New mod, new rules
New mod, new rules
Hey. I noticed that the only moderator for this community was banned a year ago, so I requested to take over.
I'm still working on the rules, the banner, and stuff, but one thing - going forward - I know will be a rule:
- No drama you are a part of. If you're in the thread, don't post it here.
Also, as with all moderators, I'm always looking for people to help out. If you're interested, let me know!
Lemmy.World/Worldnews is ran by Zionist mods who make up lies to ban users critical of israel.
Lemmy.World/Worldnews is ran by Zionist mods who make up lies to ban users critical of israel.
FlyingSquid is a Zionist who actively censors content critical of israel. In the past this was using false claims of anti-semitism but after acquiring mod powers he has started banning anti-israel posters.
After acuiquiring mod powers on /WorldNews FlyingSquid bans me by making up lies about defending the usage of child soldiers which never happened:
Recently he tried to defend himself by lying about it
After being called out for lying FlyingSquid pretends to act in good faith for a little as if he was just confused that day. Let's see what happens when we play along:
When pointed out the he was lying the crybully instantly paints himself as the victim who is "about to be insulted". FlyingSquid is clearly trying to bait an insult to use as an excuse for a reban:
Despite not being insulted, the crybully still claims he was. The Zionist victim complex is a sight to behold. He now demands to be acknowledged for his abuse of mod powers likely hoping to bait an insult:
After failing to ragebait insults the Zionist crybully "changes is his mind" and starts tacking on random extra conditions as an excuse to reban me. He now starts demanding acknowledgement for how amazing he is for falsely banning people.
At this point it is very obvious FlyingSquid has no intentions to unban me from WorldNews and is just trolling:
Subsequently he lies one more time in his ban description.
Edit: JordanLund has joined in and claimed that if you support any action of a group or individual, you fully support every action that group or invidividual has ever committed. Meaning that anyone who supports Joe Biden forgiving Student Loans actually supports the Genocide in Gaza and is a Zionist.
Edit2;
OoooooOOOOooo... My Very First Removed Lemmy Comment Ever!
OoooooOOOOooo... My Very First Removed Lemmy Comment Ever!
▄▀█ █▀▀ █░█ █ █▀▀ █░█ █▀▀ █▀▄▀█ █▀▀ █▄░█ ▀█▀ █░█ █▄░█ █░░ █▀█ █▀▀ █▄▀ █▀▀ █▀▄ █ █ █
█▀█ █▄▄ █▀█ █ ██▄ ▀▄▀ ██▄ █░▀░█ ██▄ █░▀█ ░█░ █▄█ █░▀█ █▄▄ █▄█ █▄▄ █░█ ██▄ █▄▀ ▄ ▄ ▄
I'm going to 3D print a badge and pin it to my wall, or something. Right after I finish rolling on the floor and laughing. Just give me a few minutes.
- Context: This guy creates an "angry" sub to bitch about things. Cool, cool.
- Same guy posts a couple of troll-level ranty screeds filled with nonsense and bad faith "arguments," such as they can even be considered arguments at all. W/e, that's his prerogative. However...
- Doing this in public means that this makes it to the .world front page as these things do, which invites people to comment on this silliness. Myself included.
- Jabroni gets butthurt about his opinions actually having to withstand scrutiny and then, of course, hilarity ensues.
- ...But bro is also under the impression you can't say "fuck" on the internet for some reason?
But that's not the actual headline, here. What's bats is, he actually went through and deleted pretty much every comment in that thread. Here it is.
He's, uh, really racking up the popularity.
TL;DR: User openly calls out a specific demographic (one that is prevalent on this instance, no less), is shocked when said demographic shows up, responds by throwing a tantrum and bans everyone from his playpen. Comedy gold!
Bad opinion is expressed in a bad-opinion safe space, and the comments are mostly highly-upvoted responses that just say "*removed by mod*"
Bad opinion is expressed in a bad-opinion safe space, and the comments are mostly highly-upvoted responses that just say "*removed by mod*"
Open link in next tab
How much is too much? - Blåhaj Lemmy
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/11075279
EDIT: READ THE SIDEBAR BEFORE COMMENTING HERE There’s now going to be a war against Iran, and the US media is portraying Iran as the aggressor, even though Israel blew up Iran’s embassy. THAT should have been a call to end support for the genocidal ethnostate of Israel and call for a ceasefire, but instead we’re doubling down on support. Also, friendly reminder that Israel would not be able to do this without US support. Biden could have ended this, but chose not to. What is your defense now? How can you still justify supporting this genocidal maniac? How low is too low for you? How much suffering is too much? How many lives have to be ended or destroyed because of Biden? How much is enough that you are willing to protest, speak out against it, or at the very least not defend it in some deranged manner with “aT lEaSt He’S nOt TrUmP.” People are dying. Imagine being the caliber of person who can excuse this and say this, or even approve of him and say he’s doing well. Literally the only way to look the other way is by convincing yourself that Iranians and Palestinians aren’t really human. “Scratch a liberal, and a fascist bleeds” – maaaannnn I used to think this was a bit overstated, but it’s really no exaggeration at all, is it? Edit: Lol at the right-wing neolibs who can’t help but parrot their genocide-defending bullshit in spaces where they’re not welcome. Thanks for providing examples of exactly what this post is about. Imagine thinking the person who is literally making a genocide possible is also the person who is “best for Palestinians.”
Kagi search engine, mod censorship, fun stuff
Kagi search engine, mod censorship, fun stuff
Open link in next tab
The whole internet loves Kagi, a lovely paid search engine that can find things! *5 seconds later* We regret to inform you the CEO is an unhinged narcissist who will harangue you in email - awful.systems
https://awful.systems/post/1347665
Why I left Startrek.website, created TenForward, and the admin abuse I've suffered from ST.W since then
Why I left Startrek.website, created TenForward, and the admin abuse I've suffered from ST.W since then
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/11959024
tl;dr The admins of Startrek.website are censoring users, have been harassing me across multiple websites, and have tried to convince the admins of other instances to ban me because I didn't remove comments that were critical of them on TenForward which I only made in turn because the mod of Risa was doing whatever he wanted despite it saying "No rules".
Hey. So when creating TenForward, this information was being kept out of the loop for a very good reason. We didn't want the community to be based off of drama or bad vibes or bad feelings in any way. When we made the post saying that we had created it for the explicit reason of wanting to have a place with more robust mods and with more rules, that was 100% true. However the reason as to why I came to this conclusion?
I started posting on Startrek.website back in August. Within a week or two I had gone to their Patreon and immediately subscribed, even sending a message of support and saying that if I was causing any issues to please let me know immediately. Over time I started posting more and more across different communities and instances, mostly taking inspiration from the one and only Picard Maneuver. Anyone who gives me praise should really just be giving it all to him.
Things kept going perfectly fine until a couple of months ago when I noticed some weird things in the modlog of /c/Risa. A friend of mine had made a post and it got removed within an hour. It was the same type of post that I would have made but got taken down and with no reason given. Looking at the modlog of the community, I noticed that a lot of posts were being removed for strange reasons. Either the explanation was simply "Does not inspire Jamaharon" or something super dismissive. This really left a bad taste in my mouth considering Risa's sidebar explicitly stated at the time (and does today) "there are no real rules". I contacted the admins (on my startrek.website account) and asked what the deal with the moderation and questioned the behavior of one moderator in particular as being extremely aggressive. They said that they didn't really get involved in moderation of Risa unless it was against the instance rules entirely, they just let the mods do their thing.
At this point there were two mods on the log. USS Burrito Truck and Carrot. GuyFleegman had previously left and I'd never seen Carrot active. USS BT on the other hand was the only one who was actively posting content and comments. I had a couple of run ins with BT. First was when I was making the Car Talk with Martok posts. I accidentally double posted and deleted one of them. The one left up was removed. When I asked if they could be reinstated, BT said that the double posting was suspicious. That's why for the longest time there were two posts saying "Image Only" and not linking to the full posts. BTs behavior as well was just questionable. All of his comments with people are incredibly aggressive, needlessly so, and abrasive in an unwarranted way.
The last time I encountered him was on one of my posts on Risa. I genuinely don't remember what the post was or what the situation was but a user was being quite aggressive and troll-y. Stuff like "This is why all left wing people" or something along those lines. Just silly shit. But they also said something that I personally found transphobic. I genuinely don't remember what it was and due to my deleting my Startrek.website account (I'll get to that), I can't check the post themselves.
I said that it was disgustingly transphobic and it had no place belonging in the Star Trek community as a whole, nevermind the community or instance. I then reported it. Sometime later, BT came in and said that it wasn't my place to say what did and didn't belong. Fair enough. That is totally true. But then he left the comment up and banned the person for 2 weeks for saying "This is my biggest problem with the left." Sidenote here but this user in question? They're a self admitted alt account of someone who was banned from lemmy.world, startrek.website, lemmy.ml and even hexbear for transphobic and bigoted behavior.
So I messaged the admins of StarTrek.website, SysAdmin and ValueSubtracted, again about the situation and asked what they thought. SysAdmin reiterated that they didn't want to get involved with community moderation and only stay at an admin level (slightly hypocritical as they're both moderators of /c/StarTrek, /c/Quarks and /c/StarTrekOnline, the biggest communities outside of /c/Risa). I thanked them for their time then and said I was leaving and heading over to lemmy.world. I was also going to set up my own community that was not meant to compete with but meant to be an alternate to. SysAdmin wished me luck (I'm not sure Value Subtracted ever messaged me again, although he could have) and I left. I created /c/StarTrekMemes on lemmy.world.
Some stuff personally happened and I got fairly depressed and took a break from lemmy entirely. StarTrekMemes had died on arrival due to me not bothering to put any effort in or really try, just leaving out of frustration. After about a month or so I go back to look at /c/Risa and see what the deal is and if things have gotten better. First place I check is BTs profile to see if he's cooled off at all. No. He's in the comments of someones post being very heavy handed and with a really harsh tone. So I check the post itself. It was one by NegativeNull that was openly questioning the removal of a Star Trek Shitpost and saying that it didn't compute. Various people were in the comments questioning it. Out of frustration I made a few comments elaborating that this was precisely the reason that I left Risa and set up /c/StarTrekMemes. I also elaborated on the transphobic comment thing and that I wasn't comfortable with it. I deleted it not long later because I didn't want to cause headaches for the admins of StarTrek.website. Oh did I get over that frame of mind very quickly.
Upon realizing that more and more people were growing frustrated with this, I reached out to a few people to see if they would be interested in making a new community together, ignoring the extremely bland/uninspired name of StarTrekMemes and building something fresh. We explicitly decided to not call out Risa by name or USS Burrito Truck. We wanted to build the community off of what it is and not base it off of a public disagreement. TenForward is now pretty heavily established which is why I have no issue making this post at this point. We made our point. We built TenForward for what it is. What it is is just a community with a robust community team and with a pinned and clear rule set so users can know what's going on and what to expect.
We announced the community and how fast we gained subscribers was a shock to us all. There are messages between us mods being genuinely surprised at how quickly people filtered in. On the announcement post we got a comment that surprised the hell out of me. It was from GuyFleegman. You may remember that name from earlier as being a moderator of Risa. What I didn't know was that he was the creator of original Risa on Reddit and the one who came over and created Risa on Startrek.website. He said that TenForward was his original choice of name for Risa which was a really great boost for us but he also said this:
“No real rules” worked just fine for years, in practice I enforced the same self-evident conduct boundaries that you have outlined here. If you have to tell someone to be civil and tolerant then that person was going to ignore the rules even if they had been communicated.
Which honestly makes sense. Totally see where he was coming from. But he also said this...
But since I stopped modding, the mod there seems to have moved beyond these boundaries without committing to any actual rules. This is totally unsurprising given the way that group of mods runs their communities, so I’m glad to see this place pop up.
Group of mods? USS Burrito Truck (mod of Risa), Value Subtracted (mod of /r/StarTrek) and Corgana (creator and mod of /r/StarTrek). Corgana being the public facing account of SysAdmin. ValueSubtracted was a heavily active mod and the top mod outside of Corgana. If you ever wondered why Reddit had so many different Star Trek communities, that was because of Value. If you ever wondered why /r/StarTrek had the reputation of banning anyone who spoke critically of Discovery, that was because of Value. Any criticism was taken as abuse towards the show itself and was immediately acted upon with bans. /r/StarTrekDiscovery was created with the specific intention of distancing themselves from Value and allowing people to discuss the show without fear of mod retribution.
So the announcement post carries on. People who start questioning the Risa stuff we start steering away. All of us were openly saying what I did before because it's the truth. We had a different mod philosophy and wanted to make a different community to reflect that and have more clear rules. When I said that Risa didn't have a blatant rule against Bigotry, Corgana responded saying the entire instance did. GuyFleegman said that he took some slight offense to the way I was wording things and suggesting that he or Risa allowed bigotry, which is not what I meant but my language didn't properly reflect that. I apologized and even said I'd take that more into account with how I was phrasing things. Guy said it wasn't a problem but I even explicitly said that I was not trying to cause problems with anyone.
Some people started going through the modlogs of Risa and through that, the previous post questioning moderation, or my deleted comments were able to piece it together. They started answering people questioning it. One such comment was one saying:
Fun hatin, power trippin mod got butthurt abt sumthin and can’t abide. IDK it’s pretty early.
This comment will be relevant in a moment.
One of the people who answered was Corgana, an admin of Startrek.website. He left a comment, got a response, and then tried to edit it after the fact to make it look like something else. Here is a screenshot of the conversation:
The refresh at the bottom was a comment Corgana made where he said that the mod at Risa was just doing what he thought was best for the community and making sure that it wasn't 'unfun'. It got downvoted into the negative. Someone responded saying "Then make a rule about it and don't just say that there are "no rules"" that was upvoted into the double digits. Corgana deleted his comment. I then sent a private message to Teft specifically saying thank you for laying it out correctly.
Remember that comment I mentioned earlier about a power trippin mod? Well that comment was actually reported. By whom? ValueSubtracted. I can't even tell what the entire report was as he appears to have written a small novel.
In response, I sent a message to Value with the screenshot of that comment. What follows is a series of back and forth messages. Lemmy lists the messages from top to bottom which is why I'm making these individual screenshots but I will leave a section to prove that it does carry on from that point.
At this point I sent a message to Corgana.
He never responded. Value continued to message.
(Unrelated message to another friend about TenForward rules has been blurred)
I was absolutely floored by this. I had talked to Value a bunch across Mastodon and Lemmy about Star Trek, especially Discovery. It's not exactly a secret that I'm a fan of the show so it was nice being able to chat with someone who shared similar perspectives on the show. There was also a user who had joined and was commenting on every single person who responded to my posts on Risa and was calling me a transphobe. Everyone asked for evidence and they couldn't provide any but I messaged Value about it and he stepped in and took care of it. Like I never saw this coming in any way, shape, or form.
So I reached out to people who may have worked with him in the past. This was the response one gave.
So, VT has one of the most insane “fight” instincts I have ever encountered, online or off. Catch him on a good day and he is a perfectly reasonable individual, pleasant to talk to with clever insights about Star Trek. Catch him on a bad day, and oh man you’re fucked. Shields up red alert, you are going to be dismissed at best and belittled and insulted at worst. If you intend to direct any criticism or doubt in his direction, you need to walk on the most delicate of eggshells for the conversation to be even remotely productive. He’s a uniquely bad choice to lead an online community, and /r/StarTrek’s “no criticizing Discovery” reputation is squarely on him: he loves Discovery and interprets all but the most saccharine and qualified criticism of that show to be an uncivil attack.
He’s not actually a bad person, and I can guarantee there was no bigoted intent in whatever dust-up you had with him: you said something that made him mad and then it was over, he decided to not do what you were asking because you were asking. At the end of the day he’s just very sensitive and a bad fit for community moderation because of his paranoid and combative nature. Elevating him to admin has made it that much worse.
I kept this in mind but didn't take things further. I wanted things to just chill out. I only ever started posting memes to post memes and make people laugh. I didn't want to be a moderator or get involved in stuff like this but I just felt enraged by the fact that someone was abusing that position. Power Corrupts, right? I'm always terrified that I'll step over that line and there have been times I've probably come real close. That's another reason why I wanted a team of us at TenForward. We generally run things by one another, when we rarely need to, and come to a consensus. Things run kinda great in that fashion honestly. We don't always agree either which is even better. You never want to have everyone come to the same conclusion immediately. You want people to have different perspectives. You want criticism of your opinions and actions to know how to improve them.
I don't know if it was hours later or the next day but Value made another report that was unfounded and overly dramatic.
I sent another message to Value. While I was sending the message, another message coming through at the same time from a random person on lemmy. They came to me completely unprompted but are directly questioning Values behavior explicitly. They're on bottom.
I responded to that person which is in the next screenshot. I've kept that in to demonstrate that I was going out of my way to not cause drama and not direct harassment towards anyone, even in private.
From here on is just the conversation with Value.
My response is on the next page so there's nothing below to back it up and no real reason to screenshot it. That being said....
Was that petty? Yeah. But I was so frustrated with having to deal with this. I respected this dude a lot and now he was being monumentally petty and abusing the report function?
That was the last report that he made. I thought it was over. Until I got a message from an admin asking what the hell was going on. I asked why. He showed me this
I showed him the above screenshots and he said okay and carried on. When I asked later what happened he said
He basically wanted to avoid inter-instance drama and asked what Lemmy World's stance was on this. I said we are hands-off and inter-instance drama is something I deal with daily. It's part of the gig. And if we try to mute people we get flack for it and they will just create new accounts. I also pointed out that you were supported by the original creator of the subreddit/community. Then I told him I don't have time for this as I'm at work.
I realized how absolutely unhinged with power Value Subtracted was and at that point I deleted my Startrek.website account and cancelled my Patreon subscription. I didn't want him having access to my information in any way shape or form because I just couldn't trust that he wouldn't take it too far.
Flash forward to a couple of days ago.
I noticed that I was subscribed to /c/StarTrek@startrek.website still due to a post saying Congratulations to us! In the comment was Corgana, the alternate account of an admin, saying "Thank you guys for all the work you do." It was at this point I realized he had done this several times in the past. There were other comments where he said people should add stuff to the website, that the admins were doing a great job, or thanking the admins. Honestly this is kinda gross behavior so I openly asked "Why are you using an alternate account to thank yourself?" The comment got downvoted. A day past. Everyone forgot about it. I forgot about it. Then I got a message from the automod.
The comment was removed for 'drama'. By who? Value Subtracted.
So I made the comment again. Removed this time for "being a diva" within less than a minute.
I made a third comment this time. I was fucking annoyed. The comment had been forgotten about by everyone and no one cared but Value couldn't let it go in any way, shape or form. So yeah. This is a bit bitchy and dramatic.
The comment was removed but this time it took much longer. As I found later, it was because Value had messaged an admin trying to get them to take action using multiple different reasonings. They interpreted those comments as harassment and the admin disagreed with the assessment.
In response to this information, I went to my personal Mastodon account where I sent out a toot:
Within an hour and a half, I got an email 'Warning' from Mastodon. The Admin of my Mastodon instance was asking what my relationship with Startrek.website was. I then elaborated on everything that has happened thus far and provided the same screenshots, although not edited/placed nearly as well. In the email I asked the Mastodon Admin about the report. I said I was concerned that it was a particular person. After providing all this information, the Mastodon Admin replied with this:
[..] your post regarding startrek.website was reported to me. I will not disclose who reported it as per our instance policy. I take all reports seriously so I reached out using the "warning" system Mastodon provides (it also sends an email and I wanted to make sure you received my question via email.). I asked for elaboration so I understood the situation regarding you and startrek.website better. After reviewing your response I don't think any further action is needed on my part.
Now I am 100% assuming this but who else is filing reports as a super complaint button and trying to get admins to take action on any criticism I say? Yeah. I am fairly sure it was Value Subtracted. After the reported was dismissed, I carried on until today when someone on Mastodon posted this
The ban is timed to be around the same time as my toot recommending people look into a different instance.
Value Subtracted has harassed multiple admins across multiple different federation instances trying to get them to take action on my posts or my account simply because I do not agree with him. He is petty and vindictive and is taking things to an extreme that I find beyond abhorrent. If he just wanted to get angry and whine to admins, fine. There is a reason I did nothing in response to any of his reports or when the admins reported back saying what he had done. Personally I thought they were the actions of a narcissist who was terrified of criticism and couldn't handle the concept of anyone ever seeing that criticism of him but I kept it to myself. I didn't post anything other than just suggesting people look elsewhere. Not even move. Not saying they had to. SUGGESTING.
Value Subtracted has been harassing me for a month across multiple websites and going through multiple admins. He is banning people he disagrees with personally and abusing the position he has as an admin. He is abusing that privlidge and authority by silencing a slew of people (check the modlog of /c/StarTrek where he's the active mod) and generally acting like such an abrasive person that people openly question his behavior. Whenever anyone pushes against it, the other admin hides behind an alternate account and supports him while pretending to be just a subscriber and a friend.
I have no goals in making this post. I have no goals in airing this. I am just fucking tired of being harassed by this person because any ounce of criticism thrown their way, whether it be to them or a friend, is tantamount to harassment and abuse.
TenForward was created explicitly because the moderator of that community was abusing their position and silencing whoever they wanted. Why in the hell, for even a moment, did I think that the admins would be anything different?
Like I said on Mastodon. I highly encourage and suggest anyone with a Startrek.website (Who won't see this because they've banned me) to leave their instance. Not because they banned me and because I want revenge. But because they've proven that they have wildly inconsistent administration and condone cross website abuse and harassment.
I need a fucking drink. Considering I'm an alcoholic, that's saying probably not that much.
My post got removed from Documentaries@lemmy.world (Confused)
My post got removed from Documentaries@lemmy.world (Confused)
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/22957810
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?
Hexbear brigades a lemmee thread discussing their potential defederation
Hexbear brigades a lemmee thread discussing their potential defederation
Open link in next tab
Hexbear federation megathread - lemm.ee
https://lemm.ee/post/4543536?scrollToComments=true
# Hey folks I have been receiving a lot of messages every single day about federation with hexbear. Some of our users are vehemently against it, others are in full support. The conversation does not seem to be dying down, rather, the volume of messages I receive about it seems to be increasing, so I am opening this public space where we can openly discuss the topic. I am going to write a wall of text about my own thoughts on the situation, I’m sorry, but no tl;dr this time, and I ask anybody participating in this thread to first read through this post before commenting. Before I go any further, I want to be clear that for anybody who participates here, it is required to focus on the quality of your posts. That means: * Be kind to each other, even if you disagree * Use arguments rather than calling people names * Realize that this is a divisive topic, so your comments should be even more thoughtful than usual With that out of the way, there are a few things I want to cover. ### On defederation in general First of all, I am a firm believer that defederation must be reserved only for cases where all other methods have failed. If defederation is used liberally, then a small group of malicious users can effectively completely shut down the federated network, by simply creating the type of drama between instances which would inevitably result in defederation. In my view, federation is the biggest strength of Lemmy compared to any centralized discussion forum, so naturally I think maintaining federation by default is an important goal in general. I am also a believer in the value of deplatforming hateful content, but I think defederation is not the best way to do this. Banning individual users, banning communities and establishing a culture of mutual support between mods and admins of different instances should be the first line of defense against such content. There are some further steps that can be taken before defederation as well, but these are not really documented anywhere (in order to prevent circumvention). The point is: for myself, defederation is the absolute last resort, only to be used when it is completely clear that other methods are ineffective. Finally, I am wary of creating a false expectation among lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee] users that lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee] admins endorse all users and communities and content on instances we are federated with. Here at lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee], we use a blocklist for federation, which means our default apporach is to federate with all new instances. We do not have the resources (manpower, skills and knowledge) necessary to pass judgement on all instances which exist out there, as a result, users on lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee] are expected to curate their own content to quite a high degree. In addition to downvoting and/or reporting as necessary, individual lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee] users are also able to block specific users and communities, and the ability to block entire instances is coming very soon as well. Having said all that, in a situation where all other methods do indeed fail, defederation is not out of the question. Making such a call is up to the discretion of lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee] admins, and doing it as a last resort is completely in line with our federation policy. ### Regarding hexbear Hexbear is an established Lemmy instance, focused on many flavors of leftism. They have quite a large userbase who are very active on Lemmy (often so active that they leave the impression brigading all popular Lemmy posts). One important thing to note is that while some forms of bigotry seem to be quite accepted by many hexbear users (but seemingly not by mods - more on that below), they at least are very protective of LGBT rights (and yes, I am quite certain that they are not just pretending to do this, as many users seem to believe). Additionally, while I have noticed quite high quality posts from hexbear users, there are also several users there who seem to really enjoy trolling and baiting (very reminiscent of 4chan-type “for the lulz” posting), and it’s important to note that this kind of posting is in general allowed on hexbear itself. The reason this whole topic is important to so many people right now (despite hexbear being a relatively old instance), is that hexbear only recently enabled federation. A combination of their volume of posts, their strong convictions, the excitement about federation, and the aforementioned trolling has made them very visible to almost all Lemmy users, and this has sparked discussions about the value of federation with hexbear on a lot of Lemmy instances. #### My own experience with hexbear I want to write down my own experience with interacting with hexbear users, mods, and admins over the past few days. I believe this experience will highlight why I am hesitant to advocate for immediate full defederation from hexbear at this point in time, and am for now still more in favor of taking action on a more individual user basis. Please read and see how you feel about the situation afterwards. ##### Background My first real contact with hexbear users was in the comments section of a post in this meta community requesting defederation from hexbear [https://lemm.ee/post/4287105] by @glimpythegoblin@lemm.ee. That post is now locked, because several hexbear users very quickly started doing the aforementioned “for the lulz” type spamming of meme images in the comments (these are actually just emojis, but they are rendered as full-size images on all instances other than the source instance, due to a current Lemmy bug). I did not want to take further actions in that thread in general (for archival purposes), but I did take one action, which in retrospect was a mistake: I removed a comment which contained the hammer and sickle symbol. I ignorantly associated this symbolism with Kremlin propaganda, and the atrocities my own people suffered at the hands of the soviet union during the previous century. Many users (including hexbear users) correctly (and politely) pointed out to me in DMs that the symbol has a much broader use than just as the symbol of the USSR, and people elsewhere in the world may not associate it with the USSR at all. I am grateful for users who pointed this out to me without resorting to personal attacks. Let me be clear here: while I do not have anything against leftism or communist ideas in general (in fact in today’s world, I think discussion of such ideas is quite necessary), Kremlin propaganda has no place on lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee]. Any dehumanizing talking points of the Kremlin on lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee] are treated as any other bigotry, and if communist symbolism is used in context of Kremlin propaganda (that is the context in which I have been exposed to it throughout my whole life), then it will still be removed. But there is no blanket ban on communist symbolism in general on lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee], and discussing and advocating for leftist and communist topics (as distinct from the imperialist and dehumanizing policies of the Kremlin) is certainly allowed on lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee]. ##### Hexbear user response Coming back to the events of the past few days: soon after my removal of the comment containing the symbol from the meta thread, two posts popped up on hexbear. One was focused on insulting and spreading lies about me personally. Another was focused on diminishing the horrors of the soviet occupation in my country. In the comments under both of these posts (and in a few other threads on hexbear), I noticed some seriously disturbing bigotry against my people. There were comments which reflected the anti-Estonian propaganda of the current Russian state, things like: * Suggesting that my people has no right to exist * Stating that my people (and other Baltic nations) are subhuman * Claiming that anybody critical of both nazi and soviet occupations is themselves a nazi and a holocaust denier I expect to hear such statements from the Russian state - here in Estonia, we are subjected to this and other kinds of bigotry constantly from Russian media - but to see it spread openly in non-Russian channels is extremely disturbing. Such bigotry is completely against lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee] rules in general. Additionally, my identity is public information, because I feel it’s important for the integrity of lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee] that I don’t hide behind anonymity. Considering this, I’m sure you can understand why I am very worried about my own safety when people leave comments in many unrelated threads (where my original posts are not even visible), baselessly calling me a nazi and a holocaust denier. Note that the goal of this post is not to start a new debate in the comments about the the repressions of the soviet union in Estonia or other occupied territories, but if the topic interests any users, I can recommend the 2006 documentary The Singing Revolution (imdb [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0954008]). The trailer is a bit cheesy, but the actual film contains lots of historical footage from the soviet occupation, and also many interviews with people who experienced it, who share stories which are deeply familiar to all Estonians. If anybody is interested in further discussion, then I suggest making a post about it in the Estonian community here: !eesti@lemm.ee [/c/eesti@lemm.ee]. ##### Hexbear admin response After the above events had played out, I reached out to hexbear admins for clarification on their moderation policies and how they handle such cases. I was actually very happy with their response: 1. They immediately removed the personal attacks and dehumanizing comments containing Kremlin propaganda from Hexbear, and assured me that such content is always handled by mods 2. They told me that while there are all kinds of leftists on hexbear, Russian disinformation is generally either refuted in comments or removed by mods 3. They implemented some additional rules on hexbear to try and reduce the trolling experienced by many other instances, including ours: https://hexbear.net/post/352119 [https://hexbear.net/post/352119] ##### My personal take-aways Let me play the devil’s advocate here and employ some “self-whataboutism”: among all users that have been banned on lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee] for bigotry, the majority were actually not users from other instances, and in fact people with lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee] accounts. If we judge any larger instance only by bigoted posts that some of its users make, then we might as well declare all instances as cesspools and close down Lemmy completely. I believe it’s far more useful to judge instances based on moderation in response to such content. Just as we remove bigoted content from lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee], I have also witnessed bigoted content being removed from hexbear. At the same time, I am aware of some internal conflict between hexbear users over the more strict moderation they are now starting to employ, and I am definitely keeping an eye on that situation and how admins handle it. I am also still quite worried about the amount of distinct users on hexbear who have posted Kremlin propaganda. I so far don’t have reason to believe that these users are employed by the Russian state, but the fact that they are spreading the same hateful content which can be seen on Russian television seems problematic to say the least, and it remains to be seen if moderators can truly keep up with such content. ### Where thing stand right now I am not convinced that we are currently at a point where the “last resort” of defederation is necessary. This is based on the presumption that our moderation workload at lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee] will not get out of hand just due to users from that particular instance. My current expectation is that as the excitement of federation calms down (and as new rules on hexbear go into effect), the currently relatively high volume of low effort trolling will be replaced by more thoughtful posts. If this is not the case then we will certainly need to re-evaluate things. Additionally, nothing is changing about our own rules regarding bigotry. Especially relevant in the context of Kremlin propaganda, I want to say that dehumanizing anybody is not allowed on lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee] (hopefully I do not have to spell it out, but this of course includes Ukrainians, LGBT folks, and others that the Kremlin despises), and action will be taken against any users who do this, regardless of what instance they are posting from. Finally, I am very interested to hear thoughts and responses from our own users. I am super grateful to anybody who actually took the time to read through this massive dump of my own thoughts, and I am very interested to get a proper understanding of how our users feel about what I’ve written here. Please share any thoughts in the comments.
Beehaw suppresses Technology News that Lemmy.ml had a major 2-hour outage. Removed posting. "Rumors" are encouraged in sidebar of !Technology@Beehaw.org
Beehaw suppresses Technology News that Lemmy.ml had a major 2-hour outage. Removed posting. "Rumors" are encouraged in sidebar of !Technology@Beehaw.org
LemmyNSFW annouced that they would allow loli/shota and people on other instances did not react positively
LemmyNSFW annouced that they would allow loli/shota and people on other instances did not react positively
there was an update from the admins of lemmy.nsfw where language barriers got in the way and the wrong impression was made, which was quickly addressed by the instance's other admin as well as edited by its' original author.
this got people in this instance concerned until the edit was made, however in two threads about it on kbin social the anime PFPs came out to play and the head admin of dataterm was obligated to comment as well
the funniest part is, it really demonstrates the truth of stereotypes about people with anime loli PFPs. at least a couple of the commenters in those threads are going to end up on watchlists.