Lemmy moderation is frustrating as hell
Lemmy moderation is frustrating as hell
I've been posting in the meme communities in Lemmy for a few months now. For the most part, if I make some silly meme about how broke I am or how bad American healthcare is, it doesn't get removed and the meme does well. But I've had several memes get removed that I was pretty sure don't violate the rules of the instance or the community and now I'm getting pretty frustrated. In each case, I've gone to the modlog and (if there's any reason given at all) they say that I violated a rule that is written so generally that anything could count as violating it. Meanwhile, a meme about American kids killed in a school shooting makes the top of front page.
Now, if you've made it this far, your first reaction is to question whether my posts are crossing the line. But I think all of my memes are pretty light hearted even if they're about controversial subject matter. Let me give you a few examples.
A few weeks a go I posted a meme with the caption "My wife out-drinking everyone at the table-- Our unborn son:" [picture of Tom the cat in the womb]. I understand abortion is a touchy subject for some people, but it's not like I was advocating for or against abortion. After that, I posted a meme complaining about the lack of specificity of the rules on Lemmy and that post also got removed. That's enough to let me know that the mods on that instance (lemmy.ml) will delete anything they disagree with. But I'm sure that a meme about killing the rich 1% with guillotines would stay up no problem.
I know what your thinking: Lemmy is a big place, just post on a different instance. And I thought the same thing. I went over to lemmyshitposts@lemmy.world thinking that if they're allowing shitposts, then they would have a more lax mod policy. Post a few memes about innocuous things, it goes fine. Then I post a meme that pokes fun at the LGBTQIA+ acronym for being too long and that gets removed too. So I'm coming to the realization that any post that is completely innocuous or anodyne to the mods is fine, but if you even touch on certain subjects (e.g., miscarriages, queer culture, Lemmy's rules, etc) it will get taken down.
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People here are focusing too much on the examples and too little on the core complain (that Lemmy moderation is inconsistent and this frustrates users). I think that the later is worth investigating, IMO for two reasons:
- The way that federation works, up to three groups can moderate your content: comm mods, admins of the comm's instance, admins of your instance. As such it's possible that users find mod problems far more often here than expected. And, while all those three groups are avoidable (unlike in a forum or Reddit), it's possible that users are having a hard time settling down in instances that work for them.
- Lots of mods here were previously Reddit mods (inb4: myself included). It's perfectly possible that we brought Reddit's idiotic moderation culture into Lemmy, without even realising it. And... well, Reddit mods aren't exactly known for being transparent, smart, or consistent.
- makes it especially hard for users to know what the exact rules aree, as all three of these groups can have different rules, and usually only the community mods put their rules into the community.
And the modlog doesn't show which mod/admin actually did a moderator action, so it's almost impossible to appeal to the person who e.g. banned you and clear up potential misconceptions.
Relevant detail: the modlog shows who did what, but only if you're a mod of that comm. Based on that, I think that it doesn't show it to the rest of the userbase to avoid mod harassment.
However I think that it should show to the rest of the userbase, at least, "[comm name] mod" or "[instance name] admins" instead of simply "mod". And there should be an easy way to contact the relevant group behind a certain mod action, that does not involve direct messages!
Another thing that I feel like missing is a proper channel for comm mods to "upstream" reports to instance admins, when the content fits the community rules but may or may not be in violation of the instance rules. That would indirectly help other users because there's a clearer division of responsibility, and you won't get situations like "comm mods need to take an educated guess on how to enforce instance rules that they did not set up".
Very good points!
Yeah, right now, you could only write to any of the mods directly, but that mod might not be the mod who did the mod action at all.
Moderation tools are lacking pretty bad, but in both directions.