-A few days ago, a moderator on Digital Art banned me for supposedly posting “furry” (anthropomorphic animal) art. My works are based on yokai characters (Japanese mythology), kemonomimi (humans with animal ears and tails), and beasts (normal and mythical animals). Nothing falls into the furry category, which is exclusively for anthropomorphic animals. And it should be clarified that I have been posting in that community for months without any warning or comment about my works. I tried to contact her through comments in another community she moderates (I barely use Lemmy to post, and I’m not going to download external apps to open chats just for this, plus I don’t speak English), but she decided to delete them and not speak to me.
(I won’t get into a discussion about this; if you don’t believe me, just look up the terms mentioned. Labeling everything as furry simply because it has an animal percentage is pure ignorance, and I’m fed up with the topic because I’ve explained and shown it a thousand times to some stubborn people. Please don’t try to convince me to use the word “furry” as something universal, because it’s NOT, and I know what I draw and what I don’t.)
I just wanted to clarify about Lemmy’s DM system. When you send a DM to someone (like someone named Mark), the only ones that can see it are the admins (Mark’s admin and your admin) and you and Mark. In social media like facebook, twitter, tumblr, reddit, deviant art, etc. it is the same only now it is you, Mark, and the entire moderation teams on those social media platforms that can see the messages. “Secure” (seguro) in the message you are seeing means “end to end encrypted”, so that only you and Mark can see the messages. This is only possible in Matrix, Signal, Simplex, and XMPP. I am not aware of any popular social media platforms that have end to end encryption for DMs. Even WhatsApp and Telegram are not really trusted. If facebook had to turn over data on you, that would include all of your messages because facebook can read all of your messages on facebook’s server, facebook is not secure. People are telling you to use Lemmy’s DM because unless you are saying something sensitive (like your real name/address/bank/etc.) while talking to the mod that banned you, you will be fine, it is like sending a message on any other social media. When I make this comment, everyone in the fediverse can see it, but if I sent you a DM, only me, you, my admin team, and your instance’s admin can see it. Your message will not get lost.
I know it can be confusing at first, but you are only banned in one community on one server, there are many other communities you can interact with that will appreciate your art.