lemmy.ml is a cesspit

It doesn't even have to be a touchy subject.

I've seen plenty of complaints about lemmy.ml being the worst offender for this, removing stuff that is so innocuous that you could show your grandmother at church, because someone in charge found a contorted way to be offended by it. (or worse, because it was critical of China or something)

I think users will ultimately find the path of least resistance, and the least heavy-handed instances will have a healthier growth.

People here are focusing too much on the examples and too little on the core complain (that Lemmy moderation is inconsistent and this frustrates users). I think that the later is worth investigating, IMO for two reasons:

1. The way that federation works, up to three groups can moderate your content: comm mods, admins of the comm's instance, admins of your instance. As such it's possible that users find mod problems far more often here than expected. And, while all those three groups are avoidable (unlike in a forum or Reddit), it's possible that users are having a hard time settling down in instances that work for them.
2. Lots of mods here were previously Reddit mods (inb4: myself included). It's perfectly possible that we brought Reddit's idiotic moderation culture into Lemmy, without even realising it. And... well, Reddit mods aren't exactly known for being transparent, smart, or consistent.

"lemmy.ml" nuff said imo

I've had three removed comments, no posts, But every time the mod has eventually told me that even though I haven't broken any rules, they don't like what I've written and have decided to take it down.

I think it's just the nature of the beast at this point. Smaller communities so the mods are identifying their personal politics with the impersonal rules of the communities.

At least one of those is super innocuous and I have no idea why it got moderated. I have thoughts on the others.

LGBTQ+: You probably just don't want to fuck with any marginalized communities, even if it's a pretty light touch. It's not hard to apply a valid slippery slope argument here.

Unborn child: Abortion is a touchy area, but what is reaaalllly touchy is miscarriage, Your meme could be pretty upsetting for someone who has had one or knows someone who has (we all do). I obviously can't mindread the mods, but there's a another angle that could explain the deletion. People get worked up about this shit man

Bottom line: if you wanna do edgier memes, fire up an EdgelordMemez community and have at it.

Someone was writing counterfactual garbage about a religion on worldnews@lemmy.ml and I corrected the statement.

They banned me for 14 days with the reason that I am a Nazi, because I "defended" a "white nationalist religion". Mind you, it's about a religion with 29% of non-white membership in the USA and more 59.4% of the members living outside the USA.

Hey OP, just for the record: you got a good chuckle out of me for all of the content you created that was removed. Thanks for trying to keep the fediverse interesting.

I'm coming to the realization that any post that is completely innocuous or anodyne to the mods is fine, but if you even touch on certain subjects (e.g., miscarriages, queer culture, Lemmy's rules, etc) it will get taken down.

I think polarization plays a big part of it. People are quick to downvote/remove stuff that looks like it's from the "other side."

in other words, you’re upset that memes that punch up are accepted and memes that punch down aren’t

lemmy.ml and hexbear communities are generally not very friendly IMO

I look forward to the update when we can block instances, I think lemmy will be much better with those two on ignore.

it's hard to think anything about posts like those, because everyone complains about "bad/unfair moderation", including people who post absolute bs and have no clue about it :<

not to accuse you of anything op, it's just kinda hard to get an opinion on the matter

Not that I agree with the decisions of lemmy.ml mods at all but I maintain that the moderators there reserve the right to enforce their fucked up rules on their communities how they please.

When Hexbear was federating with different various servers, they broke many servers' rules but not others. Because the Hexbear admin had trouble reigning in their users they got de-federated by many of the servers.

I'm just saying that you have to understand that what's acceptable on your server may not be acceptable on another server you post to. Maybe this needs to be made clearer across Lemmy as a whole but I'm not sure how we would.

Posting jokes making fun of the LGBTQ+ community won't go well on beehaw, and blahajzone which explicitly are safe spaces for that group. Posting negative news or views of the Beijing or Moscow governments will likely get you banned in lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.

That's what you will have to deal with in the de-centralized model, and I think it strikes a decent balance of allowing open communication, resisting overall censorship while still allowing some groups to censor out what they consider bad vibes.

There are many meme community alternatives: !memes@sopuli.xyz, !politicalmemes@lemmy.world, !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world, !funny@sh.itjust.works to name a few.

Edit: Just be sure to read the sidebar and server rules before you post if you're ever unsure.

Mods and admins on Lemmy can remove your comments and ban you because they don't like what you said and it doesn't matter wether you broke the rules or not. It's a huge issue but what you gonna do, except just keep making new accounts. It's not like you can appeal it anyways. Hell, you don't even get a notification. There's a ton of people here posting and not realizing that almost no one can even see their messages.

Ok that tom meme as youve described it is fucking hilarious

This sounds like reasonable moderation. You should find or start a political meme community if you want polical memes.

I really don't like political content on lemmy or social media.

Sorry. I am late to this. I am the mod here and the mod on lemmy shit posting. I firmly stand my decision to remove your posts. You have to be very careful with what you post memes about and I got user reports about the meme which is why I decided to act on it. People can and will take things the wrong way and that's before I even go to the potential comments and users memes like that tend to attract.

Strong moderation is the only thing that keeps a community a community. A good community is a community that says, "No, you and your content are not welcome."

The lack of that is why platforms like Twitter fail at creating community, just an amalgamation of people throwing their shit into a worldwide circlejerk.

What I'm trying to say is that moderators do not serve your they don't need to really give reasons or be consistent. They shape the community they Foster.

If your content is removed, find a community that accepts you, because the communities you found do not.