āIf there is anyone else in the world who might be able to keep me in check if I do something unreasonable, I canāt handle that. I need to be the ultimate authority over the little hapless users in my domain, period, end of story.ā
(Edit: Jesus Christ man. I know nothing about this guy other than downvotegate, but he sounds like a nimrod. IDK, I take it back, he seems fine. I talked with him and he just has strong feelings about this one issue and heās making a point. I still think the way heās trying to make the point is going to have trouble getting received, in the way heās doing it, but whatever, he seems well intentioned, I donāt think he is any sort of bad way about it having heard him out on it.)
I keep saying: The whole moderation model where it is moderators setting up a mandatory override over content within ātheir place,ā and any users who donāt like it are forced to beg for change or complain about the unfairness to others, is simply inferior to the model where it is users deciding which moderators they want to allow to override their content.
Itās a hard pill as a mod but you have to swallow it. People are going to do things you donāt like and say things you donāt like. You have to be okay with that. You will not get an echochamber of people who agree with you 100%. The choice is you can either become okay with that and apply some rules that are reasonable - or you can remove everything you disagree with pushing people away.
Look at me. I run a few communities here (and a few elsewhere), but one of them here is [email protected] . I personally am a swiftie and there are dozens of us here on the fediverse. That being said, if I banned anyone for simply downvoting a post or saying something negative about her then Iād have to defederate every instance there is. Instead, I can let my own users do that for me and let people get downvoted to hell in the community, and sometimes out of those bad comments comes some real good discussion. If anything actually comes out that is against the rules, like true hate or bigotry or personal attacks then sure thing Iāll swoop in and remove it, but even for a Swiftie community in the least likely space, that happens extremely infrequently.
I do, I have some math that determines how much they downvote vs upvote. I allow downvotes, but if you donāt provide anything positive to the community then I ban them from it.
I think it would be reasonable if you did ban prolific repeat offenders personally. Obviously not sending DMs, but theyāre clearly not interested - you would be helping them curate their own feeds.
Thatās actually exactly what I do. I score each one based on their upvote/downvote ratio and from that I can tell if I should ban them. Itās a very forgiving ratio, I donāt want to discourage down voting, but if you do all or mostly down voting then you arenāt contributing. On top of that I agree, if you donāt like it then you should welcome a ban.
Yāknow, I think this might be a symptom of a problem in Lemmy more than a problem of people.
Iāve noticed that sometimes the feed gives me a sudden influx with dozens of post for the same community, and so after the 30th post about the same thing itās pretty easy to go ātired of this, donāt care!ā
I know for sure I got banned from some AI slop communities more-or-less that way. So thatās a blessing.
I keep saying: The whole moderation model where it is moderators setting up a mandatory override over content within ātheir place,ā and any users who donāt like it are forced to beg for change or complain about the unfairness to others, is simply inferior to the model where it is users deciding which moderators they want to allow to override their content.
What model would you be calling for? How would this work in practice?
Bluesky does it by letting people (or automated systems) publish lists of content and users that that publisher is recommending that people block, and then part of your user config is enabling which of those sources you want to apply to your own feed.
I donāt really know how you could apply that to Lemmy since the model is just different. Mostly I am just talking philosophy and stuff that irritates me about Lemmyās model. A simplistic approach though could be just to have each user settings include a āmod ignoreā list or something alongside the blocks and etc, the list of moderators whose comment deletion and user ban settings you donāt want to respect. So you can still see and interact with content that comes from any users those specific mods have attempted to block.
It would be a little bit messy, it might be better to take a step back and reengineer things to be more user-centric instead of that, but that would be compatible with existing stuff, just easy harm reduction when specific mods are widely recognized by the community to be bums. I also think just the threat of it (and the corresponding loss of credibility and control for the mod) would be a useful check on people who currently feel that lack of credibility in the community means literally nothing to them, and donāt bother to try to maintain it.
(Hey @[email protected] ā remember a week ago when people were talking about your moderation on LW and asked you this and this, and then you just fell silent and still like a frozen bunny waiting for the predator to leave, instead of addressing those reasonable questions?)
Just focusing on one thing specifically here: Your grievance here (and others grievances with him) arenāt really with Jordan at this point, but with the inability or unwillingness of lemmy.world to act. Jordanās behaviour and positions are well known. Him against the world. He wonāt budge. It really is up to lemmy.world now.
In theory, lemmy/piefed etc systems are far better for mod accountability on this score because instance owners and admins are far closer to the community than reddit admins. I can tell you also that atomicpoet, for instance, making this decision didnāt come out of a vacuum on this point.
Yeah, true that. If I had to engage in rampant speculation, I would say there are two possibilities:
There isnāt somebody else whoās willing to put in the thankless work day after day to keep the big LW communities free of actually-objectionable content for free, and so theyāre basically stuck with Jordan whether or not he is doing a good job
There are some moderators who want to make quieter but much more explicitly malicious moderation, and itās kind of nice that Jordan can be a lightning-rod for mod criticism and cause a smokescreen of drama while theyāre doing that, so people heavily advocate for keeping him on behind the scenes in some way
Either or both might be true. Like people said in the original Jordan complainfest thread, theyāve known about this for literally years at this point, so I agree it seems a little unlikely that things would change now. Kaplan tried to say that new information has come to light now which is leading them to re-evaluate, but thatās honestly not really all that credible to me. I donāt really know, but if I had to guess I would guess that theyāll keep him on just because whatever structural issues led to them keeping him on in the past just havenāt changed that I am aware of.
I can tell you also that atomicpoet, for instance, making this decision didnāt come out of a vacuum on this point.
Clearly lol. If anything it is a strong point in piefed.socialās favor, is that theyāre willing to exercise common sense and take action about dumb behavior by their moderators.
And also, if this becomes a big enough issue - there should be a groundswell effort to dethrone the communities that Jordan moderates and supplant them, This can happen here.
I generally fuck with [email protected] and [email protected], they seem a lot more sensible and enjoyable than the lemmy.world equivalents. Honestly every time I enter into the big-world-event communities on lemmy.world I wind up quickly regretting it just because they are so full of hostile objectionable people who are shouting bad opinions (which of course Jordan does nothing about in the course of his relentless quest to stop people changing headlines or being mean to trolls.)
[email protected] is mod posting only though, last I checked. Also the mod seems like they might have some kind of strict opinions about whatās allowed (there is a post on YPTB about them right now, I havenāt really looked to see if there is anything valid to it but I do remember posting stories there way back when and the mod having requests about my posting that seemed somewhat arbitrary to me. Not really anything wrong or PTB, it was just kind of annoying and eventually I went somewhere else.)
To me I think refusing to federate with lemmy.world is a positive, not a negative. I havenāt really noticed anything lacking because of the LW users not being involved in the comments aside from a whole bunch of noise and hostility.
For the replacement bot you offered, I did pass it on to the person who coded the MBFC bot, I honestly donāt know what happened to it after that.
Okay, so when you said:
Specifically, with the MBFC bot, yeah, I thought, and still think, itās a good idea. Was it perfect? Well, no, but it was the best we could do for free. Or free-ish, TBH Iām not sure if there were fees involved in the API use. I can tell you the alternates I looked at were more money than I personally would pay.
But when the complaints on the bot came in, I told people honestly āHey, Iām open, whatās an alternative?ā
At best the response was silence, at worst it was angry noises.
ā¦ did you forget that all of that had happened, or what led you to summarize it in that objectively inaccurate way? It wasnāt just me either, the people you summarize as ārabidly anti-botā actually took a ton of time to explain their reasons in detail and offer alternatives, this is just ridiculous trying to pretend that they were the ones being stubborn and childish about it.
Honestly Iām not sure even what response I am looking for from this. Just making the point I guess, but itās already been hashed over to the moon and back. Feel free to respond or not, I donāt think it will change anyoneās mind unless you have some kind of really great explanation or dramatic reason for saying it this way, which seems unlikely.
For the Canadian thing? I made my position clear multiple times, Iām not re-hashing months old Lemmy drama.
(For those just joining us, Jordan isnāt Canadian and made a mistake about terminology in the Canadian governmental system, which is fine, but then he started taking mod action against the correct terminology as āmisinformation,ā and when many people including Canadians who are obviously familiar with it and lemmy.world admins tried to explain it to him, they all just kind of got this type of response.)
(Honestly like I say I also see no benefit to me addressing these issues further. As Skavau said, it seems like itās more an issue at this point of, Jordan isnāt planning on changing his methods of interaction, and the question is what the rest of Lemmy does about it.)
Itās not a matter of forgetting all that happened, itās a matter of having dozens of people going āReeeeeeee! We hate the bot!ā and having one person with a sane reply.
As a rule, yes, the responses I got were non-productive. Yours was the exception, not the rule, it got kicked up and nothing came from it.
TBH, thatās the piece I legit donāt remember, why it couldnāt be implemented, Iād have to dig back through old messages to get the whys and wherefores.
But in the end, given the groups reaction to bots in general? I doubt it would make any difference.
Clearly silence is better than offering a solution.
A solution carries the implication of critique, the recognition of a problem, and authority, ārespectingā authority, is very importamt to our dear @[email protected]
Now on your knees, you filthy disrespectful authority disrespecting bastard, and start digging.
Nothing to do with disrespectā¦ Out of all the people complaining, when asked āWell, what do you suggest?ā One person had an idea and everyone else dummied up.
As it turned out, the one suggestion didnāt work out either, but in the end, I donāt think it matters, the people who were complaining would have hated it too.
Okay, but hereās the thing: youāre not entitled to every community that exists. People can decide for themselves who they want to associate with. And if an admin is the one footing the bill for the infrastructure, their word is final on who gets through the door.
If you donāt want mods or admins overruling you, then you need to run your own server. Thatās the price of control. I already do this with two Fediverse servers, and I fully intend to do the same with a federated forum server.
I am starting to feel sincerely like it would be a good idea for YPTB to adopt a new rule: If you come in with the point of view āTHE MODS ARE GODS THEIR DECISIONS MAY NOT BE QUESTIONEDā, they get banned instantly, with a short reply from the moderator saying āCan do! My decisions may not be questioned.ā
(Temp banned obviously. Iām not a monster.)
Obviously the admins can do what they want with their server, and mods likewise within their communities. What weāre set up to discuss in this community is whether or not theyāve used that control ā which theyāre obviously able to wield ā in a manner that makes them a twatrocket.
Thereās a whole philosophy of cooperative endeavor involved here. I just recently got a temp ban that was 100% justified, Iām fine with that. Lots of mods use their mod powers in a way thatās perfectly reasonable and legitimate, and part of a healthy society is that people in whom is vested some level of control over the surroundings, we can talk about whether theyāre being reasonable with it. Almost everyone is, and sometimes there are reasonable discussions to be had about if they unintentionally stepped over a line or offended someone or something. This whole model where itās little warring fiefdoms, and Iām going to be a screaming unrestrained dickhead if I want to when youāre in my fiefdom and if you donāt like it, go somewhere else, is one that people are able to adopt. I donāt think it is a good one. I feel like ignoring the feedback you get, if you do decide thatās your MO, is going to lead to a bad engagement with the rest of the community and a lack of success for your new instance. Itās a give and take, people can talk, sometimes when people are telling you youāre out of line, theyāre just kind of looking out for you and letting you know they take offense and probably others do too, you know?
My biggest concern isnāt the āgeneralā Lemmy communityāIām focused on building my community. If a group of people on some distant server decide they donāt like me, thatās perfectly fine. Iām not there to serve them.
But if that dislike turns into dogpiling or harassmentāas Iāve already experiencedāIāll use the tools available: blocking, banning, and defederation. Once my server is live, those are exactly the measures Iāll rely on.
And yes, I know this approach may feel at odds with the broader Lemmy culture. But Lemmy itself is still quite smallāaround 36,000 users. Thatās a drop in the bucket compared to the wider Fediverse, and practically invisible next to social media as a whole.
Thatās why Iām confident I can create something federated that doesnāt have to follow Lemmyās norms or culture.
Yeah, I get that. And youāre right, you can do whatever you want including deciding āthis community is all just wrong and Iām going to make something right,ā and thatās the nice thing about user-hosted networks like this. And Iāve certainly come down on the side of āthe Lemmy community can get lost because the majority is wrong on whatever issue weāre talking aboutā in the past.
Personally in my judgement I donāt really see it as harassment in this case, I just see people disagreeing strongly with your actions and then getting snarky or insulting about it as people are wont to do ā like I said, the only thing I really know about you is that you started banning people for downvotes and ābroā both of which seem ridiculous to me. (And also a tactical error, since rightly or wrongly itāll invite a kind of dogpiling publicity which I donāt think you want.) But yeah, everyone has the ability to draw their own distinction and follow through on their own server / own community based on you being right and everyone else being wrong versus the other way around.
Well, I can only tell you what actually happened: dogpiling and harassment did occur. I had to lock down !fediversenews, and even after that, people followed me into other communities I moderated to continue harassing me.
At that point, the intention behind the original post matters less than the outcome. If the purpose of a community is to amplify outrage, itās not surprising when some people inevitably take it too far.
Well but like I say, I think you made kind of a tactical error if you donāt want stuff like that to happen. I have plenty of times seen a mod ban for some reason that almost everyone disagrees with. I have never seen a mod snoop on the upvotes for the banned comment and also attempt to ban people from expressing their approval for the banned content, and then send every one of them a snotty DM about it. I think thatās very obviously an overreach, and there is sort of a societal immune system that automatically wants to backlash against that kind of thing by marking the person who did it as āenemyā and making sure they hear about it that that behavior is unwanted. And of course the internet being what it is, sometimes that backlash takes on a life of its own and turns into something incredibly toxic and unwarranted. I think though that this idea that youāll set yourself apart from that kind of thing ever happening to you, because you can just run your own server and control everything about how people interact with you, is just a non starter. I think reexamining your own behavior is a lot more positive way to approach making sure you wonāt get harassed as much in the future.
IDK man, maybe Iām wrong or I missed finding out about some important details of how it happened. And for all I know some people did harass you in some out-of-pocket way. Iām just saying how I see it, thatās all.
You know, I only tried the private message approach because someone suggested it was the best way to de-escalate. Before that, I would simply banāno conversation, no debate.
On the servers I run myself, I go even further: I de-federate. No warnings. Itās clean, simple, and fast.
Where I misjudged thingsāand I see this clearly nowāwas in thinking that private messages would actually reduce conflict. They donāt. If someone shows signs of being toxic, or openly supports toxic behaviour, itās best to take them at their word. A conversation in that situation wonāt lead anywhere productive.
So yes, messaging turned out to be a big waste of time. The real takeaway for me is simple: own the space, set clear expectations, and act quickly when problems arise.
I think the issue was banning for giving votes you didnāt agree with, not with sending the DMs. Iāve sent DMs instead of doing admin actions before, just to open a dialogue, or to give people a chance to push back or explain before I take some kind of action, and that part seems fine. I canāt even really articulate why it was that this rubbed people so badly the wrong way, but I think sending the DMs and getting in an extended back and forth did somehow make it worse. Definitely doubling down and banning people (and also DMing them) because their reaction and vote on it wasnāt the ācorrectā and permitted one according to you made it worse.
People can vote. People can react. Setting yourself up as this lord and arbiter of whatās right and wrong is always going to make a backlash. If it was me, I would have made a public reply instead of a DM so that other people can weigh in, I would have framed it in terms of āwhat I allow hereā and made sure to clarify the rules on the sidebar instead of framing your point of view as the one thatās objectively the right one (which youāre still doing here, when you describe calling someone ābroā as ātoxicā instead of saying that you personally think itās rude and donāt allow it). And then if they still donāt agree, youāre still within your rights to just say yes okay fine but thatās the rules, sorry, and ban them (and then move on yes).
I still think you would have gotten backlash, but framing it in that way would have at least shown you have some awareness that these categories and judgements are just your categories and judgements, and regardless of what the Lemmy softwareās mod controls have led you to believe, other people are allowed to have their own that are different from yours. If youād done that I donāt think it would have really developed to anything, there might have been one YPTB post about it at worst and then people would have shrugged and moved on with their day.
No, noāmoderators arenāt all-powerful. They do important work, but they also have very real limits.
Administrators, on the other hand, carry much greater authority.
And just because someone doesnāt get along with another person doesnāt mean theyāre automatically entitled to that personās spaces. What I find appealing about the Fediverse is precisely that ability to manage the whole stack myselfāwithout waiting on a distant company like Meta or X to make those decisions for me.
Of course, I could be banned for saying this. But since this thread is about me, and about my upcoming plans, I think itās only fair that I share them openly.
So, in absence of disagreements & conflicts (bcs insta ban/defederation), and building your own community, isnāt that a bit like that the lines of Trump (well, generally politicians to various degrees) or CEOs do?
Bcs with that (in those cases being surrounded by āyes-menā) reaching other specific goals is easier/faster.
I think Iām starting to understand where & how you are going with this, but perhaps not why. CEOs donāt have āa nice communityā as a goal, they have their agenda and timelines/mandates. Their ācommunitiesā are purpose-built (āmoderatedā).
What āuseā (~overall benefit?) is a highly selected federated community?
Itās a genuine question about endgame, how it would look like.
It seems like you want yo choose how you are seen and have a eorld that includes others but has no room for them to take any agency. Youāre big on concept that things are owned.
I believe my work should remain my own, and I should have the freedom to choose who I associate with. The only way to guarantee thatāboth practically and legallyāis by covering the cost of the server myself.
And you absolutely have your own agency as well. It just means you may need to exercise it in a space thatās a better fit for you.
Im not saying you need to associate with anyone in particular, im saying you might be saying that to paper over some seriously fucked/unhealthy attitudes towards what people are amd what you want from them. Theyāre not toys. You can curate, but even the closest collaborators will have differences that need resolving. Saying that rwsolution must always fit uour exact vision if even a small part of the world is pretty fuvked up.
I donāt agree with the idea that everyone is automatically entitled to my server. For me, running a server is about configuring and curating a space Iām prepared to take responsibility for.
The Fediverse gives that same freedom to everyone. If someone doesnāt like how a server is managed, they can join another or create their own. Thatās the strength of the modelāreal choice.
So when I talk about ācontrol,ā Iām talking about shaping my own space, not laying claim to anyone elseās.
Federation is two way, while a blog tends to be one way.
Mastodon does not segment according to interest other than hashtags. Hashtags are non-moderated and can be abused with spam.
I have no problem with people commenting or contributing provided they are good people. Hell, Iāll even host them. Provided, of course, they understand the limitations of that hosting.
But that goes back to what I said previously. Thereās freedom of association, and the Fediverse gives that. Thereās lots of options. You donāt have to interact with me, nor I with you.
Thatās not what Iām saying. Iām saying that if Iām reading this right; the way youāre trying to use it is potentially pathological toxic and doomed.
That stance becomes problematic when a community really grows & becomes more than the sum is itās parts.
(I mean at bigger sizes than a few thousand active users.)
Itās a complex issue, but at some point āyourā infrastructure becomes a community that itself should* be respected.
(*should isnāt the same as needs to, but I think that morally)
I appreciate that youāre raising this in good faith because it is a complex issue. But I see real problems with the idea that infrastructure becomes morally owned by the community once it gets big enough.
Unless that community is actually paying the bills, this so-called moral obligation just shifts the burden onto the one footing the costs. That doesnāt strike me as moral at all.
And online communities are transient by nature. People show up, feel invested for a while, then disappear. To act as if their fleeting sense of ownership creates a lasting obligation on the admin is unrealistic.
Thereās also what Ortega y Gasset warned about in The Revolt of the Masses. When something is said to be āowned by the community,ā it rarely means real stewardship. It means the mass asserts itself and the loudest voices dictate terms. That isnāt democracy. Itās populism built on top of a hierarchy.
Because if the software itself is hierarchical but claims to be āfor the masses,ā that isnāt democracy either. Itās a pyramid structure dressed up in populist rhetoric. The admin still has the keys. The mods still enforce. The users still depend on both.
Thatās why I insist on my own server. Iād rather be upfront: I curate and maintain a space Iām willing to take responsibility for. Thatās not authoritarian and itās not populist. Itās just owning what I host instead of pretending the power structure doesnāt exist.
Yeah, the bit where the owner of infrastructure āownsā the community feels super weird (bcs community are the people & what they produce, the space is the infrastructure).
But I understand what you are saying.
Yeah, I get why the word āownā makes people uneasy. Thereās a sincere belief that communities should belong to the commonsāthat no one should control the space, that it should be shared, stewarded, collective.
I sympathize with that. I really do.
But thatās not how the software works.
Lemmy isnāt structured like a commons. Neither is Mastodon. Neither is most federated software. These platforms still rely on admins, moderators, and users. There are hierarchies, permissions, access levels. Someone has root. Someone pays the bills. Someone can click āban.ā
If youāre building a community on someone elseās server, you are doing so inside their infrastructure. And under the law, they are the legal operator and data controller. That gives them full authorityātechnical and legalāover the domain, the storage, the moderation tools, and the continued existence of what you built.
So yesāeverything you post on Reddit, Facebook, or Twitter lives behind walls. Even if you retain copyright, youāve handed over a perpetual license to do whatever they want with it. They own the platform. They control the archive. Youāre not publishing. Youāre donating.
The Fediverse is betterābut letās not pretend itās structurally different. If you build something inside someone elseās instance, they own the keys. If they kick you out, itās gone. Thatās not a glitch. Thatās the model.
If you truly want a commonsāa system with no admins, no mods, no hierarchyāyou need to build software that works that way. But thatās not Lemmy. Not Mastodon. Not Misskey. Not PeerTube.
In this system, the only real recourse is to run your own server. Thatās where your power begins. Thatās where your autonomy lives.
And thatās why I say: I want to own my community.
Because if I donāt, someone else will. And Iāve seen what happens when they do.
I get where we are, but I think there is a lot of nuance about this - between a policed community and a totally anarchist one (where everyone is the police). The later you prob see as that instantly & whims of the masses guided by populism.
A bit like irl in a public square. It def depends on the state laws & enforcement (sever & community mods), and the people who frequent the square (āassociationā?), but most of behaviour is provided by the people. What they talk and agree is theirs.
I get that server owners āare payingā (thatās why I believe such communities/instances should be powered by donations, I think my previous home lemm.ee was), but they donāt create content. And curating content (beyond a fixed set of rules everyone has access to upfront) by curating users is a bit like playing with AI (add a bit of this, ups a bit too much of that, etc).
Thatās why folk believe (I think rightfully) even a community on Reddit or Twatter is the users, not the mods. Like, you can adopt someone, house then, even ban disown, yet you donāt own them & their work isnāt yours. You do it bcs you want that in your life or want that for others.
I get what youāre saying, and I even sympathize with it. I would love a true public square owned by the commonsāsomething where peopleās conversations arenāt at the mercy of whoever happens to run the machine.
But thatās not how Lemmy, Mastodon, Misskey, or any of the current platforms work. These systems are hierarchical by design. They require admins, they require mods, and everyone else becomes āusers.ā Thatās not a public square, thatās tenancy.
Even donations donāt change that. If the admin holds the keys, they hold the power. Look at lemm.eeādid the community there want to be wiped out overnight? Of course not. But the admin pulled the plug, and that was the end of it. Thatās the architecture working as designed.
If we really want a public square, then we have to stop talking about āusers.ā There should only be peers. And that means each person owning their own node, not donating their content to someone elseās server and hoping theyāll be benevolent forever.
Thatās the uncomfortable truth: until the design itself changes, we donāt have commons. We have hierarchies dressed up in populist rhetoric, and every user is just one adminās decision away from disappearing.
I feel like you are arguing two extremes and nothing in between.
Iām arguing a community is possible within a prison population. And these communities are moderated yet still not owned by the prison (even if the prisoners might be, or even get executed, or punished, isolated, removed, etc).
I donāt know who is saying social networks arenāt hieratical in nature or where that idea would come from.
Or what is wrong with that. Only in a perfect anarchy would peers moderate themselves. And most folk arenāt anarchists (in the sense they donāt want to police their peers or actively contribute to values & their upkeep & evolution).
(Edit: Jesus Christ man. I know nothing about this guy other than downvotegate, but he sounds like a nimrod. IDK, I take it back, he seems fine. I talked with him and he just has strong feelings about this one issue and heās making a point. I still think the way heās trying to make the point is going to have trouble getting received, in the way heās doing it, but whatever, he seems well intentioned, I donāt think he is any sort of bad way about it having heard him out on it.)
![[Update] AtomicPoet has deleted the piefed.social communities where he was the sole moderator ([email protected] being the exception). Content is still available, details in the linked post](https://lazysoci.al/pictrs/image/cb7c5a29-e297-41a8-bde5-698ba205c3fd.png){kind=link}
āIf there is anyone else in the world who might be able to keep me in check if I do something unreasonable, I canāt handle that. I need to be the ultimate authority over the little hapless users in my domain, period, end of story.ā
(Edit:
Jesus Christ man. I know nothing about this guy other than downvotegate, but he sounds like a nimrod.IDK, I take it back, he seems fine. I talked with him and he just has strong feelings about this one issue and heās making a point. I still think the way heās trying to make the point is going to have trouble getting received, in the way heās doing it, but whatever, he seems well intentioned, I donāt think he is any sort of bad way about it having heard him out on it.)I keep saying: The whole moderation model where it is moderators setting up a mandatory override over content within ātheir place,ā and any users who donāt like it are forced to beg for change or complain about the unfairness to others, is simply inferior to the model where it is users deciding which moderators they want to allow to override their content.
Itās a hard pill as a mod but you have to swallow it. People are going to do things you donāt like and say things you donāt like. You have to be okay with that. You will not get an echochamber of people who agree with you 100%. The choice is you can either become okay with that and apply some rules that are reasonable - or you can remove everything you disagree with pushing people away.
Look at me. I run a few communities here (and a few elsewhere), but one of them here is [email protected] . I personally am a swiftie and there are dozens of us here on the fediverse. That being said, if I banned anyone for simply downvoting a post or saying something negative about her then Iād have to defederate every instance there is. Instead, I can let my own users do that for me and let people get downvoted to hell in the community, and sometimes out of those bad comments comes some real good discussion. If anything actually comes out that is against the rules, like true hate or bigotry or personal attacks then sure thing Iāll swoop in and remove it, but even for a Swiftie community in the least likely space, that happens extremely infrequently.
To be honest I feel like in your case it would be acce to ban systematic downvoters
I do, I have some math that determines how much they downvote vs upvote. I allow downvotes, but if you donāt provide anything positive to the community then I ban them from it.
Do users come in and downvote stuff there because its about Taylor Swift?
Itās mostly All browsers who see her and immediately hit the downvote button.
I think it would be reasonable if you did ban prolific repeat offenders personally. Obviously not sending DMs, but theyāre clearly not interested - you would be helping them curate their own feeds.
Thatās actually exactly what I do. I score each one based on their upvote/downvote ratio and from that I can tell if I should ban them. Itās a very forgiving ratio, I donāt want to discourage down voting, but if you do all or mostly down voting then you arenāt contributing. On top of that I agree, if you donāt like it then you should welcome a ban.
Yāknow, I think this might be a symptom of a problem in Lemmy more than a problem of people.
Iāve noticed that sometimes the feed gives me a sudden influx with dozens of post for the same community, and so after the 30th post about the same thing itās pretty easy to go ātired of this, donāt care!ā
I know for sure I got banned from some AI slop communities more-or-less that way. So thatās a blessing.
What model would you be calling for? How would this work in practice?
Bluesky does it by letting people (or automated systems) publish lists of content and users that that publisher is recommending that people block, and then part of your user config is enabling which of those sources you want to apply to your own feed.
I donāt really know how you could apply that to Lemmy since the model is just different. Mostly I am just talking philosophy and stuff that irritates me about Lemmyās model. A simplistic approach though could be just to have each user settings include a āmod ignoreā list or something alongside the blocks and etc, the list of moderators whose comment deletion and user ban settings you donāt want to respect. So you can still see and interact with content that comes from any users those specific mods have attempted to block.
It would be a little bit messy, it might be better to take a step back and reengineer things to be more user-centric instead of that, but that would be compatible with existing stuff, just easy harm reduction when specific mods are widely recognized by the community to be bums. I also think just the threat of it (and the corresponding loss of credibility and control for the mod) would be a useful check on people who currently feel that lack of credibility in the community means literally nothing to them, and donāt bother to try to maintain it.
(Hey @[email protected] ā remember a week ago when people were talking about your moderation on LW and asked you this and this, and then you just fell silent and still like a frozen bunny waiting for the predator to leave, instead of addressing those reasonable questions?)
Just focusing on one thing specifically here: Your grievance here (and others grievances with him) arenāt really with Jordan at this point, but with the inability or unwillingness of lemmy.world to act. Jordanās behaviour and positions are well known. Him against the world. He wonāt budge. It really is up to lemmy.world now.
In theory, lemmy/piefed etc systems are far better for mod accountability on this score because instance owners and admins are far closer to the community than reddit admins. I can tell you also that atomicpoet, for instance, making this decision didnāt come out of a vacuum on this point.
Yeah, true that. If I had to engage in rampant speculation, I would say there are two possibilities:
Either or both might be true. Like people said in the original Jordan complainfest thread, theyāve known about this for literally years at this point, so I agree it seems a little unlikely that things would change now. Kaplan tried to say that new information has come to light now which is leading them to re-evaluate, but thatās honestly not really all that credible to me. I donāt really know, but if I had to guess I would guess that theyāll keep him on just because whatever structural issues led to them keeping him on in the past just havenāt changed that I am aware of.
Clearly lol. If anything it is a strong point in piefed.socialās favor, is that theyāre willing to exercise common sense and take action about dumb behavior by their moderators.
And also, if this becomes a big enough issue - there should be a groundswell effort to dethrone the communities that Jordan moderates and supplant them, This can happen here.
I generally fuck with [email protected] and [email protected], they seem a lot more sensible and enjoyable than the lemmy.world equivalents. Honestly every time I enter into the big-world-event communities on lemmy.world I wind up quickly regretting it just because they are so full of hostile objectionable people who are shouting bad opinions (which of course Jordan does nothing about in the course of his relentless quest to stop people changing headlines or being mean to trolls.)
[email protected] seems a better fit, Beehaw isnāt federated with LW or SJW
[email protected] is mod posting only though, last I checked. Also the mod seems like they might have some kind of strict opinions about whatās allowed (there is a post on YPTB about them right now, I havenāt really looked to see if there is anything valid to it but I do remember posting stories there way back when and the mod having requests about my posting that seemed somewhat arbitrary to me. Not really anything wrong or PTB, it was just kind of annoying and eventually I went somewhere else.)
To me I think refusing to federate with lemmy.world is a positive, not a negative. I havenāt really noticed anything lacking because of the LW users not being involved in the comments aside from a whole bunch of noise and hostility.
Sorry I missed the reply, lots of stuff going on.
For the replacement bot you offered, I did pass it on to the person who coded the MBFC bot, I honestly donāt know what happened to it after that.
The consensus in my communities seemed to be rabidly āanti-botā, they donāt want ANY bot, regardless of source. š¤·āāļø
So we continue dealing with reported articles case by case.
For the Canadian thing? I made my position clear multiple times, Iām not re-hashing months old Lemmy drama.
Okay, so when you said:
ā¦ did you forget that all of that had happened, or what led you to summarize it in that objectively inaccurate way? It wasnāt just me either, the people you summarize as ārabidly anti-botā actually took a ton of time to explain their reasons in detail and offer alternatives, this is just ridiculous trying to pretend that they were the ones being stubborn and childish about it.
Honestly Iām not sure even what response I am looking for from this. Just making the point I guess, but itās already been hashed over to the moon and back. Feel free to respond or not, I donāt think it will change anyoneās mind unless you have some kind of really great explanation or dramatic reason for saying it this way, which seems unlikely.
(For those just joining us, Jordan isnāt Canadian and made a mistake about terminology in the Canadian governmental system, which is fine, but then he started taking mod action against the correct terminology as āmisinformation,ā and when many people including Canadians who are obviously familiar with it and lemmy.world admins tried to explain it to him, they all just kind of got this type of response.)
(Honestly like I say I also see no benefit to me addressing these issues further. As Skavau said, it seems like itās more an issue at this point of, Jordan isnāt planning on changing his methods of interaction, and the question is what the rest of Lemmy does about it.)
Itās not a matter of forgetting all that happened, itās a matter of having dozens of people going āReeeeeeee! We hate the bot!ā and having one person with a sane reply.
As a rule, yes, the responses I got were non-productive. Yours was the exception, not the rule, it got kicked up and nothing came from it.
TBH, thatās the piece I legit donāt remember, why it couldnāt be implemented, Iād have to dig back through old messages to get the whys and wherefores.
But in the end, given the groups reaction to bots in general? I doubt it would make any difference.
āAt best the response was silenceā
IDK man, Iām done with this conversation
Clearly silence is better than offering a solution.
A solution carries the implication of critique, the recognition of a problem, and authority, ārespectingā authority, is very importamt to our dear @[email protected]
Now on your knees, you filthy disrespectful authority disrespecting bastard, and start digging.
Nothing to do with disrespectā¦ Out of all the people complaining, when asked āWell, what do you suggest?ā One person had an idea and everyone else dummied up.
As it turned out, the one suggestion didnāt work out either, but in the end, I donāt think it matters, the people who were complaining would have hated it too.
Okay, but hereās the thing: youāre not entitled to every community that exists. People can decide for themselves who they want to associate with. And if an admin is the one footing the bill for the infrastructure, their word is final on who gets through the door.
If you donāt want mods or admins overruling you, then you need to run your own server. Thatās the price of control. I already do this with two Fediverse servers, and I fully intend to do the same with a federated forum server.
I am starting to feel sincerely like it would be a good idea for YPTB to adopt a new rule: If you come in with the point of view āTHE MODS ARE GODS THEIR DECISIONS MAY NOT BE QUESTIONEDā, they get banned instantly, with a short reply from the moderator saying āCan do! My decisions may not be questioned.ā
(Temp banned obviously. Iām not a monster.)
Obviously the admins can do what they want with their server, and mods likewise within their communities. What weāre set up to discuss in this community is whether or not theyāve used that control ā which theyāre obviously able to wield ā in a manner that makes them a twatrocket.
Thereās a whole philosophy of cooperative endeavor involved here. I just recently got a temp ban that was 100% justified, Iām fine with that. Lots of mods use their mod powers in a way thatās perfectly reasonable and legitimate, and part of a healthy society is that people in whom is vested some level of control over the surroundings, we can talk about whether theyāre being reasonable with it. Almost everyone is, and sometimes there are reasonable discussions to be had about if they unintentionally stepped over a line or offended someone or something. This whole model where itās little warring fiefdoms, and Iām going to be a screaming unrestrained dickhead if I want to when youāre in my fiefdom and if you donāt like it, go somewhere else, is one that people are able to adopt. I donāt think it is a good one. I feel like ignoring the feedback you get, if you do decide thatās your MO, is going to lead to a bad engagement with the rest of the community and a lack of success for your new instance. Itās a give and take, people can talk, sometimes when people are telling you youāre out of line, theyāre just kind of looking out for you and letting you know they take offense and probably others do too, you know?
Iāll respond to your edit directly.
My biggest concern isnāt the āgeneralā Lemmy communityāIām focused on building my community. If a group of people on some distant server decide they donāt like me, thatās perfectly fine. Iām not there to serve them.
But if that dislike turns into dogpiling or harassmentāas Iāve already experiencedāIāll use the tools available: blocking, banning, and defederation. Once my server is live, those are exactly the measures Iāll rely on.
And yes, I know this approach may feel at odds with the broader Lemmy culture. But Lemmy itself is still quite smallāaround 36,000 users. Thatās a drop in the bucket compared to the wider Fediverse, and practically invisible next to social media as a whole.
Thatās why Iām confident I can create something federated that doesnāt have to follow Lemmyās norms or culture.
Yeah, I get that. And youāre right, you can do whatever you want including deciding āthis community is all just wrong and Iām going to make something right,ā and thatās the nice thing about user-hosted networks like this. And Iāve certainly come down on the side of āthe Lemmy community can get lost because the majority is wrong on whatever issue weāre talking aboutā in the past.
Personally in my judgement I donāt really see it as harassment in this case, I just see people disagreeing strongly with your actions and then getting snarky or insulting about it as people are wont to do ā like I said, the only thing I really know about you is that you started banning people for downvotes and ābroā both of which seem ridiculous to me. (And also a tactical error, since rightly or wrongly itāll invite a kind of dogpiling publicity which I donāt think you want.) But yeah, everyone has the ability to draw their own distinction and follow through on their own server / own community based on you being right and everyone else being wrong versus the other way around.
Well, I can only tell you what actually happened: dogpiling and harassment did occur. I had to lock down !fediversenews, and even after that, people followed me into other communities I moderated to continue harassing me.
At that point, the intention behind the original post matters less than the outcome. If the purpose of a community is to amplify outrage, itās not surprising when some people inevitably take it too far.
Well but like I say, I think you made kind of a tactical error if you donāt want stuff like that to happen. I have plenty of times seen a mod ban for some reason that almost everyone disagrees with. I have never seen a mod snoop on the upvotes for the banned comment and also attempt to ban people from expressing their approval for the banned content, and then send every one of them a snotty DM about it. I think thatās very obviously an overreach, and there is sort of a societal immune system that automatically wants to backlash against that kind of thing by marking the person who did it as āenemyā and making sure they hear about it that that behavior is unwanted. And of course the internet being what it is, sometimes that backlash takes on a life of its own and turns into something incredibly toxic and unwarranted. I think though that this idea that youāll set yourself apart from that kind of thing ever happening to you, because you can just run your own server and control everything about how people interact with you, is just a non starter. I think reexamining your own behavior is a lot more positive way to approach making sure you wonāt get harassed as much in the future.
IDK man, maybe Iām wrong or I missed finding out about some important details of how it happened. And for all I know some people did harass you in some out-of-pocket way. Iām just saying how I see it, thatās all.
You know, I only tried the private message approach because someone suggested it was the best way to de-escalate. Before that, I would simply banāno conversation, no debate.
On the servers I run myself, I go even further: I de-federate. No warnings. Itās clean, simple, and fast.
Where I misjudged thingsāand I see this clearly nowāwas in thinking that private messages would actually reduce conflict. They donāt. If someone shows signs of being toxic, or openly supports toxic behaviour, itās best to take them at their word. A conversation in that situation wonāt lead anywhere productive.
So yes, messaging turned out to be a big waste of time. The real takeaway for me is simple: own the space, set clear expectations, and act quickly when problems arise.
I think the issue was banning for giving votes you didnāt agree with, not with sending the DMs. Iāve sent DMs instead of doing admin actions before, just to open a dialogue, or to give people a chance to push back or explain before I take some kind of action, and that part seems fine. I canāt even really articulate why it was that this rubbed people so badly the wrong way, but I think sending the DMs and getting in an extended back and forth did somehow make it worse. Definitely doubling down and banning people (and also DMing them) because their reaction and vote on it wasnāt the ācorrectā and permitted one according to you made it worse.
People can vote. People can react. Setting yourself up as this lord and arbiter of whatās right and wrong is always going to make a backlash. If it was me, I would have made a public reply instead of a DM so that other people can weigh in, I would have framed it in terms of āwhat I allow hereā and made sure to clarify the rules on the sidebar instead of framing your point of view as the one thatās objectively the right one (which youāre still doing here, when you describe calling someone ābroā as ātoxicā instead of saying that you personally think itās rude and donāt allow it). And then if they still donāt agree, youāre still within your rights to just say yes okay fine but thatās the rules, sorry, and ban them (and then move on yes).
I still think you would have gotten backlash, but framing it in that way would have at least shown you have some awareness that these categories and judgements are just your categories and judgements, and regardless of what the Lemmy softwareās mod controls have led you to believe, other people are allowed to have their own that are different from yours. If youād done that I donāt think it would have really developed to anything, there might have been one YPTB post about it at worst and then people would have shrugged and moved on with their day.
No, noāmoderators arenāt all-powerful. They do important work, but they also have very real limits.
Administrators, on the other hand, carry much greater authority.
And just because someone doesnāt get along with another person doesnāt mean theyāre automatically entitled to that personās spaces. What I find appealing about the Fediverse is precisely that ability to manage the whole stack myselfāwithout waiting on a distant company like Meta or X to make those decisions for me.
Of course, I could be banned for saying this. But since this thread is about me, and about my upcoming plans, I think itās only fair that I share them openly.
TIL using a colloquialism is the same thing as not getting along.
You and I disagree on whether itās just a harmless colloquialism.
I donāt like bro-talk. Because bro-talk feeds bro cultureāand bro culture is something I want no part of.
And according to you that disagreement also means we donāt get along. Because otherwise you wouldnāt be banning people for saying bro, bro.
You would be correct.
So, in absence of disagreements & conflicts (bcs insta ban/defederation), and building your own community, isnāt that a bit like that the lines of Trump (well, generally politicians to various degrees) or CEOs do?
Bcs with that (in those cases being surrounded by āyes-menā) reaching other specific goals is easier/faster.
I think Iām starting to understand where & how you are going with this, but perhaps not why. CEOs donāt have āa nice communityā as a goal, they have their agenda and timelines/mandates. Their ācommunitiesā are purpose-built (āmoderatedā).
What āuseā (~overall benefit?) is a highly selected federated community?
Itās a genuine question about endgame, how it would look like.
Ah, soā¦
It seems like you want yo choose how you are seen and have a eorld that includes others but has no room for them to take any agency. Youāre big on concept that things are owned.
I believe my work should remain my own, and I should have the freedom to choose who I associate with. The only way to guarantee thatāboth practically and legallyāis by covering the cost of the server myself.
And you absolutely have your own agency as well. It just means you may need to exercise it in a space thatās a better fit for you.
Im not saying you need to associate with anyone in particular, im saying you might be saying that to paper over some seriously fucked/unhealthy attitudes towards what people are amd what you want from them. Theyāre not toys. You can curate, but even the closest collaborators will have differences that need resolving. Saying that rwsolution must always fit uour exact vision if even a small part of the world is pretty fuvked up.
Generally speaking, I get along with people just fine. But I also believe you need to have principles. Without them, what do you really stand for?
What does standing for anything have to do with this?
Iām not entitled to or interested in a community you run, but this is really cringe and implies a lot of really awful shit about you.
You get how that looks, right? Wanting ātotal controlā of a community?
I donāt agree with the idea that everyone is automatically entitled to my server. For me, running a server is about configuring and curating a space Iām prepared to take responsibility for.
The Fediverse gives that same freedom to everyone. If someone doesnāt like how a server is managed, they can join another or create their own. Thatās the strength of the modelāreal choice.
So when I talk about ācontrol,ā Iām talking about shaping my own space, not laying claim to anyone elseās.
Howās that different from having your personal site or blog? Because that sounds like what you want, instead of a fediverse instance
Federation is two way, while a blog tends to be one way.
Mastodon does not segment according to interest other than hashtags. Hashtags are non-moderated and can be abused with spam.
I have no problem with people commenting or contributing provided they are good people. Hell, Iāll even host them. Provided, of course, they understand the limitations of that hosting.
If I had my way, everyone would be self-hosting.
But if the space includes people, this stops being so simple.
Sure, because people are complex.
But that goes back to what I said previously. Thereās freedom of association, and the Fediverse gives that. Thereās lots of options. You donāt have to interact with me, nor I with you.
Thatās not what Iām saying. Iām saying that if Iām reading this right; the way youāre trying to use it is potentially pathological toxic and doomed.
That stance becomes problematic when a community really grows & becomes more than the sum is itās parts.
(I mean at bigger sizes than a few thousand active users.)
Itās a complex issue, but at some point āyourā infrastructure becomes a community that itself should* be respected.
(*should isnāt the same as needs to, but I think that morally)
I appreciate that youāre raising this in good faith because it is a complex issue. But I see real problems with the idea that infrastructure becomes morally owned by the community once it gets big enough.
Unless that community is actually paying the bills, this so-called moral obligation just shifts the burden onto the one footing the costs. That doesnāt strike me as moral at all.
And online communities are transient by nature. People show up, feel invested for a while, then disappear. To act as if their fleeting sense of ownership creates a lasting obligation on the admin is unrealistic.
Thereās also what Ortega y Gasset warned about in The Revolt of the Masses. When something is said to be āowned by the community,ā it rarely means real stewardship. It means the mass asserts itself and the loudest voices dictate terms. That isnāt democracy. Itās populism built on top of a hierarchy.
Because if the software itself is hierarchical but claims to be āfor the masses,ā that isnāt democracy either. Itās a pyramid structure dressed up in populist rhetoric. The admin still has the keys. The mods still enforce. The users still depend on both.
Thatās why I insist on my own server. Iād rather be upfront: I curate and maintain a space Iām willing to take responsibility for. Thatās not authoritarian and itās not populist. Itās just owning what I host instead of pretending the power structure doesnāt exist.
Yeah, the bit where the owner of infrastructure āownsā the community feels super weird (bcs community are the people & what they produce, the space is the infrastructure).
But I understand what you are saying.
Thx for the reply.
Yeah, I get why the word āownā makes people uneasy. Thereās a sincere belief that communities should belong to the commonsāthat no one should control the space, that it should be shared, stewarded, collective.
I sympathize with that. I really do.
But thatās not how the software works.
Lemmy isnāt structured like a commons. Neither is Mastodon. Neither is most federated software. These platforms still rely on admins, moderators, and users. There are hierarchies, permissions, access levels. Someone has root. Someone pays the bills. Someone can click āban.ā
If youāre building a community on someone elseās server, you are doing so inside their infrastructure. And under the law, they are the legal operator and data controller. That gives them full authorityātechnical and legalāover the domain, the storage, the moderation tools, and the continued existence of what you built.
So yesāeverything you post on Reddit, Facebook, or Twitter lives behind walls. Even if you retain copyright, youāve handed over a perpetual license to do whatever they want with it. They own the platform. They control the archive. Youāre not publishing. Youāre donating.
The Fediverse is betterābut letās not pretend itās structurally different. If you build something inside someone elseās instance, they own the keys. If they kick you out, itās gone. Thatās not a glitch. Thatās the model.
If you truly want a commonsāa system with no admins, no mods, no hierarchyāyou need to build software that works that way. But thatās not Lemmy. Not Mastodon. Not Misskey. Not PeerTube.
In this system, the only real recourse is to run your own server. Thatās where your power begins. Thatās where your autonomy lives.
And thatās why I say: I want to own my community.
Because if I donāt, someone else will. And Iāve seen what happens when they do.
I get where we are, but I think there is a lot of nuance about this - between a policed community and a totally anarchist one (where everyone is the police). The later you prob see as that instantly & whims of the masses guided by populism.
A bit like irl in a public square. It def depends on the state laws & enforcement (sever & community mods), and the people who frequent the square (āassociationā?), but most of behaviour is provided by the people. What they talk and agree is theirs.
I get that server owners āare payingā (thatās why I believe such communities/instances should be powered by donations, I think my previous home lemm.ee was), but they donāt create content. And curating content (beyond a fixed set of rules everyone has access to upfront) by curating users is a bit like playing with AI (add a bit of this, ups a bit too much of that, etc).
Thatās why folk believe (I think rightfully) even a community on Reddit or Twatter is the users, not the mods. Like, you can adopt someone, house then, even
bandisown, yet you donāt own them & their work isnāt yours. You do it bcs you want that in your life or want that for others.I get what youāre saying, and I even sympathize with it. I would love a true public square owned by the commonsāsomething where peopleās conversations arenāt at the mercy of whoever happens to run the machine.
But thatās not how Lemmy, Mastodon, Misskey, or any of the current platforms work. These systems are hierarchical by design. They require admins, they require mods, and everyone else becomes āusers.ā Thatās not a public square, thatās tenancy.
Even donations donāt change that. If the admin holds the keys, they hold the power. Look at lemm.eeādid the community there want to be wiped out overnight? Of course not. But the admin pulled the plug, and that was the end of it. Thatās the architecture working as designed.
If we really want a public square, then we have to stop talking about āusers.ā There should only be peers. And that means each person owning their own node, not donating their content to someone elseās server and hoping theyāll be benevolent forever.
Thatās the uncomfortable truth: until the design itself changes, we donāt have commons. We have hierarchies dressed up in populist rhetoric, and every user is just one adminās decision away from disappearing.
I feel like you are arguing two extremes and nothing in between.
Iām arguing a community is possible within a prison population. And these communities are moderated yet still not owned by the prison (even if the prisoners might be, or even get executed, or punished, isolated, removed, etc).
I donāt know who is saying social networks arenāt hieratical in nature or where that idea would come from.
Or what is wrong with that. Only in a perfect anarchy would peers moderate themselves. And most folk arenāt anarchists (in the sense they donāt want to police their peers or actively contribute to values & their upkeep & evolution).
Nice edit