A link to the original post.

And a screenshot of said post along with top comments:

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Rules listed as broken:

• Rule 4 (chiliedogg): “No imperialism, conservatism, reactionism or Zionism, lessor evil rhetoric. Dismissing 3rd party votes or ‘wasted votes on 3rd party’ is lessor evil rhetoric.” (Note: they mean “lesser-evil” rhetoric, as in an appeal to “vote for the lesser evil” in a first-past-the-post system.)
• Rule 6 (me): “Be civil in comments and no accusations of being a bot, ‘paid by Putin,’ Tankie, etc. This includes instance shaming.”

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“Homophobia”

Addressing this upfront because it makes no sense: I can’t tell where the “homophobia” claim came from. None of my three comments in that thread (shown below) contain anything even pertaining to sexuality, so I was baffled seeing this.

Grasping at straws, my only guesses are that @BrainInABox@lemmy.ml:

• (Charitably) Doesn’t know what the word “meatpuppet” means and didn’t bother to take three seconds to check. (In case you don’t want to check, it’s a person with no agency of their own controlled by somebody else as a front.)
• (Less-than-charitably) Didn’t think I’d retain the evidence and wanted to throw a little libel into the mod log, as a treat.

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Comments

Note: the article I linked to in the hypertext “Putin’s meatpuppet” was a current news story from the Associated Press titled “Trump strikes deal with Putin to get diesel in sharp reversal of US policy weeks before midterms”, wherein Trump struck a deal with Russia to buy 500,000 tons of diesel, with even more in the future.

Note 2: NoneOfUrBusiness’ comment changes between the first and second images due to a ninja edit, which I point out.

Context: the OP, K1nsey6, is one of three moderators of this community and thus makes and enforces these rules.

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chiliedogg’s comment

chilliedogg isn’t even criticizing third-party votes. They’re literally just still calling Democrats the “frustratingly slow option” (the exact phrasing of the post) while (correctly) calling Republicans the “we’re gonna piss in your mouth and poke you in the eye with needles” option. This challenge alone to the post – the act of simply saying the US’ fascist far-right are worse than the post claims while not arguing the assessment of the Democratic Party in any way – is enough to warrant a comment removal.

That is, the act alone of making Republicans seem considerably worse than Democrats – without any reference to third-party voting or even directly advocating voting for Democrats – is treated as a Rule 4 violation, which significantly bolsters my point below that what I was saying was true.

This is an obvious abuse of Rule 4, even accounting for the vague and repressive way it’s already written.

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My comments

I never stated or even implied in this thread that got me banned that the OP was paid by anyone, a tankie, a bot, or was otherwise doing this as some sort of larger operation coordinated with others. I stated that the OP was acting in the interests of Republicans, whose de facto party leader has been acting in the interests of Vladimir Putin. Co-moderator BrainInABox’s response to criticism of the Republican Party above is obvious evidence of this.

The rule is used as a catch-all to remove criticism of the community’s function as propaganda useful to authoritarian regimes like Russia, where the “etc.” is a baked-in “remove any criticism whatsoever if I feel like it” clause. The community is functionally an island of lemmy.ml – if that connection wasn’t obvious by the link to “Audiobooks Read by Dessalines [lemmy.ml administrator]” in the community’s sidebar.

And if you think the part of the rule that I violated is “Be civil in comments”, well boy, do I have a screenshot for you:

And a link to that exchange.

For context, again, K1nsey6 is a moderator, and notably, this comment is over two days old. Moreover, the comment below Doc_Crankenstein’s was removed, so this thread clearly wasn’t somehow sacred or missed by the moderators. A moderator read a comment where they were told “No shit sherlock […] I’M FUCKING AGREEING WITH YOU!” then asked if they could “not be a cunt for like 5 minutes […] instead of arguing with your own imagination” and then called a “fuck face” with basically nothing else of substance and either thought that didn’t violate Rule 6 or didn’t care.

So I’m going to venture a guess that if this passes as “civil”, my pretty plain statement that K1nsey6 is running interference that helps Republicans should be considered downright pleasant and affectionate. (But in reality, it’s pretty obvious that the fact they agreed with the moderator, regardless of civility, is what saved them.)

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Edit: K1nsey6 replied to one of my comments in that thread a couple minutes after I posted this. This is their personal interpretation of “Be civil in comments”:

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Conclusion

I believe I deserve to be unbanned and my comments and chiliedogg’s comment reinstated. Even under rules designed solely to stifle legitimate criticism, our comments weren’t doing anything wrong.

What I’d like most, though, given it seems like the moderators designed the space expressly to power trip, is to bring this abuse of power out in the open, because this is clearly the norm for this community. They don’t actually care about what their rules say (e.g. “Be civil in comments”); they exist as “rules for thee, not for me” in order to remove whatever they want.

I compiled these screenshots because I had a sneaking suspicion some excuse would be conveniently found to remove them and wanted a means to be able to defend myself from a one-sided narrative. Although I’m especially glad I did because I didn’t in my wildest dreams think “homophobia” would be one of them. In the charitable interpretation (above), it’s extremely sloppy, and in the uncharitable one, it’s disgraceful and abusive libel.