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.
Yep always a rule here adn on previous instance. but i did just make bold and at top after reading yoru post that people may overlook it.
they would be just as mad i think. why would they b mad at being exiled form a communtiy they hate anyways? A time out, instead of being exiled.
well I read comments and if i see same downvoter on 3 or 4 posts and they are right away I see where it is going. do you have a number that you think should count as serial donvoting? I'd be happy th change way I do it.
it's not my instance that woudl be up to admin. but i think (?) that removeing downvoties would only be for people on my actual instance. you could for example still downovte since you are not on my instance, but I just wouldn't be able to see your downvotes. so that wouldn't stop the downvoting at all, it would only stop me from seeing the downvotes. not you
Ok, I believe you that you had 'No serial downvoting' as a rule, before this all started.
But... that 3 word phrase is very vague, there are many ways one could possibly inerperet that.
So... how should we do this, what would a better way to be more specific?
Well, that is a complicated question.
To which I would first ask you, and I guess also by proxy ask you to ask other mods on lemmyusa and ... whoever the admin is:
Do you want to be closer to a safe space for conservatives?
Or do you want to be closer to freely exposing yourself to the opinions (as expressed via downvotes) of ... the entirety of all people on all lemmy instances?
What would be the pros and cons of each of those approaches?
Is there maybe a way to define or outline somewhere in the middle?
If I were ya'll, lemmyusa admins and mods and community members... I would suggest you all have a discussion about that amongst yourselves, probably on your own instance somewhere, and then, ideally, try to create a set of rules that you mostly all agree on, that is a bit more specific, clear and thorough.
As I said elsewhere, yeah I myself did not even know you guys existed until this post today... I have no idea how you all think or feel about any of that.
The best kind of ruleset and guidelines are going to be different, depending on what the actual goal is.
i like to think its a small commuity where people who want to see some conservative articles can. its not really for converting people or having big discussions about howwe are all fashists or nazis or whatever lemmy accueses us of. people are making a big deal out of nothing.
ill be honest. i think its that a lot fo people on lemmy don't want conservatives here and wnat to bully them off of lemmy. one of our posters got a dm (shown in conservative sub) that said that she should take a vid of her killing her self so the guy who sent the message could watch it and laugh: https://lemmy.wtf/post/27666542
another one in taht same sub got banned and laughed and said he was just going to just start another account so he could continue trolling us.
it's about bullying and not wanting us here because of our politcal beliefs. and htat doesn't really seem to match the mission of what lemmy is about.
Ok uh... yeah, I generally don't think its very appropriate to ... joke about or threaten suicide or murder in a very direct and user to user, person to person context.
I really want to try to avoid reproducing a whole shit fest fight in this thread over why people are doing that, having very strong opinions.
But uh... you didn't really answer the question, or maybe I am not understanding you.
If you all want to be just mostly a community for conservatives to post conservative things and talk about things from a conservative perspective...
You could just defederate yourselves from most or all other lemmy instances, if you guys just want basically just want your own little club.
That way, you would only have to deal with any fake or duplicate accounts or whatever, that are from your own instance.
Just strictly from a numbers perspective, that would probably massively cut down on the volume, the numbers of different users you deal with.
From a technical standpoint, you don't have to be connected to everyone else, just simply as a matter of being overwhelmed, with what I am guessing is a fairly small moderation/admin team.
Then, maybe, you could also try to find a few specific instances, whose user bases might be less likely to harass ya'll, after you all maybe get more of a feel for other instances and where you get the most trouble from, versus the least, from a moderation context.
But that's just me spitballing suggestions, I don't know what exactly you all wanna do with your instance.
I'm not an admin so that's not really up to me. it's not my instance. I just mod the community sorry if i miscommunicated. the owner admin of the instance has nothing to do with our community other htna it's his instance that we put it on. we follow the rules of the instance and never had a problem.
i also don't see what that woudl be necessary since people don't have to visit us if they don't want to. but then I also don't agree w peopel defdding from hexbear and stuff. i think people should make their own choices of what the want to visit or not, but i don't feel we shoudl take that choice from them
Ah ok ok.
No, I understand you just mod one community, I got that.
I appreciate you clarifying again though.
Like I said earlier... maybe you all, the mods and admin, should have a discussion about all this.
Just because it doesn't make sense to you that people would go out of their way to harass you... well that doesn't mean everyone else thinks or feels the same way, has the same motivations, has the same reasons why they do or don't do things.
The whole idea of being a mod, of running a community that uh, interfaces with a whole, whole lot of other people... is that you have to have ways to handle people acting wild, and just... hoping that they would stop... is not a very effective plan.
You guys are far from the only, far from the first community to get a wave of people being quite negative.
Just... think of like every single time a Steam page for game reviews gets a sudden flood of negative reviews.
Sometimes, its legit, a game dev did something really shitty and a bunch of people are really mad.
Sometimes ... its less legit, based on something minor or stupid or a rumor or an outright falsehood.
... And sometimes... people disagree about which one of those two scenarios it actually is, or is closer to.
But anyway yeah, I'm not like.. again, in charge of anything here, you guys are in charge of your community.
I don't just wanna tell you: Do this. Have these rules.
Because I don't know exactly what ya'll are going for.