After being harassed in multiple discord channels by powermod FlyingSquid the news mod blackbeard has shuttered his account and moved to bluesky.
https://lemmy.world/u/Blackbeard
"The recklessness with which people downvote polite disagreements reminds me of all the worst parts of Reddit, and it proves to me that this isn’t the social media savior I’d hoped it would be, and is instead just another echo chamber. I hope eventually lemmy.world (and the fediverse more broadly) can grow out of that, but some of the behavior I’ve seen on the inside from both mods and admins doesn’t really inspire much confidence for that kind of evolution in the short term. "
FlyingSquid is the same mod who has the power to siteban people from lemmy.world
Why does lemmy.world keep having issues with their powermods and admins? Why do powermods get the ability to siteban their enemies from the largest instance?
Full disclosure, I tend to agree with FlyingSquid in the instance that kicked all of this off. I don’t have a clear opinion of them as a mod, but personally I wish the LW mods would do a lot more about the “Kamala Harris = Hitler” type of misinformation that gets a free pass on a lot of LW.
FlyingSquid comes across as perfectly reasonable in this conversation. Their arguments that another mod thanked them for reporting stuff, that it’s two reports over the course of two weeks a week which is hardly excessive, and then when the two people couldn’t see eye to eye, they said they just wouldn’t flag anything, sounds all perfectly reasonable and sensible. For some reason that wasn’t okay, and the conversation got personal, with Blackbeard constantly posting these aggrieved attacks about how FlyingSquid was being childish if he didn’t continue to report things in someone else’s community occasionally, but never anything that the mods there thought was not worthy of removal. And then petulantly refusing to say something along the lines of, “Of course you’re welcome to post there if you want” when asked repeatedly if it was okay for them to just post and participate still.
I haven’t seen any Discord harassment, so maybe I missed something, but if this is what gets posted as justification for why FlyingSquid is a terrible moderator, I suspect that the “harassment” is more of the same. Maybe it’s along the lines of “not saying exactly what I want you to say, or having conversation with other people where you say things I don’t want you to say.” People are allowed to disagree with each other over what is misinformation, or choose not to report content in someone else’s community if they get some hostile responses when they do. Trying to order someone else around and then getting personally insulting with them when they politely tell you “No, I don’t agree with how you see it,” is ridiculous.
Edit: I don’t know why I said two weeks, it was one week.
I fully ack with this statement.
There is a failure to settle what Misinformation is, FlyingSquid can’t be “more discerning about flagging/reporting” that Blackbeard wished him to do. YET Blackbeard failed to answer FlyingSquad exactly what he meant by this. And in that little inciting report “equating the US runners to X,Y,Z.” is not just an opinion, its defamation, a felony.
Blackbeard had the option to clearly say, “We want to allow people to say any bad thing about the Democrats that they want, even if it seems clearly disingenuous or like a pattern on the part of that particular user. We don’t consider that to be misinformation.” That would have clarified things and my guess is that FlyingSquid wouldn’t have argued with it. Blackbeard’s desire to tiptoe around saying that directly, for obvious reasons, and just say “be more discerning,” was what led to FlyingSquid’s confusion which Blackbeard for some reason interpreted as being hostile and obstinate about it.
It’s like a flashback to every boss who gives unclear direction about expectations, even when giving you a bollocking about how you did it wrong this time and even when asked point-blank. Except, FlyingSquid isn’t getting paid to put up with it, hence the “I think I just won’t participate then” which is probably a lot more polite than I would have been about it.
Blackbeard’s desire to tiptoe around saying that directly
Well I imagine that a Moderator should have a solid stance regarding, well, moderation. Blackbeard simply didn’t cut it. They could have just stepped down, but no, they had to nuke the account, post that screenshot to show their people skills and finally head to bluesky.
I agreed with you up until you said “FlyingSquid saying he won’t flag anything is super reasonable.” If I’m working with a peer and I’m an asshole to them about our shared responsibilities and they say “well fine I just won’t do the thing both of us are supposed to do any more,” I’d argue that’s childish. Granted I started it and drug them down to my level, but they’re down there too. Both sides get real fucking dramatic after that. It’s pretty clear Blackbeard started swinging and FlyingSquid came along for the ride.
To me, the long discord screenshot is just evidence that FlyingSquid had a bad day and said some dumb shit to someone pushing his buttons. I don’t think it contributes to the evidence that he’s a bad mod; that has to come from elsewhere. If we had evidence that FlyingSquid drops down into the mud a bunch with users, not fellow moderators, that would be sufficient.
But, it’s not a shared responsibility. Two times in a week he saw something in someone else’s community and flagged it, trying I guess to be a good citizen, and then he got this demanding and rude extensive DM chat about it with all these personal accusations. I sort of agree that he let his buttons get pushed, but he tried way harder to keep an open dialogue about it and reach a real resolution than I would have.
I think about the time when he offered to just not report anything, problem solved, and Blackbeard said he was childish and ridiculous, I would have just said “I wasn’t asking. You’re not my boss, I am free to report or not report in any fashion I would like to. If you want to give me grief about my reports, but refuse to clarify which ones you do and don’t want to receive, then I will not report. Have a good one, the matter is closed as far as I’m concerned.”
So they’re not co-moderators in this situation? That definitely changes my analysis. I feel like instance mods have some shared responsibility for the health of their instance so I wouldn’t say it’s completely not his job; the rest of my understanding was wrong if they don’t share responsibility!
I disagree that Blackbeard wouldn’t “clarify which ones you do and don’t want to receive.” Blackbeard laid out their perspective for moderation of the community, which, if FlyingSquid is not a co-moderator, is what flies, not the opinion you and FlyingSquid share. I didn’t think that was unclear at all; FlyingSquid just didn’t agree.
It’s very easy for me to say from my armchair that I’m not going to take shit from a moderator over unclear rules; if it’s not in the sidebar fuck off with telling me what I can’t report. I think you and I both agree Blackbeard was shit at trying to resolve conflict here.
