I'm trying to work out why there are posts in here about users being banned from communities, when neither the user or the community are under their control. Is this being mirrored from somewhere, or is this something that's limited to what people on their instance see?
They are also, apparently, banning users that have never been to their instance.
I've told this story on Lemmy a couple of times since being banned from Blahaj Zone, and I'll tell it again.
I once posted a meme to a Blahaj community I moderated in which someone named Obvious_Troll@hexbear.net was attacking a trans person. It was a political meme, and I'll try to avoid saying what the political viewpoint was so that this thread doesn't get derailed. But as part of the meme, Obvious_Troll was being transphobic, and the reader was expected to agree that transphobia is bad and Obvious_Troll is... an obvious troll. The username wasn't actually important to the meme, I was just including a picture of a Lemmy comment and had to include a name, so I made one up.
Ada then messaged me to say that the post would be removed unless I redacted Obvious_Troll's name. Ada said that Obvious_Troll is a real, trans lemmy user, and I'm not to attack them. There is nobody on hexbear named Obvious_Troll, I made that username up.
Read bottom to top:
!
So Ada defended a fictional transphobic troll, deciding they were trans for some reason. The troll's username was not the point of the meme, the point was what they were saying. So I made up a nonsense username to support the point of the meme. I don't think anyone would choose the username Obvious_Troll unless they wanted to be seen as a troll. As near as I can tell, Ada defended Obvious_Troll because they were from Hexbear, and Ada seems to think every Hexbear user is trans. Even a made-up one who wants to be seen as a troll and who harasses trans people. Why did Ada hyperfocus on the instance name, and not notice that the username was ridiculous? I don't know. I don't understand it.
Blahaj is intended to be a safe space for trans people. And Ada's intention with asking for redaction of this fake made up name was, somehow, to protect a trans person. And that's good. But it's really weird that Ada thought the way to protect trans people, is by defending fictional transphobic trolls.
EDIT: So, the discussion got derailed not by politics as I expected, but by Ada claiming Obvious_Troll is a real person again. Here's the original post in which Obvious_Troll is being transphobic and the reader is supposed to agree that transphobia is bad:
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Quote: "LW admin/mod team seem to have this overbearing and weird belief that they need to tell everyone else what to think and how to think it. How about... you all just fuck off and don't?
Result: Permaban
=====
aniki@lemmings.world
https://imgur.com/LIye27F
Quote: "All rights are won through violence, child. Bans on here means less than the nothing platitudes you utter"
Result: 15 day ban
=====
catloaf@lemm.ee
https://imgur.com/ONGdgNo
Quote: [the quote is really long, pls dont make me type it and just look at the link lol]
Result: 15 day ban
Note: the comment precedes the ban by 26 days, but catloaf's recent comment history contains opinions critical of the LW News mod team
Quote: "Damn what a shame, guy almost stopped being a moderator on an internet forum, would have been a grave tragedy"
Result: Permaban
=====
stormesp@lemm.ee
https://imgur.com/ZCRtuJe
Stormesp's profile at lemm.ee: https://lemm.ee/u/stormesp
Quote: [there were no comments removed in the modlog, but stormesp's recent comment history contains opinions critical of the LW News mod team, read them yourself]
Result: 15 day ban
=====
MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
https://imgur.com/YwIMSOq
Quotes: [multiple quotes, there are a lot, check out the link]
Result: 15 day ban
=====
Summary
Most interestingly here is that the two users who got permabanned didn't use slurs and didn't call for violence, they merely insulted the moderator team. I guess in the LW News mod team's eyes, that's a horrible, terrible, awful, unforgivable offense, so.......... PERMABAN.
Aniki literally is saying "words are useless, let's resort to violence" but that's a 15 day ban only, OK, makes sense, right????????
Catloaf and Stormesp were actively leaving comments sparring with the moderator team in that thread. To be honest, none of what I'm seeing in these comment seems worthy of a ban. Unless of course, you're a LW mod and you go "this guy is disagreeing with me, therefore they deserve a ban."
Edit: I forgot to write about MindTraveller since that guy douchecanoe was a last minute addition. But look at those aggressive comments, guy douchecanoe deserves a ban for sure.
Edit 2: fixed pronouns for MindTraveller
=====
Conclusion
Not a good look. Does LW want to grow into a good Reddit alternative or do they just want to turn it into Reddit for themselves only?
LW can at least come clean about this and say "yes, the rest of you can get fucked" or maybe they will have a moment of realization at some point "oh my god, are we the baddies?"
>that site has like 20 daily users, i dont think we’ll even notice they’re federated unless a hapless lib accidently steps in it.
>It’d be nice to radicalize more people
>cry havoc and let slip the bears of posting
>No, these lemmy fuckers come in here and harass trans comrades.
>>Going onto lemmy dot cee ayy and saying DOWN WITH CIS
>KKKlanada’s largest impact on American culture is a parody song by Weird Al.
>I think it’s funny that by getting lemmy.ca domain this website represents all of kkkanada in the lemmyverse. knowing kkkanadians i bet that weighs heavily on the maintainers. they perhaps even wish to subdue and recuperate hexbear on behalf of liberalism.
>>Excuse me, but it’s KKKlanada
>Death to Canada
>Whining about pig poop balls was their first reason to block us
Do you guys really want to be re-federated with Hexbear?
> cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/26218550
>
> > (posting to both communities)
> >
> > A carnist lemmy world instance admin has stepped in and meatsplained to the mods while restoring comments that violated the community's rules. They deleted comments that they did not agree with, citing 'misinformation', and threatened to demod the mods if those comments were removed again. The comments were deleted and the admin was banned from the community as per violating the rules of the community, that was until they unbanned themselves (admin abuse) and unmodded two of the moderators because of "promoting harmfull actions against pets".
> >
> > As far as it stands, if the lemmy world community wasn't already not a safe vegan place for you (it really wasn't) it most certainly isn't now as carnists (lemmy world instance admin) currently mod it.
> >
> > I suggest any vegan who wants a safe and welcoming space to come and interact with vegantheoryclub.org. Sorry for any inconvienance that this may have caused. I am deeply upset at the admins actions today and don't condone them whatsoever.
> >
> >
> > !
> >
> >
> > !
The community /c/soulism@lemmy.blahaj.zone was removed by the instance admins two weeks ago. The community contained only memes and discussion of the ideas of soulism. There were no attacks against anyone. Here is the admin's explanation of the situation:
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https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/9875313
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Transcript:
ADA:
The post you linked to by MindTraveller is an active misrepresentation of events by them
Traveller and I are not “in agreement” about much of anything. Their politics are very far removed from mine
This is the text of the message I sent advising that I was shutting the group down.
> After consideration, I’ve decided that non voters does not really fit the stated goals of blahaj zone. Your motives for creating it seem based on a personal vendetta, and whilst your views are genuine, nothing constructive comes from the community. All it does is create division, because its sole purpose is to target others, without really focusing on any progressive ideas or discussion of its own.
> At the moment, it’s causing more harm than good to the overall community.
> I’ll leave the community open, so that if you choose to set the community up on another instance, you will have the opportunity to direct them to the new location.
Given the post which you linked, (which I had not seen until now) I will be removing Traveller and the new community, because once more, the goal appears to be to create division
The goal of blahaj zone is not political. The goal is to allow trans people to have a space where they can exist on their own terms, without having to pretend to be someone they’re not. My own political views are closer to Links/LibertyHub than nonvoters or its ilk. Yet as long as there is no bigotry or gatekeeping, then trans people with politics at odds with my own are welcome. It’s why we have an “armed queers” community, despite my own strong distaste for gun culture.
It is communities/posters that exist primary to create division, without adding anything positive back, that have no place here.
----
This comment contains only one side of the discussion I had with Ada about Non-Voters and Soulism, here is the full context (top is newest, bottom is oldest):
!
Transcript:
ADA:
Hey there. After consideration, I’ve decided that non voters does not really fit the stated goals of blahaj zone. Your motives for creating it seem based on a personal vendetta, and whilst your views are genuine, nothing constructive comes from the community. All it does is create division, because its sole purpose is to target others, without really focusing on any progressive ideas or discussion of its own.
At the moment, it’s causing more harm than good to the overall community.
I’ll leave the community open, so that if you choose to set the community up on another instance, you will have the opportunity to direct them to the new location.
MINDTRAVELLER:
Thanks for letting me know. I don’t mind if nonvoters is gone. It served its purpose. The guy who was banning trans people and calling us liberals for not wanting to die is no longer in power. The Blahaj community is no longer divided. We achieved unity. And sure, some people are whining that they have to get along with others now, but the tide is against them. I’ll see if there’s a way to lock the community and prevent new posts. I want to keep the most recent post visible so in two months when the transphobes start whining about Kamala I can link that post and tell them “called it.”
MINDTRAVELLER:
There we go, all locked up. No new posts or comments.
MINDTRAVELLER:
Also, your mention of constructive politics gave me an idea. I want to create a soulist community on Blahaj. Something like https://www.reddit.com/r/Soulism101/. That place has been a ghost town since the APIcalypse, but the soulist movement has been going strong on Discord. It should have a place on Lemmy too. Plus, it would dramatically reduce the number of people mischaracterising soulism on the fediverse. The only attacks shall be against capitalism, the cisheteropatriarchy, the state, and reality.
ADA:
That sounds like a much better fit!
----
Non-Voters was completely locked up, and I made a post explaining the decision to close it, which both Ada and I agreed on, as you can see in this message log. In Ada's later public comment, she says the post was a misrepresentation of events. She said that she and I did not agree. However we can clearly see in this chatlog that when Ada told me the community was closing, I agreed to close it. And when I asked to open a new community not focused on any form of criticism of others users, she agreed too. If I had not agreed to do as Ada said and close the community, there would not be a post from me announcing the community's closure. So the idea that Ada and I did not agree to close the community is nonsense.
At the time that /c/soulism was removed from lemmy.blahaj.zone, I had in fact already been unbanned from /c/libertyhub by the community's mods. Ada cites division as the reason for the removal, but there was no division at this time, except between some Liberty Hub users and their own mods. Here is the log:
!
Transcript:
MINDTRAVELLER:
Hi, I’d like to appeal my ban on Liberty Hub. I never broke the rules, I only complained about LOC’s overly strict moderation style. I was banned with the reason “off topic”, which isn’t a rule.
KITTENZRULZ123:
I unbanned you however know that you have broken the rules, if you make me regret this act of leniency I will reban you.
----
At this time, the division between Non-Voters, myself, Liberty Hub, kittenzrulz, and linkopenschest had been resolved. Non-Voters had never been a community specifically designed to target Liberty Hub, and in fact linkopenschest and kittenzrulz both had posts on the community that engaged with the concept in good faith, and which I did not remove. They were never banned from the community, and they decided to reverse my ban from the community. So the three of us had been engaged in a good-faith disagreement from the start, minus one impulsive ban that was reversed, and we had already set our differences aside. I became an outright ally of Liberty Hub when they decided to relax their excessive bans, and they were exploring the possibility of treating me the same way.
Here is where I diverge from pure fact to analysis and speculation: Since division still existed between the users of Liberty Hub and the mod team, and the users perceived Ada as an ally of the mod team and of myself (because I was cooperating with everything Ada told me and getting along well with the LH mods), Ada panicked. The fact that I was getting along with everyone and making compromises was causing the conspiracy theorists to target Ada. So Ada manufactured a drama between her and myself to make it clear that she did not approve of me, even if I was agreeing to do everything she told me. The unity, compromise, and reconciliation was a bad look for Ada in the eyes of the tinfoil hat people. Ada chose to regain the tinfoil hats' favour by inventing a fake disagreement between herself and me. That's the reason /c/soulism was removed, despite hosting zero offensive content and never even having one of its posts or comments reported by anyone. Ada needed to conjure up a fight from nowhere to look good to the conspiracy people.
Names blurred to protect the innocent / crazy. Not trying to call anyone out, just thought the response was hilarious and highly disproportionate. Like, they distinguished that comment (green border/background).
For reference, the comment I presume that was downvoted that apparently triggered that response was to the tune of "BoTH SiDEz!!!!" with some hyper generalizing / stereotyping on the side.
Recently Lemmy.World admins have heavily started pushing an MBFC bot in their
bigger subs despite it being deeply unpopular with the users. However rating
propaganda was not enough for the mods as they are now actively fundraising for
MBFC as well.
[https://lemm.ee/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F...
> Things got heated on the piracy community at lemmy.dbzer0.com when the admin, db0, announced plans to use a GenerativeAI tool to rotate the community's banner daily with random images.
>
> While some praised the creative idea, others strongly objected, arguing that AI-generated art lacks soul and meaning. A heated debate ensued over the artistic merits of AI art versus human-created art.
>
> One user threatened to unsubscribe from the entire instance over the "wasteful BS" of randomly changing the banner every day. The admin defended the experiment as a fun way to inject randomness and chaos.
>
> Caught in the crossfire were arguments about corporate ties to AI image generators, electricity waste, and whether the banner switch-up even belonged on a piracy community in the first place.
>
> In the end, the admin stubbornly insisted on moving forward with the AI banner rotation, leaving unhappy users to either embrace the chaotic visuals or jump ship. Such is the drama and controversy that can emerge from a seemingly innocuous banner change!
I'm kind of okay with this. It was a reasonable take -- not a hot take or an incendiary comment or something. Mods using their power to shut down discussion -- expected on that instance I guess ;)
!
This is my first time getting any sort of ban on any lemmy instance. Now I just need to get banned on a right-wing server for some other centrist take, to keep balance in the universe ;)
How many of you have experienced this on lemmy.ml?
Lemmy is full of plenty of people who hate me for being trans and disabled. And way too many self-identified leftists who think I'm being trans and disabled the wrong way and am therefore a right wing troll.
Most of the well known Lemmy instances lean communist, even if their admins can be quite socially regressive. As such I've accumulated a reputation as being a troublemaker for the left. I want to go make trouble for the right to fix my reputation. I wanna go talk shit, stir up drama, and get banned. I want the modlogs to say a bunch of open bigots hate me instead of the closet bigots who hate me now. I wanna ruin some nazis' days and call them shitheads. Where do I go on the Fediverse to go make trouble for the open reactionaries?
(CW: Slurs, transphobia, Reddit, probably other stuff)
https://rdrama.net/post/246507/apparently-rdrama-has-their-own-offsite?sort=new
Original link about rdrama: https://hexbear.net/post/1688372 Why are there such
garbage people in existence?
>Ok, so, I crossposted the documentary “Four Horsemen 2012” to !documentaries@slrpnk.net and it got removed for not being “a solarpunk themed documentary” - all good, it was my mistake I didn’t check it’s a community for documentaries with a specific there/topic.
>Then, I wake up to the message from the SAME PERSON (Five@slrpnk.net) removing the same documentary from !Documentaries@lemmy.world which I assume is a GENERAL PURPOSE instance for documentaries about all topics. Their reason was: “I’m going to remove this documentary out of solidarity for Ukraine” even tho the documentary had NOTHING to do with Ukraine and doesn’t even mention it ONCE! I’m super confused. The rules for this community don’t even say anything about certain documentaries being allowed or not. What is happening? Ideological censorship?
This thread is intended for blåhaj zone users. Top level comments from accounts
on other instances will be removed. ====== It has recently been brought to my
attention that the lead admin of programming.dev is engaging in ongoing
transphobia. You can see the conversation in question here
https://pro...
The admin banned people for saying that calling everything transpobia isn't the way to make you seem reasonable and all non blahaj TLC get removed by default.
Out of curiosity I went to exploding-heads.com [http://exploding-heads.com] and
it looks like it’s not working anymore. Is there a new place they hang out now?
Are they undercover on the regular servers or something? It’d be a little
surprising to me if they all just gave up on being active on the F...
As is evidenced, multiple comments have been removed by mods. The Mod log shows the moderator removing multiple of these comments due to "rule 1", which on lemmy.ml is:
>No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. Code of Conduct.
The mods then also banned some of the commenting users for a few days.
This all lead to a post by one of the affected users to AskLemmy, accusing the mods of "removing all comments critical of Hamas". "No comments critical of Israel were removed", the user alleges. The post has since been removed by the lemmy.ml mods as well and the user banned for 14 days.
Recently I was browsing some communities I typically hang out in and I started
noticing Hexbear accounts being… well their typical selves. Which made me check
which account I was on because I’ve got a few, and when I noticed I was on my
Blahaj account I had to check and it looks like we’re federated...
Blahaj's admin has refederated with Hexbear, using most Blahaj users unhappy and baffled. No communication from the admins regarding the change, though one user speculated it was a halloween trick. Multiple pings to the admin Ada have gone unanswered, even though Ada is clearly still active on Lemmy.
Area for discussion of the gender, disability, and politics of the user
DroneRights. Also, compilation of bigotry directed their way from elsewhere in
the fediverse.
To anyone who is not familiar with the situation, please read our previous post
[https://ani.social/post/863176] for context. Please do not say anything hateful
toward the concerned instances’ admins. — ## What happened? A few hours ago,
Lemmy.World and lemmy.dbzer0.com has defederated from ani.soci...
Hello World, Today, after careful consideration and evaluation of recent events,
we have decided to defederate from Lemmygrad [https://lemmygrad.ml].
Regrettably, we have observed a significant increase in hate speech and calls to
violence originating from the Lemmygrad instance. Due to the severity...
>
> > In the recent Lemmy developer update, there's a reference to one Lemmy developer, SleeplessOne1917.
> >
> > I found some horrifying comments from this user.
> >
> > https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/2649200 - "There is no such thing as an Israeli civilian. All settlers are valid targets."
> >
> > https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/2649472 - "15 year olds are military age. That makes them valid targets for killing."
> >
> > https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/2649732 - "... There is no such thing as a zionoid civilian. Everything that moves and isn’t Palestinian is a valid target. ..."