this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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Ye Power Trippin' Bastards
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225 users here now
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.
Posting Guidelines
All posts should follow this basic structure:
- Which mods/admins were being Power Tripping Bastards?
- What sanction did they impose (e.g. community ban, instance ban, removed comment)?
- Provide a screenshot of the relevant modlog entry (don’t de-obfuscate mod names).
- Provide a screenshot and explanation of the cause of the sanction (e.g. the post/comment that was removed, or got you banned).
- Explain why you think its unfair and how you would like the situation to be remedied.
Rules
- Post only about bans or other sanctions that you have received from a mod or admin.
- Don’t use private communications to prove your point. We can’t verify them and they can be faked easily.
- Don’t deobfuscate mod names from the modlog with admin powers.
- Don’t harass mods or brigade comms. Don’t word your posts in a way that would trigger such harassment and brigades.
- Do not downvote posts if you think they deserved it. Use the comment votes (see below) for that.
- You can post about power trippin’ in any social media, not just lemmy. Feel free to post about reddit or a forum etc.
- If you are the accused PTB, while you are welcome to respond, please do so within the relevant post.
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.
YTPB matrix channel: For real-time discussions about bastards or to appeal mod actions in YPTB itself.
Some acronyms you might see.
- PTB - Power-Tripping Bastard: The commenter agrees with you this was a PTB mod.
- YDI - You Deserved It: The commenter thinks you deserved that mod action.
- BPR - Bait-Provoked Reaction: That mod probably overreacted in charged situation, or due to being baited.
- CLM - Clueless mod: The mod probably just doesn't understand how their software works.
Relevant comms
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You shielded universalmonk and routinely banned other people for minor insults
Universal Monk knew right where the line was, when they crossed it, they were gone.
Others didn't care where the line was.
Not true. You thought you knew just how to defend their disgusting and transparent motives but they were indefensible. A chorus of many people shouted loudly for weeks and it finally had an impact.
How do I know it wasn't true? From a million miles away that was an obvious troll and that was specifically breaking the rules.
Life has been better for me since I blocked the politics sub.
No, the mods discussed their account multiple times and each time reached the conclusion they were not breaking the rules... until they did, and when they did, they got booted.
There's a lot behind the scenes that you aren't aware of.
Life has been better since you blocked politics? Must have happened after you got banned:
https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&actionType=All&userId=1413078
This is such a weird point of view. The mods don't "own" the space. It's not your server. You're the representatives of the community. It's very weird for the community to speak with an overwhelming voice that they want someone banned because they are toxic and unhinged (and also, breaking the objectively stated rules of the community, with things like how many articles posted per day), and for the mods to say, "No, we decided they stay." Them eventually deciding to ban, after the behavior got even more objectively unacceptable, doesn't excuse it.
It's like the difference between how Trump runs the government and how a normal president runs the government. Trump doesn't "own" the country. He has a responsibility for it. The ownership, but not the responsibility, is what makes someone bad in a leadership position. It's not to say you need to automatically accede to any loud contingent of the community that's yelling about something. But UM was about as clear-cut a case as it is possible to get, and I cannot for the life of me understand someone who's entrusted to keep a community of people a good place, who decides to come out and tell the members of that community "No, we've decided that this person needs to stay in the community, and we don't care what you think about it." I have no idea who these moderators are who are looking at UM's behavior and deciding "yeah that's not rule-breaking," let alone a consensus of them.
I think it is, in part, a product of the weirdly off-kilter incentives that exist on the modern volunteer internet. I sort of suspect that what's going on is that every human being kind of has an internal mental model of how much the rest of the community "owes" them, and that colors their behavior and how they adhere to the social contract. In places where someone feels like the community has "given them so much," that kind of thing, they'll really have respect and good dealing in almost everything. They'll fight hard to keep the community as a good place. They won't fall back on bullshit excuses like "well he's not breaking any rules (today)."
I do see the other side of it. I think almost any moderator on the modern internet gets put upon by so much thankless crap on a day-to-day basis (some of which you touched on elsewhere ein these comments) that your what-I-owe-the-users meter is absolutely pegged at "0" only because it can't go lower. I get that. I don't think it's really wrong for you to feel that way. I have a lot of sympathy for what mods do and it's a pretty critical part of keeping the community okay. I'm just saying that it would be hard for be in that position and take at all seriously what any one of "the users" thinks or wants, or even a group of them. That is wrong though. That is your position, to support the will of the community to build a good place to be. Not to lecture the community on what it should be, with whether that is good or bad as irrelevant or subordinate to "the rules."
I don't know, man. I don't really know what the answer is, and I don't really like the thankless and difficult position that mods on busy communities get put into. But this mindset is wrong.
The mods set and enforce the rules of the community, if someone isn't breaking the rules, they can be as obnoxious and hated as they can stand.
We looked at them, repeatedly, and were actively waiting for them to cross that line, when they did, we took action.
This happens on the back end a lot, there are a couple of other accounts (which shall remain nameless) under discussion now.
In those two cases, they aren't in my communities so I approach it as "not my circus, not my clowns", but provided an opinion. I think they're ban worthy, but it's ultimately up to the mods of those communities and admins to make that call.
Yeah you've said that a lot but I know what I saw. Dozens minimum were routinely saying things like "this troll hasn't been banned yet? Wtf?! They are a super obvious troll"
Any discussion that discounted that was not a good one . If you got made the fall guy, that sucks but from the user perspective, you defended an obvious troll.
We don't moderate based on fee fees. We moderate on rule breaking behavior. UM was right on the line, until he wasn't.
But this is besides the point here of removing posts from shitty sources, which Monk also was not doing.
You can ignore the point about everyone thinking they are a troll, which breaks rules, but it stands.
What "everyone thinks" doesn't enter into it without evidence. The majority of voters thought Trump would make a fine President in the last election. In a lot of cases "most people" are wrong.
Funny you should mention that. Disinformation campaigns disseminated by trolls from around the world are partially responsible for that.
"What everyone thinks" certainly should matter. If everyone is saying it's a troll, it's probably been clear for a while that it's a troll. The evidence was overwhelming. Pretending it was absent proves my point.