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 was thrown out the window the second you mentioned moderator actions. At that point it stopped being a message between two users and started being a message between a user and a moderator. If you hadn’t mentioned any moderator stuff, yeah. I would have disagreed with your assessment but I would have respected it and removed the word bro from my comment. But you escalated it by saying “If you keep doing this, then I will do this”. You made it worse. You prepared for the worst and then told me what that preparation would be. If we’re talking about things we find personally insulting or offensive, that’s one of them for me. That means that you’re automatically assuming that I’m going to disregard you and feel the need to back up the words with a stick.
No, you turned it into a conflict when you said “Stop doing it or else”. Moreover, you were speaking as a moderator and clarifying the rules. A clarification you have made public elsewhere. There was nothing in that screenshot that was private when you were DMing it to everyone else when people were downvoting you.
Right. It couldn’t have been you DMing everyone saying “Don’t downvote me or else”. It was my screenshot. Not the fact that the post on /c/asklemmy that you’ve mentioned in this thread was posted by someone else and had this screenshot:
That would imply that it was YOUR behavior that brought upon the wave of harassment, not my own. So I utterly reject this notion that my screenshot was responsible for your petty behavior. You initiated it amongst others. Moreover, you unbanned THAT dude because you said it was a mistake. Yet you’re doubling down on me. Moreover, no one saw my screenshot who didn’t see your comment at the same time. Your comment was downvoted to low hell on its own well before I added that screenshot.
Fair enough on the DMs though and the piefed error. I’ll keep that in mind for myself too.
So if I understand you right—you’re saying that if I hadn’t mentioned the rules or the possibility of a ban, you would have been more willing to ease off.
If that’s the case, I’m genuinely sorry that my attempt at de-escalation ended up making things feel more tense. I really did try to phrase things as carefully as I could. In fact, I even asked ChatGPT to help me write the message so it would come across as “very gentle, polite, but also firm.” Here’s the log of that request:
https://chatgpt.com/share/68d1ce2a-9e74-800f-954f-023db390a0ee
I often use ChatGPT this way because tone is something I genuinely struggle with, and I don’t want to come across harsher than I mean to.
Just to clarify—he’s not unbanned. He’s still banned, and his post on !asklemmy@lemmy.world was removed. That removal wasn’t requested by me, but the post itself did result in a ban on !fediversenews@lemmy.world.
My point is that if you had just requested me to not say bro I would have raised an eyebrow and thought the request was dumb but I would have done it. The second you brought up moderator actions it stopped being a request from one user to another and started being a warning from a moderator to a user. At that point you also lost some expectation to privacy as a lot of moderation stuff on Lemmy is public for a reason. To help things either be held accountable or for users to know what type of moderation is going to be in an area so they can make a decision on whether or not they want to stay there.
It is bugging the hell out of me though that you still aren’t getting my problem with all of this. You banned me for posting the screenshot of something that you were willing to say publicly and, evidently, had previously said publicly. Nothing in that message you sent me was private. Nothing was something you hadn’t said publicly or wasn’t willing to say again. Which means the entire banning of me for that was insanely petty or a decision to apply a rule unilaterally and without nuance. In either case? I stand by the post and just about everything else I’ve said in this thread and I have nothing further to add.
You’re right that the content itself wasn’t secret—I’ve said those same things publicly before. But it was still sent as a private message, and I believe private messages should stay private unless both people agree otherwise. For me, it’s less about what the words said and more about the principle of respecting the privacy of the exchange.
There’s also a real risk when private messages are made public. Even if the content isn’t sensitive, taking something intended as one-on-one often opens the door to dogpiling, misinterpretation, or harassment from people outside the conversation. And unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened here—once the message was posted publicly, it escalated into conflict and harassment that I had been trying to prevent by keeping it private in the first place.