I tend to browse /All and by New on Lemmy. I went to respond on a thread on !vegan@lemmy.world to thank someone for a recipe that looked good, and found out I had been banned.
Odd, considering I hadn’t posted to that sub at any point in the past. I checked the modlog to find that “Mod” had banned a bunch of people citing “Rule 5.”
Their Rule 5 states: Bad-faith carnist rhetoric & anti-veganism are not allowed, as this is not a space to debate the merits of veganism. Anyone is welcome here, however, and so good-faith efforts to ask questions about veganism may be given their own weekly stickied post in the future (see current stickied discussion).
I (and hundreds of others) seemingly broke rule 5 of this community without ever posting there. What is going on?
And my apologies if this isn’t the place for this, but I had no idea where else to post the question.
I’ve never posted in that sub either, but I was banned today, and the only possible explanation is that it was for downvoting. A lot of their posts are self-righteous and needlessly confrontational, so I’ve downvoted a lot of their memes when they wind up in my feed, but I’ve never commented on any of them.
This moderator isn’t trying to remove hostile comments or stop rule violations; they’re trying to artificially lower the number of downvotes their content gets to make the community look less unpopular. You can actually sort posts by recent and see how the percentage of downvotes suddenly dropped off after the ban spree. This is a blatant attempt to manufacture consent for their community by gaming the system.
You can actually sort posts by recent and see how the percentage of downvotes suddenly dropped off after the ban spree. This is a blatant attempt to manufacture consent for their community by gaming the system.
That would violate lemmy.world’s terms of service, specially 3. (system disruption) and 5.1 (community manipulation).
Perhaps you guys could/should elevate this issue to the lemmy.world admin team.
That was kind of what I was attempting to do here. Is there another way to do that?
I suggest you (or anyone else here, really) to direct message !lwreport@lemmy.world, the account is a relay to the admin team. Be sure to mention:
- The issue (they’re banning people left and right)
- Concerns (e.g. they might be gaming the system),
- This thread (to show that it isn’t just your personal pet peeve, plenty people are pissed.)
I honestly thought the vegans had moved to a different instance since the drama. I thought the .world comm would be killed but looks like their sticking around and doing some sus modding of their own. I mean, one good turn and all that. 🤷♂️
I mean, the flipside could be just as true. I would be surprised, if there’s not some right-wing twats, who felt attacked in their manliness by the concept of veganism, and then started gaming the system by deploying tons of downvote bots. If you regularly downvoted posts without commenting, you might’ve looked like such a bot.
It could be, but it’s really not. This community posts shit insulting, “carnists,” all the time, then suddenly claims they’re getting attacked or brigaded when these posts get negative responses. I get not wanting to have to debate random assholes every time you share an article about veganism; I even get banning people for being hostile to your insulting memes; but banning people for downvoting a meme is messed up, which is why the other mods on /c/Vegan just removed Mod the responsible for this..
Ok, I tend to think I’m a decent human being but I don’t understand your logic and I can only see your comments as negative. Please help me understand the differences in our thought train.
- People are downvoting content (abusing the intended purpose of a downvote) they’re seeing without even being involved in a community
- Mod of that community bans users (common with vote brigading) who aren’t real active users, users can no longer see the content satisfying your dismay of seeing it in your feed (instead of blocking the community)
- You then accuse the mod of stopping people downvoting who don’t like the community who aren’t a part of that community?
You’re actually acknowledging you’ve “downvoted a lot of their memes” because of previous un-related content, continuing to abuse the downvote and even pointed out the mod was effective at stopping the vote brigading from people outside the community. I have no clue about the Vegan situation myself, but I thought a mod had completely autonomy to run their community the way they want and the point of decentralization was the ability to move into another space when needed.
You’re actually acknowledging you’ve “downvoted a lot of their memes” because of previous un-related content
No I’m not. I could see how you could choose to misinterpret what I said like that, but I didn’t say that, and I’ll rephrase it so that there is no question as to what I’m saying; they share self-righteous, antagonistic memes, and when those memes wind up in my feed, I downvote them. There are also plenty of neutral posts (articles, etc.) from that community that I don’t downvote, but when shit like this, and this, and this ends up in my feed, I downvote it.
I could block the instance, but I see absolutely no reason to silence myself and allow their shitty opinions to go unchallenged. Why should I hide from their content and allow their community to insult me freely? I’m using the downvote button, the most passive way to express displeasure online, to respond to someone who is insulting me for my lifestyle. Why the fuck is the appropriate answer supposedly, “well, you should instead just hide from the people insulting you.” Why isn’t the response to the community, “Yeah, if you insult a lot of people, you get a lot of downvotes, maybe stop posting such hostile shit.”
I’m not a vegan, none of those memes you’ve posted make me feel personally attacked nor do I feel insulted. I’m glad for the clarification, but I was expecting something much worse like a vegan death cult manifesto by the reactions here.
You don’t want to silence yourself from a community you’re not a part of by your own admission? Do you really feel it’s your duty to go into every community and mandate their content and tone to your liking?
I guess you can look at it as “hiding” to curate your feed by removing the communities you’re not interested in. I don’t think you’re really challenging their opinions, just kinda being a douche. I see plenty of shit posted about windows or apple users, we’re not pitch forking everyone that posts a spicy meme. We insult the rich and powerful etc, what class of protection are you proposing to secure? The omnivores? Who’s going to police what’s hostile or insulting? I don’t understand what this call to action is trying to implement or suggest besides outside policing of communities which is one of the reasons the fediverse was made to combat that type of control.
Pretty sure i heard they are banning people based on the downvotes/ upvotes. If you downvote a vegan or upvote a non- vegan then you get banhammered.
That community is a joke though and i refuse to participate (as a vegan).
Why the fuck is Lemmy making votes visable to moderators? This is RIPE for corruption and abuse. Secret ballot is the only way voting works!
people really need to stop confusing an upvote/downvote to basic democratic voting. There is no ticker above the ballot box letting you know how everyone voted before you, there is no “policy” or “elected position” being voted on. This is more akin to an open conference debate where people are booing or yaying when someone speaks up about a topic. Your privacy on a public forum discussion never existed to begin with, people in a public setting know their anonymity isn’t guaranteed.
For a community that just tries to exist peacefully and gets brigaded by “jerks” all the time, they sure are weirdly fixated on becoming the centre of attention every single week.
You should not feed the troll, but it’s too fascinating not to look at it. Like a pack of chimpanzees flinging their doodoo at the glass walls.
They could make the community private. They could keep rabbits as pets. They have made veganism their entire identity, a pseude-religion, and they have a pathological need for validation. Anyone who questions their absolute moral superiority challenges that identity so they seal themselves up in a hermetically sealed, idea tight echo bunker where only supportive ideas are allowed and only validating up votes are tolerated.
They, of course, feel quite free to spread their extremism to discussions outside of the echo bunker, they just don’t tolerate other ideas in the echo bunker.
You can tell this is a good faith criticism by how it simultaneously criticizes them for not making the community private and for being an “echo bunker.”
I didn’t criticize them for not taking the community private. I simply pointed out that they could completely seal the echo bunker by taking the community private. I also pointed out that they could keep vegetarian pets and feed them a vegan diet without anyone criticising them for trying to feed a vegan diet to a carnivore.
Holy hell! It’s over 19 pages long, and that’s over the past day. They even went as far as trying to ban admins.
Edit: it looks like they only tried to ban one admin. I thought I had saw more, but I guess not. But damn, talk about sour grapes.
“the first amendment holds” lol, I wasn’t aware Lemmy was part of the US government
It’s doubly stupid because LW is construed and governed by Dutch, German, and Finnish laws. Not United-Statian ones.
It’s all also done by a one single moderator, a same one that was complaining about the “carnists brigading” in the community. There was a handful of comments deleted along with more than 300 users banned.
I wonder if it’s the same user who has almost exclusively dominated the front page of the sub with memes in the last day or so. Going back a couple pages, there was a lot more variety and nuance in the content. Subject matter notwithstanding, it looks like someone terminally online going on a power trip.
That one moderator has just downvoted every comment here and is likely responsible for the single downvote on this post.
mOr bAns?!
Edit: Aww shit! Two downvotes! Popcorn time!
There’s a lot more to the story on Rooki.
How utterly bizarre and yet entirely predictable based on recent events.
