled when banning. Purging is what you described, and only admins can do that

Once you remove a users data, only the instance admin can see it. Nobody can see purged content (iirc). Not to be pedantic tho

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

This is an important point since these clowns are willing to abuse the system to censor

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Content censorship but you are also on lemmt.ml

They are notoriously shiti ablut it.

Block their subs, deny them engagement

There other communities where discussions are welcome and content is not censored to win online pissing matches

[–] [email protected] -2 points 4 days ago

Blocking ml made my fediverse experience much more pleasant. I was losing faith in humanity.

[–] AwesomeLowlander -1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Get off .ml already. There's no open discussion to be had on that instance.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago (1 children)

This was a .world mod, not .ml.

[–] AwesomeLowlander 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Whoops, my bad. My point still stands though, just take it as a non-sequitor :P

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

Personally, I've never had problems with the mods on .ml, but I have several times with .world.