this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2024
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Ye Power Trippin' Bastards

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This is a community in the spirit of "Am I The Asshole" where people can post their own bans from lemmy or reddit or whatever and get some feedback from others whether the ban was justified or not.

Sometimes one just wants to be able to challenge the arguments some mod made and this could be the place for that.

Rules

Expect to receive feedback about your posts, they might even be negative.

Make sure you follow this instance's code of conduct. In other words we won't allow bellyaching about being sanctioned for hate speech or bigotry.

Some acronyms you might see.

Relevant comms

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So I was just banned from starcitizen@lemmy.ml for no apparent reason? (feddit.org)
submitted 3 weeks ago by DmMacniel@feddit.org to c/yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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So I try to make heads or tails of this situation. I got randomly banned from a community where I posted a youtube video showing something from a Convention. Then I wanted to post a question today but realised that I couldn't since I was banned. That community is sadly the biggest of all Star Citizen communities (the next one would be from lemmy.world)

I took a look at the Mod log and see the following line in it:

So no clean up of violating comments or posts, just a strict out ban.

The community has a pretty standard ruleset:

further, the moderator @Rumblestiltskin@lemmy.ml hasn't posted anything since a year, so what gives here, or was it some other mod that was able to declare the ban?

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[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 74 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

This has nothing to do with the community. The modlog shows that you were banned site-wide from lemmy.ml, which is implemented by a ban from each individual community individually (so despite how this says it was done by a "mod", it was actually an admin):

Removed Comment So they are doing a China? by macniel@feddit.org reason: Rule 1

It is an unwritten rule that you are not allowed to criticize China there. Or Russia. Or anything else that they do not like.

[–] DmMacniel@feddit.org 34 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Oh damn now that makes sense. This site wide ban really needs to be conveyed better so I didn't even thought of making that connection.

To bad that one of the biggest meme community is hosted on .ml

[–] Deceptichum@quokk.au 50 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Everyone is better off not using .ml

[–] Speculater@lemmy.world 17 points 3 weeks ago

Blocked them ages ago when they removed a silly meme that they thought might maybe be anti China, but was 100% unrelated.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 9 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

The only ways that I know of to user-block Lemmy.ml:

  1. non-Lemmy PieFed (you can block any custom instance you wish - it lacks some polish compared to Lemmy but it's really growing up strong and is even ahead in some ways, e.g. this one) or Sublinks, in the meantime Tesseract on dubvee.org that says it will switch to use the latter eventually. Edit: I forgot to mention Mbin, b/c I am not sure if it can or not. Someone said that originally Kbin could user-block whole instances, but there seem to be reports that Mbin cannot for whatever reason, and I have not made an account to check it out personally or a post to ask someone.

  2. lemmy.cafe that is very welcoming and has blocked all of the big 3, + threads, and interestingly, virtually nothing else. I think this should be among the new default recommendations really, the only downside seems to be that it has only a single admin so perhaps less stable than e.g. lemm.ee (though the latter allows lemmygrad.ml, hexbear.net, and lemmy.ml - which for some people is a good thing, but for people who want the opposite of that, without other additional restrictions, that's lemme.cafe). It is notably running 0.19.6-beta.9 though, so the admin seems super on the ball, and it has really nice welcoming messages too, guiding people to a variety of helpful resources. Edit: oh I forgot about your instance, quokk.au, also only a single user, though it doesn't block lemmygrad.ml for whatever reason, but yes that's another option.

  3. someone said that the Boost app allows user-blocking of instances. I cannot confirm personally nor know of others - Voyager (on Android) cannot, but what about e.g. Sync?

  4. Lemmy ostensibly has a "user block of instances", except it doesn't really at all - all it does is block communities, not users, and what little protection it did offer irt the latter has actually weakened over time (e.g. for those in Lemmy.World running 0.19.3, users from blocked instances cannot trigger a "notification", whereas for most people outside of that running 0.19.5 they can). At this point I don't expect anything that will allow blocking lemmy.ml users to ever be released on any instance running the Lemmy codebase - the only options seem to be move to an instance offering defederation, leave Lemmy entirely, or suck it up and swallow what you're given.

It makes sense that most instance admins do not want to defederate though, b/c some communities are still held hostage on the lemmy.ml instance - e.g. !firefox@lemmy.ml with 3.6K MAU (monthly active users) vs. the next largest one !firefox@lemmy.world with only 0.7K MAU, that's an enormous difference! Actually it would be best if communities, especially niche ones, were not held hostage by ANY kind of political maneuvering - except there is literally nothing these days that is not political, it would seem, including "facts" themselves.

But yeah, one reason to move communities off is that the mods themselves could accidentally get booted, or at the very least their users could at any point say something that sets off the ban hammer - and then never be allowed to post or comment in the community again? Unless it's a community called I_fucking_love_Russia_and_China_too, it's a risk that can seriously fragment the Fediverse, to tie that content to a certain brand of political thinking.

Especially one that is nowhere written down, and could change at any given moment, also without any prior notification.

img

But so long as you continue to use the Lemmy software, what right does anyone have to complain about how the devs wish to implement their own code, which they wrote for themselves, for their own desires and ends?

If we want better, we have to make things that are better, on our own.

[–] Deceptichum@quokk.au 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

What's the Big 3? The instance I'm on is de-feded with ML, Hex, and Threads. Honestly my experience here has been much better than on any of the other bigger sites for that reason.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I don't doubt it. Threads I thought was more of a preemptive measure though, since iirc Meta wasn't ready to actually start sending any of its data towards the Fediverse. The "third" member of the big 3 then is lemmygrad.ml. Though most instances defederate from it, even if they don't defederate from hexbear.net or lemmy.ml, so possibly even without having defederated from it explicitly you aren't really seeing much content coming your way from it?

Oh no, your defederation is somehow wonky. I don't see lemmygrad.ml communities, not that I wanted to you understand but it's not in your defed list so they should be there, but I do see communities from both lemmy.ml and hexbear.net. Maybe simply adding the instance names is not enough and you need to "reinitialize" the data or some such? Here's one: https://quokk.au/c/memes@lemmy.ml and here's another: https://quokk.au/c/memes@hexbear.net. But then again... all the posts are old, so maybe that's how it is supposed to look? I dunno, so my message is probably confusing, but I thought I would offer it anyway just in case you didn't know, and if that helps you figure anything out!:-)

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

When instances are defederated the connection between them is severed and data stops being exchanged. However communties, posts, and comments still remain on your instance from before. There just won't be any new ones added. In order to remove the old ones they need to be purged but that's not usually done since it takes effort and it's not usually worth it unless the communities themselves contain objectionable/illegal content.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 3 points 3 weeks ago

Thanks 👍

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The only ways that I know of to user-block Lemmy.ml:

There is a also another way, I saw someone suggesting that a person could contact a remote instance's admins and have their accounts and data removed from the instance. Essentially requesting a ban.

The big drawback to all but one of the methods listed above is that they are false-assurance or cosmetic/curation blocks, not functional blocks. And with some of the more problematic instances out there, false-assurance is almost worse than nothing at all. With your posts and comments removed from your instance you'll never receive replies or attacks from users on that instance, they'll just never see your content anymore.

​

It makes sense that most instance admins do not want to defederate though, b/c some communities are still held hostage on the lemmy.ml instance - e.g. !firefox@lemmy.ml with 3.6K MAU (monthly active users) vs. the next largest one !firefox@lemmy.world with only 0.7K MAU, that’s an enormous difference!

That's why admins need to defederate it more often. If Lemmy.world alone gave them the boot it would slash their userbase in those communities significantly. It's very likely that the moderators there would move or a large amount of other users would move. They're not going to though unless they have to, and making it easier by keeping the door open only slows that down from happening.

​

But so long as you continue to use the Lemmy software, what right does anyone have to complain about how the devs wish to implement their own code, which they wrote for themselves, for their own desires and ends?

I would say every reason since the nature of open-source code means you can fork it and use it how ever you want. Especially given that many people are contributors. I say if you want complete control and don't want to hear complaints about your code and platform don't license as GPL and make contributors waive their IP ownership to the devs when contributing code. They didn't do any of this though.

​

If we want better, we have to make things that are better, on our own.

Sublinks is looking very promising as a replacement for Lemmy not only is it written in a more well known language than Rust it's also aiming to have more features while remaining mostly compatible with the Lemmy API.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I don't know how you would force compliance with a different instance though, especially if it is not located in the EU.

In the end we can only control ourselves - e.g. note I'm writing this from a PieFed account:-). But yes Sublinks is a very exciting development as well, though I have not heard any developments for many months when it was mentioned that it was not stable yet.

And yes someone could fork the Lemmy codebase. Many instances including Lemmy.cafe and Tesseract on dubvee.org have done exactly that, though unlike Mbin (since Kbin is now defunct) they don't want to get too far ahead of the main branch so that they can still receive future updates easier, whereas PieFed and Sublinks and Mbin are each entirely separate projects from Lemmy to begin with, though they are interoperable with those federated communities which is awesome 😎.

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I don’t know how you would force compliance with a different instance though, especially if it is not located in the EU.

If you're in the US and they're in the US or countries that have copyright treaties you can request removal under DMCA since you own your posts and comment content. And if you don't agree to their TOS or licensing it's a kind of a grey area for them. Still not completely foolproof since if Instance admins are willing to go further than you're willing to go (i.e. not complying without a lawsuit), you can't really do much about it.

In the end we can only control ourselves - e.g. note I'm writing this from a PieFed account:-). But yes Sublinks is a very exciting development as well, though I have not heard any developments for many months when it was mentioned that it was not stable yet.

Yeah especially because Rust is much harder to contribute to. Once Sublinks gets off the ground I feel like there will be more people eager and willing to contribute code. I'm hoping that it's still going since there would be great benefit in this project being an option.

And yes someone could fork the Lemmy codebase. Many instances including Lemmy.cafe and Tesseract on dubvee.org have done exactly that, though unlike Mbin (since Kbin is now defunct) they don’t want to get too far ahead of the main branch so that they can still receive future updates easier, whereas PieFed and Sublinks and Mbin are each entirely separate projects from Lemmy to begin with, though they are interoperable with those federated communities which is awesome 😎.

I believe Programming.dev does it too, they call it Pangora though they're currently restructuring it to be a fork of Sublinks so they haven't worked on it much at the moment. Also Tesseract is an alternate frontend of the Lemmy software, not a different software. It does improve Lemmy greatly though.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

So what will make Sublinks better than e.g. PieFed? Or Mbin for that matter? All 3 of these I thought used Python rather than Rust, as Lemmy does.

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I think the main benefit is Lemmy API compatibility and the fact that it's compatible with Lemmy's database structure. Meaning that an instance could choose to migrate from Lemmy to Sublinks. When it comes to any other software they can't really. They'd have to start from scratch as a platform.

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[–] yuri@pawb.social 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Voyager DOES allow you to user-block entire instances, it’s in the settings menu under “filters and blocks”

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Hrm, I see. But that block seems to just set Lemmy's default "user-level instance blocking", which does not block users from the instance, only communities. i.e., it's the same as the Lemmy web UI, and in it I see that I've already blocked Lemmy.ml, for all the good that it does - which I mean to say is not much.

So I meant here that the app does not provide additional functionality beyond the web UI, to do something that the web UI can or will not.

And this is why I don't want to write a post about this topic - it's terribly confusing, with so many fine-grain details that can trip someone up. This would be better written by a team of people who each know more about the various aspects, i.e. the different apps and methods of accessing the Fediverse. But at least here I offered what little I do know personally.

[–] yuri@pawb.social 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

ooh i didn’t even realize there was a difference. you’re right, it is terribly confusing hahaha

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 weeks ago

It's done that way on purpose, blocking the users from an instance can disrupt the flow of communities. It's purpose isn't to filter out users, it's to filter out all communities on that instance. It's not an alternative or replacement to defederation it's an alternative to blocking every community from a specific instance, which is long and tedious.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 13 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

To bad that one of the biggest meme community is hosted on .ml

Give !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world and !memes@sopuli.xyz a check, perhaps you'll like one (or both) of them.

[–] FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] DmMacniel@feddit.org 7 points 3 weeks ago

I will check them out, all four of them. Thanks (and to you @lvxferre@mander.xyz)

[–] GBU_28@lemm.ee 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

No, just forget them.

[–] DmMacniel@feddit.org 5 points 3 weeks ago

Since that community auto removed itself from my favourite list, I guess I will just forget about them :)

[–] BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one 43 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

Fuck Lemmy.ml they are all tankies and pro-fascism.

If you are a mod from lemmy.ml reading this, go fuck yourself ban me.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 18 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

If you are a mod from lemmy.ml reading this, go fuck yourself ban me.

You know, at those times I'm really glad that I've stopped moderating comms there. I closed one down, migrated another, but nobody can blame me for condoning this shit.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 16 points 3 weeks ago

Thank you for your service. You are part of the solution here, we all can see it:-).

[–] Valmond@lemmy.world 6 points 3 weeks ago

I have them blacklisted so there's that.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 21 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

Hey folks, I just had an amazing idea: a drinking game. Drink a sip when someone gets banned from lemmy.ml, under rule #1, for criticising either Russia or China. Two sips if there's no reasonable way to interpret it as criticism against the populations, only against the State or corporations.

...nah, bad idea. You'll ruin your livers.

Serious now. After checking the modlog, it's clearly a PTB (power-tripping bastards) case. The nearest of something bigoted that I could find in the modlog was

Conspiracy theorists, Populists and Putin Dick sucker will run with this for sure.

This is bad not because you're criticising Putin, or Trump, but because of the expression itself. Even then, it's more of a "Watch your language, you're being homophobic", not grounds for a month long ban. And let us not fool ourselves, this likely had zero impact on your ban.

[–] ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Devils advocate: sucking dicks isn't inherently gay (women exist), and "sucking someone's dick" figuratively is a colloquial albeit explicit term for "sucking up" to someone, or "kissing ass."

Saying "blah blah sucking putin's dick" is homophobic (gay) is like saying "blah blah eating MTG's box" is homophobic (lesbian).

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[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 6 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Well, there was something about encouraging assassination, though it was two months ago. Possibly the admins were noticing a pattern of behavior and just decided to hell with it.

So imho the chief issues here are perhaps more related to transparency, explaining what happened - OP had no idea even? - and why (as in precisely which rule), rather than trying to guess if it was justified or not, especially since we can no longer see all the linked stuff (unless someone has admin privileges and wants to look).

Edit: also, I just had... significantly more than a sip, of 70 proof whiskey, so apparently I knew that you were going to say this? Yeah... we'll go with that:-).

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I saw that entry. It was in lemmy.world, not .ml, and given the target of the joke I don't think that the .ml team would care about it.

So imho the chief issues here are perhaps more related to transparency [...]

Yup, pretty much. They never communicate properly who is removing the content / banning the user, and why. And they clearly don't want to. (Perhaps the .ml admins are waiting for the devs to implement transparency features into Lemmy /s)

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 6 points 3 weeks ago

Good point.

Before I saw the /s my brain was cracking up ... uh, the .ml admins are the devs tho?!?!?!

img

And they have actively taken steps to prevent people from finding how who did what action. Only ~~authority figures~~ admins can see some of that now, while the rest of us just see "mod". In fairness, it does protect a mod team against aboose.

img2

Though it shifts the balance of power away from the worker/peasant/user-class and upwards to the we-are-all-equal-but-some-of-us-are-more-equal-than-others-who-are-supposedly-also-equal class. You know, the principles of "communism", where famously we are all equal except the handful of rulerz above us all?

img3

But as I mentioned elsewhere, it's their software, and they can - and WILL btw - make it work however they want to. We are the ones who choose to use it... or not.

[–] morphballganon@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago

Well, I got banned from ml. What are we drinkin boys

[–] Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.win 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I was banned for saying Cuba was communist with no value judgment of either the nation or the political system. AFAIK they are the only truly communist nation remaining.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

I was banned for saying Cuba was communist with no value judgment of either the nation or the political system. AFAIK they are the only truly communist nation remaining.

Emphasis mine. That is not how it looks like in the original context:

[OP] If the US stayed out of other countries politics and there were no coups or installation of people favorable to the US what would the world look like?

[You, removed as "rule 1"] Those countries would have been taken over by communist regimes due to support from hostile nations... So like Cuba but all over the place.

You're clearly casting a value judgment over the Cuban political system, and defending US intervention in other countries.

With that out of the way, it's yet another case of rule #1 (no bigotry) being used to prevent people from criticising the admins' views, because they can't be arsed to list in the rules "5. Don't criticise our political views here."

Side note. I do not want to engage on the discussion of capitalism/socialism/communism here, as it falls outside the scope of this community. However:

  • Communists distinguish between "socialism" and "communism", as two sequential economic systems. Cuba's regime is socialist, not communist. Since this conflation shows that you aren't communist, it further reinforces reading your comment as casting a negative judgement over the Cuban regime.
  • What you're calling "nation" there is "country". For Cuba it doesn't make much of a difference, but for other countries it does.
[–] DarkNightoftheSoul@mander.xyz 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Side note. I do not want to engage on the discussion of capitalism/socialism/communism here, as it falls outside the scope of this community. However:

  • im gonna
  • you cant stop me i already did it
[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 2 points 3 weeks ago

...yeah, I'm aware that the first bullet point is exactly what I said that I didn't want to do. It's just that the tidbit about terminology is relevant here.

The second bullet point is something else though.

[–] Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.win 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

You’re clearly casting a value judgment over the Cuban political system

I don't see how. Please elaborate.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 2 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

It's a bunch of little things together:

  • Cuba often being used as boogeyman when criticising communists, typically without mentioning all things dragging the Caribbean down (regardless of Castro and Guevara);
  • the fact that you're clearly not a communist, based on how you used the word;
  • usage of negatively charged words, such as "take over" and "hostile";
  • the predictive part of your comment being already mentioned by other users, over and over, leaving the point of your comment to be just voicing your opinion=judgment.

Together they make your "like Cuba" immediately read as "bad", even if you were trying to be as neutral as possible.

And at the end of the day, no matter the subject, it's almost impossible to be truly neutral and not cast any sort of judgment. We do this all the time, often without even realising it.

[Just to be clear: I am not defending the .ml admins and their bullshit removal of your comment as if it was bigotry. It is not bigotry, nor it should be removed as such. OK?]

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[–] Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

IMO even in this case, he's not criticizing them for sucking dick, he's criticizing them for sucking Putin's dick. Those two things are not the same - one is potentially homophobic (if directed at male users), but the other is more of an indictment of users who are happy to swallow Putin's constant stream of disinformation than it is a criticism of anyone's sexuality. I get that some folks have trouble parsing the difference though.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 5 points 2 weeks ago

IMO even in this case, he’s not criticizing them for sucking dick, he’s criticizing them for sucking Putin’s dick

Yup, and that's an attenuating factor, alongside what ArcaneSlime said. It's no grounds for a ban, at most a "pls watch language" scolding.

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 18 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It's probably @davel@lemmy.ml the pro-Russian shill.

Dude denies Russian propaganda even existing. These clowns are so uncultured they genuinely don't understand how see-through their bullshit is.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 12 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Broaden your mind.

There is more than one Lemmy.ml admin:-).

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

There's a whole bunch of them for sure. Just wanted to ping the fucker.

[–] BomberMan9865@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

If you want to ping them you have to do it as a link like this @Dasus@lemmy.world Just @ing their username doesn't work yet. You'll also have to do it as a new comment since edits won't notify them.

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[–] bestboyfriendintheworld@sh.itjust.works 10 points 2 weeks ago

Getting banned from lemmy.ml is a badge of honor.

[–] Etterra@lemmy.world 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Well your first mistake was buying into Star Citizen's empty promises.

[–] DmMacniel@feddit.org 5 points 3 weeks ago

Eh, it's a hobby and I like it very much :)

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