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!
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.
disagree all you like but they doesnt make it accurate.
i can’t stand the phrase “fuck around and find out”, or using the word “aesthetic” as an adjective, but people are going to say stupid shit and i can’t fix that. i have to live with being wrong in all my wrongness, i don’t try to bend the world to my admittedly asinine views. i just sit here and cringe in private.
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?
I said it elsewhere, private messaging shouldn’t be used for communicating rules, those should be made public, but if you decide to use private messaging to explain a rule, expect it to be made public, that’s just fair play with the users.
ChatGPT can’t be used to make polite and kind a message that cannot be made that way due to its unreasonable nature.
I didn’t try to reach out to you as you never made any problematic decision on !movies@piefed.social . What you do on other communities are your decisions, I didn’t feel like I should intervene on that
Practically, how would you have handled this situation? I don’t think sidebar works. Maybe a sticky but stickies can only remain up for so long.
If it really bothers you that much, you can either reply to the person in public and say something “I prefer not to be called bro, thank you” (you don’t have to explain your reasons even) or you can ignore it.
It shouldn’t be a bannable or comment removable offense ioo.
I have not seen anyone give you a specific answer regarding a better way of handling this situation. I would like to try to do so.
You mentioned that an exhaustive list of terms is not practical, and I agree with that assessment. You also state that you have distilled the rule down to “be civil”. This seems to be an oversimplification requiring further explanation whenever an infraction arises, which seems equally impractical.
A better solution can most likely be found between the two extremes. Clarifying text added to the “be civil” rule might make your stance on what constitutes incivility more apparent.
“Be civil: dismissive, insulting, or overly antagonistic interactions will be subject to action at the discretion of the moderators.”
i would have re-assessed my understanding of how the word was being used on a case by case basis rather than attempting to globally regulate its use. i would definitely refrain from punishing people for their votes. i would suggest that you not look at people’s votes. it’s not going to help you be a better mod or a healthier human.
upon inspection it’s clear that the ‘bro’ in question is just a figure of speech intended to colloquialize the comment, and is not an adversarial or confrontational usage.
think of it like the other common online terms like ‘my brother in christ,’ or perennial favorite, ‘internet stranger.’
people use words like this as social crutches in the same fashion as FAFO, LOL, haha, and all the others.
this whole dumb debacle just reminds me of the phrase “YOUR religion doesn’t prohibit ME from doing anything.’
i hope you can find some peace and are able to reopen your community soon. maybe you can find another mod that can help guide you through the ones that are harder to resolve.