cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/35891683
I have changed the original title of this post, as it is imo, thanks largely to discussion in this thread, with a lemmyusa mod, unnecessarily incendiary.
Original Title:
"lemmyusa.com is engaging in vote manipulation, suggest defederating unless it is addressed"
Mod Abuse:
https://lemmy.world/modlog/1432313?page=1&actionType=All
The instance has 3 active subs, it's unlikely the admins are not also the mods engaging in this.
Banning anyone who downvotes is a clear attempt to foster a chilling effect on dissenting opinions. The mods and admins of this instance are putting their thumb on the scales in order to make their ideas appear more positively received than they actually are.
Thanks for your attention to this.
I realize that doing a cross post here is... unorthodox, and this doesn't drectly involve my own interactions, and I am technically breaking a number of the rules of this comm...
... but I think this is worth the discussion and consideration of, and potential further investigation from this comm, which essentially functions as a de facto place for discussing things like this.
Further context / info I have been able to gather:
Here is a direct link to their own modlog.
Their dedicated legal page:
Their described 'sidebar rules' appear to only be:
We're keeping it simple:
Be thoughtful, act responsibly, and treat others with respect.
No NSFW content.
Everything else seems to be in the Legal / TOS / Privacy Policy section.
My preliminary, most charitable interpretation of mod/admin activity here... is that they can and will essentially ban anyone who posts on their instance and is not a lemmyusa user, as any other user would not have agreed to their TOS.
???
Further, this instance appears to be hosting an account that is impersonating SatansMaggotyCumFart, a fairly well known, mostly parody/dedicated 'bit' account here on lemmy...
The profile description of their version of SMCF claims to be 'the only real profile!', and is using a clearly AI generated avatar/profile pic... and uh, to me at least, it seems very unlikely this is the actual SMCF.
UPDATE:
Ok.
After some conversation in this thread, I should add:
There is, and there was at the time this all started, a rule in the comm that much of these downvote bans took place in, which reads:
'No Serial Downvoting.'
Personally, I find this rather vague.
How many dowmvotes, in what timeframe, across how many comms/comments/posts, etc?
I am also still uncertain to what extent these actually are dedicated, persistent, serial downvoters, vs just a whole lot of randos seeing something on their feed and then downvoting it and moving on.
I get the intent behind trying to stem a mass wave of negativity, nobody likes a wave of mass downvotes and hostile comments...
But on the other hand, there should probably be a bit more clarity and specificity here, less heavy handed actions for less comitted and persistent behavior.
IMO, a balance has to be struck between allowing people to genuienly freely express their opinion via downvoting, but at the same time, there are clearly also cases where people or groups of people basically just downvote all comments or posts from a specific user or in a certain comm or pertaining to a certain topic, etc.
I myself am fairly confident I have managed to attract at least one person who downvotes all my posts/comments on their instance, simply because I am on their shitlist, apparently.
So ideally... we could maybe have a constructive conversation about that.
As to the SatansMaggotyCumFart profile on lemmyusa being an impersonatory account:
We've got one mod from lemmyusa here saying he really isn't sure, and personally blocked him, I think from his own user standpoint, not from the standpoint of himself as a mod.
IMO, the account still strikes me as likely another person, impersonating the actual user... I of course cannot be certain, but the profile still strikes me as very sus.
Finally, I am least personally going to strongly discourage any one reading this from popping in to lemmyusa and going out of your way to downvote every single thing on there simply because it is on that instance.
They are already in more or less lockdown mode, call that a win if you must.
I did not intend nor do I want this very post to act as an attack vector.
UPDATE 2
SatansMaggotyCumFart, the real one, has appeared in this thread and confirmed that the lemmyusa profile is indeed an impersonation, is not them.
In my mind it's pretty simple.
They're always going to be able to manipulate things on their own instance to try to interfere with strategy number 2 above. Lemmy.ml does this, presumably lemmyusa would do the same, just banning anyone from off instance that for whatever reason tries to engage with sensible stuff. But they can't ever do a perfect job at it, and I don't think other instances should be assisting them be pre-emptively shutting off that line of communication.
That is my 2c
For what its worth, I cross posted this, I did not write the original title, and I also agree that simply being a conservative instance is a terrible reason for defederation, muchless automatically.
What I do have a problem with is Power Tripping Bastards who enforce rules that are not stated, who have double standards, who are hypocrites.
Myself formerly being a conservative from a conservative household... I held not being a hypocrite as a higher virtue than anything else from my default worldview, and I altered my worldview instead of abadoning my integrity.
There are doubtlessly other such people, who could potentially be persuaded, as I was, by sound arguments, appeals to empathy, 'think of it from the point of view of the other'.
However at the same time... no one is or should be obligated to deal with having to argue with or try to teach hostile and aggressive people all the time.
I would personally prefer a standard of who is federated/defederated to whom be based more on the capacity of the mods and admins to have reasonable rules and also enforce those rules reasonably.
Not merely on face value political alignment alone.
Then wouldnt it be easy to just ignore the community and move on? we are not asking you to teach us and please show a single post in the community that is aggressive. in fact we actually locked comments and comm just so no extreme comments and arguemnts get made.
I have never been to lemmyusa nor this Freeze Peach comm before, ever.
This crosspost I made ... was my discovery that these even existed.
I am not a mod.
I am not an admin.
I don't even think I know any of the people or accounts that are making these downvotes ya'll find problematic.
What I am is a rando on the internet, who is trying to shine a light on what appear to be ... at best, very hamfisted attempts at moderating a lemmy instance.
Thats what we do here in this comm, all talk about cases where some mod or admin somewhere on lemmy may be acting kinda shitty.
Frankly, I agree with you in the sense that if one doesn't wanna talk with conservatives, the right thing to do is just not talk to them, as opposed to harass them.
But like I said... I'm not in charge of anything here, I didn't even know ya'll existed literally untill I made this post.
we weren't advertising our community or anything like that, we were jsut minding ourown business. Now the community has blown up with downoting brigading lol i don't care abou tthat tho, i already know lemmy doesn't like conservatives.
People in ths thread and others think we are trying to rot brains of lemmys when we weren't doing anything but posting conservativre stuff to our own conservative communites. so it's wild everyone is ganging up on us. im not upset or anyting so just pointing it out because I think its so funny how crazy some lemm peeple can be
I've always perceived this as both a very weak and insulting argument for defederation or whatever drama people wheel it out for. It was used a lot in various Mastodon defederation dramas.
Like, you (purveyor of said argument) really think your own homies are that weak-minded that mere exposure to right-wing posts will some how turn them into zombie rightoids? You think I'm that weak? And that's the reason for defederating or bullying them or whatever? Fuck off.
not only that, but most don't even read the fking articles, they downvote, send hateful dm's and scream defedration. so how am i converting or brainwashing anyone by posting conservative stuff to a conservative forum? i don't post any conservative stuff anywhere else on lemmy, just my conservative community. lol
I like this post. thnk you, you make a lot of sense and I agree (i am mod of the conservative2 community)