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.
Update: He’s deleting his communities. Update here
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!
To be honest, I’m not sure what exactly I’d be apologizing for.
For me, the word “bro” has always carried negative weight. Every time it’s been directed at me, it’s come with bad intent—either as a way to dismiss me (as OP even admitted) or as a forced, insincere familiarity from someone looking to take advantage. In my experience, no one who’s called me “bro” has ever done so kindly.
So I’d ask you to put yourself in my shoes: how would you handle it? I’m not asking rhetorically—I truly want to know. Maybe I am too sensitive to that word, but from where I stand, every use of it has been tied to toxicity. And I don’t want to encourage that in the communities I care for.
The fact that people now throw “bro” at me in unrelated threads only reinforces my point—it’s being used to harass, not to build friendship. That’s why I see it as a toxic word I don’t want in my spaces.
Here’s a couple things. I don’t expect apologies for each one, or apologies at all, I am merely demonstrating things that could be apologized for.
Sending out multiple DMs to people policing their downvotes of your comment
Banning me for clarifying your own stance of the rules
Banning multiple people for downvoting
Locking down the community? That makes sense considering the shit you were given, unfairly I might add, by people who were taking things way too fucking far.
It was less a dismissal of you and more of the wording of the post. Typically its just a colloquial way of saying “Hold up and reconsider because this is… strange”. Can it be used worse than that? Sure. But you never asked for clarification or anything. You immediately went to my DMs and said “This is personally offensive and insulting and violates the rule of be civil.” You never asked how I meant it. You made an instant assumption.
But none of that matters. The reason this post was made was because you banned me for posting that screenshot in my comment but the only thing that screenshot said was your stance on the word bro! SOMETHING YOU’RE NOW PUBLICLY SAYING! Like I did nothing wrong. At all. You came into my DMs using your stance as a moderator. That’s no longer a private communication between two individuals, thats you as a moderator flexing your position and saying “Do this or else”. My response was “Fine then I’ll leave but here is why I disagree.” You then responded to my DM (Which throws everything about your point of Piefed.social not allowing you to get responses into question) saying why you disagreed. All of that is fine. It’s just you making your stance on the rules clear. Why is me making that stance public such a problem?
Trying to outlaw the word bro will only backfire because people will just say it more. Moreover, it’s such a commonly used word that like… you’re going to have to just get over. Like I cannot stand when people use certain turns of phrase and find them personally aggravating but I’m not going to go out of my way to threaten someone with moderator action, DM multiple people about their downvotes and then ban someone for clarifying my own position.
Responding to your points:
Just to be clear—you weren’t banned for saying “bro.” The issue was that a private message was taken and posted publicly.
My intent really was to keep it between us—to quietly ask you to ease off without shaming you in public.
Here’s the entire conversation I can see from my side:
https://imgur.com/a/OYiL1pA
You can test this yourself: start a private message on piefed.social with someone on a remote server. You won’t get their reply. DMs only work if both parties are on piefed.social.
Exactly. And rules around civility can’t spell out every possible insult or slur—it’s contextual. “Bro” is one of those words that, in my personal experience, has almost always been used in an uncivil way.
If someone uses language I’ve explained is offensive to me, that tells me they’re not interested in mutual respect—and that makes community-building impossible. Participation isn’t an entitlement. Freedom of association means I can choose who I interact with. The fact we’re still talking shows I don’t think you’re beyond reaching an understanding.
My approach has always been to try for dialogue before taking any harsher step—to explain why I find something uncivil and give someone a chance to see where I’m coming from. That’s what I was trying to do with you.
Did I communicate that perfectly? Probably not. And the fact that piefed.social’s DM system is half-broken definitely didn’t help.
You received my DM because of the first clause in that sentence: I consider the word “bro” to be offensive in this community. The “downvoted my request” part is context, not the charge.
Let me unpack it.
The boundary: “Bro” is not welcome here. I’ve explained why before. In my experience it is used as a put-down or as a fake familiarity play. That crosses our be-civil rule. Setting that boundary is my job as a mod.
What your vote signaled: When I asked a commenter to avoid that word, you downvoted that ask and later wrote “ban me, bro.” A vote is your right, but in this situation it functioned as encouragement to keep using the term I had just flagged. If you had upvoted a “keep saying it” reply or written the same sentiment in words, I would have sent the same DM. The issue is the encouragement of behavior I view as uncivil, not voting itself.
What the DM was and was not: It was a friendly warning and an attempt to de-escalate before moderation is needed. It was not a punishment for how you vote. I do not moderate people for disagreeing with me. I step in when disagreement turns into pushing others to ignore a clearly stated boundary.
The goal: Keep the space focused and civil so people can talk about the topic, not each other.
Bottom line: You were contacted because your actions encouraged use of a term I have asked people not to use here. If you avoid that term and do not promote it, you are welcome to participate. If you prefer a space where that word is fine, that is your choice. Freedom of speech and freedom of association both apply, and I was exercising the latter to keep the community healthy.
this is really THAT hill for you isn’t it?
i wish i could understand but i just don’t.
also you keep saying that the piefed DM reply isn’t working properly but you just quoted my reply to your DM, ‘ban me bro’
i want to be kind and see where you’re coming from, but it looks like you’re not being honest with us, so that’s hard to do.
I’m not lying. The only reason the issue didn’t come up with you is because you’re on piefed.social, not a remote server.
The way my settings were configured, I could still receive messages from people on piefed.social, but not from anyone outside the server.
You might want to double-check that setting yourself—I’d hate for you to run into the same problem down the road.
Which is a nonsense stance to take. You sent me a moderator message clarifying how you took the rules. I posted that screenshot. That’s it. Which means that a stance you are willing to make public is what you’re banning me over. That is it. You said you didn’t want to shame me in public and if that’s true then me posting the message that is supposedly shaming me is my own prerogative. And, once again, this is a stance that you took as a moderator. You then banned me because I made your stance public. The rest of this doesn’t matter. The bro thing is irrelevant. It’s set dressing.
The issue boils down to the fact that you privately made it clear how you stood on the word bro. I made that publicly clear so others could know because I felt it was a silly way to apply that rule. You then banned for that. Meaning that you banned me for making your own stance publicly clear. There was nothing else in that screenshot other than how you were going to apply the rule to the word bro. Ergo, there should have been zero issue with me making that clear to others so they could avoid breaking that rule. You overreacted.
I want you to actually explain to me why what I did was wrong and worth banning.
It wasn’t about making my stance public—I’ve been open about it for a long time. For example, here’s me saying clearly that I block anyone who calls me “bro”:
https://atomicpoet.org/@atomicpoet/posts/AyRhhPi12urDezmd1M
And here’s another example from last January:
https://atomicpoet.org/@atomicpoet/posts/AqZF38Bo0xQrUdXFBo
So my stance has always been public, and my usual practice is simply to block or ban when it comes up.
Now, you might say, “That was on your home server, not in !fediversenews@piefed.social.” That’s true—but the post in question originated on atomicpoet.org, which means all replies to it flow back there. Communities I run aren’t just for Lemmy users. They’re also for people on Mastodon, Akkoma, and other microblog platforms, and most of the engagement actually comes from those places. People on Lemmy sometimes miss that wider context.
The ban wasn’t about restating my stance. It was because a private message was posted publicly. If you had asked me directly to clarify my stance again in public, I would have done so gladly. But with piefed.social’s DM system broken, I never would have seen such a request.
You’re welcome to tell anyone about my stance—it’s not a secret. I’ve repeated it many times across the Fediverse. The only reason I reached out privately was to try to resolve things quietly and without embarrassment. Unfortunately, with the messaging system broken, that wasn’t really possible.
That said, I’d much rather we be able to move forward on better terms. My intent was never to escalate things, only to keep the community space respectful for everyone. If we can take this as a learning experience, I’d be glad to put the focus back on building the kind of community we both want to see.
That’s kind of unreasonable when they couldn’t reply to you, which is what the crux of the issue. That is kind of your fault as your settings didn’t allow for replies, but also kind of not as you didn’t know.
Either way, it was likely to happen when they received no reply to their DMs to you.
At the time, I honestly didn’t realize they were trying to reply to me—and I also didn’t know they couldn’t reply to me.
I wasn’t aware that my settings were preventing people from remote servers from responding. I don’t even remember ever changing that setting—if I did at all.
It’s probably not a good idea for anyone to send messages to people on remote servers if there’s no way for them to reply.
And you’re right—leaving that setting on would have led to problems sooner or later. I’m glad someone finally pointed me in the right direction.
Sure, we’re autistic too, so we do understand to some degree. We’re trying to explain in a way that hopefully makes sense to you too.
Do you think that if you had posted “calling me ‘bro’ on this community is going to get you banned” it would have had a different outcome than what happened?
I don’t think it’s practical—or even healthy—to try and list every possible insult or epithet that might get someone banned. That’s why I keep the rule simple: “Be civil.” When I feel someone has crossed that line, my first instinct is to give a private heads-up rather than make it a public scene. I used to handle things with public call-outs, but based on feedback, I was encouraged to try a more private approach. That’s what I was aiming for here.
The problem is that nobody other than you considers “bro” to be uncivil.
I have to disagree—many people I know also find it insulting. I’ve even seen serious conflicts break out, beyond just arguments, because of the word “bro.”
That said, I recognize not everyone realizes it can come across that way. That’s why I reached out privately—to help make people aware of how it might be received.
Seems more efficient to express this kind of guidelines publicly, especially for words as common nowadays as “bro”
I doesn’t seem like keeping the approach private would have changed much anyway, you would have reached to someone else, who would have ignored you to see if you were serious with it, then that person would have created a report similar to this one.
Well, a lot of things went sideways here.
I tried private messaging based on feedback—it didn’t work.
I even used ChatGPT to help me phrase things in a friendlier, gentler way—that didn’t work either.
On top of that, I wasn’t even receiving replies because of Piefed’s settings. Thanks for catching that, by the way—I honestly thought I was losing my mind.
And now I have to ask—have you been trying to reach me all this time and just never gotten a response?
That’s an issue that hasn’t been reported yet
@rimu@piefed.social @wjs018@piefed.social @Skavau@piefed.social
It works for me, I just tested it with lemmy.world, back and forth.
Rimu, it’s not working for me. I can post multiple screenshots of this. The only message I received is from someone also on the piefed.social instance.
What is your setting for “Accept messages from”?
You found the problem. The setting was “This instance”. I changed it to allow all instances, and now I’m able to receive a reply from lemmy.world.
I think if “This instance” is selected, you shouldn’t be able to send private messages to remote servers.
We just discussed it on the Piefed Zulip space, a warning is going to be added, potentially even removing the possibility as you suggested
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