Note: Can you guys please stop downvoting stuff of his that is unrelated to the situation? Just because he’s a shitty moderator in this particular moment and situation does not mean that his other posts deserve to be criticized or downvoted as well. Leave the dude alone. Only criticize him on his moderator behavior in this thread or when seen in the wild. Do not bully or go after this guy for no reason. Please. That’s not what I made this post for, and it’s not what I’m trying to direct.
Bro is used pretty colloquially and, admittedly, often as a dismissive turn of phrase. Exactly as it was in this comment of mine on the post “Lemmy users are in an uproar because MAGA fascists spun up their own server.”
I made a pretty off hand dismissive comment because I thought the wording of the post was a bit sanctimonious. Didn’t even downvote it. Then I took a nap and woke up to a comment from the mod. He has now deleted it after it hit -20+ comments but was
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Also, we’re not related. Refrain from the bro speak.”
A comment that I thought was kind of idiotic and so I dismissed it as much with a response
What I didn’t see was that the moderator had DMed me at the same time.
So because of a moderators personal interpretation of how the word “bro” is used, using the word at all is offensive to them and ergo is banned from usage on !fediversenews@piefed.social under the rule of “Be Civil.”
Now this is utterly impossible for any user to ever follow unless it is made clear. This moderator refuses to make this information clear publicly so I edited my original comment, gave context and added a screenshot of that message.
At the same time I also responded to the moderator via DMs.
I got another notification from @shifty@leminal.space with this comment:
I went to respond but by the time that I had, the moderator had already banned me (effectively permanently) from the community.
So let’s recap here. The moderator is taking the word “Bro” as personally insulting/offensive for whatever reason. They’re using the rule of be civil as a cudgel to enforce their opinion but they refuse to make this opinion clear. Meaning that it is impossible to properly follow this rule. On top of that, if the moderator messages you then you must keep that entirely private or you will be banned.
@atomicpoet@piefed.social is out here complaining about fascism while using fascism. Neato.
The whole time I thought I was just dealing with the atomicpoet@piefed.social account but I didn’t realize that user has made his own instance and account on it with @atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org. THAT account was what posted the original post and that account doesn’t even have moderator abilities. What an utter joke. But this entire community is filled with extremely heavy handed moderation. 11m ago, 12m ago, 22m ago, 23m ago, 24m ago… My apologies to people like @TherapyGary@lemmy.dbzer0.com, apparently you’ve been permanently banned from the above community for “Downvote Brigading”. This AtomicPoet dude should go back to reddit…
I’d suggest people start defederating from this dude though. Looks like he’s a hairtrigger away from doing it to you if you piss him off.
Also… I couldn’t help myself. I sent him the link to this post with the wording “Here you go, bro”
What can I say. I’m also an asshole.
Edit: I forgot to add these into the post and that is entirely on me. One of them doesn’t make me look awesome but I should have put it in and it’s unfair of me that I didn’t.
After my initial response to his DM, he sent this back:
Immediately after he sent that message, he banned me. My guess is that he clicked on my username and refreshed or something, saw the screenshot that had been added to the comment and then banned me for the previously mentioned reason of posting a screenshot of a DM. Guess I’m really violating this now.
Before realizing I had been banned, I then sent this DM to him. This is the one that does make me look like an absolute wankstain.
That last line is really arrogant and narcissistic on my part. I was just waking up from a nap and he was aggravating me but that’s not really an excuse. I did act like a bit of a fuckstick there. I can be a twat. This is known. Also one reason why I don’t do much in the run of moderation anymore, I just don’t trust myself to not turn into what I hate. But I could have worded that a LOT differently. What I was trying to get across was that my most recent post was the Jordan Lund one and getting annoyed by his behavior and that acting like a power tripping moderator to the dude who literally just did an expose on that might not be the greatest course of action. But I didn’t word it as such. I worded it the way I did and came of like a cuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuunt. That is totally on me and I hate myself for it.
If you liked this manuscript of moderator misconduct, you may also marvel at Jordan Lund: Master of Malicious Mismanagement and The Admins of StarTrek.website: Value Subtracted & Corgana’s Calamitous Command. Collect the complete compendium of corruption today!
That’s nice of you.
Unfortunately in this case, this isn’t the first time he’s featured in this community, the other post got removed for whatever reason. The only remaining evidence of that is
Still don’t want people to use my particular post as a jumping off point to give him shit for that. Especially if he’s reverting bans. Like maybe he shouldn’t have the community, Idk. I didn’t find him important enough to bother doing a real deep dive into his shit of. I just don’t want to be the reason for bullying I guess. I hate myself enough as it is.
I’m honestly a bit puzzled why you’d want to put me on blast here. From my side, I thought we had been working together amicably on !movies@piefed.social, and I’ve always appreciated your role there.
As for the recent events, the explanations are straightforward. At first, I thought there was a brigade, so I acted quickly. When it became clear that one of the people wasn’t part of it, I unbanned him, and he took down the thread. Not every ban has been undone, but in the cases where it was uncertain, I reversed course. The main feedback I got was that I should reach out before taking mod action.
So this time I tried to put that feedback into practice—messaging first, in what I thought was a kind and gentle way. Maybe it wasn’t perfect, but I was genuinely trying to reduce toxicity. For clarity: in the last 24 hours, the only bans were for accounts that publicly posted private messages or openly brigaded from this thread and from !asklemmy@lemmy.world.
And I do hope you don’t think “go harass a mod” is the right response to situations like this. If something like that ever happened to you on !movies@piefed.social, I would absolutely stand up for you and shut it down without hesitation.
I didn’t put you on blast, I provided context of previous events, including the ban reversals.
We are probably going to disagree here, but messaging people about using a word as common as “bro” today and threatening them from a ban if they reiterate doesn’t really seem kind or gentle.
Messages sent to users from mods threatening them from being banned should be allowed to be made public, as bans should be related to a rule, and rules should be public.
I’ve been on the other side of power tripping, on a movies community no less, so wouldn’t be so categoric about “stand up for the mod”.
https://lemmy.zip/post/25898384?scrollToComments=true
Tl,dr: power tripping mod perma banned me from a community I built, instance admin didn’t want to intervene as it was against their admin policy. It took me months to rebuild that community elsewhere, and that’s probably why I’m very cautious with power tripping mods since then.
Being a mod on Piefed/Lemmy requires more transparency than on other platforms due to the transparency of the mod actions and the federated nature of the platform.
Users here have choices between several versions of the same community, they will usually avoid the ones where the mods are enforcing what they perceive as arbitrary decisions.
Harassment is never a good thing, but mods are also accountable for their actions.
If you have doubts about how your rules or actions will be perceived, feel free to ask on !fedigrow@lemmy.zip where other mods can discuss it with you.
Let me ask you honestly—not rhetorically—what would you see as both practical and kind in a situation like that? I truly want to understand.
I’ll say again: I don’t think it’s realistic to list every possible insult or epithet in the sidebar. That’s why I’ve tried different approaches.
So have I. That’s exactly why I started !movies@piefed.social. A moderator there didn’t like my reviews and removed them without explanation, so I decided to create a new space where that wouldn’t happen.
From that point on, I promised myself that if something wasn’t clear, I’d do my best to make it clear. At first, I did that with public notes, but then I was told private messages were kinder. So I shifted. Then I listened to more feedback—but this time, things still didn’t work out.
And this is where the challenge comes in: moderation takes time, it’s unpaid, and when you step into it, you often end up facing dogpiles and harassment.
The truth is, I’m the main contributor in most of my communities. I spend hours every day creating original posts to keep them alive. Given that, it’s hard to see what purpose it serves me—or anyone—if a wave of people shows up only to harass.
I don’t believe everyone is automatically entitled to participate if what they bring is hostility and outrage. And I hope you’d agree that building a healthy space means drawing that line somewhere.
“bro” is a commonly accepted term on the Internet today. If I had to ban it on my communities, I would add this in the rules, even potentially with a link to a post with an extensive list of banned terms. That way it’s clear for everyone.
The context were probably different. For moderation decision regarding brigading with non subscribers downvotes, private messages can work better, as users prefer to keep their votes private.
For rules decision, public communication is better, see above.
I’m well aware, but a lot of mods can still mod and step in without being considered power tripping. One important part is to make the rules you apply public, as I said already.
There are two options for you
The challenge with listing every banned word is that someone will always find a way around it. They’ll use a term not on the list and then claim, “It’s not banned, so it must be fine.” That’s why I prefer to keep it simple with the guideline: Be civil.
That said, on !videogames@piesocial I wrote up a detailed explainer and linked it directly in the sidebar. I plan to do the same for all my communities—and since we co-moderate one together, I’d really value your feedback on that.
My preference is to start Piefed communities myself because they’re portable. If I ever spin up my own Piefed server, I can migrate them over. That flexibility matters to me.
But just as important, I’ve been an early adopter of Piefed and probably one of its most vocal evangelists. When I create a new community, it often gains traction quickly simply because I’m already out there championing the platform.
That’s really why I start new communities—to keep momentum going and to help Piefed grow.
You’re not really addressing the distinction I made: either communities are for a wide target audience with more laxist rules, like !movies@piefed.social (by the way, if someone called someone else ‘bro’, would they not be considered civil on !movies@piefed.social ? What if they call you ‘bro’ ? ), or they are more of a smaller community thing with tigher rules, like !videogames@piefed.social seems to be based on the current activity, especially compared to !gaming@lemmy.world or !games@sh.itjust.works
!fediversenews@piefed.social seemed like it was a general community, but your decision about it made it more of a small community with stricter rules, and it seems this is where the issue comes from. If people had known from the start that it was mostly your community with your rules, they would have probably posted on !fediverse@piefed.social and let you do whatever you want on !fediversenews@piefed.social
In other words, if you want a community to reach a wider audience, the rules need to be acceptable by a wider audience as well
Here’s the approach I’d take now:
The majority of people on !fediversenews@piefed.social actually came from @fediversenews@venera.social, which migrated over to Piefed. Most of them already know me, so I don’t think they would have gone to !fediverse@piefed.social instead—many of them aren’t even familiar with how Piefed itself is structured. That’s something I’m actively working to change.
And just for context—!fediversenews@piefed.social exists because @fediversenews@venera.social was one of the very first communities on the Fediverse focused on Fediverse news. The only problem was that Friendica really isn’t well-suited for forum-style discussion, so I created a new home for it on Piefed.
On that point, I see it differently. The way I see it, I’m providing these communities with an audience, not the other way around. A lot of people join in or comment because they’re already familiar with my Akkoma account first.
And honestly, “Lemmy” specifically isn’t even my focus. My communities were always aimed more at microblog audiences, and Lemmy engagement has just been incidental.
If this is the approach, then the first part is never “not as a mod”. You can’t take off the mod hat, when you have the power to put it back on to enforce your own preferences. This is not how it works and people will call you out on this.
To be an effective moderator, you need to be transparent and honest, or people will notice and raise hell about it until your inevitable crash-out.
I totally agree that one cannot cover every potentially situation in the rules or else rule-lawyers will get around it, but you also need to be cognizant when some personal preferences like “bro” are not what most people would consider “uncivil” and in this case you need to spell them out explicitly to avoid issues, or just accept that you are in the minority on this and don’t enforce them at all and instead try to organically curate a community which agrees with you on it.
You didn’t answer for !movies@piefed.social. Would you do the same?
It depends on the community. For !fediversenews@piefed.social it might be true (and I say might because active posters like @Sunshine@piefed.ca maybe just discovered your community here on Piefed, not from Friendica)
For !movies@piefed.social, !movies@lemm.ee was among the top 100 most active communities on the Lemmy/Piefed, so it’s definitely different.