Cross posted here as it was highlighted that the individual is a lead Lemmy developer, raising serious concerns about the direction of Lemmy, a leading Fediverse platform, and the impact on future user adoption.

Hi

There have been some rather concerning actions taken by an admin of the !privacy@lemmy.ml community, dessalines@lemmy.ml. Based on recent moderation decisions and a complete lack of communication, it seems like their account may have been compromised, or even more concerning if these actions are deliberate.

  1. Erroneous Rule 4 Enforcement, First Instance: a guide posted to !privacy@lemmy.ml, despite receiving many positive votes and comments, was removed under Rule 4:

If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered

However, this post was a guide and not a question, so Rule 4 does not apply. Attempts were made to reach out for clarification but there has been no response, despite their account showing recent activity.

  1. Erroneous Rule 4 Enforcement, Second Instance: an on-topic informational video also posted to !privacy@lemmy.ml, despite also receiving many positive votes, was again removed under Rule 4. This post was again not asking a question, so again Rule 4 does not apply. Again, no explanation has been given.

  2. User Bans in Completely Unrelated Communities: user bans of over a month have been applied for not only !privacy@lemmy.ml but several completely unrelated communities:

This is especially concerning given that the above posts have no relation to these communities, and no recent activity has been made in any of them, meaning none of their rules could have been broken. Moreover, a public track record of positive contributions across Lemmy has been established, with many positive votes and comments received over a sustained period. Given all of this, the bans appear to be highly disproportionate, only adding to the growing concerns around moderation practices.

  1. Repost with Disclaimer Removed: a repost of the guide, despite a disclaimer explaining the original removal appears to be in error and that attempts to contact the admin have failed, despite again receiving many positive votes and constructive comments, was once again removed. Again, no explanation has been given.

Given all of this, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that something is not right. Mistakes in moderation happen but the complete lack of communication, the disproportionate actions, and the ongoing bans from unrelated communities raise serious concerns. It seems as though the account is most likely compromised, or even more concerning if these actions are deliberate.

Has anyone else experienced similar issues with this admin, or does anyone have more insight into what might be happening?

TL;DR: Admin dessalines@lemmy.ml of !privacy@lemmy.ml appears to be making seriously concerning moderation decisions, including erroneous enforcement of Rule 4 in at least two separate instances, failing to respond to messages, and applying user bans in completely unrelated communities despite a long track record of positive contributions across Lemmy. This has led to speculation that their account is likely compromised, or even more concerning if these actions are deliberate.

Any thoughts or similar experiences would be appreciated.

Cross post with https://lemmy.world/post/43944126

  • ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zipEnglish
    31·
    1 day ago

    For every Lemmy.ml community you’re subscribed to, search for a non-lemmy.ml alternative. Almost every one has an alternative now. Subscribe to the new one, unsubscribe from the old, and never look back. This kind of heavy handed and/or opinionated moderation is the status quo there.

  • flamingos-cant (hopepunk arc)@feddit.ukEnglish
    63·
    2 days ago

    You were instance banned under lemmy.ml’s rule 4, not the privacy community’s rule 4. ml’s rule 4 is “No Ads / Spamming”. This seems to have been prompted by you reposting a removed post, which frankly seems fair despite what I think of ml’s moderation normally.

    Rule 4 does seem to be a bad reason to remove the original post, though I think it should’ve been removed simply for how cringe ‘cuckloading’ is as a term. Stop trying to link sexual deviancy to moral deficiency.

    • orgrinrt@lemmy.worldEnglish
      28·
      2 days ago

      Just jumping in to boost this message, posting your own videos is advertising your channel, probably fine if one and done, but consistently I’d consider it advertising or spamming too. Even if not own videos, just persistently posting videos is bad etiquette and I can see how that’d be construed as spamming too.

      This op is cringe either way. “This moderator’s account has been compromised! No other way to explain them enforcing the instance rule 4 after consistently spamming the communities with my videos!”… Jesus christ.

  • Areldyb@lemmy.worldEnglish
    32·
    2 days ago

    This is not evidence of account compromise, whatever you may think of dessalines’ moderation decisions.

  • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
    91·
    2 days ago

    This is literally how he always acts. There’s a reason that many instances do not federate with lemmy.ml, his instance.

    He’s incredibly pro communist, pro Russia, pro China, and will ban you for even mentioning that something could be foreign propaganda.

    At the end of the day, hopefully your instance builds their server code from source and inspects it to make sure there’s nothing nefarious. It would be nice to use a decentralized Reddit like platform not coded by him, but no one else has the time, resources, ability, and/or dedication, to step up.

    I would still rather use Lemmy over Reddit, though I did switch to donating to piefed, the Canadian instance runners, over donating to him.

    • scytale@piefed.zipEnglish
      43·
      2 days ago

      It would be nice to use a decentralized Reddit like platform not coded by him, but no one else has the time, resources, ability, and/or dedication, to step up.

      You literally mentioned piefed in your next sentence.

      • mrmaplebar@fedia.io
        36·
        2 days ago

        Mbin also exists…

        Also, to be fair, the software isn’t necessarily problematic like the moderation is. No point throwing the baby out with the bath water.

        • Zagorath@aussie.zoneEnglish
          9·
          2 days ago

          Worth noting that Lemmy receives at least some institutional funding for its development. And I believe some of that funding is contingent on hitting active user goals or similar metrics.

        • fonix232@fedia.io
          7·
          2 days ago

          Power tripping people rarely limit themselves to power trip on a single angle.

          And while Lemmy’s open source, it’s a big enough codebase for someone to add a bit of admin override that can go unnoticed for quite a while. Just remember what happened with xz.

          • mrmaplebar@fedia.io
            7·
            2 days ago

            Sure, but we allow people to power trip by giving them power in the first place. People choose to use Lemmy and participate in lemmy.ml, directly or indirectly; that gives the maintainers and admins power.

            Now, I don’t see eye to eye with the tankie crowd. That’s fine, whatever. But I can still appreciate the creation of Lemmy as an open software project.

            Ultimately FOSS gives us agency. I don’t feel that the creators of Lemmy have any power over me personally. They’re not very significant, but I do appreciate their project.

            • greybeard@feddit.onlineEnglish
              5·
              1 day ago

              I moved onto piefed when the lemmy instance I was on shut down, and I don’t regret it at all. It’s a solid choice and promotes options in the threadiverse.

      • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        3·
        1 day ago

        Piefed is known to incorporate CCP-style shadow profile and similar measures, such as “Social Credit”, so it’d be hilarious to complain about l.ml’s alignment to then migrate to piefed of all places.

      • Zangoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
        15·
        2 days ago

        Tbf Piefed also does have opinionated moderation literally hardcoded into the source code.

        It’s pretty easy to modify since it’s python and not rust, but still not great

          • Zangoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
            5·
            2 hours ago

            There were a few, not exaustive since it’s been a few months since I looked through the source code, some of this might have changed and there’s also a few other checks that I’m forgetting:

            • 4chan screenshots (specifically anything that OCR identified as having “Anonymous #(number)” in it) were banned. Honestly this one is fine as a toggle but I think for a while it was just on by default in the code
            • any community that had specific words in it were blocked at instance level. I think “meme” was there, a few swear words, and a few carryover reddit meme community names (196, I think nottheonion was also there, anything with “shitpost” in the name, etc.)
            • There’s a hidden karma/social credit score based on a user’s interactions and net total karma hidden from them that gets impacted by any moderation actions, including some of the automated hardcoded ones (e.g. even trying to upload an image that gets flagged by the hardcoded checks). In some cases the user is not informed of any of these changes (the image upload will appear as a generic image upload error)
            • users with a low enough net score can be automoderated at both a community and instance level

            Edit: the other thing is, a lot of this hardcoded moderation isn’t documented anywhere outside of the code, likely because a lot of the measures would be useless if people knew how they worked

            Edit 2: updated based on Blaze’s reply from another comment, I misremembered the shadow banning, I was confusing it with the federation errors that occur when one user blocks another

          • Eldritch@piefed.worldEnglish
            5·
            1 day ago

            There are some disabled by default, filters built into piefed. That the main Dev uses on their instance. It’s not really even remotely the same thing or as controversial. But it’s the closest thing piefed has and gets brought up regularly because of it.

            • Zangoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              1 hour ago

              Honestly I would consider [user-obscured] hardcoded shadowbanning just as bad.

              Just because I’m closer to agreeing with the PieFed dev’s opinions a little bit more doesn’t mean that I’d support shadowbanning someone because the trivially-evaded checks caught a false positive in the crossfire. Piefed’s auto moderation/social scoring is pretty much textbook definition security-by-obscurity. The second anyone knows how it works, it’s useless. It will pretty much exclusively catch people who just wanted to post a harmless meme or something.

              At least (for now) Dessalines isn’t hardcoding his tankie beliefs into Lemmy’s source code.

              Edit: Blaze is right, it isn’t shadowbanning, but the rest of my point still stands, added the [] part to clarify

                • Zangoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  1 hour ago

                  Thanks for clarifying, I guess I misremembered the shadowbanning part. I think I was mixing together the fact that reputation isn’t really transparent (users’ reputation can change by even attempting to upload an image that gets flagged, and the vague error means they’ll probably try multiple times without realizing they’re being moderated) and the fact the communities can autoban any user whose global reputation is low enough.

                  I still think the security-by-obscurity approach to moderation is inherently flawed though, and I hate to imagine how the dev approaches actual account security if that’s their approach to moderation.

    • Die4Ever@retrolemmy.comEnglish
      22·
      2 days ago

      It would be nice to use a decentralized Reddit like platform not coded by him, but no one else has the time, resources, ability, and/or dedication, to step up.

      piefed, the Canadian instance runners

      PieFed and Mbin don’t share any code with Lemmy at all, they’re in totally different programming languages

  • oce 🐆@jlai.luEnglish
    69·
    2 days ago

    You have been a user for 3 years at least, surely you have heard about the tankie situation on Lemmy? If you don’t share these views it’s better to ignore/block those three or four instances. It will make your Lemmy experience much more relaxing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie

  • fonix232@fedia.io
    33·
    2 days ago

    What I find quite ironic is that dessalines started Lemmy to get away from the perceived over-moderation of Reddit… only to do the exact same thing.

  • realitaetsverlust@piefed.zipEnglish
    38·
    2 days ago

    Lmao no. That guy is just a fucking nutjob. It’s nothing new really. The only thing compromised is his brain really.

  • ShellMonkey@piefed.socdojo.comEnglish
    33·
    2 days ago

    Multi comms is likely an instance ban, which they hand out freely on the .ml instance for anyone not in line with their ideology.

      • [deleted]@piefed.worldEnglish
        13·
        2 days ago

        It sometimes only shows if the user has posted or voted or something like that in the listed communites. Can’t remember exactly what, but there is something that limits what communities are listed when someone is instance banned, which for lemmy shows as a bunch of community bans.