I tend to browse /All and by New on Lemmy. I went to respond on a thread on [email protected] to thank someone for a recipe that looked good, and found out I had been banned.
Odd, considering I hadn’t posted to that sub at any point in the past. I checked the modlog to find that “Mod” had banned a bunch of people citing “Rule 5.”
Their Rule 5 states: Bad-faith carnist rhetoric & anti-veganism are not allowed, as this is not a space to debate the merits of veganism. Anyone is welcome here, however, and so good-faith efforts to ask questions about veganism may be given their own weekly stickied post in the future (see current stickied discussion).
I (and hundreds of others) seemingly broke rule 5 of this community without ever posting there. What is going on?
And my apologies if this isn’t the place for this, but I had no idea where else to post the question.
I’ve never posted in that sub either, but I was banned today, and the only possible explanation is that it was for downvoting. A lot of their posts are self-righteous and needlessly confrontational, so I’ve downvoted a lot of their memes when they wind up in my feed, but I’ve never commented on any of them.
This moderator isn’t trying to remove hostile comments or stop rule violations; they’re trying to artificially lower the number of downvotes their content gets to make the community look less unpopular. You can actually sort posts by recent and see how the percentage of downvotes suddenly dropped off after the ban spree. This is a blatant attempt to manufacture consent for their community by gaming the system.
You can actually sort posts by recent and see how the percentage of downvotes suddenly dropped off after the ban spree. This is a blatant attempt to manufacture consent for their community by gaming the system.
That would violate lemmy.world’s terms of service, specially 3. (system disruption) and 5.1 (community manipulation).
Perhaps you guys could/should elevate this issue to the lemmy.world admin team.
That was kind of what I was attempting to do here. Is there another way to do that?
I suggest you (or anyone else here, really) to direct message [email protected], the account is a relay to the admin team. Be sure to mention:
- The issue (they’re banning people left and right)
- Concerns (e.g. they might be gaming the system),
- This thread (to show that it isn’t just your personal pet peeve, plenty people are pissed.)
Since I wrote this, things have changed a bit. The mod in question seems to have become extremely unpopular, even in her own community, and she’s gone on posting spree on /c/vegan that’s getting downvoted. I still think you can demonstrate that she was trying to manipulate the downvote numbers, but it the evidence is less clear.
The issue (they’re banning people left and right) Concerns (e.g. they might be gaming the system), This thread (to show that it isn’t just your personal pet peeve, plenty people are pissed.)
Done! I appreciate the pointers as I would have never known about this on my own.
That + this is exactly why I just blocked them. They don’t want downvotes? Fine, I don’t want to see their posts. Win win.
I honestly thought the vegans had moved to a different instance since the drama. I thought the .world comm would be killed but looks like their sticking around and doing some sus modding of their own. I mean, one good turn and all that. 🤷♂️
There’s a vegan community on vegantheoryclub, they spat the dummy and defederated from .world. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking of.
I mean, the flipside could be just as true. I would be surprised, if there’s not some right-wing twats, who felt attacked in their manliness by the concept of veganism, and then started gaming the system by deploying tons of downvote bots. If you regularly downvoted posts without commenting, you might’ve looked like such a bot.
It could be, but it’s really not. This community posts shit insulting, “carnists,” all the time, then suddenly claims they’re getting attacked or brigaded when these posts get negative responses. I get not wanting to have to debate random assholes every time you share an article about veganism; I even get banning people for being hostile to your insulting memes; but banning people for downvoting a meme is messed up, which is why the other mods on /c/Vegan just removed Mod the responsible for this..
Welp, I guess that’s that then…
More or less. A quick skim of the comments shows that there’s going to be some internal fighting over this, but I don’t really care. As long as it banning people for downvotes doesn’t become normalized by Lemmy Mods, this doesn’t affect me.
Indeed
Ok, I tend to think I’m a decent human being but I don’t understand your logic and I can only see your comments as negative. Please help me understand the differences in our thought train.
- People are downvoting content (abusing the intended purpose of a downvote) they’re seeing without even being involved in a community
- Mod of that community bans users (common with vote brigading) who aren’t real active users, users can no longer see the content satisfying your dismay of seeing it in your feed (instead of blocking the community)
- You then accuse the mod of stopping people downvoting who don’t like the community who aren’t a part of that community?
You’re actually acknowledging you’ve “downvoted a lot of their memes” because of previous un-related content, continuing to abuse the downvote and even pointed out the mod was effective at stopping the vote brigading from people outside the community. I have no clue about the Vegan situation myself, but I thought a mod had completely autonomy to run their community the way they want and the point of decentralization was the ability to move into another space when needed.
You’re actually acknowledging you’ve “downvoted a lot of their memes” because of previous un-related content
No I’m not. I could see how you could choose to misinterpret what I said like that, but I didn’t say that, and I’ll rephrase it so that there is no question as to what I’m saying; they share self-righteous, antagonistic memes, and when those memes wind up in my feed, I downvote them. There are also plenty of neutral posts (articles, etc.) from that community that I don’t downvote, but when shit like this, and this, and this ends up in my feed, I downvote it.
I could block the instance, but I see absolutely no reason to silence myself and allow their shitty opinions to go unchallenged. Why should I hide from their content and allow their community to insult me freely? I’m using the downvote button, the most passive way to express displeasure online, to respond to someone who is insulting me for my lifestyle. Why the fuck is the appropriate answer supposedly, “well, you should instead just hide from the people insulting you.” Why isn’t the response to the community, “Yeah, if you insult a lot of people, you get a lot of downvotes, maybe stop posting such hostile shit.”
I’m not a vegan, none of those memes you’ve posted make me feel personally attacked nor do I feel insulted. I’m glad for the clarification, but I was expecting something much worse like a vegan death cult manifesto by the reactions here.
You don’t want to silence yourself from a community you’re not a part of by your own admission? Do you really feel it’s your duty to go into every community and mandate their content and tone to your liking?
I guess you can look at it as “hiding” to curate your feed by removing the communities you’re not interested in. I don’t think you’re really challenging their opinions, just kinda being a douche. I see plenty of shit posted about windows or apple users, we’re not pitch forking everyone that posts a spicy meme. We insult the rich and powerful etc, what class of protection are you proposing to secure? The omnivores? Who’s going to police what’s hostile or insulting? I don’t understand what this call to action is trying to implement or suggest besides outside policing of communities which is one of the reasons the fediverse was made to combat that type of control.
We insult the rich and powerful etc, what class of protection are you proposing to secure? The omnivores? Who’s going to police what’s hostile or insulting? I don’t understand what this call to action is trying to implement or suggest besides outside policing of communities which is one of the reasons the fediverse was made to combat that type of control.
What the ever-loving fuck are you talking about? No one’s asking for anyone to police the Vegan community. They’re free to post as many obnoxious memes as they like, it’s just fucked up to block people for a downvote. Yeah, a lot of Linux communities post shit about Apple or Windows users, but if the mods start combing through the downvotes to ban anyone who disagrees with them, I’d like to think we’d recognize that as an abnormal behavior. What is so hard about this?
Edit: It looks like the other mods on /c/Vegan have chosen to remove the Mod responsible for this ban wave, so hopefully we’re all on the same page that this is abnormal behavior, and not how mods are meant to operate.
I think I can explain it. I think it’s abnormal behavior to downvote outside of misinformation or out of context. I also think it’s abnormal to ban anyone who downvotes, but both of you have the right to do so. Neither of you broke a site-wide rule, unless you didn’t follow the guidelines in their community sidebar before participating. Them choosing to remove the mod is the communities right and I support that. I look at the form of downvoting you’re conducting as a form of vote brigading (socially, not directed by an individual but a group effort nonetheless with evidence by the bans). If bans for non-participation go out and downvotes continue, they can better get a grasp of what the actual community wants. Atm they’re just following what the “All” feed tells them without being able to differentiate.
I look at the form of downvoting you’re conducting as a form of vote brigading
You’re welcome to look on that however you like, but that’s not what brigading is; actual brigading is a coordinated attack by a group of accounts to affect the vote count of a specific community or user. That’s why it’s called brigading; you’re supposed to be part of a brigade.
It’s great that you only downvote things taken out of context or misinformation, but it’s not abnormal to use voting to express approval or disapproval for opinions. The vote counts on this thread show that most people are using voting this way.
thanks for ignoring my statement on the difference in brigading so you could brake off into a diatribe -_-. The Jan 6th wasn’t a brigade, just ask Trump. Just need some social boogeymen to stir up trouble and it becomes a “natural” problem, not a brigade. “The vote counts on this thread show that most people are using voting this way.”, in this space, about lemmy drama and a small echo chamber.
Look I’ll be honest and let you know you just seem like a spoiled down-voter after all of our back and forth. You don’t follow the communities rules, you don’t belong to the community, you constantly downvote in a negative way, and the only people who have broken a rule, is this post with all the people talking about the ban on here (instead of privately reaching out like is spelled out).
fighting over this, but I don’t really care. As long as it banning people for downvotes doesn’t become normalized by Lemmy Mods, this doesn’t affect me.
You don’t care about the community, only your ability to downvote on anything you want
- I’ve never posted in that sub
- I’ve never commented
- their posts are self-righteous
- they’re trying to artificially lower the number of downvotes their content gets
By people who never participate or even belong in the community, who downvotes because of … feelings. You’re the perfect example of the Paradox of tolerance, by allowing your views you will only wish to silence and put down other’s who you don’t agree with.
Holy hell! It’s over 19 pages long, and that’s over the past day. They even went as far as trying to ban admins.
Edit: it looks like they only tried to ban one admin. I thought I had saw more, but I guess not. But damn, talk about sour grapes.
It’s all also done by a one single moderator, a same one that was complaining about the “carnists brigading” in the community. There was a handful of comments deleted along with more than 300 users banned.
That one moderator has just downvoted every comment here and is likely responsible for the single downvote on this post.
mOr bAns?!
Edit: Aww shit! Two downvotes! Popcorn time!
I wonder if it’s the same user who has almost exclusively dominated the front page of the sub with memes in the last day or so. Going back a couple pages, there was a lot more variety and nuance in the content. Subject matter notwithstanding, it looks like someone terminally online going on a power trip.
Yep, same person
“the first amendment holds” lol, I wasn’t aware Lemmy was part of the US government
Removed by mod
It’s doubly stupid because LW is construed and governed by Dutch, German, and Finnish laws. Not United-Statian ones.
There’s a lot more to the story on Rooki.
From what I’ve been told there is a rift between mods of the community.
I had the same issue as you and contacted the mod team no understand how I violated rule 5. One of the mods confirmed I hadn’t violated rule 5 and unbanned me. I was then immediately rebanned again by the original mod.
There was another conversation about it on /c/unpopularopinion and it looks like people were getting banned simply for downvoting one of the mods.
I’m kinda dumbfounded. I’ve only posted (or commented) once in the past nine days. The one that happened to be at a similar time was this comedy one on a completely different Community on a different instance for a goofy anime question. Did… did I really just get banned from talking to vegans for… not liking anime?
This might be peak stupid internet if so.
My only comment in the community was a suggestion that someone reformat their post to make it more legible ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I totally get what you’re feeling.
I hope this is not in poor taste, but it seemed to fit? :-P
One can only hope that mismanaged communities will be outgrown by better ones when enough people simply get together somewhere else.
Banning your good faith readers is a fast path to irrelevancy.
Ah yes, fair and balanced
I’m sure there’s more to it. I’m just sharing what I know.
Pretty sure i heard they are banning people based on the downvotes/ upvotes. If you downvote a vegan or upvote a non- vegan then you get banhammered.
That community is a joke though and i refuse to participate (as a vegan).
That’s the most fragile thing I have ever heard of.
Why the fuck is Lemmy making votes visable to moderators? This is RIPE for corruption and abuse. Secret ballot is the only way voting works!
Lemmy is an open, federated platform. You cannot realistically hide who voted, because there is no trusted server that would secretly count up votes and provide a total.
Pretty sure votes are public. It’s just that most (all?) the front ends only show the number.
It’s kinda how the fedi spec works. Nothing is private.
I know kbin/mbin showed who voted.people really need to stop confusing an upvote/downvote to basic democratic voting. There is no ticker above the ballot box letting you know how everyone voted before you, there is no “policy” or “elected position” being voted on. This is more akin to an open conference debate where people are booing or yaying when someone speaks up about a topic. Your privacy on a public forum discussion never existed to begin with, people in a public setting know their anonymity isn’t guaranteed.
Exactly. Better to assume nothing on social media is private, especially federated social media.
Afaik, votes are visible to server admins (because admins hold the keys to the DB) and server admins can proliferate information however they want. With anyone being able to be a server admin, there isn’t much you can do about it.
Votes are not specifically visible to moderators. Instance admins can see them through the database and everyone can see them through other federated platforms besides Lemmy.
They’re visible to anyone with a lemmy instance, or any activitypub compatible platform. It’s likely that she set one up to monitor the votes on the community and ban anyone she saw down-voting her, and yes that is very much a thing that power-hungry losers do.
For a community that just tries to exist peacefully and gets brigaded by “jerks” all the time, they sure are weirdly fixated on becoming the centre of attention every single week.
You should not feed the troll, but it’s too fascinating not to look at it. Like a pack of chimpanzees flinging their doodoo at the glass walls.
They could make the community private. They could keep rabbits as pets. They have made veganism their entire identity, a pseude-religion, and they have a pathological need for validation. Anyone who questions their absolute moral superiority challenges that identity so they seal themselves up in a hermetically sealed, idea tight echo bunker where only supportive ideas are allowed and only validating up votes are tolerated.
They, of course, feel quite free to spread their extremism to discussions outside of the echo bunker, they just don’t tolerate other ideas in the echo bunker.
You can tell this is a good faith criticism by how it simultaneously criticizes them for not making the community private and for being an “echo bunker.”
I didn’t criticize them for not taking the community private. I simply pointed out that they could completely seal the echo bunker by taking the community private. I also pointed out that they could keep vegetarian pets and feed them a vegan diet without anyone criticising them for trying to feed a vegan diet to a carnivore.
Fair warning: The account you’re arguing with is a troll account who bad-faith argues with everyone, as evidenced by their post history - they often simply have their posts deleted by mods. It’s best to block and move on.
As much as I hate echo chamber-ing, when it comes to trolls, it is occasionally required.
It’s an. ML account. I know what it is but thanks for the warning.
Fair enough!
Wait, vegans have animal prisoners? Like in cages and leashes, and glass prisons?!?!?!?
Real coherent .
I think it’s an expression of ego. They are absolutely convinced of their moroal superiority and are frustrated by the fact that they haven’t been able to insult, harass, bully, shame, and threathen everyone into joining their quasi-religion so they’re going to prove to themselves that they are right by keeping a captive carnivore and forcing it to eat a vegan diet. They justify this by self-absolving. Self-absolution is one of the hallmarks of extremists. Anything they do, even when it goes against their own beliefs, is ok because they are morally pure.
Did you know that vegans are hated on par with drug addicts? Perhaps. Did you know that people who consume a plant-based diet for their health or for the environment are hated much less than people who are vegan because of concerns about animal welfare? I think that’s interesting. People feel judged by the mere existence of ethical vegans. And I think you are demonstrating how those feelings of being judged are expressed as defensiveness and “hatred” (though I know that language seems strong in this context).
Did you know that vegans are hated on par with drug addicts?
Oh take the back of your hand off your forehead. That’s just fucking ridiculous. You know you’re not purple, right? You don’t glow in the dark? How the fuck could anyone know that you were a vegan other than you telling literally everyone you speak to that you are? It’s like that fucking cross-fit and spin crowd. Literally no one would care if there weren’t extremists out there harassing restauranteurs and butchers to try to bully them into not serving meat. If vegan extremists didn’t lecture, harangue, and shame anyone who eats meat then no one would care. If you’re hated it’s because of your behaviour and how you treat people, not because you choose not to eat meat.
Perhaps. Did you know that people who consume a plant-based diet for their health or for the environment are hated much less than people who are vegan because of concerns about animal welfare?
No one cares what you eat or why. They only care how you act and how you treat other people. Have you tried being nicer to people?
I think that’s interesting. People feel judged by the mere existence of ethical vegans. And I think you are demonstrating how those feelings of being judged are expressed as defensiveness and “hatred” (though I know that language seems strong in this context).
It has nothing to do with ethical veganism and everything to do with harassing, intimidating, bullying, shaming, insulting, labeling, haranguing, etc. people to try to get your way.
It is how you act, not what you eat.
Mods abusing power, is just a normal day on social media. Power always corrupts.
I’m also banned because I believe cats cannot be healthy vegans.
The Vegan Community Mod vs Admin drama aside they’re probably in the process of transferring to an instance where animal cruelty is explicitly allowed, so I wouldn’t expect them to be very welcoming on the current instance.
Bet you’re on the ban list now. Shit! I’m talking to you. Guess I’m on the ban list now too
You get a ban and you get a ban! Everyone gets a ban!
Can I get on the ban list, too?
Too many questions. Banned
Not enough questions? Believe it or not, straight to ban.
(The guy in red’s name is Ban:-)
But there was no interaction with them at all?
Yeah I’m saying the mods might be intentionally cutting off world users preemptively before they move.
But even then, I’m a lemmy.ca user. I just posted it here because it’s their instance.
Oh, my bad, yeah no idea whats going on there.
This post may be relevant: https://slrpnk.net/post/11069853, i.e. perhaps one of those mods is using this same bot. So yeah, you seriously and literally might have been banned bc of a couple of downvotes in some totally unrelated community!?!? As that post says:
even a single downvoted comment could result in a ban.
e.g. I just found out that I’ve been banned from a community that I’ve literally never heard about, on an instance I rarely visit, as a result of this bot. Though I never got a message about it, nor does the modlog give a length of time for it? (Nor can I even see the ban in several different modlogs on instances other than Lemmy.World - so there may be issues with federating this action? The community seems to be new, created in the last month, and filled with a deluge of posts from the same few people - so very likely nobody from my instances has subscribed to it yet, and perhaps that caused the ban for it to also not be propagated? I dunno. It’s odd to not see a length of time for it though - does it look different to someone who has an account on Lemmy.World, like with an expiration that somehow wouldn’t show for someone not logged in?)
And even there, aside from how that post calls us “jerks”, and the community too (thereby exposing hypocrisy - bc everyone that they don’t like are labeled as “jerks”, while they rise above us all, by their own way of thinking…bc they are never downvoted?) it seems to be malfunctioning, bc I most definitely don’t have more downvotes than upvotes, either overall or it mentions over the past month - not that we are even allowed to see those? Perhaps it is counting per-community somehow? I do have this comment in [email protected] that people seemed to dislike greatly. Probably I was too serious, in a community dedicated to shitposting? :-P And now therefore I banned from this community that I, and probably mostly all of us, have never so much as heard of?
Summary: some children are attempting to play around with what they seem to think is AI, and are now weaponizing downvoting in an attempt to cheap out on modding effort. Not only that, but they are using my data without my consent, or apparently much thought into it at all. And to top it all off, they call anyone they want to as “jerks” - bc obviously anyone who ever receives downvotes, even once, even on a single comment, in an entirely unrelated community, qualifies for that label, don’t you agree? /s I think you should form your own opinion though, as to who may be acting like jerks here:-).
Edit: the bot post has a spoiler tag at at the end, but with nothing inside except a horizontal line? i.e., they don’t seem very experienced with markup, and presumably therefore with actual coding as well?
Edit 2: omg reading through those comments - it just keeps getting better and better! Especially how readily they take to criticism, but this comment also caught my eye:
Some people were getting banned just because of a single downvote from one of the admins, applied to a reasonable comment, outweighed the whole community’s consensus.
Wow, just wow. The author also did not seem to care about the load this will put onto the instance servers, to be federating hundreds or thousands of community bans, and then lifting them, and then reapplying them again later, however often this bot will be ran. More to the point, modlogs seem like they will become no longer human-readable? (unless perhaps you could filter out all actions taken by these bot accounts - which I can’t see how to do) As such, I wonder if this will be treated by other instance admins as an attack against the Fediverse? What would the limit be, I can only guess - 100 community bans per account per day? 1k? 10k? We might soon find out, whether we want to or not!?
If they’re indeed using this bot or something similar the amount of idiocy goes up the roof.
The bot author outright says that the bot is experimental. Automatic bans are stupid and silly. Using votes as grounds for banning is something that should be done only to address vote manipulation, or something damn serious. And it should never be done based on a single vote, but on voting patterns.
And they’re showing the exact same lack of transparency as a certain instance, except that instead of “rule 1 and 2” it’s “rule 5”.
They don’t even see the contradiction: that in an attempt to fight the fascists (as they say in the post I linked), they have become ones themselves.
Also, I don’t mind if they user block me using such a bot - that is simply curating their own feed (I may not think highly of their choice, but at least I agree that it would be their choice) - but to ban me from some place, and more importantly make a note in my modlog to that effect, is something else entirely. It’s the difference between choosing not to have an abortion for oneSELF, vs. making that determination for someone ELSE to not be allowed to have an abortion.
And then telling that person what you think about the situation, at whatever frequency that bot is run, essentially spamming the Fediverse with your own speech, in an attempt to silence someone else’s (in your community… except that unless you are an instance admin - in which case you don’t need to resort to this type of implementation - you don’t “own” any community, even if you started it, i.e. there are still instance rules that need to be followed, and anyway you certainly don’t own the modlogs of every person across the entire Fediverse!!!).
If I were the author of this bot, setting aside how I never would have made such in the first place, the best solution now would be to throw it away entirely, as it is far too broken to be fixed with mere tweaking, like minimum of five comments rather than one. Even then, that account might end up being banned from several instances, for “vote manipulation”, and it even puts the instances that allow users to run it at risk of being defederated as well, eventually if that becomes a pattern and the admins are unresponsive to deal with it, for violation of the rules of the Fediverse, especially spamming. These are like constant advertisements of “I don’t like this other person, and want them to only have access to separate but equal communities away from me”, which is… not ideal but basically their private thoughts, not something that needs to fill up the modlogs of a large fraction of people across the entire Fediverse, especially mostly innocent people getting caught up in too wide of a net, and making the modlogs of those thus affected no longer human readable.
I disagree with the idea that the bot author is “becoming a fascist” in their attempt to fight fascism. Sure, the bot is a dumb idea; and I predict that it’ll reinforce local circlejerks (even if it does nothing, as long as people think that it does). But I don’t see it being able to enforce some unpopular and harmful ideology by force, allowing it to take over.
There is a contradiction or two though - votes and moderation are supposed to handle different types of undesired content, so one cannot rely on the other. And by giving votes a stronger effect (they might cause someone to be banned) the bot is discouraging their legit usage (content sorting - what if someone gets banned because of my downvote?) and encouraging the non-legit one (e.g. someone did nothing wrong but I have a pet peeve against them and I want to see them gone, so I downvote them).
Also, I don’t mind if they user block me using such a bot
That’s how I see it too, on general grounds (not just for this bot). Blocking is ultimately about you not hearing the offending party; banning is about the offending party not being able to talk.
The bot does use force though: e.g. if I had wanted to post in the community, now I am unable to b/c despite my consent and against my judgement (in this scenario), I am no longer able to. Granted, this level of “force” does not rise to full “violence”:-).
Though does fascism necessarily imply violence? Yes they are willing to use it, and moreover they don’t shirk from it as others do, seeing it as a healthy and natural part of the world, but they seem to me to simply want to win, using whatever means necessary, rather than having that be a defining characteristic for them, as if using it were their sole or even primary tool? As the current regime of disinformation warfare is showing us, if lies work better than tanks, then those are what you want to use to convert your target from a foe into an ally. The goal for them being the attainment of said goal, unlike e.g. liberalism that focuses more on the process to get there - the means not justifying the end (for some, though fascists would ofc disagree… violently if necessary).
Also, for me it is not just the improper technique - if they want to do something incorrectly, that’s on them, e.g. I don’t need their code to compile & run, only my own - but rather the various means of imposition that their application of their tool has upon me / us all. e.g. right now my account has zero bans on it (ironically including this one, b/c outside of Lemmy.World I cannot see this ban, only on that exact server instance), but if this bot makes a new “determination” for me lets say every other day, then in the course of the next quarter I (or whoever) could have nearly 50 mod actions taken against me. That means then that if I get legitimately banned, from a real community that I may actually care about, I will have a much harder time even noticing that, if I have no tools to separate out those automated bans from the human ones (just b/c it has not happened to me yet, doesn’t mean that it never will!:-P). It is the email spam issue all over again, or the older I-was-just-sitting-down-to-eat-dinner-with-my-family-when-the-salesman-calls (or shows up at your front door, at a time they figured you would be home): how do you maintain utility of a tool (your email address, your phone number, your front door visitation privileges), when someone abuses those, spamming it at all hours of the day and night with their blitzkrieg approach to “just making sure that I/you are aware of this amazing opportunity… and if you act now then you can…” I am saying: these mod actions are not harmless - they deny us the use of the normal functioning of the modlog.
And even if the modlog issue were fixed, it is still harassment. A white woman stopping an immigrant, or a black person, to “share their opinion” of whether the recipient should be in that particular place… “I’m just saying”, or “I’m just asking questions here…” except no you aren’t, you’re on a campaign to convey a message that “you[r kind] are not welcomed here, you should go elsewhere, imho”. It’s an attack - a fairly low-key, extremely ineffective one, but a pointed/directed, nonconsensual, not-friendly, abusive message that is being sent. Though unless I am misunderstanding something here, while I can block the sender, I cannot block those modlog entries… right? (do you know?) Thus they deny me the use of that, filling it up with their spam, even if - again - I have never visited nor ever desired to visit their community. Ofc if someone were an admin, or had access to some of those admin tools… then that would solve the issue for them personally, to either not have to see those messages or at least be able to filter them so that they can see others, but it would not help anyone else across the Fediverse - that is an unreasonable expectation that “we should all become admins of our own instances”. Thus, these qualify as “attacks” under those circumstances - do they not?
But I suppose where I went wrong was that “fascist” seems to imply a far-right nature? And while far-left totalitarians share a lot in common - the heavy directive role played by the mods/admins, the self-sufficiency not desiring input from anyone outside of the echo chamber of loyal
petssubjects, and the purity seeking to separate themselves from the denigrated “jerks” - they indeed differ, I suppose, in the specific definition of their end goals. So what do you think, would the more proper word be “authoritarian”/“totalitarian”, rather than “fascist”? I suppose we all (translation: me:-D) are playing fast & loose with that word, as in the concept of certain people being “like (without necessarily precisely being” (a fascist), but I’ve been doing so long already that I’m not putting it in quotes, and allowing myself to forget even inside my own mind whatever I may have originally meant. (And I may even have offered this exact apology before, to you, yet if so, then here we are again…)In any case, they do seem to be falling prey to the same format of thinking as those that they claim are “bad”? And then they ramp up the scale - if they downvote, then *I* will ban! (at which point the other side simply gets alts, etc.) And then in the process, as you pointed out, such an arms race nullifies the original/proper/intended use of those tools.
“Authoritarian” does sound more accurate, and I do agree with you that it’s a bit too forceful.
On fascism, Robert Paxton has IMO a good definition. The key points are, basically
- Strength through unity and uniformity.
- Outsiders = enemies be damned. We only care about ourselves.
- Blame outsiders for our situation.
- You can’t choose things by yourself, trust a strong leader to do it for you.
- Violence is OK to use as long as it targets our enemies.
A lot of those points go completely orthogonal to both the bot+bot author, and the vegan comm mod (if she’s using that bot; I don’t know, it might be something she coded herself).
I also don’t see it as coming from the mod of the vegan community, even if I outright ridicule her actions as being shitty for the community, the Fediverse as a whole, and herself.
Also, for me it is not just the improper technique […]
I fully agree that it is spammy as fuck, over what would be remotely reasonable. And IMO Lemmy devs should be doing something to make modlogs easier to filter and audit.
(Your analogy with the salesman calls is perfect - the act itself wouldn’t be a big deal, if it wasn’t consistently obstrusive. I just want to dinner!)
I cannot block those modlog entries… right? (do you know?)
I don’t think that you can. And… yes, it leaves a sour taste in your mouth, it’s like someone from a shop telling you “YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE!”. Even if you never entered the shop, and even if you don’t plan to do so.
It’s also a really shitty moderative practice. The whole idea of moderating is to stop people from ruining each other’s experience; and yet that’s exactly what they’re doing. (Perhaps I’m biased because I tend to issue a lot of warnings, but barely any ban. Still.)
Thus, these qualify as “attacks” under those circumstances - do they not?
I think so.
Fascinating. I always enjoy going deeper with you:-).
According to his definition, put forth in his 2004 Anatomy of Fascism (via that wikipedia page), he says:
Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
I picked up on the usage of the wording of “jerks” - at least 3 times in the bot post, and more times still on the actual community page - bc of how much it struck me as a tactic of “humiliation”. As in, it’s not enough to ban someone - they need to be told about it (just when they sit down to dinner! 😔), everywhere they look, and have that word added, with the link to that word given specifically embedded into the modlog ban message. i.e. it’s very “in-your-face”. Much like how “the poors deserve their fate bc they’re lazy and spoiled and entitled”, never mind all the facts to the contrary e.g. what if a store is currently selling (almost expired) steak meat for half the price of ground chuck. But no, Kansas had to pass a law specifically prohibiting people on food social welfare programs - most often widows, whose husbands disappeared for whatever reason and left a single parent to now raise an innocent child - from purchasing steak with those funds, regardless of the pricing. The “luxury” items - even nearly expired ones - are too good for the likes of them, i.e. it’s a humiliation tactic used by conservatives to stick it to the poor. Just like that bot calls people “jerks”, as in it’s not enough to ban them, they must also have that label thrown into their face.
And we could go down, one sentence fragment at a time, one after the other - e.g. “obsessive preoccupation with community decline”, yup, check - and we see how well that bot post meshes with this definition of fascism. And even irl regimes don’t always meet all the criteria - with only Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy having done so. “working… with traditional elites” - yup, community mods, check. “abandons democratic liberties” - yup, people’s rights to only be banned after they have committed some offense, which downvotes do not qualify as, especially in some other community entirely, and all the more so when a single downvote can do the trick. “and pursues with redemptive violence” - yup, I mean it’s anonymous online, so fairly limited, but we agreed how it’s an “attack” nonetheless. “and without ethical or legal restraints” - yup, violates various codes of conduct as well as the entire spirit behind federation principles. “goals of internal cleansing and external expansion” - yup, get rid of the “jerks” and thereby make the communities that use the Santa-bot great again.
I dunno, the more I look into this, the full-on term of “fascism”, not just authoritian/totalitarian seems to fit better. But I’ll be curious to hear your rebuttal bc you definitely have read far deeper than I on this topic:-). I agree it’s strange to think in terms of fascism wrt online moderation principles rather than tanks and coups, but if the shoe fits, as the old saying goes…
ignore this reply for a moment
Don’t worry, mate. Take your time!
About Kansas: I’m not sure but I feel like the humiliation is accidental, and yet the motivation resembles fascism in its own way - preventing the individual from choosing under the assumption that they’ll cause themself harm. As in, “if we let them buy steak they’ll wreck their budgets” style.
(It’s a discourse associated with authoritarianism, but authoritarianism is one of fascism’s “legs” anyway.)
In the case of the vegan mod: I’m really not sure if her bot complaining about “jerks” fits well with fascism. The humiliation that fascists complain about is not just about “wah, you were mean to me, I feel humiliated”; it’s more like “you’re humiliating me to drag me down from my rightful position”. To make it fascist she’d need to insert that into a context, like “if vegans weren’t so humiliated they’d be ruling the world/Lemmy!” or something like this.
And even irl regimes don’t always meet all the criteria - with only Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy having done so. “
Note that the criteria work more like a ladder than like a checklist. As in, to fulfill a criterion you need to fulfill the preceding ones. At most we could claim that she reached the third step (arrival to power), but her ability to exercise it is clearly handicapped (as in, the vegan community is clearly not buying her shit).
you definitely have read far deeper than I on this topic:-).
To be honest I didn’t. I’m actually defending my view but I’m aware that it might be completely wrong. I like discussing this stuff with you though.
This is such a bad idea. Voting already achieves what they are doing - increasing the visibility of “good” content and minimizing the visibility of “bad” content through crowd sourcing. 1) Banning people for using that system is seriously off base, and 2) turning that system into outright bans from interacting at all is way too far.
This is an automatic system to rigidly create and maintain echo chambers. Really hoping this doesn’t spread.
*Also also - administering bans based on how and where people interact with content, even as mild as up or down voting, is a dangerous choice. Utilizing a purity test of who’s allowed to interact where isn’t going to make Lemmy a better place.
The author of the bot has already been challenged. It looks like (although I’m no admin so I cannot confirm) they simply downvoted that dissenting opinion, responding with derision (this we all of us can read since it’s public, note no /s tag either, though sarcasm heavily layered on), and proceeded to do whatever they wanted regardless of consent, by anyone.
i.e. they aren’t simply turning away applications to join a community, that’s 100% within their rights, although even that would be more than a little weird to scrape through every single downvote from every community across the entire Fediverse in order to make that determination. But even so, at least the applicant would be asking for it (hopefully with appropriate informed consent). Instead, they seem to be proactively judging the entire population present across the entire Fediverse, regardless of whether we’ve ever so much as even heard of their own community, and then filling up our modlogs with the manifestation of their disapproval. Like okay Karen, I don’t need you spamming my (public!) inbox with every thought that crosses your mind, that my post history happens to remind you of! :-P
I noted elsewhere that this is exactly what Trump supporters have talked about wanting to do, both online but also even irl as in Project 2025. However, the cat is out of the bag - we are not offered the choice to avoid this occurrence altogether, our only choice now is how we will respond to these attacks on the principles of freedom of expression, and also the ability to preserve the modlogs to be human-readable rather than continually polluted with bot actions, taken by every community that we have zero interest in to begin with, until they wormed their way to becoming the center of attention (Karen) with their expressions (Karen) of what they (Karen) seem to think of us, at every given moment that they decide is right for them to divulge that “information”.
I love the irony of a vegan community eating themselves
How utterly bizarre and yet entirely predictable based on recent events.
I think they’re trying to damage the vegan brand by being as excluding as possible.
I don’t mind vegans, I really dislike this type of treachery giving any group a bad name.
I would definitely agree with that conclusion, and unfortunately it does work, many people think of the angry vegan stereotype when someone talks about veganism, and that’s because of assholes like her. She would say that it’s because of the meat industry and alt-right think tanks, which is true but they also do feed off the bad examples people like her give and go “see we’re not lying”.
If she wanted to be helpful or benefit that community she wouldn’t intentionally behave in the exact way that people criticize the community for acting, she should shun that behavior and banish people who do it. That’s the only way to bring about positive change.
I’m so tired of hearing about this community. They should change their name to ShittyAntiCarnivoreMemes and move to .ml.
They ban anyone that doesn’t agree with their ideology. Regardless how respectful you are about it.
The bad: simply downvoting a meme gets you banned
The good: You didn’t have to open your apps filter settings to stop seeing the absurd shit they post
Funnily enough, their ban spree is self censoring and will end up creating an echo chamber nobody will see.
I say, tofu and let tofuck it up.
I think I must’ve been banned as well, I saw a post in my All feed that I tried to upvote but received an error when doing so, just for that one community.
“Rule 5” like most:
https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&userId=670823Thought as much, thanks for the context!
