What is the point of these forums if you’re banned for using it?
From the modlog:
admin
Banned @Julianus
reason: 3 week timeout for more constant bickering
expires: in 21d
There are admins with clear political bias and they are using their powers to suppress opinions they don’t like. This isn’t a ban for violating rules… but simply replying to their posts. What gives?
I have to say “bickering” is a dubious reason for a ban when there are people in here that respond to anything against their views with heavy sardonicism, degrading the quality of conversation immediately. Yet nothing is done to it.
On Lemmy.ml specifically, even though it is stated as a general leftist instance (so yes, we do have a political bias), we have generally tolerated most political views with the major exception of the far right.
If you look closer into it, at the histories of those banned for example, bans given in that people think is because of their political views, you’ll find it’s most often their behaviour: repeatedly debating in bad faith, and more importantly, harassing, or using attacks or insults against other users, which is covered under rules 1 and 2. Usually it takes multiple offences for a ban, unless the first offense was particularly egregious.
When banning someone other than an obvious troll or spammer from the start, we generally don’t remove their post history specifically so it can be referenced later. So I encourage you to have a look.
In what way is lemmy.ml specifically, eurocentrist? Many users here are very critical of Europe, while not buying into the propaganda about places like China, Cuba, etc.
hundreds of links of Ukraine & Russia, brief mentions for other conflicts outside of europe. E.g. nothing about the recent Sri Lanka state of emergency. It’s not about the sides being taken, it’s about the stories being told.
To be fair, I have witnessed this politically motivated censorship once on this instance. Two users have criticised the paradox of tolerance from a philosophical aspect and rejected its abuse and the overuse of the “nazi example” by certain admins, who proceeded to shame them with long paragraphs and banned them, for being Nazi sympathizers? I personally think sometimes admins should avoid heated debates because it will most likely end up with someone abusing their powers for their own bias. Even though the sidebar precises that the largest lemmy instance is leftist, in fact it is more diverse and pluralist than that. This is something to think about.
We have never removed any responses during debates, with us or otherwise, with the exception of clear violations against the (not at all political) rules. In fact, we sometimes leave rule breaking comments up if they have gotten a lot of responses, especially factual rebuttals, by other users.
In the tolerance example you brought up, the user wasn’t banned for having that belief, they were banned because they were repeatedly being disrespectful to (attacking and insulting the) other users trying to debate with them, following multiple reports of their comments.
I am not sure if we both have the same person in mind (for now I won’t reveal anyone’s name). I rechecked the post and reread it couple of times. I tried to check the modlog but the ban couldn’t be seen but this lerson is still labeled as “banned”. Couple of observations:
we sometimes leave rule breaking comments up if they have gotten a lot of responses
comments were not removed, the user was banned
repeatedly being disrespectful to… other users
said person was only debating with one other user, an admin specifically.
neither of them was being blatantly disrespectful, though their debate was surely heated.
-the modlog didn’t specify your stated reason.
the user wasn’t banned for having that belief
The modlog (now weirdly missing certain logs) stated that they were nazi a sympathizer, when in fact they were not (the admin was biased in my opinion and being maliciously rethorical with his replies)
Again, we could be talking about different people here, so if you need more information I will gladly serve you with that so you could check yourself. A counter-argument to what I’ve said could be that the user was banned for other comments he made on other posts but that could easily be refuted because: 1) No other comments of theirs gained so much attraction and controversy and 2) the modlog stated they were a “nazi sympathizer”.
Either way, my argument prevails concerning admin/mod bias, especially that the the user was banned by the same admin they were arguing with. That, I think, can lead to unjust consequences. A solution would be that another admin/mod be the one that decides in such cases.
Can you link that user’s profile then? I’m not the one who took the action so I don’t know all the details off the top of my head.
The modlog (now weirdly missing certain logs)
It’s not perfect but also not malicious. Bulk actions are only listed as a single entry for example, something that needs to be addressed in further development.
And of course we do have to hide links to things like porn, gore, etc from it so it can’t be seen at all. We also remove blatant spam and brigading posts (like the recent waves from 4chan) because they want it to be seen in any way possible, and knowing that it will remain visible in the modlog will just encourage them. We have never removed a rule breaking debate post from the modlog in this way.
I see now. I didn’t deal with this person, but IMO, I don’t see the ban as being unreasonable. The admins have generally agreed that advocating for bigotry such as white supremacy and Nazi ideology is also against rule 1. I guess whichever admin banned them saw this user as falling under that category.
But nobody was defending bigotry until the admin mentioned it, and the issued reason of the ban was malicious rather than truthful . Either way I still respect your opinion and this issue has passed a long time ago. But I mentioned this specific case to talk about a general issue, which is the predominant admin/mod bias when they enter into heated arguments. I already stated my suggestion above and would like admins to take it into consideration, regardless of whether this phenomenon is frequent or not. Thank you.
Julianus, are you soferman all over again? Because if you are, and if you begin with your squeak all over again, I will put you in your place like I did last year.
Aww, thanks for confirming. For some reason there was 1 downvote half a day ago, now there are 7. Makes sense with what your instance is trying to do. You and your instance should be banned from federation.
What is the point of these forums if you’re banned for using it?
Because it’s made for the people who don’t get banned.
If you get banned, it’s usually a pretty big hint that this community isn’t for you, and to evade is only wasting your own time in the end.
There are admins with clear political bias and they are using their powers to suppress opinions they don’t like.
lemmy.ml openly, explicitly has a political bias. This isn’t a free-speech extremist place, and people here enjoy that fact. We don’t want to see the same tired derails every day, we would go somewhere else for that.
21 days for “constant bickering” is a bit vague (and something a large number of us are guilty of)
More interesting than that though is your instance mandacaru.caatinga.digital which I have never seen before, and the sudden appearance of right-wing trolls from that same instance.
If we look at the timing…@Nemo accout 2 hrs old currently (same time @Julianus account was banned) and troll accounts x7 created since then too.
I’m a little curious what this user was banned for as well. I don’t have any vested interest, but I scrolled through Julianus’ comments and didn’t see anything approaching bad taste. Maybe I missed it, or it was scrubbed.
I (Julianus) simply picked a server from lemmy.ml’s own list when I tried to log in and saw I was banned. I don’t know anything about those other accounts. In fact, they were banned before I could even read whatever they wrote.
Well you didn’t miss much, they just flail around saying some racist stuff and try to get some air-time for their scat fetishes - not kink shaming or anything, but I wish they felt more comfortable sharing that sort of porn within their own circles.
The admins are allowed to moderate however they like with the rules they see appropriate. If you disagree with their decisions, you shouldn’t expect to be welcomed on lemmy.ml and should instead look for another lemmy instance that better aligns with your ideas.
I find that conversation flourishes when you limit it to a certain degree. In spaces which are completely open and have a massive range of opinion, what you’ll find is mostly yelling at each other over broad talking points that everyone is already familiar with. After a while, nothing of interest comes out of the far left clashing with the far right all the time. But when you limit it, time can be spent doing other things than yelling at the dickhead on the other side who you have little to no overlap with and see as a dire enemy. You can talk about nuances in principles, differences in organizing, etc. It makes for richer, more interesting conversation.
On a hunch… Reddit is far more tolerant of right leaning views than this instance of Lemmy. If I recall correctly, the creators have explicitly said they’d rather have strict moderation than a wide userbase. It’s supposed to be part of the appeal.
There are other instances that may be more tolerant of other views if you consider that this instance is not tolerant enough. It should be noted that lemmy.ml is described in the sidebar as “a community of leftist privacy and FOSS enthusiasts”, so I think it should have been pretty clear that there was going to be a bias.
Bias of opinions, ok. But bias extending to censoring other opinions isn’t cool. If a mod doesn’t like my opinions, he’s free to block me from his view, just like anyone else. But banning me from participating for speaking my mind within the rules of community isn’t leftist, it’s fascist.
I’m just warning you guys. You’re making neat little tech demo that’s heading right to a dead end, if you allow banning people for speaking withing the posted rules.
What makes the “rules of the community” relevant here? Would you have no problem if the rules specifically disallowed your opinions?
Rules are guidelines and should always be loose, left up to human judgement and enforcement. If everything must be outlined with a specific rule, then you’re just inviting constant rules lawyering for the rest of time instead of effectively taking care of people who make your community worse.
you can’t really disallow that though, instances should be free to moderate however they wish. there will always be moderation like this in some instances, so just avoid those instances. the only thing that bothers me is lemmy.ml bears the name of the platform, yet says it’s not a default instance, which is misleading but oh well, not a big deal.
the only thing that bothers me is lemmy.ml bears the name of the platform
I mean, so does lemmy.pt and lemmy.cat, but you are right, people see it as the first instance recommended on join-lemmy with the most users and that is has lemmy as its name and think it’s in some way the official instance.
which community and which instance are you talking about? lemmy.ml has a very clear left-leaning bias that they like to enforce pretty often with instance and user bans, but not post bans as far as i’m aware, so avoid them as your home instance. i see you’re on a different instance already, though, so you should specify what you’re talking about.
i guess the fact that you have to specify illustrates the beauty of federation!
It was previously shown but is not any longer. The rationale given for the change was along the lines of: “to prevent targeted attacks on mods for mod decisions.”
If you want frozen peaches, go to reddit, they have glowie admins, glowies like having lotsa bootlickers.
I have to say “bickering” is a dubious reason for a ban when there are people in here that respond to anything against their views with heavy sardonicism, degrading the quality of conversation immediately. Yet nothing is done to it.
What makes you think that using Lemmy is only about unconditional free speech? That is a weird assumption to make.
On Lemmy.ml specifically, even though it is stated as a general leftist instance (so yes, we do have a political bias), we have generally tolerated most political views with the major exception of the far right.
If you look closer into it, at the histories of those banned for example, bans given in that people think is because of their political views, you’ll find it’s most often their behaviour: repeatedly debating in bad faith, and more importantly, harassing, or using attacks or insults against other users, which is covered under rules 1 and 2. Usually it takes multiple offences for a ban, unless the first offense was particularly egregious.
When banning someone other than an obvious troll or spammer from the start, we generally don’t remove their post history specifically so it can be referenced later. So I encourage you to have a look.
leftist but also extremely eurocentric, so don’t threaten that aspect of their identity
Are you saying Lemmy.ml is Eurocentric?
all activitypub networks sadly, but yes lemmy very much so
In what way is lemmy.ml specifically, eurocentrist? Many users here are very critical of Europe, while not buying into the propaganda about places like China, Cuba, etc.
hundreds of links of Ukraine & Russia, brief mentions for other conflicts outside of europe. E.g. nothing about the recent Sri Lanka state of emergency. It’s not about the sides being taken, it’s about the stories being told.
That I agree with, and it is something that the community here should do better, me included.
btw i was a banned account for being ‘racist’ against europeans xD just came back to share IPCC news, feel free to ban me again
To be fair, I have witnessed this politically motivated censorship once on this instance. Two users have criticised the paradox of tolerance from a philosophical aspect and rejected its abuse and the overuse of the “nazi example” by certain admins, who proceeded to shame them with long paragraphs and banned them, for being Nazi sympathizers? I personally think sometimes admins should avoid heated debates because it will most likely end up with someone abusing their powers for their own bias. Even though the sidebar precises that the largest lemmy instance is leftist, in fact it is more diverse and pluralist than that. This is something to think about.
We have never removed any responses during debates, with us or otherwise, with the exception of clear violations against the (not at all political) rules. In fact, we sometimes leave rule breaking comments up if they have gotten a lot of responses, especially factual rebuttals, by other users.
In the tolerance example you brought up, the user wasn’t banned for having that belief, they were banned because they were repeatedly being disrespectful to (attacking and insulting the) other users trying to debate with them, following multiple reports of their comments.
I am not sure if we both have the same person in mind (for now I won’t reveal anyone’s name). I rechecked the post and reread it couple of times. I tried to check the modlog but the ban couldn’t be seen but this lerson is still labeled as “banned”. Couple of observations:
said person was only debating with one other user, an admin specifically.
neither of them was being blatantly disrespectful, though their debate was surely heated.
-the modlog didn’t specify your stated reason.
The modlog (now weirdly missing certain logs) stated that they were nazi a sympathizer, when in fact they were not (the admin was biased in my opinion and being maliciously rethorical with his replies)
Again, we could be talking about different people here, so if you need more information I will gladly serve you with that so you could check yourself. A counter-argument to what I’ve said could be that the user was banned for other comments he made on other posts but that could easily be refuted because: 1) No other comments of theirs gained so much attraction and controversy and 2) the modlog stated they were a “nazi sympathizer”.
Either way, my argument prevails concerning admin/mod bias, especially that the the user was banned by the same admin they were arguing with. That, I think, can lead to unjust consequences. A solution would be that another admin/mod be the one that decides in such cases.
Can you link that user’s profile then? I’m not the one who took the action so I don’t know all the details off the top of my head.
It’s not perfect but also not malicious. Bulk actions are only listed as a single entry for example, something that needs to be addressed in further development.
And of course we do have to hide links to things like porn, gore, etc from it so it can’t be seen at all. We also remove blatant spam and brigading posts (like the recent waves from 4chan) because they want it to be seen in any way possible, and knowing that it will remain visible in the modlog will just encourage them. We have never removed a rule breaking debate post from the modlog in this way.
Thank you for responding.
here’s the comment of DPUGT responding to Dessalines about the paradox of tolerance.
I believe that. And yes it should be addressed, especially when it comes to such matters.
I see now. I didn’t deal with this person, but IMO, I don’t see the ban as being unreasonable. The admins have generally agreed that advocating for bigotry such as white supremacy and Nazi ideology is also against rule 1. I guess whichever admin banned them saw this user as falling under that category.
But nobody was defending bigotry until the admin mentioned it, and the issued reason of the ban was malicious rather than truthful . Either way I still respect your opinion and this issue has passed a long time ago. But I mentioned this specific case to talk about a general issue, which is the predominant admin/mod bias when they enter into heated arguments. I already stated my suggestion above and would like admins to take it into consideration, regardless of whether this phenomenon is frequent or not. Thank you.
Julianus, are you soferman all over again? Because if you are, and if you begin with your squeak all over again, I will put you in your place like I did last year.
Aww, thanks for confirming. For some reason there was 1 downvote half a day ago, now there are 7. Makes sense with what your instance is trying to do. You and your instance should be banned from federation.
wow, you would ban a hole instance cause of a single person, really?
If the instance owner does not, that would be natural progression, since the person would repeatedly use sockpuppets from that instance.
Or, each account could be banned over time with high investment of mental facilities and time.
Because it’s made for the people who don’t get banned.
If you get banned, it’s usually a pretty big hint that this community isn’t for you, and to evade is only wasting your own time in the end.
lemmy.ml openly, explicitly has a political bias. This isn’t a free-speech extremist place, and people here enjoy that fact. We don’t want to see the same tired derails every day, we would go somewhere else for that.
21 days for “constant bickering” is a bit vague (and something a large number of us are guilty of)
More interesting than that though is your instance mandacaru.caatinga.digital which I have never seen before, and the sudden appearance of right-wing trolls from that same instance. If we look at the timing…@Nemo accout 2 hrs old currently (same time @Julianus account was banned) and troll accounts x7 created since then too.
Maybe the banning served it’s purpose perfectly?
I’m a little curious what this user was banned for as well. I don’t have any vested interest, but I scrolled through Julianus’ comments and didn’t see anything approaching bad taste. Maybe I missed it, or it was scrubbed.
I just want to say as a user with a long track record at mandacaru.caatinga.digital this is a real instance. Our values include,
I (Julianus) simply picked a server from lemmy.ml’s own list when I tried to log in and saw I was banned. I don’t know anything about those other accounts. In fact, they were banned before I could even read whatever they wrote.
Well you didn’t miss much, they just flail around saying some racist stuff and try to get some air-time for their scat fetishes - not kink shaming or anything, but I wish they felt more comfortable sharing that sort of porn within their own circles.
The admins are allowed to moderate however they like with the rules they see appropriate. If you disagree with their decisions, you shouldn’t expect to be welcomed on lemmy.ml and should instead look for another lemmy instance that better aligns with your ideas.
That seems to defeat the purpose. I came here for civil discussion of differing opinions. If I wanted an echo chamber, I’d go back to reddit.
I find that conversation flourishes when you limit it to a certain degree. In spaces which are completely open and have a massive range of opinion, what you’ll find is mostly yelling at each other over broad talking points that everyone is already familiar with. After a while, nothing of interest comes out of the far left clashing with the far right all the time. But when you limit it, time can be spent doing other things than yelling at the dickhead on the other side who you have little to no overlap with and see as a dire enemy. You can talk about nuances in principles, differences in organizing, etc. It makes for richer, more interesting conversation.
On a hunch… Reddit is far more tolerant of right leaning views than this instance of Lemmy. If I recall correctly, the creators have explicitly said they’d rather have strict moderation than a wide userbase. It’s supposed to be part of the appeal.
There are other instances that may be more tolerant of other views if you consider that this instance is not tolerant enough. It should be noted that lemmy.ml is described in the sidebar as “a community of leftist privacy and FOSS enthusiasts”, so I think it should have been pretty clear that there was going to be a bias.
Bias of opinions, ok. But bias extending to censoring other opinions isn’t cool. If a mod doesn’t like my opinions, he’s free to block me from his view, just like anyone else. But banning me from participating for speaking my mind within the rules of community isn’t leftist, it’s fascist.
I’m just warning you guys. You’re making neat little tech demo that’s heading right to a dead end, if you allow banning people for speaking withing the posted rules.
What makes the “rules of the community” relevant here? Would you have no problem if the rules specifically disallowed your opinions?
Rules are guidelines and should always be loose, left up to human judgement and enforcement. If everything must be outlined with a specific rule, then you’re just inviting constant rules lawyering for the rest of time instead of effectively taking care of people who make your community worse.
I suggest reading On a technicality.
you can’t really disallow that though, instances should be free to moderate however they wish. there will always be moderation like this in some instances, so just avoid those instances. the only thing that bothers me is lemmy.ml bears the name of the platform, yet says it’s not a default instance, which is misleading but oh well, not a big deal.
I mean, so does lemmy.pt and lemmy.cat, but you are right, people see it as the first instance recommended on join-lemmy with the most users and that is has lemmy as its name and think it’s in some way the official instance.
Here are my thoughts in it
https://files.catbox.moe/pdpj3a.mp4
Eat a turd you fggots
which community and which instance are you talking about? lemmy.ml has a very clear left-leaning bias that they like to enforce pretty often with instance and user bans, but not post bans as far as i’m aware, so avoid them as your home instance. i see you’re on a different instance already, though, so you should specify what you’re talking about.
i guess the fact that you have to specify illustrates the beauty of federation!
https://lemmy.ml/c/worldnews
The modlog doesn’t specify who took the action. That seems like something that should be logged…
It was previously shown but is not any longer. The rationale given for the change was along the lines of: “to prevent targeted attacks on mods for mod decisions.”
Which is fair because the mod team should be operating as a whole unit in the end anyways.