Ye Power Trippin' Bastards @lemmy.dbzer0.com macniel @feddit.org 1w ago

So I was just banned from [email protected] for no apparent reason?

So I try to make heads or tails of this situation. I got randomly banned from a community where I posted a youtube video showing something from a Convention. Then I wanted to post a question today but realised that I couldn't since I was banned. That community is sadly the biggest of all Star Citizen communities (the next one would be from lemmy.world)

I took a look at the Mod log and see the following line in it:

So no clean up of violating comments or posts, just a strict out ban.

The community has a pretty standard ruleset:

further, the moderator @[email protected] hasn't posted anything since a year, so what gives here, or was it some other mod that was able to declare the ban?

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Hey folks, I just had an amazing idea: a drinking game. Drink a sip when someone gets banned from lemmy.ml, under rule #1, for criticising either Russia or China. Two sips if there's no reasonable way to interpret it as criticism against the populations, only against the State or corporations.

...nah, bad idea. You'll ruin your livers.

Serious now. After checking the modlog, it's clearly a PTB (power-tripping bastards) case. The nearest of something bigoted that I could find in the modlog was

Conspiracy theorists, Populists and Putin Dick sucker will run with this for sure.

This is bad not because you're criticising Putin, or Trump, but because of the expression itself. Even then, it's more of a "Watch your language, you're being homophobic", not grounds for a month long ban. And let us not fool ourselves, this likely had zero impact on your ban.
- Devils advocate: sucking dicks isn't inherently gay (women exist), and "sucking someone's dick" figuratively is a colloquial albeit explicit term for "sucking up" to someone, or "kissing ass."
  
  Saying "blah blah sucking putin's dick" is homophobic (gay) is like saying "blah blah eating MTG's box" is homophobic (lesbian).
  
  The catch is that this only works to insult Trump because it's seen as insulting on first place, and it's only insulting because [homo|bi] men and women are seen as "less" than heterosexual men.
  
  Counterpoint: I'd judge a woman for sucking putin's literal dick just as much as I would a man, and it has more to do with the guy they're choosing to have sexual relations with. If a guy or woman was blowing, idk, Weird Al or someone cool I wouldn't bat an eye. Even if it wasn't just a figurative bastardization of "sucking up," the "bad" doesn't come from the "gay" it comes from the "fuck that guy he's a POS."
- Well, there was something about encouraging assassination, though it was two months ago. Possibly the admins were noticing a pattern of behavior and just decided to hell with it.
  
  So imho the chief issues here are perhaps more related to transparency, explaining what happened - OP had no idea even? - and why (as in precisely which rule), rather than trying to guess if it was justified or not, especially since we can no longer see all the linked stuff (unless someone has admin privileges and wants to look).
  
  Edit: also, I just had... significantly more than a sip, of 70 proof whiskey, so apparently I knew that you were going to say this? Yeah... we'll go with that:-).
  
  I saw that entry. It was in lemmy.world, not .ml, and given the target of the joke I don't think that the .ml team would care about it.
  
  So imho the chief issues here are perhaps more related to transparency [...]
  
  Yup, pretty much. They never communicate properly who is removing the content / banning the user, and why. And they clearly don't want to. (Perhaps the .ml admins are waiting for the devs to implement transparency features into Lemmy /s)
  
  Good point.
  
  Before I saw the /s my brain was cracking up ... uh, the .ml admins are the devs tho?!?!?!
  
  And they have actively taken steps to prevent people from finding how who did what action. Only ~~authority figures~~ admins can see some of that now, while the rest of us just see "mod". In fairness, it does protect a mod team against aboose.
  
  Though it shifts the balance of power away from the worker/peasant/user-class and upwards to the we-are-all-equal-but-some-of-us-are-more-equal-than-others-who-are-supposedly-also-equal class. You know, the principles of "communism", where famously we are all equal except the handful of rulerz above us all?
  
  But as I mentioned elsewhere, it's their software, and they can - and WILL btw - make it work however they want to. We are the ones who choose to use it... or not.
- Well, I got banned from ml. What are we drinkin boys
- I was banned for saying Cuba was communist with no value judgment of either the nation or the political system. AFAIK they are the only truly communist nation remaining.
  
  I was banned for saying Cuba was communist with no value judgment of either the nation or the political system. AFAIK they are the only truly communist nation remaining.
  
  Emphasis mine. That is not how it looks like in the original context:
  
  [OP] If the US stayed out of other countries politics and there were no coups or installation of people favorable to the US what would the world look like?
  
  [You, removed as "rule 1"] Those countries would have been taken over by communist regimes due to support from hostile nations... So like Cuba but all over the place.
  
  You're clearly casting a value judgment over the Cuban political system, and defending US intervention in other countries.
  
  With that out of the way, it's yet another case of rule #1 (no bigotry) being used to prevent people from criticising the admins' views, because they can't be arsed to list in the rules "5. Don't criticise our political views here."
  
  Side note. I do not want to engage on the discussion of capitalism/socialism/communism here, as it falls outside the scope of this community. However:
  
  Communists distinguish between "socialism" and "communism", as two sequential economic systems. Cuba's regime is socialist, not communist. Since this conflation shows that you aren't communist, it further reinforces reading your comment as casting a negative judgement over the Cuban regime.
  
  What you're calling "nation" there is "country". For Cuba it doesn't make much of a difference, but for other countries it does.
  
  Side note. I do not want to engage on the discussion of capitalism/socialism/communism here, as it falls outside the scope of this community. However:
  
  im gonna
  
  you cant stop me i already did it
  
  ...yeah, I'm aware that the first bullet point is exactly what I said that I didn't want to do. It's just that the tidbit about terminology is relevant here.
  
  The second bullet point is something else though.
  
  You’re clearly casting a value judgment over the Cuban political system
  
  I don't see how. Please elaborate.
  
  It's a bunch of little things together:
  
  Cuba often being used as boogeyman when criticising communists, typically without mentioning all things dragging the Caribbean down (regardless of Castro and Guevara);
  
  the fact that you're clearly not a communist, based on how you used the word;
  
  usage of negatively charged words, such as "take over" and "hostile";
  
  the predictive part of your comment being already mentioned by other users, over and over, leaving the point of your comment to be just voicing your opinion=judgment.
  
  Together they make your "like Cuba" immediately read as "bad", even if you were trying to be as neutral as possible.
  
  And at the end of the day, no matter the subject, it's almost impossible to be truly neutral and not cast any sort of judgment. We do this all the time, often without even realising it.
  
  [Just to be clear: I am not defending the .ml admins and their bullshit removal of your comment as if it was bigotry. It is not bigotry, nor it should be removed as such. OK?]
  
  Didn't think you were defending .ml admins. I was curious how my statement could be construed as judgmental. I was genuinely trying to be neutral in my statement and your criticism helps me see how I could improve it in the future.
  
  Yup, I get it - that's why I focused on how it reads, not on your intentions. I believe you when you say that you were trying to be neutral.
- IMO even in this case, he's not criticizing them for sucking dick, he's criticizing them for sucking Putin's dick. Those two things are not the same - one is potentially homophobic (if directed at male users), but the other is more of an indictment of users who are happy to swallow Putin's constant stream of disinformation than it is a criticism of anyone's sexuality. I get that some folks have trouble parsing the difference though.
  
  IMO even in this case, he’s not criticizing them for sucking dick, he’s criticizing them for sucking Putin’s dick
  
  Yup, and that's an attenuating factor, alongside what ArcaneSlime said. It's no grounds for a ban, at most a "pls watch language" scolding.

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