Context: https://lemmy.world/comment/14224519
I was just browsing some comments and came across this… exchange. In addition to “WTF is wrong with you” I also reported the comment for something like, ‘this person is using the plain definition of genocide to discredit the idea of genocide. this person is clearly some kind of bigot/troll, or a deeply ignorant and unserious person. please keep a close eye on this person.’ I think that’s the reason why another mod responded with the genocide articles. All this before I realized they were a mod. Incidentally, this flyingsquid character is still sealioning that nobody answered them and that “the genocide is, as I said, not all that horrific.” At least they put the words in their own mouth this time (downgraded from “you must not think it’s all that horrific” -what the fuck!?).
When I checked my inbox this morning I found they had responded, but this time I noticed their name, and the M next to it.
So I ask you, in this context (or any, really), is “…good god, you’re a mod here?” uncivil? I think the moderator is silencing legitimate criticism. I think it was the moderator being uncivil throughout. I think this flyingsquid character is a Power Tripping Bastard.
There’s no genocide of russians or russia sympathizers going on in Ukraine. You’re such an obvious tankie troll, why are you even bothering here? YDI
im tired, boss
New drinking game, take a drink every time flying squid ends up on this community. He and Jordan Lund are absolute shit stains.
“The people who are still in the community manage to tolerate me, I must be doing something right.”
-flyingsquid, probably
So I ask you, in this context (or any, really), is “…good god, you’re a mod here?” uncivil?
Mildly. I’d not remove it myself, but it also contributes nothing and is provocative.
That being said, FlyingSquid is thinskinned (or sensitive, if one prefers), which is a poor trait for a mod to have.
Look my take on it is if you’re a mod, you shouldn’t get involved in spicy discussions. There’s just no way to avoid the conflict of interest, and it makes you look like shit no matter how you slice it
Hexbear and .ml have the same problem of mods/admins getting involved in political discussions, then deleting comments that disagree with them. It’s just a bad look.
It’s not a “bad look”, it’s abuse. Moderators are supposed to be impartial, that’s the whole point, whether at a political debate, or in an online forum. Censoring one side to support their beliefs would get them fired from any other moderator job on the planet. The only reason they get away with it here is because they do it for free and keep the conversations relatively spam/bot-free.
I never had this issue on reddit tbh. Users could say whatever they wanted and I never removed anything that wasn’t against the rules. Even joined in on the dumb “mods will remove this any second now” idiocy for shits and giggles for things that didn’t break the rules.
Then you probably haven’t been using it the last year. I got ip banned for a comment pointing out international law relating to indigenous defense against occupation. That was 6 months before reddit nuked accounts posts and comments it didnt like regarding the luigi mangione/uhc ceo debacle.
I moved on with the API bs, and don’t actually know what happened to the sub I modded. I know at least one mod stuck around though.
I got sitewide banned for mocking people using Windows on Steam deck
Right? Like, at least use an alt for plausible deniability.
I see Flying Squid around a lot. I’m not a fan.
Hadn’t really noticed that character before yesterday, when they argued that WWII was a proxy war before the US got involved directly. Good thing I didn’t engage.
How did they get to mod so many high traffic communities? I thought we got rid of the power mods from reddit. Is flyingsquid operating their own instance? I haven’t checked, but I’d bet they only mod communities on a single instance.
Update: yup, flyingsquid is only modding on .world, what a coincidence
He came over during the first wave of reddit API refugees afaik, contributes a ton (is terminally online), and probably messaged the mods/admins expressing an interest in modding.
He’s a bit of a PTB but I’ve seen worse. Forums/magazines/etc aren’t democracies and as the old internet adage goes “mods = gods” and you don’t have to like them but there’s little than can be done about their temper tantrums.
I’ve learned to limit my interactions with him as he definitely tries to bait people or put words in their mouths, pretty typical mod bullshit tbh.
Had a wild “discussion” with FlyingSquid a few days ago which basically ended with him saying “reported because anyone who disagrees with me is a troll”. Blocked him after that.
https://lemmy.world/comment/14167451
.World mods are libbed up.
He accused you of lying about what he said when that’s basically what he did to me the other day. Prohectionism as hell lmao.
He plays a reasonable Zionist on lemmy since hasbara tactics about beheaded Israeli babies won’t work here.
This is the some tactic neo libs love using violence is never the answer*
*unless my daddy is doing it to you undesirables, then it is his right!
Slapped the
israeli propagandahasbara right outta their mouth.
This is on you… for unblocking worldnews (/s):-P
I like [email protected].
There’s also
You guys should really consolidate at some point
this, but unironically
Almost certainly still better than Reddit, although why bother with either? :-P
Step 1. Block flyingsquid.
That has saved my sanity and general feelings for Lemmy. Otherwise I would have quit the entire platform due to one person.
Eish, that’s one weak constitution you got.
Direct action is surely gonna be off the table for you if an internet person disagreeing can push you to throw in the towel.
FlyingSquid is someone who tries to provoke users and then bans them with his epic mod powers because he is very cool.
It wasn’t so much a disagreement or me having a thin skin. I felt like they were a net-negative to a place I feel half-ass comfortable saying anything at all. I saw the patterns of behavior they had with others and I got sick of reading that shit in every damn thread. Hearing that they were given a mod position disturbs me. After spending some time with that curated out, I have had a far better experience. Not saying squid is a bad person, but the shit that gets stirred up due to him is exhausting.
I wish him the best of luck with his health issues, his daughter, and his family.
Yeah they’re everywhere picking fights and banning people, I don’t even go out of my way to find them i just read threads and somehow they’re always in the comments arguing and accusing people of putting words in their mouth lol
Ehhh, it’s kinda borderline, but being snide is definitely incivility, if not egregiously so.
If it had been a ban based on that single comment, yeah, that’s over the line. But just a comment removal? Nah, that’s a mod’s job, to mop up the piss so it doesn’t spread and stink up the joint.
Is a snide comment enough to increase the chances of a comment section jumping the shark? Kinda situational, but people do love to find an excuse to be dicks.
I would have removed the comment too, though I would have communicated my reasoning since it’s a matter of interpretation as to how the removed comment is intended. It could be taken as more of a “oh dear, I am surprised”, or more as “how did you manage to be a mod”, or even as a “you suck as a mod”.
While a mod expects a degree of nastiness, it comes along with the role; you still can’t let it go because when people are scrolling, the vibe of a community suffers from such things. The more snarky and snide comments there are, the more likely people are to think it’s okay. So removing them prevents future problems to a limited degree.
And that really does work. I’ve seen it from the user side and the mod side. If you intend to keep a community relaxed and friendly, you can’t allow slap fights and petty bullshit to stay up or it snowballs. It isn’t a matter of if, it’s when and how bad.
Now, there’s communities where that kind of thing is okay. If that’s the way someone wants to run a C/ or other forum, that’s fine. But you’ll notice as a user that those communities end up getting very toxic very fast.
See, people think that because they don’t curse or directly insult someone, that they’re still being civil. That is absolutely not the case. Don’t believe me? Well, bless your heart.
You can be very uncivil without telling someone to fuck themselves. And you can be perfectly civil while calling someone a cunt. If you don’t thin that’s true, well aren’t you just adorable.
A mod removing an off topic, probably rude comment is not power tripping, or silencing criticism. It’s literally what a moderator is supposed to do. If you have a problem with a mod, having it out inside a thread that isn’t about that is a dick move of its own. It’s just not the place or time.
Now, ignoring the specifics of your post, that specific comment and action.
Flying squid is a strange case. As a mod, he (they? I can’t recall for sure if they’re a guy or not, but I think they’ve specified their gender that way) gets called on the carpet a lot. Which can be an indicator of a problematic mod. I would, however, argue that this is power tripping bastards, not fair and equal moderation evaluation. Nobody posts here unless they disagree with a mod’s actions. There’s a selection bias inherent to the nature of the place.
The squid seems to err heavily on the side of minimizing disruptive comments, sometimes erring a little too much.
And, there may be some hypocrisy in allowing their own uncivil comments to stay up. But is that power tripping, or is it simply poor judgement? A mod that’s going to participate in their own C/ has to follow the same rules, or they’re just a dick. But it’s really easy to forget that, as a mod, you have your own idea of what is and isn’t a rule violation. That idea is not obvious to all users, and if you’re going to give your own comments leeway, you damn well need to do so for others. You have to remember that tone is hard to detect in writing, that English isn’t everyone’s first or best language, and that there are a ton of people that will say things that seem uncivil, but may well be just jocularity (the aforementioned “cunt” as an example).
It’s my personal opinion that if you can’t do that as a mod, if you can’t find that balance, it’s time to find a replacement. I’ve had to do it in the past tbh.
If you interact with squid outside of the hot button issues, they’re pretty damn chill. Outright friendly most of the time. So I have trouble believing malice on their part as a mod. I could be wrong, but it doesn’t fit their public behavior overall.
I can believe that anyone can exhibit bad judgement as a mod. Largely because I know I have, and I actively work to minimize that. If you’re aware of it being a probability, and you try not to, but you still fuck up, then anyone can. It’s how you handle fixing it that matters.
This is already longer than the short attention span we’ve developed online, so I’m going to stop here with a summation.
No power tripping with the specific mod action taken, but there is some questionable behavior overall.
I believe the mod in question is an abusive mod: I’ve seen them debate with someone in a conversation, bait them into sparring, then when the person responds, ban them for breaking the rules. That alone is moderator abuse, it’s not being objective, and an environment where the moderator tries to create ban incidents isn’t a friendly one to be in. For this reason I blocked every community where they are a moderator. Context
The misinformation removals require the mods to be a source of truth, which is asking a lot for non omniscient humans.
Their non-mod posts seems fine. I’m sure as a person they are normally great, but they don’t maintain the distance/objectivity (yet) to be a good mod.
I simply cannot agree (edit: based on this reasoning) that “…good god, you’re a mod here?” (for the record, intended as something like “your being a mod explains why no action was taken” or “you cannot say the things you have said here in the way that you’ve said them and also be a good moderator”) is an uncivil statement or sentiment to express. Conceivably it was very a uncomfortable, unwelcome, or even upsetting sentiment to read about one’s self. From my perspective, it is clear that the mod abusing their powers to silence criticism of their authority, not to remove an uncivil comment.
In contrast to you, I understand “civility” to refer explicitly to politeness in speech and writing, regardless of the actual sentiment (bless your heart is civil, but that doesn’t mean its sentiment is not unkind). In those terms, if either of my two comments were uncivil, it was clearly “WTF is wrong with you” which employed vulgarity to make my point. That said, googling civility comes up with anything from that plain “politeness” definition to extremely broad definitions including respect, tolerance, … I quite frankly cannot be asked to be any more respectful and tolerant towards apparently genocidal sentiments than I already have.
As I see it, they chose to ignore an arguably uncivil remark but exercised authority to remove “incivility” when I implied they were an arsonist hired as a firefighter.
But is that power tripping, or is it simply poor judgement?
I can’t tell the difference here.
If you interact with squid outside of the hot button issues, they’re pretty damn chill.
Yeah and if you talk to my uncle about something other than race relations or the “lost cause” he’s pretty chill too. He loves talking about classical music and math.
No power tripping with the specific mod action taken, but there is some questionable behavior overall.
Fair enough.
I mean, you can disagree about it being civil or not, but you asked. So, you know, why ask if you aren’t going to consider the possibility?
I welcome this challenge and thank you for keeping me honest.
I will rephrase: You have not successfully argued (in my opinion) that the removed comment was uncivil. I remain unconvinced, based on stated reasoning, that the removed comment was uncivil. I emphasize that I recognized the first comment as actually uncivil (both statement and sentiment) which should demonstrate a willingness in principle to recognize my own incivility.
Well I’m glad to see someone else was disgusted by that response.
No, that’s not incivility.
And in case he changes the comment saying “genocide is not all that horrific”, here’s an archive: https://archive.is/Frsby
Let me see if there’s a way to report a mod to the admins.
Edit: yeah, if you message @[email protected] it goes to the admins.
Edit 2: 24 hours later, comments are still up and no response from the admins.
i hardly think he’s saying there that genocide in general is not horrific - he gives two examples that are well short of genocide, and says that if you call that a genocide then that genocide is not all that horrific
They give two examples of things that actually constitute genocide but which are never performed by themselves.
Even In the question, “what if Mexico invaded USA and prevented us enclaves from celebrating us holidays, would that be genocide?” flyingsquid couldn’t manage to separate the cultural erasure from the physical destruction. Because yeah, obviously if you take over a country and deny the people of that country the opportunity to practice their culture… that’s genocide. It’s cultural erasure. Along with all the, y’know, the deaths that tend to go along with military invasion of a sovereign nation. It would tend to turn Americans into Mexicans- it would tend to erase the American identity.(edit: fake news) It is a question that could only be uttered by a deeply ignorant and unserious person in no position to be lecturing others on the subject, or a bigot/troll who knows better but wishes to discredit the concept of genocide.it was the other way round, the usa invading mexico, with mexico in response disallowing 4th of july celebrations
Hm. you’re right. That’s a trickier question, but still yes it’s genocide. I find it hard to believe “you’re not allowed to celebrate 4th of july” happens in a vacuum in wartime.
oh come off it. is every war genocide to you? you diminish the term by using it this loosely
I, and everyone else in this thread, seem to disagree. The onus is on you at this point to make the opposite case. To someone else. I’m not interested in hearing your arguments for why denying people their culture is actually cool and normal and totally not horrifying or genocide. Flyingsquid’s question is an absurd hypothetical oversimplificaiton, not representative of actual genocidal conditions, and the question can only be asked by an unserious and ignorant person in no position to be lecturing others, or by someone attempting to cheapen the concept of genocide. Cultural destruction doesn’t happen in a vaccuum. It doesn’t happen without the exertion of violence. Are you seriously of the opinion that if us invaded mexico and mexico said “you can’t celebrate us holidays now” to us people living there, they’d just meekly go along with it? Do you seriously think that would be the only thing mexico would do, ban 4th of July? I didn’t answer Flyingsquid because it’s a stupid and/or evil fucking question.
Don’t be naive.
Don’t be an asshole who thinks not supporting Russian imperialism is genocide. Jesus I hate how good this bait is, surely nobody is stupid and cruel enough to think Ukrainians should be embracing russian takeover and genocide, or that rejecting russian takeover and genocide is itself somehow genocide
They were so close to having a valid point about forcibly ending cultures that are horrible (slavery culture of southern US states, nazis, etc.) but missed the mark by ignoring the differences between those aggressively violent cultures and a regular old aspects of culture like language and other facets of a regional identity. Then doubling down on trying to equate forcing the language of an invader on the populace is somehow the same as a language not being available in all public schools because there aren’t enough speakers of that language in an area.
Then they ignored all of the replies that explained why the basis of their logic was wrong.
PTB
Wanting Russia take over your country is horrible. How tf does that need saying?
Next time please provide an even lower quality screenshot
it’s a png hosted on mander. try letting it finish loading.
World news has identical paid US militarist control as main reddit subs. Ultra easy to be banned, and banning is needed to control low information people, the majority of which are unconcerned with criticality, who read a lot of news information with the bias.
On a per user basis, lemmy has higher concentration of US empire agenda censorship agents than reddit.
Yeah, when dead CEO happened they really exposed their hand lol
Even reddit knew to let it run for a week until they got a patsy.
If only we could all contribute so courageously and intelligently like you
how brave and extremely smart of you to reply this way? did you read the comment before posting it or are you just
