cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/35891683
I have changed the original title of this post, as it is imo, thanks largely to discussion in this thread, with a lemmyusa mod, unnecessarily incendiary.
Original Title:
“lemmyusa.com is engaging in vote manipulation, suggest defederating unless it is addressed”
Mod Abuse:
https://lemmy.world/modlog/1432313?page=1&actionType=All
The instance has 3 active subs, it’s unlikely the admins are not also the mods engaging in this.
Banning anyone who downvotes is a clear attempt to foster a chilling effect on dissenting opinions. The mods and admins of this instance are putting their thumb on the scales in order to make their ideas appear more positively received than they actually are.
Thanks for your attention to this.
I realize that doing a cross post here is… unorthodox, and this doesn’t drectly involve my own interactions, and I am technically breaking a number of the rules of this comm…
… but I think this is worth the discussion and consideration of, and potential further investigation from this comm, which essentially functions as a de facto place for discussing things like this.
Further context / info I have been able to gather:
Here is a direct link to their own modlog.
Their dedicated legal page:
Their described ‘sidebar rules’ appear to only be:
We’re keeping it simple:
Be thoughtful, act responsibly, and treat others with respect.
No NSFW content.
Everything else seems to be in the Legal / TOS / Privacy Policy section.
My preliminary, most charitable interpretation of mod/admin activity here… is that they can and will essentially ban anyone who posts on their instance and is not a lemmyusa user, as any other user would not have agreed to their TOS.
???
Further, this instance appears to be hosting an account that is impersonating SatansMaggotyCumFart, a fairly well known, mostly parody/dedicated ‘bit’ account here on lemmy…
The profile description of their version of SMCF claims to be ‘the only real profile!’, and is using a clearly AI generated avatar/profile pic… and uh, to me at least, it seems very unlikely this is the actual SMCF.
UPDATE:
Ok.
After some conversation in this thread, I should add:
There is, and there was at the time this all started, a rule in the comm that much of these downvote bans took place in, which reads:
‘No Serial Downvoting.’
Personally, I find this rather vague.
How many dowmvotes, in what timeframe, across how many comms/comments/posts, etc?
I am also still uncertain to what extent these actually are dedicated, persistent, serial downvoters, vs just a whole lot of randos seeing something on their feed and then downvoting it and moving on.
I get the intent behind trying to stem a mass wave of negativity, nobody likes a wave of mass downvotes and hostile comments…
But on the other hand, there should probably be a bit more clarity and specificity here, less heavy handed actions for less comitted and persistent behavior.
IMO, a balance has to be struck between allowing people to genuienly freely express their opinion via downvoting, but at the same time, there are clearly also cases where people or groups of people basically just downvote all comments or posts from a specific user or in a certain comm or pertaining to a certain topic, etc.
I myself am fairly confident I have managed to attract at least one person who downvotes all my posts/comments on their instance, simply because I am on their shitlist, apparently.
So ideally… we could maybe have a constructive conversation about that.
As to the SatansMaggotyCumFart profile on lemmyusa being an impersonatory account:
We’ve got one mod from lemmyusa here saying he really isn’t sure, and personally blocked him, I think from his own user standpoint, not from the standpoint of himself as a mod.
IMO, the account still strikes me as likely another person, impersonating the actual user… I of course cannot be certain, but the profile still strikes me as very sus.
Finally, I am least personally going to strongly discourage any one reading this from popping in to lemmyusa and going out of your way to downvote every single thing on there simply because it is on that instance.
They are already in more or less lockdown mode, call that a win if you must.
I did not intend nor do I want this very post to act as an attack vector.
UPDATE 2
SatansMaggotyCumFart, the real one, has appeared in this thread and confirmed that the lemmyusa profile is indeed an impersonation, is not them.
If the users are actually serial downvoters, that’s a perfectly fine reason to ban. Votes are supposed to sort the good content (for that community) from the bad, and if someone comes in and downvotes everything, that doesn’t do that. They’re not participating in good faith for the community’s intentions. Voting isn’t a Lemmywide opinion score that must be allowed to run unrestricted. It’s ok for mods to say “this community is only for people who actually like its subject”.
That’s not to say there may not be plenty of good reasons to block the communities or defederate. They’re likely going to stray into hate speech and/or host their own trolls. It’s simply that banning people who are only there to disrupt it isn’t itself some sort of high crime.
Donald J Musk does not want conversion in his posts, he does not want debate, he does not want to argue. He only wants adulation and praise. He goes as far as locking posts so no one can comment. The only thing you are left is block, or down vote his misinformation.
That’s UM, afaict
Impossible. I asked UniversalMonk whether Donald J Musk was him, and he said no, and we all know he never lies.
Sigh. Yet again, you can’t seem to go long without bringing up my name.
I get that you might be fixated on me, but you mention me far too often. Doesn’t it get exhausting having me live rent-free in your head?
I’m not Musk, and I’m not part of OP’s post, not the subject of it, and I have nothing to do with what it’s about.
I get that you might be fixated on me, but you mention me far too often. Doesn’t it get exhausting having me live rent-free in your head?
Somewhat recently, he used the fact you commented in a thread as proof that his words used aginsst him were meaningless, when caught in a lie about his favor troll, PugJesus.
I tried talking with him both in public and in private, but the guy just wants to stay convinced that I am part of some long-term plot to overthrow lemmy or something. I honestly still have no clue what he’s mad about since him and I agree on most topics anyway. lol
You disrespected his favorite political party that doesn’t care about him or acknowledge his existence, therefore you’re evil.
Nope. He posts conservative content. I’m a socialist and I post socialist content, write socialist and anarchist articles, and maintain socialist communites and a socialist mastadon account.
So quit saying this. I have nothing to do with OP’s post, nor am I the subject of OP’s post, nor do I have anything to do with the subject of OP’s post.
Weird how they are more obsessed with you than you are of them, bringing you up randomly, yet you’re the villain.
It’s not even like the good old days of them accusing me of advocating for third party just to split democrats, or that I’m actually Russian or any of the juicy stuff. Now it’s just anyone they don’t like, MUST be an alt of mine. How boring. wtf?!
It was way more fun when they would stretch their imagination and break down the times I posted to make charts and shit of what part of Russia they thought I lived in. How I was a Russian plant only posting to stay off of the front lines of that war, and how I’d disappear the day after the election, etc. Good times.
Not gonna lie, I kinda miss the wacky shit they used to say about me. LMAO
post socialist content
It wasn’t always the case: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/46576874/19393763
Oh, I still post all political spectrum content to my politics unfiltered community: !politicsunfiltered@sh.itjust.works
But if people imply that posting conservative content makes me a conservative, then posting independent content would make me an independent. Right? Same logic. And I post plenty of independent content.
By that logic, posting Democratic content would make me a Democrat, posting pirate content would make me a pirate, and posting anarchist content would make me an anarchist. Right? And I post plenty of anarchist and pirate content.
So why not tell everyone what content I actually post the most and always have? Hint: it’s socialist content.
And I host Socialist Mastodon and X.com accounts. I volunteer for my local city Socialist office. I’ve even had stuff published in their Socialist newspaper. Hmmm, I guess I have good reason to say I’m a Socialist. My posting history is public for all to see.
Lemmy can stay mad that I didn’t vote for Harris.
I voted Socialist, I’m proud that I voted Socialist, and guess what? Voting Socialist next presidential election too. :)
My brother, @eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com , this is a perfect example of why you and I have to stay strong. Lemmy is always going to gang up on us for not voting for the duopoly, not matter what we do. Look how mad they still are that we didn’t bow down. lol
But if people imply that posting conservative content makes me a conservative, then posting independent content would make me an independent. Right? Same logic. And I post plenty of independent content.
By that logic, posting Democratic content would make me a Democrat, posting pirate content would make me a pirate, and posting anarchist content would make me an anarchist. Right? And I post plenty of anarchist and pirate content.
From your comment above
He posts conservative content. I’m a socialist and I post socialist content, write socialist and anarchist articles, and maintain socialist communites and a socialist mastadon account.
Choose one logic and stick with it. Or just say “I mostly post socialist content, but also post conservative content, which is why some people think I’m conservative”
Posting Breitbart articles such as this one 2 months ago is always going to make some people question your political stance: https://sh.itjust.works/post/42448458
My brother, @eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com , this is a perfect example of why you and I have to stay strong. Lemmy is always going to gang up on us for not voting for the duopoly, not matter what we do. Look how mad they still are that we didn’t bow down. lol
I’m on good terms with @eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com , supporting them in previous discussions when other people were trying to paint Eugene in a bad light using bad faith arguments.
I’m not ganging up, I don’t live in the US, I don’t care what you vote. I just rectify incorrect statements such as the one above. I’m not mad either.
I haven’t strayed from my logic at all. I’ve always posted news from all political angles. I’ve never hidden that, and it’s easy to see. You’ll find recent articles I’ve shared from conservative outlets, independent sources, Green Party platforms, and more.
But here’s the key point: the overwhelming majority of my posts, my voter registration, my voting history, and my volunteer work are all Socialist. Plus, and this is what you should respect, I openly identify as a Socialist.
So people labeling me as conservative is simply inaccurate.
I know you’re careful not to outright call me conservative, but whenever I correct someone who does, you’re quick to say, “but you posted this…” and point to conservative articles links that I’ve posted.
What you never mention are the third-party articles I’ve posted. Specifically all the Socialist articles I’ve posted, or the Socialist communities I’ve created and supported. Or the Socialist pieces that I’ve actually written myself. I’ve been published in print in my local Socialist newspaper under my actual “real life” name!
Despite all the nonsense people on Lemmy say about me, and yes I believe you have helped stir some of it by your selective curation of my stuff, I have stayed what I have always been: a proud Socialist.
why dont you just block him or her.
I would if they got too obnoxious. I actually find it more funny and odd than annoying, definitely not worth blocking.
He only wants adulation and praise.
only if he gets it from chad mctruth. no other adulations and praises count. I just sent him link to ur post lol
Voting isn’t a Lemmywide opinion score
That is precisely what it is. I would say that browsing only a particular community’s content and none other is not the most common way that people look at Lemmy.
It’s ok for mods to say “this community is only for people who actually like its subject”.
Dude what kind of content are people posting that is prompting any detectable number of people to run around downvoting all of it?
Personally my opinion is that if you’re using multiple accounts to artificially inflate your number of up or downvotes, you’re doing something wrong, but if you just don’t like a bunch of content, it doesn’t really matter whether “you are part of the community” or like its subject in terms of whether or not you should be allowed to enter downvotes. That’s why they’re there, for stuff that people don’t like. You can always visit an instance which just doesn’t allow downvotes, if you feel your stuff needs to be insulated from anyone being able to say that they don’t like it.
There are accounts who genuinely do go around downvoting en masse without any contributions. When I was growing my community, I caught about 5 accounts - some with no post history, and no contribution history on my community doing it. They also had a long mod log history of bans for doing it elsewhere.
So I banned them because they kept burying new posts. That is my right.
There are accounts who genuinely do go around downvoting en masse without any contributions.
very much this! (im a mod in the conservative community post is about)
Was this for the television community? I feel like maybe people just don’t like TV related content. I kind of feel the same way (and the same for sports content); I don’t downvote it, but it doesn’t really offend me if the community gives its input “Hey I don’t want this.” Sometimes people like stuff, and sometimes they don’t, it is okay I think.
What do you mean by “mass”? Is it like hundreds of downvotes, or 5-10, or how many? And when you say, “no contribution history on my instance,” why is that relevant to whether someone’s allowed to downvote? This POV is just kind of strange to me. Why don’t people have a right to downvote? Why does your stuff need to be insulated against people being able to “bury” it, isn’t that what that button on their UI is for? Back when UniversalMonk and the media bias bot were active on lemmy.world, there were people who would give hundreds or thousands of downvotes to that content, but I feel like that’s probably allowed. That’s just the reaction.
I’m not trying to be argumentative about it, we may just not see eye to eye on it, I’m just trying to get a sense of what the details are, that’s all.
If they don’t like television content, they can just mute the community and cultivate their feed better. It’s not for them, and that’s fine, but the impact of downvoting hurts the visibility of posts on there across the Fediverse. They aren’t “part of the community” in this context. They are hecklers.
They were downvoting almost every single post on there. Sometimes shortly after I posted it. They have the right to downvote, but I also have the right to judge as a community moderator whether or not I think the downvoting is reasonable. If you go on television now and look at most posts, you will see downvotes on most, and many of them actually participate in the community. I am not unreasonable on this. I don’t ban anyone just for downvoting.
They were downvoting almost every single post on there. Sometimes shortly after I posted it. They have the right to downvote, but I also have the right to judge as a community moderator whether or not I think the downvoting is reasonable.
Very much this. yes.
Yeah, makes sense. I don’t think it is reasonable to downvote literally every new post that comes from a given community, unless there is some wild shit coming out of that community or something. I think partly my reaction to this whole issue is colored by that AI art community mod who would literally ban anyone who ever gave his content a downvote, accusing them of being an “anti-AI troll” because his stuff needed to be exempted from criticism. That’s the main context I have seen this argument take place in and the dude was entirely off his rocker about it. I get it if your content is completely reasonable and for whatever reason someone’s downvoting literally every post or something.
Yeah I know about the AI art stuff. That’s a tough one to me because a lot of the fediverse will downvote AI automatically, so if they did nothing, every single post there would be met with heavy downvotes.
It wasn’t just that, it was also that they were objectively unhinged when they tried to defend it, instead of just laying out what you just laid out, or admitting “Yes we ban anyone who downvotes because at the end of the day we just don’t want our stuff to be downvoted” or something.
Dude what kind of content are people posting that is prompting any detectable number of people to run around downvoting all of it?
You must be pretty new here.(Nevermind, didn’t check who I was responding to)There’s around two posts a month in this very community where someone is complaining that they’re expected to block a community with content they don’t like instead of just downvoting everything they see from it.
AI communities are common ones, so are political comms, but there have been some postd where someone just doesn’t like the memes of a certain meme community too. You’re making a false assumption that people only downvote stuff for any sort of legitimate reason.
Yeah if I made a metal music community, and someone who didn’t like metal downvoted everything, why would I allow them to continue?
It very much is not, because few people see any given community when browsing All. Someone might see one post and downvote it, but they wouldn’t be downvoting everything. If they just hate all the content, they shouldn’t care about being banned unless they just wanted to keep attacking it.
And you’re new to the Internet if you think haters won’t go to a community they dislike and downvote every single post. It doesn’t even need to be something serious like politics. Console wars, sports teams, or just a TV show that rubs some group the wrong way.
Conservative subs on Reddit used to never be able to use the voting system to sort their own comments because of it. On Lemmy the votes are visible so you don’t need to guess who’s doing it. If you’re not participating in a community in good faith they have every right to ban you.
It doesn’t even need to be something serious like politics. Console wars, sports teams, or just a TV show that rubs some group the wrong way.
Certain dipshits do this with every post that mentions “AI,” which has been a problem when trying to discuss it in any form, including random machine learning topics, how to selfhost, compsci videos about how the algorithms work, etc etc etc.
If the users are actually serial downvoters, that’s a perfectly fine reason to ban.
They are. And today there is a downvote brigade coming from lemmy.world as a result of this and other posts. also if people hate the community so much then htey shouldn’t be mad for being banned from it?
And no, we don’t post conservative content to other communities, we jsut stick to our own
As far as I can tell, they do not have any language in their legal page that specifically describes serial downvoting as a bannable offense.
Nor do they really even seem to have anything that attempts to outline a general or specific concept of intentional manipulation, or what would constitute a violation of that ‘good faith’ you describe.
Like, I get you, that if they actually are serial downvoters, that is generally bad.
However:
Have an actual ruleset that describes that.
So that people can maybe see that is a thing they should not do.
The alternative is that this all falls under an extremely vague and nebulous concept of their first sidebar rule, which is highly non specific, extremely prone to totally arbitrary enforcement.
…
EDIT:
The ‘tankie’ instances are notorious for banning and deleting comments with more or less this same, often viewed as BS methodology:
Everyone who says something they don’t like, just gets removed via Rule 1, which is similary vague and arbitrary, subject to ad hoc interpretation.
Just go look through this comm’s history to see that.
So… there is precedent for my line of thinking here.
Okay, so this is clearly a MAGA instance. But why did they tag it as conservative2? There’s not even a “conservative” on lemmyusa.com
There are a number of ( lemmy ) instances that have a ‘conservative’ comm.
At one point, one of those was run by a genuine conservative mod… but they then abandoned it.
Then another person… it may possibly have been SMCF, but I am not sure about that… took it over and then ran it as a parody of itself, for a bit.
Then a ‘conservative2’ popped up as another ‘genuine’ comm.
All the above is my best vague recollection and should not be considered highly accurate.
Nonetheless… if something actually did play out along those lines… this fits the reddit style MO of meta-drama based naming conventions.
It would also fit with the general online right wing agitator MO of intentionally sewing confusion as to who is who and what is what.
Then a ‘conservative2’ popped up as another ‘genuine’ comm.
yes. and the mod from that moved on, there was already a conservative community on .today, so we moved to lemmyusa because we liked the logo
Well hey I appreciate the confirmation and more details.
It’s from !conservative2@lemmy.today (which seems to have been deleted or removed?). I don’t get why the move to a new comm when they already control !conservative@lemmy.today.
correct. and mod fo conservative didn’t really want the drama of a big influx, so we moved to lemmyusa beacuase of the name and the cute logo of the instance.
I’m guessing it’s supposed to serve as an alternative to an identically named subreddit.Just checked, conservative2 was banned from reddit 3 years ago, so probably not.
because there are already a lot of conservative communties on Lemmy and we are from teh conservative2 group on .today. The orginal mod disappeared. and there is already another conservative comm on today, so we moved to lemmyusa and it has a fun instance logo (I’m a mod in conservative2)
In my mind it’s pretty simple.
- Federating or not with a MAGA instance needs to be on the basis of issues a hell of a lot more impactful than any kind of Lemmy voting misdemeanor or anything.
- I actually think that keeping open lines of communications with people under certain authoritarian structures does more to tear them down than any amount of “isolating” them can. It’s why I don’t have a problem with engaging on lemmy.ml for example. If people can never hear the counterpoint, then it’s that much easier for them to continue the mental picture of whatever horribly skewed strawman counterpoint their overlords are telling them is the counterpoint. I don’t think defederating from lemmyusa to “punish” them for being MAGA is the way to do it.
- I do think if they’re going off instance and being obnoxious, then just booting them is probably the answer. No one’s required to degrade their own Lemmy experience for the sake of these folks.
They’re always going to be able to manipulate things on their own instance to try to interfere with strategy number 2 above. Lemmy.ml does this, presumably lemmyusa would do the same, just banning anyone from off instance that for whatever reason tries to engage with sensible stuff. But they can’t ever do a perfect job at it, and I don’t think other instances should be assisting them be pre-emptively shutting off that line of communication.
That is my 2c
For what its worth, I cross posted this, I did not write the original title, and I also agree that simply being a conservative instance is a terrible reason for defederation, muchless automatically.
What I do have a problem with is Power Tripping Bastards who enforce rules that are not stated, who have double standards, who are hypocrites.
Myself formerly being a conservative from a conservative household… I held not being a hypocrite as a higher virtue than anything else from my default worldview, and I altered my worldview instead of abadoning my integrity.
There are doubtlessly other such people, who could potentially be persuaded, as I was, by sound arguments, appeals to empathy, ‘think of it from the point of view of the other’.
However at the same time… no one is or should be obligated to deal with having to argue with or try to teach hostile and aggressive people all the time.
I would personally prefer a standard of who is federated/defederated to whom be based more on the capacity of the mods and admins to have reasonable rules and also enforce those rules reasonably.
Not merely on face value political alignment alone.
no one is or should be obligated to deal with having to argue with or try to teach hostile and aggressive people all the time.
Then wouldnt it be easy to just ignore the community and move on? we are not asking you to teach us and please show a single post in the community that is aggressive. in fact we actually locked comments and comm just so no extreme comments and arguemnts get made.
I have never been to lemmyusa nor this Freeze Peach comm before, ever.
This crosspost I made … was my discovery that these even existed.
I am not a mod.
I am not an admin.
I don’t even think I know any of the people or accounts that are making these downvotes ya’ll find problematic.
What I am is a rando on the internet, who is trying to shine a light on what appear to be … at best, very hamfisted attempts at moderating a lemmy instance.
Thats what we do here in this comm, all talk about cases where some mod or admin somewhere on lemmy may be acting kinda shitty.
Frankly, I agree with you in the sense that if one doesn’t wanna talk with conservatives, the right thing to do is just not talk to them, as opposed to harass them.
But like I said… I’m not in charge of anything here, I didn’t even know ya’ll existed literally untill I made this post.
we weren’t advertising our community or anything like that, we were jsut minding ourown business. Now the community has blown up with downoting brigading lol i don’t care abou tthat tho, i already know lemmy doesn’t like conservatives.
People in ths thread and others think we are trying to rot brains of lemmys when we weren’t doing anything but posting conservativre stuff to our own conservative communites. so it’s wild everyone is ganging up on us. im not upset or anyting so just pointing it out because I think its so funny how crazy some lemm peeple can be
People in ths thread and others think we are trying to rot brains of lemmys
I’ve always perceived this as both a very weak and insulting argument for defederation or whatever drama people wheel it out for. It was used a lot in various Mastodon defederation dramas.
Like, you (purveyor of said argument) really think your own homies are that weak-minded that mere exposure to right-wing posts will some how turn them into zombie rightoids? You think I’m that weak? And that’s the reason for defederating or bullying them or whatever? Fuck off.
Like, you (purveyor of said argument) really think your own homies are that weak-minded that mere exposure to right-wing posts will some how turn them into zombie rightoids?
not only that, but most don’t even read the fking articles, they downvote, send hateful dm’s and scream defedration. so how am i converting or brainwashing anyone by posting conservative stuff to a conservative forum? i don’t post any conservative stuff anywhere else on lemmy, just my conservative community. lol
I like this post. thnk you, you make a lot of sense and I agree (i am mod of the conservative2 community)
Vote manipulation is when you organize voting, whether that’s you with multiple accounts, a malicious instance just sending votes without real people, or stuff like that. Banning people isn’t vote manipulation.
Suppressing votes is manipulating them.
Suppressing people who come to a community to just downvote stuff seems fine. If someone doesn’t like everything the community likes they are not a good fit for the community
The idea here is that wanton banning of people who downvote things is the issue.
…
They could be doing this in a documented, organized, vote bridage fashion.
They could be doing it in an entirely self directed manner.
And between those two things is a spectrum.
There could also be downvote bots.
Or, maybe they’re just being falsely accused of something like that, without good evidence.
…
But the problem that I see is that… there is no actual rule or rule set to cover any of this, on lemmyusa, nothing exists describing the acceptable bounds of how often and when you csn downvote.
And what that means is that all these people are being banned arbitrarily, which means that there no real rules, the real rule is ‘the admin/mods ban/delete whatever they don’t like’, which would make them Power Tripping Bastards.
…
Actual legit admins and mods will always have a degree of their own discretion and interpretation of rules.
Evaluating those edge cases is an important function of this comm, as is also allowing people such as yourself to inadvertently self-report when they break fairly clearly defined rules and norms, and erroneously identify this as impartial, unfair moderation.
But when mods/admins offer very dubious reasoning for their actions when they are clearly following unstated rules or have obvious double standards… this is bad, and we try to discuss that here.
But the problem that I see is that… there is no actual rule or rule set
we do say in sidebar rules of our communty no serail downvoting and no downvote brigading.
Ok, after a good deal of conversation, I have ammended the actual post with a large section under UPDATE.
I have included that there is an actual rule that reads ‘No Serial Downvoting’, and more info, and more of my own thoughts.
thank you. I think the update is a good one. now tho is this even a good fit for this community? basicaly you are saying that someone does a bunch of stuff that you don’t personally agree with but probably isn’t something that shoudl be wiped from lemmy ro defederated orwhatever.
the vibe I’m getting from evryone here is that they think peole should just ignore shit they don’t like and move on without the drama. i know you didn’t name the post, but still the post is titled that and put in thsi forum. i just don’t think it’sa. godo fit and i don’t seeing anyone realy jumping up to defed it.
lemmy.world woudl def love this type of post. but dbzer0 seems to be a little bit more open when it comes to stuff like this. Dbzer0 attitudes are more like, 'fuck it, i don’t care what assholes do, let them do their thing and lets move on" lol
Well… perhaps incredibly ironically…
I actually broke a bunch of this comm’s rules by… making a cross post, having a post that is not directly me talking about an interaction I myself had with a specific mod or admin or community or instance.
Normally, there is a bit more of a solid framework going on in the posts in this comm.
But, that being said, it is totally normal for this comm to get posts where the poster, the person describing what they see as bad or absuive actions from a mod…
It does happen that people just say, no, dude, you were the one being an asshole, what the mod did was totally justified, YDI.
We have two fairly common acronyms:
PTB for Power Tripping Bastard, ie, a mod or admin is is way outta line.
YDI for You Deserved It, ie, the mod or admin was reasonably enforcing their own rules, their own rules are reasonable, stop being a little baby, lol.
There are others, we also have a sidebar here.
But the point here is that… normally, just being posted here, on its own… is not a call out, its not a shitlist.
Its a place for people to report things they have a problem with, and then everybody else talks about it.
I think I myself have an older post here somewhere where the consensus was mostly: no, stop whining, I was being ridiculous.
Often times… there is no strong, shared consenus in one way, every one kinda just mostly disagrees.
So, if it ends up being a false alarm, then ooops, I raised a false alarm and i eat shit on that, lol.
But, what I was going for, and what seems to have taken place at least a bit… was an actual conversation about this… event, I guess you’d say, and how rules should work, what should and should not be seen as generally acceprable behavior both from rando users, as well as mods and admins.
…
Uh, as to the title being as it is…
Yeah I genuinely didnt’t know if I should keep the title the same, so as to not change what the original person posted… or if I should change it, to editorialize it the way I would.
I will try to see if I can think of a better title… I am actually not even sure if I can change the title?
I think this might be the first time I have ever crossposted anything, I certainly don’t do it often.
…
But uh yeah, I would agree generally with your assesment of dbzero users:
We’re anarchists.
Kind of a whole big thing for us is ‘fuck you i wont do what you tell me’, lol.
And the flip side of that is that our ideal world is one where people can coexist, without coercion, be weird in their own little ways, so long as it does not really harm other people, or force them to do things they don’t want to, or perpetuate systems that harm everyone in direct or indirect, complex and subtle ways.
It would be nice if there was an option to block vote Federation but accept content.
On the other hand, if an instance is largely acting in bad faith, maybe it’s best not to engage at all.
I’ve suggested something like that as a more advanced admin feature but they told me to implement it as a plugin, so I’m waiting until that’s possible
Hey, there you are.
Sorry to uh… yeah, not really follow all the comm rules here…
Uh… yeah.
You tell me if you want me to just modify the post itself in some way to try to be… more compliant.
Beyond that…
Hopefully this is me being overly paranoid, but here goes:
The user who made the post that I have here crossposted is named Coupable.
As in a coup.
As in an undermining and subversion of a complex system.
Their account is only 3 months old.
It has made only 2 posts, one of them this one, and a single comment.
https://lemmy.world/u/Coupable
While the information presented, or highlighted appears to be genuine…
I find the account itself to be fairly suspect.
This could potentially be a throw away, from one of these lemmyUSA people, where the point of doing this would be to create a catalog of other users (me, you, SMCF, everyone here) who seem to respond to their post, such that we could be further studied by them, to later be assesed for future potential harassment and gaslighting.
This sounds paranoiac, but this also is the known strategy employed by essentially professional, extremist, and often state funded internet trolls, to destroy the social cohesion of online spaces by more or less identifying and targetting the … most ‘influential’, or ‘important’ or ‘dedicated’ users, for lack of better words.
I very much hope that I am bring unduly paranoid.
EDIT:
welp.
I very much hope that I am bring unduly paranoid.
u are. I’m a mod fo the community and not an admin of anything adn nto some weird statefunded profesional extremist. I work at burger king in texas. are you being for real?!?!
lol props for admitting you work at BK, I worked at two on two different coasts back in the day. The east coast one was rated the worst BK in the state by internal metrics when I worked there.
… holy fuck, worst in the state?
honestly, that’s impressive, hahah!
i guess that makes three of us here in the uh, BK alumni club, rofl.
worst thing is that i used to love BK food, and now I get it free, but sick of it. Good co-workers tho and good hardworking boss. fast food are only jobs in this little town. once i get enough saved up for a car, i’ll get better job in the city. Until then just working hard, taking care of my gf and saving my money. so I don’t have anyting to complain about at all. life is good
I… don’t think you fully understood what I was saying there, but uh… I appreciate the candor.
I was referring to the account that I cross posted this from.
Unless you are here telling me that actually is your account, then I am relieved that I am being overly paranoid.
sorry if I misunderstood. no i am not them and i dont evne understand what they do most of the time. he has nothing to do with our community
Fair enough!
Fascists maintain conformity by disappearing those who don’t conform. PTB always.
please do not tell me how to run my own community because you are not the police thanks
Are you really so stupid as to have just here outed your alt account?
EDIT:
Well done.
You say “outed” like he was hiding it.
As best I can tell, they are.
This post was made in reference to an entire instance.
The admin of that instance is named:
currently going by ‘Slueth’.
https://lemmyusa.com/u/admin@lemmyusa.com
And there do not appear to be any users from the lemmyusa instance named anything close to ‘Chad McTruth’.
So… assuming this person is earnestly defending their own instance… they are not using the same name on their own instance that they use elsewhere on lemmy.
ur being trolled by chad mctruth, then overthinking and overanallyzing things.
I would call this just ‘thinking’, but yes, I appreciate you informing me of this.
I was already aware of it though.
Not exactly my first day on the internet.
I am really trying to make an attempt to be as reasonable, straightforward and amenable as possible.
Start with the open hand, not the closed fist, and all that.
Either way, I guess thanks for confirming that Chad … likes to do a bit of trolling, from time to time… could be helpful for others evaluating the extent to which they’d prefer to be or not be associated with him.
i dont understand his points but just wanted u to know he has nothing to do w my conservative2 community you are discussing. hopefully I didndt come across as to mean
i dont get his points
what points
Uh… Ok.
Yes, I understand that now.
Thank you.
no
A compelling defense and rebuttal.
lets put this to the test
@admin@lemmyusa.com are you me
i think you want to read the “information” part of the sidebar a bit more
For the additional context of how clearly and obviously these seem to be very similar people, the lemmyusa admin and chad here?
I think you want to be precise and specific.
- rule 2 - no self promotion unless its relevant to the conversation like if chads stomach hurts and youre mr bismol
- rule 3 - no downvoting
- rule 5 - no reporting us to the admins
patriot pro tip
- if you do things like say freeze peach instead of free speech you can use that as a safety net for when people get mad at you so you can point to it and pretend your ideas were a joke all along and say it was satire even though it wasnt
chad mctruth is in general a pretty weird account fostering its own tongue-in-cheek cult of personality that may or may not be trolling/satire/art project/whatever?
Cool.
Those are the rules for that comm.
That comm is not what this post is about.
This post is about the lemmyusa instance broadly.
Where are those rules on lemmyusa?
Like, genuienly, I tried to find them, and the main body of this post shows what I was able to find.
None of those rules mention anything about downvoting being not allowed.
I may have genuienly missed where, on lemmyusa, it just actually says ‘no downvoting’, or something like that.
…
If ya’ll want to just not have downvoting… you do realize that you can configure an instance to just not allow any one to downvote anything, right?
You can just have the upvote button, and disable the downvote button.
There are other instances that do this.
that was not the point; my point was the sidebar makes !chadmctruthistruth sound satirical. read more than just rule 3 and try to look for the nonexistent rule 4.
rule 4 is actually under topsyturvy tuesdays under other stuff
- rule 4 - posts or comments that are anti-religious will be pinned okay "ironic” prejudice is funny
this rule was added because a little cow got mad at me when the pope died
Nah, Chad’s a few different people and they’re the opposite of conservatives.
please do not tell me how to vote from my own account because you are not the police thanks
banned
Mans just stroking himself while using lemmy, freak
I’m a mod of the community. the reason for the bans isn’t vote manipulation, it’s serial downvoting which is against the commnity rules. right now there is an extreme downvoting brigading going on from lemmy.world because of this post and the cross post. feel free to go look and look who most of downvotes are from. lemmys don’t like conservatives, and thats fine, but we are allowed to be on here too.
we locked the comments and the community to mods only because of teh extremist stuff happening after the charlie kirk murders. there were lemmys cheering and posting memes and laugnign about murder. if you don’t like conservatives thats fine but then why are people mad if you are banned from a community that you only went to to downovte?
this seems to be a of drama over a community you don’t even like. So why not just ignore and move on? i don’t understand. here is screen cap of over 20 downvotes from someones post today (College conservatives reveal what Charlie Kirk meant to them and how they will keep his message alive)(https://lemmy.myserv.one/post/21138775)
I didn’t block on names cuz voting record is public, all are from lemmy.world, but I can blcok them out of mod of this sub asks me to:
because you’re locking all topics in fear of discussion, voting is the only way to interact with your community.
its not fear of discussion. its comments are always hateful and extreme espcially after the kirk killing. Lemmy doens’t want to ‘discuss’ anyting. they wanna just type ‘nazi’ and ‘fascist’ over and over.
if a locked post gets 30 downvotes within 5 minutes, u think those people would have ‘discussed’ anyting. not only that, i see the reports when they report. the reports usually sya ‘die fascist die’ lol which is what the comment woudl say too.
Then maybe consider posting actual conservative content instead of just hateful alt-right “news” that is trying to incite culture wars.
can u show me something that is hateful? whats a hateful article on there?
Here’s the front page of the community right now. can u let me know which articles you think are hateful? can u quote some hateful content from thes articles?
Why More Blacks and Hispanics Are Turning Republican
The Accomplishments of Black Conservative Thought
Why the American Founding Matters for American Conservatism
Americans’ Views of Space: U.S. Role, NASA Priorities and Impact of Private Companies
Texas Tech student arrested after hurling vile comments at Charlie Kirk mourners
FBI Confirms DNA Found at Scene of Charlie Kirk Assassin’s Hiding Spot Matches Suspect
Teen arrested ‘destroying’ Charlie Kirk memorial as chilling copycat fantasy exposed
Coldplay Frontman Chris Martin Tells Concertgoers to Send Love to Charlie Kirk’s Family
Suspect in Charlie Kirk killing under special watch pending mental health evaluation
On Intellectual Diversity
A Conservative Definition of Diversity
“Ongoing Hate Campaign of the Democrat Apparatus ‘Led Directly’ to Charlie Kirk Assassination”
i don’t think that pointing out hate is hateful. look at all the meme and smiley faces after someone is brutally murdered. you don’t think that that’s hateful?
here on lemmy i saw someone discussing the murder, and how much blood thre was. then people were laughing and someone psoted a meme of a dam of water releasing. and it was getting upvotes. that’s hateful. i have seen more hate on lemmy lately than ever before. reporting about it isn’t the problem
additionally, like half of the posts are about an ultimately unimportant public figure dying in a school shooting. If you don’t want people expressing their oppinion about that, maybe consider not posting about it, and get over it already. You guys over there are usually quicker to do that, when it comes to children dying in schools.
additionally, like half of the posts are about an ultimately unimportant public figure dying in a school shooting.
that’s in the news tho. all the major news orgs are reporting it. it was a major news event, even if u personally think it’s unimportant. also not as many today since news is evening out.
half of the recent articles over in !politcs were of the shooting too, did you complalin to them that they shoudl stop posting articles about it? why is our community held to a different standard than any other comm on lemmy?
deleted by creator
can u show me something that is hateful? whats a hateful article on there?
I will not link anything, but a breitbart article that YOU posted, trying to blame the Democrats for the Kirk school shooting is a prime example. It’s just another article hatemongering, fingerpointing and trying to fuel a culture war over in the US.
Get real!so do u point this out to all the people on lemmy who say that kirk deserved it and that his republican ideas got him killed? Beause that’s saying same thing, just different party name. ive seen pleny on lemmy blaming republicans for the murder and saying it was secret ops. do you point out that they are hatemongering? is blaming republican for it ok? i don’t think posing a news article reporting on hate counts as hate. having said that i think both sides shold be nicer, but i see so much of lemmy saying they are ‘done being nice, it’s time for war’ so i’m nto sure why im being pointed at for this
So instead of trying to make a better place, you’re just going to make the same thing with an oposite spin? Why not just call your community “no u” then? Just stop your whataboutism, this is about your “community”. With it being locked it is not really a community. It’s like the moderators shared little notepad that they can post their links to. There is no discussion of ideas going on, there is no way to engage other than pressing the up- or downvote button.
I don’t understand how anyone can think that’s a good use of anyone’s time or resources.
Complaining about about mass downvotes when all you do is post links, without your own input, without others being able to input their ideas feels like intentionally breaking your leg and then complaining that you can’t walk right.
I have a strong feeling about why you and your friends made this community, and why you don’t want anyone to post in there, and the post titled “So I pissed off Lemmy”, gloating about is is a prime example of it. Have your little echo chamber of hate.
Goodbye
lemmy.world is the lowest common denominator, fresh-off-reddit instance. people posting “this is the way” and bringing a glossary of logical fallacies to an adult conversation and thinking they’re clever.
I don’t participate in a single community hosted on that instance, and I feel it’s improved my experience. some instances block .world because it’s such a fountain of drivel. ymmv.
Hey uh, while we’re at it…
Can you tell me why there seems to be an account on lemmyusa that… seems to be impersonating SatansMaggotyCumFart?
Is that really him?
Or is that an impersonation?
… Do you have any idea?
As neither of us think things like sending people suicide/death threats is acceptable…
I would hope that we would both also agree that it’s pretty not cool to have somebody running around impersonating someone else, putting someone else’s words into say, your own mouth.
Can you tell me why there seems to be an account on lemmyusa that… seems to be impersonating SatansMaggotyCumFart?
no clue. thats not my account and I didn’t even know there was an account liek that til you mentioned it. but he’s a wellknown troll so not surprising he has people parodying him. he is pretty quick to be obnoxious to people and laugh about it. i agree that personation is annoying tho and wish it didn’t happen but the mindset of many on lemmy is that eveyrhting is a war and the can do whatever they want since they think they are on the correct side of whatever argument they are making.
i don’t agree with it at all. I don’t like his style, so I just blocked him. I don’t think he shoudl be kicked off of lemmy and i don’t think people should impersonate him. but i blocked him and moved on
Huh.
Well, ok then.
Again, thank you for the honest assessment!
Ok.
So, this is the crosspost.
I duplicated or reposted someone else’s post.
But I duplicated it because of what it showed… ie, this was all ongoing before either the original post or this post.
Also: I genuinely missed that you have rule 7, which does say no serial downvoting, in the comm.
That’s my bad, I will try to update the main post here, with more accurate information, when I can make sense out of what is going on.
…
However:
You could just temp ban them.
A time out, instead of being exiled.
…
Also, did you actually have this rule 7 before this all commenced?
Genuine question, I missed those sidebar rules in the conservative2 comm.
…
Also… can you actually show that these people were actually serially downvoting?
A serial downvoter would be something like an account, whose only interactions with your comm or your instance, is to downvote more or less every post.
If there are a flood of random people downvoting just one particular post or topic of posts… that would be a bunch of people just expressing their dislike.
(If they are actually saying things in comments that violate your rules, thats another thing.)
Serial means repeated, like a serial killer keeps killing people?
It does not mean a lot of different people share a dislike of something.
A downvote brigade implies an organized, formally orchestrated network of people (or I guess bots, which so far have been pretty rare on lemmy, in my experience).
.World is functionally the default instance that most reddit refugees or just normies land on.
It is possible that there is some kind of an actual brigade going on.
It is also possible a lot of people don’t or didn’t like Charlie, and do not need any kind of formal organization or direction to feel that way.
We wouldn’t want to just silence all their voices simply for expressing their dislike of him via a downvote, would we?
…
I have also pointed out in another comment that one thing ya’ll could do, could consider, is to simply remove downvotes from your instance, like, remove the ability of anyone and everyone to downvote anything.
Other instances have done this, it is possible to do, but I am not or admin or developer, I do not how to implement that.
…
All that being said, I am glad you are here, communicating earnestly… that is to me, much more preferable than being a bit of a troll as with Chad, or not being present at all… this way we can have an actual conversation.
Also: I genuinely missed that you have rule 7, which does say no serial downvoting, in the comm.
Yep always a rule here adn on previous instance. but i did just make bold and at top after reading yoru post that people may overlook it.
You could just temp ban them.
they would be just as mad i think. why would they b mad at being exiled form a communtiy they hate anyways? A time out, instead of being exiled.
Also… can you actually show that these people were actually serially downvoting?
well I read comments and if i see same downvoter on 3 or 4 posts and they are right away I see where it is going. do you have a number that you think should count as serial donvoting? I’d be happy th change way I do it.
I have also pointed out in another comment that one thing ya’ll could do, could consider, is to simply remove downvotes from your instance, like, remove the ability of anyone and everyone to downvote anything.
it’s not my instance that woudl be up to admin. but i think (?) that removeing downvoties would only be for people on my actual instance. you could for example still downovte since you are not on my instance, but I just wouldn’t be able to see your downvotes. so that wouldn’t stop the downvoting at all, it would only stop me from seeing the downvotes. not you
Ok, I believe you that you had ‘No serial downvoting’ as a rule, before this all started.
But… that 3 word phrase is very vague, there are many ways one could possibly inerperet that.
So… how should we do this, what would a better way to be more specific?
Well, that is a complicated question.
To which I would first ask you, and I guess also by proxy ask you to ask other mods on lemmyusa and … whoever the admin is:
Do you want to be closer to a safe space for conservatives?
Or do you want to be closer to freely exposing yourself to the opinions (as expressed via downvotes) of … the entirety of all people on all lemmy instances?
What would be the pros and cons of each of those approaches?
Is there maybe a way to define or outline somewhere in the middle?
If I were ya’ll, lemmyusa admins and mods and community members… I would suggest you all have a discussion about that amongst yourselves, probably on your own instance somewhere, and then, ideally, try to create a set of rules that you mostly all agree on, that is a bit more specific, clear and thorough.
As I said elsewhere, yeah I myself did not even know you guys existed until this post today… I have no idea how you all think or feel about any of that.
The best kind of ruleset and guidelines are going to be different, depending on what the actual goal is.
i like to think its a small commuity where people who want to see some conservative articles can. its not really for converting people or having big discussions about howwe are all fashists or nazis or whatever lemmy accueses us of. people are making a big deal out of nothing.
ill be honest. i think its that a lot fo people on lemmy don’t want conservatives here and wnat to bully them off of lemmy. one of our posters got a dm (shown in conservative sub) that said that she should take a vid of her killing her self so the guy who sent the message could watch it and laugh: https://lemmy.wtf/post/27666542
another one in taht same sub got banned and laughed and said he was just going to just start another account so he could continue trolling us.
it’s about bullying and not wanting us here because of our politcal beliefs. and htat doesn’t really seem to match the mission of what lemmy is about.
Ok uh… yeah, I generally don’t think its very appropriate to … joke about or threaten suicide or murder in a very direct and user to user, person to person context.
I really want to try to avoid reproducing a whole shit fest fight in this thread over why people are doing that, having very strong opinions.
But uh… you didn’t really answer the question, or maybe I am not understanding you.
If you all want to be just mostly a community for conservatives to post conservative things and talk about things from a conservative perspective…
You could just defederate yourselves from most or all other lemmy instances, if you guys just want basically just want your own little club.
That way, you would only have to deal with any fake or duplicate accounts or whatever, that are from your own instance.
Just strictly from a numbers perspective, that would probably massively cut down on the volume, the numbers of different users you deal with.
From a technical standpoint, you don’t have to be connected to everyone else, just simply as a matter of being overwhelmed, with what I am guessing is a fairly small moderation/admin team.
Then, maybe, you could also try to find a few specific instances, whose user bases might be less likely to harass ya’ll, after you all maybe get more of a feel for other instances and where you get the most trouble from, versus the least, from a moderation context.
But that’s just me spitballing suggestions, I don’t know what exactly you all wanna do with your instance.
You could just defederate yourselves from most or all other lemmy instances, if you guys just want basically just want your own little club.
I’m not an admin so that’s not really up to me. it’s not my instance. I just mod the community sorry if i miscommunicated. the owner admin of the instance has nothing to do with our community other htna it’s his instance that we put it on. we follow the rules of the instance and never had a problem.
i also don’t see what that woudl be necessary since people don’t have to visit us if they don’t want to. but then I also don’t agree w peopel defdding from hexbear and stuff. i think people should make their own choices of what the want to visit or not, but i don’t feel we shoudl take that choice from them
Ah ok ok.
No, I understand you just mod one community, I got that.
I appreciate you clarifying again though.
Like I said earlier… maybe you all, the mods and admin, should have a discussion about all this.
Just because it doesn’t make sense to you that people would go out of their way to harass you… well that doesn’t mean everyone else thinks or feels the same way, has the same motivations, has the same reasons why they do or don’t do things.
The whole idea of being a mod, of running a community that uh, interfaces with a whole, whole lot of other people… is that you have to have ways to handle people acting wild, and just… hoping that they would stop… is not a very effective plan.
You guys are far from the only, far from the first community to get a wave of people being quite negative.
Just… think of like every single time a Steam page for game reviews gets a sudden flood of negative reviews.
Sometimes, its legit, a game dev did something really shitty and a bunch of people are really mad.
Sometimes … its less legit, based on something minor or stupid or a rumor or an outright falsehood.
… And sometimes… people disagree about which one of those two scenarios it actually is, or is closer to.
But anyway yeah, I’m not like… again, in charge of anything here, you guys are in charge of your community.
I don’t just wanna tell you: Do this. Have these rules.
Because I don’t know exactly what ya’ll are going for.
They have someone impersonating/mocking me promoting conservative comms: @QuantumTickler@lemmy.myserv.one
I certainly wish they’d stop.
Isn’t it kinda ironic that this community is on dbzer0 lol
What are we going to get called this time, tankies, fascists, or libs? Place your bets
You’re a bunch of Moo-Dengists.
How about: Pol Pot Posadists?
Why would it?
loving the new title. thank you for the discusisons to. more people on lemmy need to be like you and we’d have less drama
gosh, lots of drama in this post and the other post about me. Sorry if i bored u guys. I’m still gonna keep banning for serial downvting. Sorry it caused so much drama, but i’m going to stick to what I was doing even tho there were some good conversations here. I just wanted to put this out to you all in case I get banned here.
Some people made fun of me for my typing: No excuses but from slight brain injury and missing finger (both issues from car accident when i was little) but i’ll take more time to type better. Dont feel sorry for me, just wanted you to know im not as bad off as i type. haha I ain’t got nothing to complain about and i’m inspired to type better now. My thinking is ok, just motor movement is skippy is all.
