this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2025
-5 points (46.7% liked)
Ye Power Trippin' Bastards
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331 users here now
This is a community in the spirit of "Am I The Asshole" where people can post their own bans from lemmy or reddit or whatever and get some feedback from others whether the ban was justified or not.
Sometimes one just wants to be able to challenge the arguments some mod made and this could be the place for that.
Posting Guidelines
All posts should follow this basic structure:
- Which mods/admins were being Power Tripping Bastards?
- What sanction did they impose (e.g. community ban, instance ban, removed comment)?
- Provide a screenshot of the relevant modlog entry (don’t de-obfuscate mod names).
- Provide a screenshot and explanation of the cause of the sanction (e.g. the post/comment that was removed, or got you banned).
- Explain why you think its unfair and how you would like the situation to be remedied.
Rules
- Post only about bans or other sanctions that you have received from a mod or admin.
- Don’t use private communications to prove your point. We can’t verify them and they can be faked easily.
- Don’t deobfuscate mod names from the modlog with admin powers.
- Don’t harass mods or brigade comms. Don’t word your posts in a way that would trigger such harassment and brigades.
- Do not downvote posts if you think they deserved it. Use the comment votes (see below) for that.
- You can post about power trippin’ in any social media, not just lemmy. Feel free to post about reddit or a forum etc.
- If you are the accused PTB, while you are welcome to respond, please do so within the relevant post.
Expect to receive feedback about your posts, they might even be negative.
Make sure you follow this instance's code of conduct. In other words we won't allow bellyaching about being sanctioned for hate speech or bigotry.
YTPB matrix channel: For real-time discussions about bastards or to appeal mod actions in YPTB itself.
Some acronyms you might see.
- PTB - Power-Tripping Bastard: The commenter agrees with you this was a PTB mod.
- YDI - You Deserved It: The commenter thinks you deserved that mod action.
- YDM new - You Deserved More: The commenter thinks you got off too lightly.
- BPR - Bait-Provoked Reaction: That mod probably overreacted in charged situation, or due to being baited.
- CLM - Clueless Mod: The mod probably just doesn't understand how their software works.
Relevant comms
founded 10 months ago
MODERATORS
We need to stop normalizing banning people for how they vote.
Notice how it's always people bitching about being "downvoted for disagreeing," but never for upvoting in agreement?
It's literally a 1-way street where we can only show our support for things. Fuck that.
fr, like go back to Facebook where there are no downvotes, maybe the fediverse isn't a good fit for you
i look forward to the lemmy 1.0 feature "private communities" where only subscribers see posts. That would be a good way to grow niche communities
Perhaps a blend of the reddit model to make it configurable if a post can go to all.
I mean, it's fine if ya'll want your echo chambers and exclusivity.
I personally have no interest in such endeavors and would actively avoid such communities.
Communities are built on shared interest, or expressed differently they are built on excluding people who don't share a interest.
Any idea when this feature comes out?
hahaha, its on the road map, but I'm guessing 'when its ready'
If someone never participates in a community apart from popping in to mass downvote, they have no interest to be in this community.
But if there's a community spreading harmful disinformation and it pops up in my all, I should give it an upvote for the effort or what?
I see a lot of these communities browsing by all lately and when I downvote the posts I see (which are literal harmful disinformation) I get banned for downvoting.
If you profoundly disagree with any community views, I suggest you block and move on. Going there and downvoting everything is a dick move.
In this case, it's not a profound disagreement with the community's purpose (carnivore diet). I find the concept interesting.
But if I see some horrendous thing from that community (Youtuber saying eating meat cures cancer) in my All feed and downvote it, then apparently I'm being a dick and deserve to be banned immediately?
That video was one ladies personal testimonial and she didn't just do carnivore, she also incorporated prolonged fasts intermixed with carnivore refeeding. Her single experience was that her inoperable tumor went into remission. That isn't the same thing as "carnivore cures cancer."
The interesting cancer research going on with glioblastomas is with a ketogenic protocol (not specifically carnivore) - a press (keto), and pulse (glucose and glutamine suppression) protocol - which has demonstrated some promising early data. Taking advantage of the warburg effect (i.e. cancer only metabolizes glucose and glutamine).
Now going back to the testimonial lady, she didn't following a observed protocol, she wasn't using a press/pulse protocol. She just kinda stumbled around and for some reason her inoperable tumor went away. It's interesting, but hardly anything to hang your hat on. However, the value of the underlying testimonial is still there - if nothing else is working for your specific situation you can try carnivore - it couldn't hurt.
No but if your ONLY interference with this community (or any community) is to downvote, you have no interest being there.
Actively combatting harmful medical misinformation is not a "dick move", they deserve every downvote and worse
Then combat it with links?
The problem is - what you consider harmful misinformation I consider foundational nutrition. How can we reconcile our different perspectives?
I see a few options
I prefer 2, but I'm happy with 1 - I find 3 boring and not a good use of my time.
If you truly prefer 2 then you wouldn't automatically ban people for downvoting posts in your communities. Downvoting things on my way past in my All feed is not an act of disrespect to your whole worldview.
You don't downvote comments from All, do you? Wouldn't that require you to go into the post and actively downvote them one by one?
I don't know what you're quoting here because I dont think that was at me.
I was pretty sure I downvoted like 3 posts and a couple of comments in those, but then upvoted another one and some comments in that thread. However, looking back at the comm, my UI shows I have only downvoted one post and no comments, so I must have actually been banned after downvoting literally 1 post. I only realised I was banned when I tried to comment on a post, so was still trying to participate without even realizing I couldn't.
You can upvote/downvote direcrly from All, but I think its pretty normal behaviour to click on it from there and then upvote/downvote. Downvoting literally every comment would be a lot more work and is a pretty dumb move.
I'm quoting the mod's comment to OP from the image on this post in reference to your quote above.
Yet that's exactly what OP is stated to have done by the mod.
Right, so you ignored entirely what this tangent is about.
The mod has stated they have automatic tooling for banning people who downvote on their communities and personally I was banned after one downvote. That cuts off any opposed discussion at a very early juncture.
Not to mention this ban extends to all communities they moderate, so the OP reason "community mismatch" in Carnivore also gets you banned from a bunch of other communities that aren't related to diet at all.
I mean, you can do whatever you want in the community you create, but by definition, all of the above is power trippin'.
Yeah, this is intentional, if I as a human have to review someone's behavior and approve a community ban then I don't want to have to do it for each of my communities one after another. It's a broad heuristic. I probably should improve the tooling to only do the ban by a group of communities rather then all I moderate.
As you can imagine in the past removing someone from a single community causes them to go to my other communities and throw negativity around.
Ideally each community would have a moderator account so they arn't obviously linked - that is a optimization for the future.
Did you contact the mod directly? They've also said they're happy to unban but you'd have to behave like an adult instead of throwing a tantrum.
It's really not power tripping unless they directly refuse to engage and remove the ban after you've attempted to resolve it civilly. Mods often use tools to manage their responsibilities and tools can make mistakes, as can mods.
As long as it aligns with what you believe, otherwise it's power tripping.
Good point
Like in online games we have different types of users
PvE Users - They want to talk about stuff
PvP Users - they want to win fights
The PvP users are always mad that the PvE users don't want to mingle
Here's the problem though. I’ve been a victim of downvote brigades. It usually starts with someone downvoting every single post in one of my communities. Fine, maybe they don’t like my politics. But then it spreads. They start hitting every community I run, even the non-political ones, and downvote everything I post. Eventually, they downvote every single post I make anywhere, just because it’s me.
Some people genuinely get joy out of doing that. They don’t read the post or care about the content. They just see a name they don’t like and hit downvote.
I’m not making this up. I saw it happen over and over. That’s why banning users based solely on voting behavior became a feature. It was needed.
So I started banning people who only showed up to downvote and never contributed. Once I did that, they stopped bothering those communities. They knew they couldn’t mess with me anymore.
Since then, serial downvoting has dropped across the Fediverse. People figured out they could get banned for it.
It wasn’t about disagreeing with information. It was about targeting people. I’m not saying OP did that, but that’s the pattern I’ve seen.
I personally would like to see votes be eliminated for the entire fediverse so the vote manipulators have no way to try to shape narratives.
I think you're making it out to be a bigger deal than it actually is.
Also, you put too much value into the meaning of votes.
This is a disgusting precedent and we should be fighting back against it. Hell, people were literally coming here because reddit was banning them for how they voted.
Why is it so difficult for average people to not be pieces of shit in positions of power? Learn to deal with criticism.
Well, the developers did make it a feature to be able to ban based on voting.
We didn't always have that feature, it's relatively new. So I guess there were enough people asking for it that it became a thing. Also, you yourself mentioned that you were troubled at seeing the "normalization" of the practice, so obviously there are enough people seeing it as an issue that you have noticed it.
Again, I'd love if Lemmy got rid of the option to upvote/downvote. And just for background, I once had a guy who would take screen shots of how many dowvotes I had on my posts, then post that screenshot, and laugh about it and use that to argue to others that they should just bully me off of Lemmy. I won't say his name here, but he still mentions my name a lot. lol
There's criticism, and then there's the weird stalker types that seem to be on Lemmy that become serial downvoters. There are even some that create downvoting bots. Yeah, bots just to downvote. That has also been an issue that admin had to work on.
No voting at all, would solve it though!
Yeah, we need to make sure people like you and ideas like yours infest as few communities as possible.
You're clearly not mature enough to handle anonymous discourse on the internet, so you need to have tools in place to abuse your power against those you don't like.
I'm going to ignore you now. Hopefully we don't have to cross paths again and I never have the displeasure of seeing one of your censored communities.
That sounds like the very censorship you seem to be arguing against though.
Of course, you're free to ignore me. That is the right attitude! I would prefer people "ignore" and "block" rather than become serial downvoters.
Thanks, friend! :)
You would like to get rid of votes? The one thing that differentiated Reddit and now Lemmy? Why are you not using Facebook or Discord or any other platforms focused on positive community building?
And no I did not target this person. As I have explained I scrolled hot and Lemmy doesn't have enough content yet to idk "drown out the noise"
If you think downvotes are the one thing that differentiate Lemmy, you're an idiot.
Yes, I would like to get rid of votes. Because people weaponize them, and people like you take advantage of them. If you don't agree with a community, just block it and move on. You don't need to go in and just do a long stream of downvoting.
In a perfect world, voting works. But lemmy seems to draw a crowd that seems to harbor more obsessive types who can't let something go.
Brah, you don't even like the community you're mad about! lol But you seem mad that now you aren't allowed to downvote there anymore.
The mod even gave you a chance to be unbanned, and you decided not to take him up on it. You brought it here to see opinions, and most of the opinions are that you are in the wrong. It is what it is.