To be clear, not talking about this community, obviously 😛.
What’s the point of writing down rules, if mods just do what they want? But I suppose that’s the risk you take when you call someone a liar in a small community; they might be a mod.
Edit: I’m not trying to say that mods suck, they perform a useful and often thankless job. Just that it can be difficult for small communities to get a healthy number of good mods, which can become a problem.
Public warnings are bullshit, anyway. They post a reply, warning you for saying something you didn’t say, often /u/ mentioning you, then delete the original comment to cover their tracks.
I’ve been shadow-banned from a few subreddits when I was still on the site.
Not. One. Warning.
on r/images or r/gifs or something, I 'and my ax’ed on some random thread. Banned. Thread context? All deleted. No warning, no explanation, and when I asked for feedback I got something like “the ban holds” or something.
Honestly, I’m a dick a lot of the time, but I simply can’t reconcile a ban for “and my ax”. Ban me for the actual stuff I do, sure. A warning would be excellent. But that one bugs me the most as I can’t learn from it.
The worst thing you can do is burn bridges with people you disagree with.
The best way to make a bigot not be a bigot anymore is for the people they hate to be friendly to them.
There’s this one black musician that has gotten quite a few grand wizards of the KKK to leave the clan, just by having friendly conversations with them.
Doing that makes them realize that they’re going through the same shit as the people they hate, which then makes them realize that the people they really should be directing their hate toward are billionaires.
Because we’re all getting a lower wage that we should be, we’re all paying a higher interest on debt than we should be, we’re all paying higher rent than we should be. We’re all paying more for our necessities than we should be. And the billionaires’ unbridled narcissistic avarice is why we’re all suffering.
That’s why every media outlet always twists narratives to make people hate each other. If we’re fighting each other, we won’t focus on the real evil that’s looming over all of us.
while I absolutely agree with you in a private setting, in a public setting I believe it does more harm than good to provide a platform for people to preach hate.
Saying certain things are hate crimes, and shouldn’t be allowed. Like burning crosses, etc.
If you’re burning a cross in someone else’s property, that’s a crime vandalism, trespassing harassment.
Saying naughty words and only saying naughty words doesn’t actually hurt anything besides people’s feelings
Do you really want to live in a place where you can be arrested for saying something that offends people?
If that’s the standard for what kind of speech we outlaw, then it’s only a matter of time before religious lunatics start throwing people in the gulag for saying “god damnit”. or “Jesus” as a stand-in for some kind of curse word.
If we lose free speech, you may agree with the one that’s allowed to censor things, but what happens when free speech is gone and someone new, who you strongly disagree with is now allowed to censor things?
I’ll say again. The same laws that allow bigots to say what they say are the same laws that allow us to make fun of them.
Free speech already isn’t absolute. Free speech isn’t about words, it’s about expression of opinions. And it’s illegal to express some opinions in some ways. For example you can’t discriminate based on race when you hire employees.
We’re already willing to draw a line, and the world hasn’t gone to hell.
I actually live in Canada, where we have Hate Speech laws (like exist in many countries), where speech that is significantly harmful to marginalized communities is considered illegal. Despite what the Flu Trucks Clan ironically claim, they’re not being censored.
The line isn’t gonna slide one way out of control and nobody can stop it, the line is drawn where the people of the country largely think it should be. In some non-secular countries, the line is drawn very far and I think it’s gross. In other countries like the USA I think the line hasn’t been drawn far enough and people are put in needless harm.
Besides, were talking about Lemmy here, not laws for which you can be thrown in jail.
Free speech already isn’t absolute. Free speech isn’t about words, it’s about expression of opinions. And it’s illegal to express some opinions in some ways. For example you can’t discriminate based on race when you hire employees.
You’re confusing words with other things that have nothing to do with words.
I actually live in Canada, where we have Hate Speech laws (like exist in many countries), where speech that is significantly harmful to marginalized communities is considered illegal. Despite what the Flu Trucks Clan ironically claim, they’re not being censored.
Words are words, violence is violence.
And I saw the videos that were taken from inside of the trucker’s protest, they were completely peaceful. The truckers were protesting the dystopian surveillance that came along with those QR code apps. Did you know that those apps communicate your personal details wirelessly? Completely without your consent?
The sheer volume of databreaches that big-tech-owned services go through all the time and you feel comfortable letting those idiots handle all your identity information and to let them send it to anyone who’s able to spoof the signal to download it?
You’re probably thinking about the nazi flags that were seen at the trucker protests. And those people holding those flags were definitely NOT feds helping to peddle a narrative…right? It’s not like the media would lie to get us to hate our neighbors without listening to what they have to say or anything.
You’re confusing words with other things that have nothing to do with words.
Free speech is freedom of expression. Expression extends beyond words. If all you protect is words, then you’re not protecting much. But if you allow any expression, then bad things happen.
Wow, you put a lot of words in my mouth, ostensibly to give yourself something to fight me about. It’s too bad I never said any of that stuff, and super suspicious that you completely ignored what I did say about the flu trucks Clan. Almost like you’re trying to peddle a narrative 🤔
It happens on Lemmy all the time. I’ve been shadowbanned at least three times, all on the bigger instances.
I really, really suspect that the big Lemmy instances are being run by Reddit admins or spooks or some-such. They’re moderating their instances in the exact same way Reddit did minus the profiteering. The censorship is the exact same.
Also, the fact that it’s possible to shadowban people and the software itself doesn’t circumvent that by auto-messaging you or putting a banner on the top of your screen when you are banned from an instance or community is reason #589238923 why Lemmy fucking sucks ass.
I really, really suspect that the big Lemmy instances are being run by Reddit admins or spooks or some-such. They’re moderating their instances in the exact same way Reddit did minus the profiteering. The censorship is the exact same.
It’s just the reality of online content moderation. The good mods/admins are people who are passionate about a topic and want to provide a space for discussion and community building. When it comes to the “power mods” or whatever, like those we saw on reddit who moderated 100+ subs, they’re just in it to stroke their own egos.
Lol it literally just happened again now to another account. Site ban with no explanation. Clearly the way link aggregator sites are structured is just authoritarian and we need to create democratic social media.
A ttrpg called .dungeon got a remaster recently and I keep coming back to one of the screenshots on the store page, because I’m such a big fan of the rules for community moderation it enumerated:
I like that! For more minor infractions that aren’t a perma-ban, I hope that they explain to the person THAT they got banned, and WHY.
It also helps that they said upfront that they’re liberal with bans, rather than saying that all bans are forewarned and then simply not giving the warning.
#5 is the worst rule there. I’ve been called that for the most milquetoast of statements. You really have to be more specific. This community sounds like an annoying pain to be a part of tbh, I don’t have time to feel like I’m stepping on glass every day
Nothing says bootlicking by applying the same bad-faith thinking you accuse others of having without caring about the fact that humanity has had to operate on good faith the entire time it’s existed.
That should be in the rules instead of "bootlicking," then. Well-defined rules make it harder to enforce them unfairly. The fewer questions the community has to ask about guidelines, the easier it is to follow them.
Thank you for answering in good faith, by the way.
Bootlicking’s easier for people to type and say, and most people do have an understanding of what it means. It’s just not really officially codified yet.
And it’s all good. There is far too much bad faith bullshit going on on this platform that goes unabated for me to not at least try to speak in good faith. I wish the others would learn to do the same. 🤦
It may be easier to type and say (as are most words in comparison), but "antidisestablishmentarianism" has a well-defined meaning that would make for a less-vague rule. "Bootlicking" means a lot of different things to a lot of people, and not all of those people have common sense, to put it nicely. I've been called a bootlicker for saying I don't want to tear down the entirety of every government everywhere, ever, for instance, which I imagine isn't what that rule is trying to convey.
There's a reason "legalese" is the language laws are written in. It's very specific, with any potentially ambiguous words given clear definitions before any of the rest of the law is presented (at least that's the intent in the US, anyway). If you were to, say, define "bootlicker" in the beginning of the rules to mean "excessive praise for police violence," then I'd say it's quite safe to use elsewhere in said document. Leaving such a vague word undefined in what amounts to a paralegal document opens up avenues for abusive interpretation, both from moderators and community members.
TL;DR: Clear definitions of what your rules mean leads to a healthier, easier to moderate community overall.
Or just accept that bootlicking is synonymous and stop quibbling over semantics.
There is no definition that will be clear enough for bad faith actors and pressing the issue just makes you look sus. Using language requires some effort on your part. It is impossible to just be on us.
I probably should’ve clarified its the last few that I felt were relevant to this post. I understand it sucks when you feel like anything you say may get you banned due to someone else’s interpretations, but in practice I don’t think it really becomes an issue.
Perhaps be a bit more careful when first joining a community as you learn how the community tends to act and behave, and where the lines tend to be drawn, but then after that you should have a general sense of what’s allowed, and if you do go over the line the mods are much more likely to just give a warning instead of a ban if you’re a regular.
I mean hey, by all means if you think a community is too hive mind-y or echo chamber-y then by all means don’t join. That’s the beauty of small highly customized communities - it can be moderated in a way all the members agree with, and anyone who doesn’t like it can find or found a different one.
I don’t know what exactly you’re imagining such a community would disallow, but I feel like whatever it is, I’d agree with it being disallowed. Disagreeing with someone is typically fine in most communities I’ve seen, it’s just hate speech or any -ism or -phobes that aren’t. And that’s fine.
A lot of moderated instances with vague rules like that have quite a bit of nuance. The mods usually arent jerks looking to ban everyone who doesnt agree with them, and if they are then they did you a favor good riddance. One of the issues with the classic “but mah free speech” sea lioning that occurs on reddit is it makes it hard to actually keep things moderated and civil. People get outraged and start going “the rule says that Im not allowed to be an asshole, but I was specifically being a asshat and I think if you really wanted no asshats you should make a rule about it”
Which does lead to granular rules that actually do remove nuance and discretion from enforcement.
Clearly you have no sense for nuance. Not everything anyone disagrees with is siding with genocide and oppression just because they disagree. It’s concerning that that’s immediately what you assumed.
There are potentially 3 different groups of people that may ban you for a comment. If you break a community rule, a moderator may ban you as you would expect from reddit. However, since reports also notify the admins of the community instance and the admins of the instance of the reporter, you may end up banned by an admin if they believe you are breaking an instance rule.
The modlog is great for transparency, but lemmy should also make it clear what group has banned you and why. I haven’t been banned before so I’m not sure what that process looks like currently though.
This is my first time. I’m not even sure where to find the modlog in jebora.
And yeah, notifying me that an action has been taken against me and the reason for that action would help me understand that I’ve done something wrong, what it was, and how to modify my behavior.
I didn’t get a ban, but definitely had a post “disappeared” with no explanation because I had the audacity to mention the extreme anti-Israel bias around here.
It is morally right to be against a racist ethnostate genocidal Zionist regime and anyone even a little standing up for them is going straight to hell. Yes, this includes statements like “it’s complicated” no it fucking isn’t. The entire state was created to do ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
EDIT: of COURSE it’s a lemmy world user. Fucking nazi bar instance.
That’s one of the real problems I see so often, moderators feel strongly their side is right therefore anyone on the other side MUST be a bad actor and therefore it’s good to get rid of them using any means necessary - I’ve seen the same happen with people arguing against just stop oil and various other similar things - in the mods minds they’re just getting rid of bad faith posters and evil agents but in reality they’re silencing anyone who disagrees.
They in this case being the fucking nazis, who first came for the trans people, and then the communists, the socialists, the trade unionists, Jewish people, etc
Do you think you were the good guy in that thread? You came off incredibly hostile. I would not have banned you for just that, but still I can see why.
The hell I did. One’s an explanation, one is literally “thanks,” one is the only sentence and pointing to the initial not-remotely-hidden explanation, and one is that explanation made even more explicit.
What the fuck else was I supposed to say? Do I have resting bitch font - are people just automatically reading things in the shittiest possible tone of voice? Read it conversationally and there’s none of that alleged tone.
This and so many other conversations go ‘Why are you mad?!’ ‘I’m not and I don’t know how to convince you of that.’ ‘Ah-HA!’ There’s no winning. Once someone’s assumed you’re fucking with them, somehow, the words don’t matter.
Yeah I don’t think that’s the issue, when the person who showed up to tell me and play along took the first one completely literally and the second one as sneering sarcasm. Where the goddamn mod chimes in is after a bone-dry run-down of how both were misunderstandings. Their scolding simultaneously blames me for expecting people to be psychic and also for talking down to them. How the fuck is anyone supposed to deal with that self-contradictory blend of bad-faith readings?
Literally none of this was there. I’m annoyed at all of you - but not the guy I was talking to, in the first place. You are inferring something that was not there.
From a bare explanation of agreement.
Being concise didn’t help. Being verbose didn’t help. Being conversational didn’t help. Being literal didn’t help. I tried everything and all of it is still being misinterpreted as the polar fucking opposite of what I actually fucking wrote.
Being concise didn’t help. Being verbose didn’t help. Being conversational didn’t help. Being literal didn’t help. I tried everything and all of it is still being misinterpreted as the polar fucking opposite of what I actually fucking wrote.
Same here, so I'll try it your way:
You're acting like a hyperaggressive, condescending dickhead in every single one of those comments, and though I personally agree with you, I still want to slap your teeth straight because you're being an utter prick about it.
Just because you agree with someone doesn't mean you're not doing so in a hugely offputting manner.
Same where? You had one comment and it’s just the same tutting. That’s not comparable to the variety of ways I tried de-escalating with the initial guy.
Now you want to claim you agree with me - about the widespread misreading of anything I write in the worst possible way - and you’re threatening violence over that same misreading. What the fuck is this conversation?
‘You were very rude disagreeing with that guy.’ I said I agree with them and thanked them.
‘Well you were aggressive toward people critiquing your rude disagreement.’ I told them there was no such thing, because I said I agree with them and thanked them.
‘It’s plainly these specific turns of phrase.’ I have invited half a dozen people to suggest what I was supposed to do besides agree and thank them.
‘Hey buddy, I agree with you, but I wanna kick your head in for explaining how you’re unhappy with all this condemnation.’ This topic has been the most compelling argument I’ve ever experienced, against trying to be nice to people online.
The way you write heavily implies that you're only out to prove you're better than anyone else without even the faintest chance of you actually being better than anyone at anything. You sound smug, arrogant, ignorant, and generally offputting. If you can't understand that people don't like that, then I suggest you learn to enjoy being alone for the rest of your life.
Also, where did I say shit about you condemning the other person? Putting words in people's mouths is a great way to piss them off even more than you do just by opening your mouth in the first place.
My favorite part of this haranguing is how y’all don’t hesitate to declare I’m subhuman and due for getting bones broken, but I’m the rude and hostile one for saying please and thanks.
This is the rudest thing you could think to say to someone, and it’s over nothing.
I can’t demean your character worse than you’ve just done, yourself.
I'll take the hit just to watch you roll around in your own verbal diarrhea
My favorite part of this haranguing is how y’all don’t hesitate to declare I’m subhuman
Please point out the exact sentence, or set of sentences, where I said that.
This is the rudest thing you could think to say to someone, and it’s over nothing.
Good, perhaps you might start to understand now that you've been on the receiving end of your own behavior.
You've also not addressed anyone who's mentioned your incredibly condescending, snide tone. Literally nobody. Not even to be dismissive about it. You can ignore your problem all you want, but the fact is that the way you talk means you could be reading me a document saying that I've just been given $10 billion and I'd still fucking hate you. You asked why you were treated poorly, people answered unanimously, and you don't even have the wherewithal to consider the point that everyone is trying to pound through your brow ridge.
You're the problem. Your behavior is the problem. The way you talk is, you fuckin guessed it, absolutely the problem.
You got your answer. Accept it or don't, just do it somewhere else because nobody fucking likes you.
How could I be any more direct and polite with someone that confused about what I said? I’m not sneering at their idiocy and making remarks about their parentage. I walk them through a rhetorical device they demonstrably did not understand, and apparently that was the wrong thing.
What the fuck was the right thing?
What sequence of words do you want, instead? At this point I’m not convinced there is a right answer.
Someone else already mentioned your “go on, tell me” and “thanks for playing along.” Both of those offer nothing to the conversation and only exist to be condescending.
Over and over and over. None of you are listening.
And it’s NOT condescension, it’s building a fucking comparison! It’s a sixth-grade-reading-comprehension rhetorical device. It’s getting ahead of an obvious yeah-but someone might make… and then someone made that yeah-but anyway. And then got mad that I told them: I agree, thank you.
The fuck was I supposed to tell them? If there was no right answer - none of this criticism means anything.
‘How am I suppose to make this comparison without an invitation being labeled as hostile?’
‘Don’t.’
Less helpful than you might think.
People: the comparison is the point of the comment. And even if that was somehow the worst possible way to make it, I’m still left wondering how the fuck to de-escalate confusion, if direct agreement is enough to launch monocles from faces. If “thanks” is hostile, what the hell are we doing.
You didn't ask that question. I answered the one you did. Congrats on the novel combination of moving the goalposts and putting words in people's mouths, I guess? Seriously, do you not read your own words?
People keep telling you which parts of that conversation would have been better left out if you wanted to sound sincere, but all you do is further attempt to weaponize your feigned ignorance.
You know damn well that you're acting like a condescending prick. Enough people have pointed out the things you could have changed in that exchange so that you didn't sound like a condescending prick. And now, here you are, acting like a condescending prick to anyone who dares to answer the question you asked on a public forum.
Literally nobody has suggested any better way to say anything, despite direct questions throughout, asking exactly that.
The entire problem in the root thread was someone going ‘what did you want?!’ when I said: yes, thanks. And everyone saying that was terribly rude also thinks it was disagreement. So the question of ‘what else was I supposed to do’ goes unanswered, and everybody piling on to say ‘well not that’ is making the same error that is highlighted and corrects in the root thead.
And you in particular have nothing to add but increasingly shallow name-calling and ‘well, don’t.’ Don’t fucking talk down to me about reading my own words when you just got done declaring me unworthy of human interaction, after being shocked, shocked!, that someone would remain confused by a dozen people repeating the same mistake.
I am genuinely disappointed in this community’s moderators for not already showing you the door over the worst of your hypocritical abuse. Did you have anything more you wanted to spit before going on my blocklist and out of my sight?
When someone tells you "this thing you said was unnecessary and you would have avoided the conflict if you'd left it out" a dozen times and you continue to demand answers like nobody's even responded, it becomes difficult not to treat you the way you treat others. In every one of those interactions in the thread you linked, you added something to your otherwise inocuous post that was entirely unnecessary and extremely inflammatory. These things have been pointed out to you repeatedly. Had you not said them, you would have had no problems. Why the fuck is this so hard to understand?
Also, I'm not saying you're not worthy of human interaction, I'm just saying that nobody's going to tolerate your bullshit and you'll end up pushing all your friends and family away one by one if any of them have even the faintest semblance of a spine.
In a normal conversation you’d absolutely come across as a massive dick. You don’t have “resting bitch font” you just sound absolutely insufferable. You can make your point while not being a dick about it, you just need to choose your words better and not go for the “uh huh, definitely, here’s why you’re wrong and why I’m right, now piss off”
I am abundantly agreeing with that confused dingus. They’re making the comparison I was making, in the first place. They just keep going ‘then what did you mean?!’ as I repeatedly clarify what was never a mystery.
This is a trolling tactic. I don’t think they did it on purpose, but the effect is the same. It creates no-win situations, where all responses can be twisted in bad faith and cast as vicious mockery. Even when it’s ‘I am not yelling at you… you are yelling at me.’
Do y’all think rhetorical questions are automatically hostile? If someone answers one, and I tell them it was rhetorical, and they still demand to know why I asked - what the fuck am I supposed to say? What sequence of words is not going to be labeled condescending, sarcastic, or backhanded?
Once everything gets read as insincere, the words don’t matter. Nothing I write will be taken seriously. A dry and complete accounting, just trying to smooth things over, is labeled “semi-friendly shit” and publicly shamed. No roads lead out of that trap.
Would any apology have worked? Or would it be read as more of the same sneering tone that is 100% inferred and 0% implied?
Your mistake was interacting with internet hatethiests. The only interaction you should ever have with them is reminding everyone in the room that they were a big part of the rise of the alt right and that the movement never underwent even a little bit of denazification.
From where I sit, you replied to a comment about Judaism with a comment assuming the person you were replying to thought the same thing about Islam, and wondered why he got mad.
Some improvements I’d like to see, but maybe I’m missing something and could be a bad idea
The submitter gets notified if an action is taken on content they’ve submitted or on their account.
Define rules with a tally of how many times a user breaks each of them, with well-defined consequences that can be programmed.
The addition of polls
Restrict polls to users already subscribed to the community at the time of the poll creation, or with a minimum of xx days subscribed and/or xx amount of submissions, upvotes, etc
Have the rules voted by the community, and moderators elected/impeached by its community.
I implement the first two and the last rules in all the communities I moderate. Everyone gets either a message or a comment if they break the rules/I remove their comment/I give them a warning. I also reply to the vast majority of mod reports made, explaining what action I’ve taken and why. All my communities have a one-warning-then-you’re-banned rule, but bans are rarely permanent.
I repeatedly state that I’m looking for moderators, that I welcome all constructive feedback and suggestions regarding the way the community is run and what the rules are. I make it clear I want the communities to be a community effort. I’ve never ever vetoed a suggestion someone’s made - I always offer to let the community decide. What happens? People complaining/criticising but never taking me up on the offer to hold a vote on whatever it is they don’t like. It’s like shouting in the wind and it’s exhausting.
Have the rules voted by the community, and moderators elected/impeached by its community.
lol so you want to increase the amount of work mods do and then vote them out when they do shit you don’t like.
here’s an idea: become a mod yourself. do the unpaid work of cleaning up the trash so other people can whine in entitled posts like this about how all the mods are trash. jfc
Add comment