I'm afraid that is going to be the case anywhere there is moderation... even here.
I've definitely seen some emotional mods on Lemmy who relish in throwing gas at the fire before a ban and posts from people complaining about them. Hell, I have experienced it first hand. And it doesn't look like anything is ever done about abuse. The sad thing is that Lemmy can change this but doesn't look like it wants to.
"Post removed. Reason: Rule 1" No other explanation given and nobody oversees the moderation. The standard is on the floor. I'd be more than happy to volunteer if there was a auditing system in place. We to police the police, per se, and do so in a fair and transparent way.
emotional mods on Lemmy
Post removed. Reason: Rule 1 (be civil)
It's human nature .... and it's also politics and marketing
In the non political communities, the people with the most time take the opportunity to moderate. Unfortunately having time on your hands is not an indicator of wealth, ability or status. A percentage of these people are just internet addicted individuals that spend all their lives online. And a percentage of these people see moderating as way to give them power over others.
The other dynamic I see happening is politics and marketing and propaganda. In the political communities, important messages need to be pushed by state organizations or groups to push a message or react to opposing views. We like to think that we are a tiny independent bubble in Lemmy but the more popular it becomes, the more professional and dedicated marketers will migrate into the service.
It's all human nature .... the human nature to be in control, to have control or to exert control.
And like you say, the only way to moderate it all is to moderate ourselves and others on a continual basis.
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” -Thomas Jefferson
We will never achieve a free form social media that can be open, inclusive and safe for everyone ... we have to realise that we have to always be fighting and advocating for one, otherwise we will always run the risk of giving room to those who want control over everyone and everything.
I've seen it happen here already.
even here
Here is especially bad.
This is absolute bullshit.
I used to be a mod on /r/soccer, and there were strict rules around duplicates, and on keeping things related to football news and OC. It's the most popular sport in the world, and when you've got enough subscribers to fill multiple stadiums, just "posting anything football" doesn't scale. You also end up with a huge amount of content about the most popular teams, and when there's a long-tail of fans from other leagues/countries you isolate a lot of people.
I can happily say that in the time I was a mod there were no questionable decisions. The mods went out of their way to verify decisions, discuss them with others, and reverse any bans if the user acknowledged that they'd broken rules. What the mods got in return was:
- Probably 5-10 death threats a day. No hyperbole.
- A handful of script kiddies that tried to spam the sub with offensive content, CP, and stuff that obviously breaks the rules.
- One stalking attempt on a mod that resulted in the police getting involved, a potential arrest, and a kid getting kicked out of school.
- Several people getting pissy, starting their own subs, and then realising that keeping things on topic and stopping people posting "Paul Pogba skills compilation 2015-2020 Despacito Remix" several times a day is quite tricky...
Funny enough, pretty much every decision was made by reports. Four reports triggered a message in modmail, and we just followed what users had reported..
Yeah your experience matches mine. Id really encourage people to not blanket trash on all mods. It is a lot of work that goes into moderating communities and it is either done by people who love the community, or by someone who loves that power dynamic. I'm not saying all mods are perfect, but give a chance for individual mods to prove themselves. It's generally a thankless job, especially lately. By trashing on all mods we're just going to scare away the good intentioned people and all that is left are the power hungry ones.
How does moderating like that work? Do you guys take shifts? Is there a group chat?
Everything is done via modmail. Users report posts/comments, and the reports go into a queue that basically says "this comment has been reported due to X". As a mod, you go into the queue, review the content, and decide what to do. Very occasionally, you'd look at the new posts, but very few people did this, because reports would usually come into modmail within minutes. In terms of "power", all that was different from being a normal user was some extra buttons, and modmail.
Often we'd be called out for banning people, or deleting things. This was almost always the admins, because I assume people had broken rules that had incurred their wrath, or they had been caught with duplicate/spam profiles to get around bans. We got a lot of shit for one ban...which was the kid that got in trouble with the police for stalking a mod at their place of work.
There were about 15 of us, and we were told to basically do as much or as little as possible. All the rules were community driven, so users got a say in what rules to add (don't accept this source, no compilations, no news from years ago to confuse people, etc).
Sadly, with such a popular sub, a post that clearly breaks rules might get 300-500 upvotes before it's removed, and you get the typical "but everyone likes this post, why remove it?!". In my experience, users don't care if it breaks the rules, until they care it breaks the rules. There is no winning when you're a mod.
I did it because I used the sub for a decade, and wanted to give back while.i had been laid-off from work (COVID times). I definitely don't regret it, and if Reddit weren't so shit I'd do it again.
Lemmy ain't any better
Since Lemmy is federated, anyone can start their own instance so it's easy for users to migrate if the admins on one instance decide to start banning everyone they don't like.
Sorry but I'm on the mod's side here. Some content doesn't belong on some communities. Most people upvote from their front page without even checking what community you posted to. If you allow things based on popularity, every community devolves into deep-fried shitposts
These were the complaints I heard about mods before the API debacle. After all the mods quit or got their 3rd party tools nuked, it was all complaints about repost bots not being removed. I've never been a mod, but you couldn't pay me enough to babysit thousands of angry dorks, much less get me to do it for free.
The feeling of power over others is their payment.
Proudly perma-banned from Reddit for taking the piss out of the far right.
Proudly had comments deleted from lemmy.ml for taking the piss out of the far left.
Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
Getting banned from Lemmy.ml is like shooting fish in a barrel though. They're very sensitive.
Hell, they'll even kick you for shit you say OUTSIDE their instances
Ah so it’s not just me then…
They are as easy to trigger as your average Tumblr user.
Completely unrelated, does anyone remember suck.com? A Fish, a Barrel, a Smoking Gun.
Thank gods that doesn't happen here. Right?
Right guys?
Finally, the original! Thank you kind stranger.
Pretty sure you're about to get banned.
The rules end up there because people complain about things and then the mods implement a rule to ban the things people complain about. Sometimes they let the community vote on it. It does end up being the vocal minority who the rules cater to sometimes.
And they have to be more or less vague to give the moderators room to decide if the rule breaker did it by accident or is just an asshole. Trolls will do anything to walk the fine line between not breaking the rules and being as annoying as possible.
I mean…there’s very good reasons to respect the wishes of minority groups sometimes (not always). It’s the reason they wrote the “First they came for the communists” poem.
the admins let people like akwardtheturtle have free rein over
hundredsthousands of subs until they protested the API stuffNah, upvoters are stupid and will often upvote anything with a pretty picture regardless of whether it fits a sub, regardless of whether it's been reposted 50 trillion times, and regardless of whether it's complete bullshit. Mods absolutely should delete a lot of posts even if they're popular.
My number 1 desire for a reddit replacement is some sort of meta restrictions on voting. Ban people from voting for a post if they're not subbed. Ban people who upvote bad content from voting in your sub. The more and more time I spend on reddit and the fediverse, the more I'm convinced that upvotes as implemented are a broken, shitty way to determine what content I see.
Have you even been here 20 seconds? The lack of self awareness is astounding. Wow.
Here after a permanent ban for asking what a post meant. Fuck Reddit.
Welcome to Lemmy Here from a permanent ban last year for .... Fuck I don't even know just pissed off the wrong mod
That's their M.O.
Fuck these mods too.
A few lemmy mods are no better.
Is that so?
Somebody posted a picture of a Harry Potter book burning in what I believe was a bird bath.
I commented that it was ironic that two groups so diametrically opposed as those that don't like shitty TERFs, and crazy Fundamentalists that not only believe magic is real, but also Sinful, would protest the books in that way for such completely different reasons.
The person posting said something about "hurr durr mah both sides," some people corrected them that I wasn't saying they were the same, just that it was bizarre that they agree on something at all, much less that... and then the mod removed my comment (I believe the same that wrote the comment responding to mine).
So... sometimes mods here can show poor reading comprehension and remove things for no reason as well.
I get posts removed now and again. Just arbitrarily. The big subs are not too bad, but smaller ones are often vanity projects.
i remember posting in /r/boneappletea a screenshot where a well known brand made a mistake, they deleted it because it was against a rule saying there should be no identifying informations, like people could raid poor multi million brand or something, also the sub was notorious for posting speech to text errors without batting an eye
on the other hand i've been banned on lemmy twice,
fistfirst time was because my rather sexist comment, but second time was because i said something about Uighurs genocide in China, (guess what instance was that?) also both bans were issued without any warning, completely against their CoCWell, that's not even shocking, honestly, because the mods on reddit are garbage, and they migrated here, still garbage, because spez took their precious tools away, which forced them into actually doing their jobs.
This is already happening here too. Might even get worse in the long run.
Lemmy and kbin slowly but surely become Reddit 2.0
Mods are one thing, but at least Lemmy doesn't insert recommendations in my subscriptions feed.
What’s Lemmy?
This also applies to Tankie instances like .ml. If you're critical of them in entirely different instances. Last straw for me was getting a comment removed for "bigotry" when I responded that I still visit r/rimworld on a thread asking how things are since the reddit migration. Nothing in my post was bigotted in any way, so I assume one of the mods sifted through my comment history and saw I had recently mocked Tankies in a different thread entirely
This is one of the problems with the public mod log that Lemmy has. Transparency is one of the worst things to have when dealing with bad faith actors since it's nothing but a public record of their "accomplishments." It won't stop shitty mods from being shitty.
One of the problems with the public mod log on a federated site is a moderator can just write something egregious for the ban reason and then the user is stuck with that. It propagates across instances too. I have a huge list of banned users who I never actually banned, and I assumed were banned by other instance moderators.
Having a lot of features to try to thwart bad moderation on a federated platform isn't really that important anyway since it's easy for anyone to simply create their own instance and users can migrate there.
I mean, the issue with my comment removal wasnt the transparency, it was that I had a harmless and perfectly contributing comment removed for no reason, the "Transparency" of "Rule 1" didnt apply to my comment in any way, nor was I causing a commotion on the thread.
edit: Lmao ok, the modlog is back to showing what my comment was, apparently I DID call out Tankies, albet passively, in my removed comment. So a bit snowflakey, but NOT as bad as I originally thought. Oh well, any instance that thinks the word Tanky is bigotry isnt really worth my time either
Mods should never use their privileges in discussions where they are involved (obviously they should not be the only mod on a channel either).
I have been on both sides, mod and victim of mod abuse. Mistakes happen. It is a delicate balance on both sides of keeping constructive and not trying to „be right“ by any means.
The most absurd situation is when you have to block a mod because they’re actually the head troll and also an admin of an instance. Its both hilarious and sad.
I think a hardcoded function to file complaints against mods with the other mods and/or the admins and optionally, a way to elect mods and unelect them would be great.
In fact I might try to make it. :)
Erego, fuck the majority of reddit mods. I was a redditor for nearly 12 years, and in that span of time? I met a shockingly few amount of decent mods. "Mistakes happen"? I don't quite think that cuts it. In my experience it was never once a mistake. Off the top of my head: got banned from /r/gamestop for defending children with autism and their parents, /r/justiceserved simply because I had the audacity to comment in /r/JoeRogan when they didn't even know what I said, /r/gamingcirclejerk because I enjoyed my time with hogwarts legacy, /r/Destinythegame because I defended myself from an elitist dogpile because I said I wanted matchmaking, /r/parenting because I gave parenting advice and /r/SteamDeck because I pointed out that the rules said no low effort posts, yet the sub was full of them and upvoted while actual effort posts, like tech support, were downvoted and ignored. Then the mods went a step further, and mass reported me for harassment because I presented mountains of evidence I gathered, showing they don't properly do their jobs, which then got me completely banned from reddit. I've seen significantly more than that. These are just the ones I can easily remember the details of. I find very hard to believe you, a mod, were a victim of mod abuse. Statistically, you could easily be mistaken for another terrible mod. Obviously I don't know much about you, it just seems very unlikely. No offense. Genuinely.
Well. There is a boatload to unpack here but I dont have that much time so let me try to make it brief:
By „Mistakes happen“ I meant that I can see that people can make mistakes, even as mods, but they need to own up to them, which they rarely do.
As a general rule, I believe that you have experienced this and are telling the truth about your experience because that is your reality and in stark opposition to you, I dont accuse others of being not genuine.
What I do see is that you‘re lacking restraint for respectful conversation, which is likely one of the reason people ban you. They might also ne assholes and not listen to reason, and salty, and terminally online.
But the moral of this interaction for you should be to show some restraint and basic respect towards others. That might help you get along in life better.
Feel free to answer any way you like but know that I will block any disrespectful people immediately.
Have a good one.
This happened to me.
On the "Mario Kart Tour" sub, I made a meme during the games "Election" event. I made vague but obvious comparisons to Trump/Mario Vs Biden/Luigi.
Everyone in the comments were having fun, there was no complaining, and the post even reached the homepage.
Then the fucking mods deleted my shit and pissed the community off. I got universal support and the sub was filled with posts requesting the mods to undelete my meme.
In the end, the mods were cunts.
Fucking clowns.
Yeah, I'm seeing a few mods trickle in here who are trying to say otherwise, but reddit mods are 95% shit all around.
Despite the comments here, lemmy is actually better at this because of federation.
If your post gets deleted by some salty mod, you can just hop over to the next instance and post the same thing and everyone on the original instance who has federation on will see it.
Or in the case that there's a mod catfight, then you just have two instances where everyone crossposts anyway.
It happens on Lemmy, as well. I have seen posts removed according to a "rule x", where "rule x" when the post didn't go anywhere near "rule x". I just left the community, even if those posts weren't mine.
When the billionaire sister of Elaine Chao (wife of Moscow Mitch and nepotism hire in the Trump administration) drowned in a Tesla, I got banned for 3 days for "celebrating her death" even though I did no such thing:
The same mod banned 13 other people for the same thing in the same thread, even though only one or two of them had actually broken the rule.
I used to help moderating a sub for a while, terrible hobby, you had this feed that was a constant stream of shit that you had to clean it out, some people of the internet are just disgusting.
Also being in part responsible about what to do with the people having a mental health crisis, it does affect you to an extent.
Wouldn't do it again easily.
And people blame us for everything wrong with the sub too without having no clue about the whys, just to be in on the trend, and also endless fking drama, "why did you delete my hate speech 😭😭😭".
Adult babies.
But yeah, some subs are moderated like shit, a lot of times the only people who remain are people who are in for the resemblance of power and don't mind/like that kind of treatment, IE they're as shit as what they're moderating, rchile wasn't really that way and that's why it has been chronically undermodded and basically bleeds mods.
I was downvoted to hell in a gaming sub, I made a reply to my comment and provided examples and got upvoted for that. I got banned by the mod for negativity or something even though my post wasn’t directed at anyone, it was just downvoted because I said something without proof initially.
Same on basically any community here with mods/admins with an agenda. I've had comments removed from multiple communities that don't break any written rules.
If somebody ever makes a wojack for me, I will know I have completely failed as an individual and as an icon for whatever I'm doing
Mod on lemmy, mod on reddit...
Lol it's going to be way worse here
It already is
The Nazis always chose the biggest losers of a neighbourhood to act as „block wardens“, I.e. snitches who’d report to them what the neighbours were talking about…
We are not immune or even shy with this problem.
I remember my post in ITAP being removed because it had the word moody in the title
What does ITAP stand for?
Is This A Penis?
Interesting Trowels And Plows?
Irresponsible Tech And Puppies?
Much more boring I'm afraid, I took a picture
this guy looks surprisingly like alex jones
