The post in question, if interested:

Also, I don't know how to see which mod/admin banned me, so if you know how to in the modlog, definitely let me know.

Banned for 7 days, so I'm not super mad or anything - I just thought it was funny.

Honestly I don't blame them - I'd be embarrassed about people finding out my community was on .ml too.

I made a post about the Europeans who are being deported from Germany for being anti-genocide. https://lemmy.ml/post/28407953

A user repeated the now many times debunked lie that these victims facing deportation were "violent racist rioters". Blatant German propaganda, made up to smear opposition to the genocide in Palestine. Which Germany supplies 30% of the weapons for.

After calling them, and a few other users out for repeating the same lie, the moderators banned me.

Mod Carrotcypher links to their own personal blog and then pins their own post.

Opsec101's homepage, made by Carrotcypher:

And here's a look at rule 3!

Call me picky, but I think the moderators should follow the rules they write and enforce.

https://lemmy.ml/post/28111691/17749466

This is actually insane. Another user was criticizing the New Deal era and brought up a bunch of points, I commented refuting a bunch of their points but describing two of of them, Japanese Internment and the Red Scare, simply as "legitimate criticism."

@Decoy321@lemmy.world responded "No they’re not. Those two things were caused by far greater international factors. Like, you know, the 2nd World War."

I cited a commission that found that internment was not caused by a legitimate threat posed by the Japanese but was rather caused by racism and hysteria, and that even Reagan agreed with that conclusion and signed a bill paying reparations to the victims.

Well then the mod responded that I was jumping to "inflammatory conclusions" and "personal attacks" because I assumed that when they said that criticism of internment is not legitimate it meant that they were defending internment. They continued to refuse to explain how else I was possibly supposed to interpret such a claim. I still have no idea. Apparently their stance is, "It's not legitimate to criticize the thing I oppose." If anyone can make sense of that, please enlighten me.

Since they refused to explain, I took a guess that maybe the misunderstanding was that they were interpreting "legitimate criticism" as "damning criticism," like that because a bad thing happened during that era, nothing good came of it at all. I made it clear that this was speculation and that any criticism of interpreting it that way only applied if that's what was happening.

The mod responded by permabanning me, removing all of my comments so they don't show in the modlog, and adding this:

Edit: the other commenter essentially proved that they were just baiting people into inflammatory discussion. They kept resorting to personal attacks and flip-flopped on their position solely to continue arguing. This behavior is not tolerated here. Please report such trolls in the future.

At literally no point did I "flip-flop" my position of "internment was bad, actually." Nor did I "bait" them, unless "criticizing internment is legitimate," is somehow "baiting" someone into saying "no it isn't." By far the most "inflammatory" thing that was said was when they said that criticism of internment was "not legitimate." The "personal attacks" I made were stating the fact that the position they had expressed was to the right of Reagan on the issue, and also making a quip about a .world mod defending the Red scare and Joseph McCarthy.

This seems to be a case of a clear case of PTB, the mod apparently misspoke but because they're a mod they can just ban people for calling them out instead of owning up to it.

Edit: My comments are still visible on kbin.earth (thank you @Skua@kbin.earth) so I can provide screenshots:

:::spoiler screenshots

Deleted

So I'm not 100% sure this is the right sub for this but I couldn't really find another sort of mod abuse sub that had actual users. I recognize that I am most certainly an asshole in this situation, but I got banned Fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com for a misogynistic comment I left on a completely different sub.

imogen_underscore in that same thread made multiple death threats against me and has only received a 7 day ban. So I want to be clear here that in their eyes a misogynistic comment left on an entirely different sub is WORSE than death threats left in your own sub?

Case 1

Original post

Moderator carrotcypher says "removed for paywall." When asked about which rule this breaks, receives no response. The post is then locked.

Case 2

Original post

Same as the first, except this time there is no paywall - the link is to a freely accessible advocate.com page.

It is censored with no explanation.

Case 3

Original post

Same as Case 2, moderators censor the post and leave no explanation.

Case 4

Original post

This one is finally given a removal reason: a rule that does not exist in the sidebar, and seems to have nothing to do with the post ("Your post has been removed for being too specific to a company or single product.")

But in a censored comment, the OP of the post says they received a different removal reason:

This time, other people notice the censorship and the nonsensical nature of the official removal reason.

Since this removal, there has been no further post of this news in r/privacy. Sources tell me the moderators refuse to explain their decision.

Top: TFW when Nazi Germany wasn't Nazi.

Bottom: This mod just removed a rhetorical question because "nobody said that"???

Thread in case y'all wanna see the context. Everything below the first paragraph was added after my response.

Context:

Original post

This action was taken under an unannounced rule that can label and censor criticism of anyone or anything with "FUD."

You'll find it's only used to protect the rich and powerful, though.

Unable to simply delete the post, the moderators scrubbed comments from anyone who named and shamed CEO James Dolan, but allowed his supporters to remain uncensored.

Criticism of basically anyone rich or powerful was removed.

Criticism of Tucker Carlson was removed.

kamala Harris, as a da, locked people up and refused parole to keep them as slaves fighting fires.

mod says it's misinfo (probably without fact checking) and removes the comment

update:

idk how I was doing mod abuse

• The article I got banned for.
• Community.

The most funny fact here is the articles that came in the same time.

Zelensky predicts that Putin 'Will Die Soon'

And from the New York Times:

The Secret History of the War in Ukraine: This is the untold story of America’s hidden role in Ukrainian military operations against Russia’s invading armies.

It just shows that Lemmy or Reddit, both have terrible mods and both can silence your voice on command without any reason.

Heise blacklisted

The post

Censored, all comments locked.

The removal reason

Why this is bullshit

This is not a normal removal message. Most of this removal reason is from a template, the portion including "Now blacklisted" was manually added and has never been used before.

Heise is based in Germany, where the best privacy laws (the GDPR) are enforced strictly. If this site is blacklisted, then any site can be blacklisted.

"Please link to a credible source" is part of the original community rules, and maybe the moderator who edited the message forgot to remove it, because Heise is credible.

US border security questions are suppressed

The post

Censored, all comments locked.

The removal reason

Why it's bullshit

Their post is based on legitimate concerns from legitimate news sites. There is no FUD here, there is no attack on any "privacy mainstay" unless the moderators believe the US surveillance apparatus needs to be protected by them.

And if we needed more evidence the moderators are protecting the DHS, they also removed this comment from the thread's OP:

Bonus: mods censor a guide to safe border crossing

The post

The removal reason

Why this is bullshit

No rules were broken. Moderator carrotcypher cannot even be assed to fabricate one. (Why not just blacklist The Guardian too?)

This has been bugging me for a while, and I don't know where else to really ask (this feels like the best place for this specific question); but how do you know what mod did what in the modlog? I've rarely ever seen the modlog actually state what mod/admin performed the action. Can get the user of the comment and even the undeleted text of their comment if it's a comment removal; does not show the mod/admin who actually handled it.

Just noticed a comment was removed for "not crossing the line but close to violating the TOS" and I wanna talk to whoever pulled that dumbass shit. I don't think it's a power trip to make a "report" about it here, I just wanna know what the fuck kind of stupid bullshit reasoning that is and the modlog does not show who the moderator that removed it was.

Edit: Even MBFC rates dropsitenews as a reliable source https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/drop-site-news-bias-and-credibility/

MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY

There is no rule about 'blog sites' on worldnews. Jordanlund has made this up and proceeds to classify anything he does not like as a 'blog '.

The post was https://lemmy.ml/post/27600301 on !antitrust@lemmy.ml

When opening the link, it popped up something I didn't even get to see because it created crashed my browser.

I returned to the post and commented "Jesus, the pop-up on that site is brutal " that's it, that's the exact quote because I use an app that stores things from specific sources that are typed in

Annnnd

For being annoying.

Because the mod didn't like their link being criticised.

I ain't even mad, I'm just amazed to see a PTB in the wild like that.

Which mods/admins were being Power Tripping Bastards?

@PugJesus

What sanction did they impose (e.g. community ban, instance ban, removed comment)?

Community ban, comments wiped from modlog

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).

Unable to find comments in modlog

Explain why you think its unfair and how you would like the situation to be remedied.

I was community banned after the mod falsely smeared me as doing genocide apologia. Not just me but also the hosts of the Blowback podcast Brendan James and Noah Kulwin, as well as Noam Chomsky. According to PugJesus, we are all actually pro genocide.

Context:

In this post about the victims of the Iraq War, I shared Season 1 of the Blowback podcast as it does a phenomenal job covering the war and aftermath while humanizing the victims. PugJesus falsely smeared them as "campist cretins" to discredit the entire podcast. I pushed back.

PugJesus brought up a previous discussion where they also tried to discredit the Journalists and Podcast based on tweets. Here, as with the more recent post, pushed back.

The tweets in question:

According to PugJesus, this is evidence that Brendan James and Noah Kulwin are pro Russia and pro Ukrainian genocide. I completely disagree.

To clarify my position. I have always maintained the position that Ukraine is fighting a war of self defense and fighting for their sovereignty. I have always maintained that Putin's war is illegal and unjustifiable; and that what Russia should do to pull out completely and enact reparations. I have always maintained that I am in complete support of supplying arms to Ukraine, same as any other people fighting against Imperialism and/or Colonialism. I also consider Putin's invasion justifies the need of a European security pact, although I'd prefer it to be one without the US. And yes, Putin's war is a genocide, as multiple genocide scholars have expressed.

I do not consider the US to be a benevolent and altruistic actor. Instead I consider the US to not have the best interests of Ukraine at heart; using the opportunity to expand NATO for the benefit of US Hegemony and to extract capital out of Ukraine. I believe those are worth criticizing and not remotely "genocide apologia"

The two contentious points are as follows

Has the US escalated the conflict to further its own foreign policy goals? Or is saying so genocide apologia?

From the evidence I have seen, yes the US has escalated the conflict. That does not mean Ukraine is to blame, which they aren't. Nor does it mean Russia hasn't escalated the situation more than the US has, which is an easy argument to make and has merit. All it means is that there are actions by the US worth criticizing as they at the expense of Ukraine.

Sources:

• Chomsky and Barsamian, In Ukraine, Diplomacy Has Been Ruled Out
• Noam Chomsky & Vijay Prashad: U.S. Must Stop Undermining Negotiations with Russia to End Ukraine War
• Senators say Israel blocking transfer of US-owned Iron Dome batteries to Ukraine
• The Russia-Ukraine Crisis: A Scorecard on Biden’s Response

Has the US used the conflict to exploit Ukraine financially? Or is saying so genocide apologia?

I think the US has certainly exploited Ukraine, in particular with the usual neoliberal model of loans and privatization via the IMF and World Bank. This is a criticism of the US and of Neoliberal economics, not of Ukraine who's facing an existential threat.

Sources:

• Ukraine’s Debt: an Instrument of Pressure and Spoliation in the Hands of Creditors
• US corporations cash in on Ukraine’s oil and gas
• Ukraine moves closer to large-scale privatization breakthrough

Of course both these criticisms are peanuts when it comes to Trump's complete alignment with Putin's foreign policy aims.

I'm no expert on Russia/Ukraine, if anyone has sources I've overlooked please share. My main concern is the discrediting of Blowback and the Journalists who host it, who have done phenomenally detailed and sourced work on the Iraq War, Cuba, Korea, Afghanistan, and Cambodia. Likening them to "pro-genocide" is disingenuous at best and discrediting their work on that is an injustice.

Commented on a post with the most recent (non-Breitbart) headline and updates. Added this with 3 independent sources:

FYI, Breitbart is a far-right, low-quality source.

Media Bias Fact Check

Media Bias Chart

AllSides

Mod apparently didn't like a more reputable source being added to their post because it was removed in minutes lol.

reason: Rule 6 Violation

Rule 6: Using the Poisoning The Well fallacy to attack sources shared in a post is presently not allowed (this rule may change in the future, and isolated instances will not subject you to a permanent ban)

Just admit you want an echo chamber to spread disinformation and promote biased articles! Using this rule to police sources is very thinly-veiled censorship...

https://lemmy.world/comment/15747505

mod Removed Comment Well you know how the american Jew feels about African Americans haha So much rich history there by sunzu2@thebrainbin.org

reason: What?

Hmmm.... Why did this get removed? Seems like content censorship

Context:

The article in question was well sourced, factually accurate, and written by a well-renowned author and journalist whose work appears elsewhere too, regardless of which outlet published it.

Nonetheless, Jordan Lund is once again blindly trusting a pro-zionist conservative outlet masquerading as a bias and fact checker that nothing from anywhere that criticizes the fascist apartheid regime can be reliable 🤦

These comment removals don't appear on the modlog but the likely culprit comment is

"It fucking matters that the lemmy main code contributors are Tankie scum. The less power they exert over the whole, the better."

At a 3 to 2 score, but also includes such heinous comments as

"You can just browse lemmy in a mobile browser like waterfox just fine...

Why would anybody want to install unnecessary third party apps? That sounds awful."

and

"I havent used many instances but I've never used one which didn't have a mobile site."

The Modlog does mention the ban with the following reason:

Link to Modlog

Hi all, thank you for reading my post. modlod link

In the 196 sub an OP was asking for advice on how to change their friends opinions which they disapprove of, because they were trying to warn them off of 'the tankie triad' and their friend didn't have any issues with what they were seeing and was in fact subscribed to a number of instance already.

Clocks got banned first after suggesting that the OP try to be a genuine friend and try to find some common cause in real life rather than alienating people over abstract geopolitical factionalism:

[> The original post feels like bait, but here is an authentic response.

Maybe genuinely be their friend instead of alienating them based on political flavoring. Perhaps you can be better working together to help others in your locality or communities than squandering over geopolitical matters. Swallow your frustrations, being annoyed is a part of being in a community. You can move on. ](https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/modlog?commentId=13347091)

I raised the issue that censoring earnest advice as 'tankie apologia' and preemtively writing off any common cause/ isolating people is no way to win people over either as friends or comrades.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if 'genuinely be their friend' is 'tankie apologia' to be censored, I'm not sure you're going to be very successful convincing anyone of anything in the real world.

I then got banned for this one, for continuing to find 'the tankie triad' extremely silly:

yeah that's the context, I was just laughing because:

1. only Lemmy users with an axe to grind call them that
2. it sounds really silly, like they're a nemesis to dr venture.
3. I'm supposed to be the melodramatic one yet every day I get one-upped 😔

link

screenshot:

I'm not here to tell them how to run their comm, my position is that this is way more draconian than anything I've run into in any of 'the tankie triad'. The same groups of people loudly complaining about censorship on 'tankie' run instances don't seem to have a problem enforcing vague/arbitrary vibes based censorship in their spaces.

Mods

• https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/u/will_steal_your_username

Actions

• Removed posters comments
• Banned posters from community

Mod log

1. Original comment that was deleted with reason of "Tankie apologia".
2. When another user comments has suspicions of mods actions, Mod replies with this.
3. Poster replies in exasperation explaining perspective, rationale, and offline experiences. Comment gets deleted and purged.

Explanation

The original comment I made was stating that alienation of someone by frustrating their political beliefs is not a way to convince them of anything.

That being their genuine friend goes a long way in helping someone rather then attacking them.

That together they both can work together for a better future.

That you can be annoyed, but that should be swallowed because that is what it means to be part of a community.

You will always be annoyed one way or another in a community, that is the beauty of a community, that there are different people that may annoy you slightly, but working together to still be a community.

The moderator disagrees with this, viewing it as "tankie apologia".

When I replied, explaining why I made my post and my background, My post was removed and I was banned from the community.

Thank you @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com for reminding me on this missing context: https://lemmy.ml/comment/17251624

In my reply post, I wrote that "advocating for war on any country is not political flavoring".

That cannot be swallowed, and one should not befriend such a person without sufficient care for ones own wellbeing.

I had wrote explicitly thinking of people who suport Russia against Ukraine, Israel over Palestine, and Assadists etc.

My purged comment also states that "people seeking to punish / attack LGBTQIA+ people is not political flavoring".

I whole heartingly believe trans rights are human rights.

Free HRT and gender affirming care for all!

To remove an otherwise popular comment advocating for support what I feel are healthy behaviors, then name call someone as a "authoritarian" and a "tankie apologist" is disingenuous and corrupt to me.

Remedy

Personally I would like my comments restored so at least others see a different way of looking at things. I have no qualms with remaining banned.

Perhaps I should have not commented in reply to the mod, but they had already removed my post and I had little to lose.

Otherwise, I am very tired of this on the internet, I am tired of tribalism and the lack of empathy in this world.

What do you all think, should I have even made my original comment if I already knew it would be fruitless?