This is entirely down to the instances and how they administer the moderators on their communities. The big difference is that if such a thing happened on the fediverse, if it’s really bad, members of the community could recreate it on another instance and take the userbase.
Ie if the moderators of art@lemmy.world lost the plot, it could be remade on art@lemmy.zip. That doesn’t work so well on reddit because “art”, the natural name is taken.
But on Reddit it’s just as easy to make your own new sub with a different name.
Depends on the subreddit. Many topics have what would be-called natural names that people naturally look for. Suppose you don’t like how r/television is ran. What are you gunna do? Make your own? What you gunna call it? r/tv-shows? Maybe (but that’s also already taken). r/television2? r/bettertelevision?
Also, how are you gunna effectively advertise it? Reddit is way too big for a new small communtiy in most cases, unless it directly sources from another large community.
Yes, that is the benefit of federation, but the downside is that if a user is forcibly removed from participation in a community they liked, it won’t really matter that they created a new one if they can’t tell the users in the old community to migrate. But this is talking about worst case scenarios where mods mass ban thousands of users indiscriminately, and not considering something more specific such as when a mod has a personal issue with a specific user and lets their personal feeling get in the way of their job as moderator.
Speaking as a moderator (even though I don’t really do much on a low traffic community), if a mod bans specific users just because they don’t like those users, that’s an abuse of power. But that abuse of power will largely go unchecked because it isn’t big enough of a problem for most users to take issue with, usually.
Banned users will typically either ban evade by creating alt accounts on different instances, or not participate in any Lemmy community other than some community focused on mod power abuse, for example.
Yes, that is the benefit of federation, but the downside is that if a user is forcibly removed from participation in a community they liked, it won’t really matter that they created a new one if they can’t tell the users in the old community to migrate.
Well this is true - on an individual user level. But I am talking about a situation where a mod team (or even just 1 moderator) is so bad, so hated that enough of the userbase for that community get fed up - they could just make their own and use tools like !newcommunities@lemmy.world or !communitypromo@lemmy.ca to advertise what they’re doing (this does work).
Obviously if it’s just you aggrieved with how a community is run, you’ll find it much harder. But that’s true anywhere.
Speaking as a moderator (even though I don’t really do much on a low traffic community), if a mod bans specific users because they don’t like those users, that’s an abuse of power. But that abuse of power will largely go unchecked because it isn’t big enough of a problem for most users to take issue with, usually.
Oh absolutely, and it’s not realistic to expect administrators of medium to high level instances to micro-manage and oversee all moderator decisions within their instance. But I imagine if you lost the plot on your !cars@lemmy.world community and started banning people for frivolous infractions, you’d be credibly replaced by a competing community in relative short-order and I would imagine its more likely that the lemmy admins would remove you eventually.
If I started power tripping, I would hope I would be replaced. But instance admins have a rough job just keeping the instance running. Smaller communities are bound to slip through the cracks.
Im just saying, while Lemmy has more protections perhaps than Reddit, it isnt really that different.
More importantly is the actual ratio. If its 5k out of 500k that would means 1% of bans were unjust, which could just be explain as error margin, but this one is over 98% of the bans that were unjust. It is a blatant abuse of whatever perceived power there is.
This can happen on the Fediverse as well, though. It might not happen at the same scale as on Reddit over here due to the public modlog, but mods can still ban people for no legitimate reason.
There are lots of other reasons why Reddit sucks. But mods power tripping isn’t unique to them. We have our own fair share of power tripping mods and community hoarders that migrated here from Reddit.
Power tripping on the fediverse is mitigated by various factors though:
Public modlogs (as you said).
Federated structure meaning a deranged moderator team can find themselves replaced by a copycat community on another instance if they’re bad enough.
And perhaps I’m a bit naive here, but I’d like to think that no respectable instance admins on the fediverse would allow the brazen behaviour of the r/art team. They’d have long been removed.
I run my own instance. I’m the only Admin, I’m the only Mod, I’m the only user. I “ban” people daily. Of course it doesn’t actually do anything but It’s fun it just feels more gratifying than just blocking someone.
But yeah I’d never allow people to sign up for my instance, I don’t have the time nor desire to admin people and mods.
In this situation I specifically mean instances designed for other people to use. Not private-use instances like yours. Although if your instance (ie: you) behaved badly enough, and notably so - you’d just end up getting defederated.
That is indeed true. Only issue I can see is the copycat community might not outgrow the older community. And I think people tend to gravitate towards the larger community if there are multiples of them. Especially newer users who won’t know of the power tripping mods and will just assume it’s an ordinary community. But let’s hope new users joining the Fediverse have better critical thinking skills and start asking questions if they see a community with a strong and active copycat community.
That is indeed true. Only issue I can see is the copycat community might not outgrow the older community. And I think people tend to gravitate towards the larger community if there are multiples of them.
Thankfully the Fediverse designates community size by active users per week/month/etc when you look them up. Piefed specifically does this. You can’t even see the overall subscribers in the community browser. So this levels the playing field somewhat.
Five. THOUSAND. users. They were banned for no reason, yet people still defend visiting Reddit. Let it die…
To be fair, I would not be surprised the learn the exact same thing is happening on Lemmy, to exactly the same degree of severity.
Lemmy isn’t really any better than Reddit in this regard, unfortunately.
This is entirely down to the instances and how they administer the moderators on their communities. The big difference is that if such a thing happened on the fediverse, if it’s really bad, members of the community could recreate it on another instance and take the userbase.
Ie if the moderators of art@lemmy.world lost the plot, it could be remade on art@lemmy.zip. That doesn’t work so well on reddit because “art”, the natural name is taken.
I always see this argument here.
But on Reddit it’s just as easy to make your own new sub with a different name.
In both cases you still have the same problem.
Depends on the subreddit. Many topics have what would be-called natural names that people naturally look for. Suppose you don’t like how r/television is ran. What are you gunna do? Make your own? What you gunna call it? r/tv-shows? Maybe (but that’s also already taken). r/television2? r/bettertelevision?
Also, how are you gunna effectively advertise it? Reddit is way too big for a new small communtiy in most cases, unless it directly sources from another large community.
You see the uphill problem here?
Yes, that is the benefit of federation, but the downside is that if a user is forcibly removed from participation in a community they liked, it won’t really matter that they created a new one if they can’t tell the users in the old community to migrate. But this is talking about worst case scenarios where mods mass ban thousands of users indiscriminately, and not considering something more specific such as when a mod has a personal issue with a specific user and lets their personal feeling get in the way of their job as moderator.
Speaking as a moderator (even though I don’t really do much on a low traffic community), if a mod bans specific users just because they don’t like those users, that’s an abuse of power. But that abuse of power will largely go unchecked because it isn’t big enough of a problem for most users to take issue with, usually.
Banned users will typically either ban evade by creating alt accounts on different instances, or not participate in any Lemmy community other than some community focused on mod power abuse, for example.
Well this is true - on an individual user level. But I am talking about a situation where a mod team (or even just 1 moderator) is so bad, so hated that enough of the userbase for that community get fed up - they could just make their own and use tools like !newcommunities@lemmy.world or !communitypromo@lemmy.ca to advertise what they’re doing (this does work).
Obviously if it’s just you aggrieved with how a community is run, you’ll find it much harder. But that’s true anywhere.
Oh absolutely, and it’s not realistic to expect administrators of medium to high level instances to micro-manage and oversee all moderator decisions within their instance. But I imagine if you lost the plot on your !cars@lemmy.world community and started banning people for frivolous infractions, you’d be credibly replaced by a competing community in relative short-order and I would imagine its more likely that the lemmy admins would remove you eventually.
If I started power tripping, I would hope I would be replaced. But instance admins have a rough job just keeping the instance running. Smaller communities are bound to slip through the cracks.
Im just saying, while Lemmy has more protections perhaps than Reddit, it isnt really that different.
Eh, they’d likely be directly told that @righthandofikaros@lemmy.world is losing it rather than manually checking the local logs.
More importantly is the actual ratio. If its 5k out of 500k that would means 1% of bans were unjust, which could just be explain as error margin, but this one is over 98% of the bans that were unjust. It is a blatant abuse of whatever perceived power there is.
It’s indefensible
This can happen on the Fediverse as well, though. It might not happen at the same scale as on Reddit over here due to the public modlog, but mods can still ban people for no legitimate reason.
There are lots of other reasons why Reddit sucks. But mods power tripping isn’t unique to them. We have our own fair share of power tripping mods and community hoarders that migrated here from Reddit.
Power tripping on the fediverse is mitigated by various factors though:
Public modlogs (as you said).
Federated structure meaning a deranged moderator team can find themselves replaced by a copycat community on another instance if they’re bad enough.
And perhaps I’m a bit naive here, but I’d like to think that no respectable instance admins on the fediverse would allow the brazen behaviour of the r/art team. They’d have long been removed.
I run my own instance. I’m the only Admin, I’m the only Mod, I’m the only user. I “ban” people daily. Of course it doesn’t actually do anything but It’s fun it just feels more gratifying than just blocking someone.
But yeah I’d never allow people to sign up for my instance, I don’t have the time nor desire to admin people and mods.
In this situation I specifically mean instances designed for other people to use. Not private-use instances like yours. Although if your instance (ie: you) behaved badly enough, and notably so - you’d just end up getting defederated.
That is indeed true. Only issue I can see is the copycat community might not outgrow the older community. And I think people tend to gravitate towards the larger community if there are multiples of them. Especially newer users who won’t know of the power tripping mods and will just assume it’s an ordinary community. But let’s hope new users joining the Fediverse have better critical thinking skills and start asking questions if they see a community with a strong and active copycat community.
Thankfully the Fediverse designates community size by active users per week/month/etc when you look them up. Piefed specifically does this. You can’t even see the overall subscribers in the community browser. So this levels the playing field somewhat.