11mo ago

What's the story with their modlog

I'm trying to work out why there are posts in here about users being banned from communities, when neither the user or the community are under their control. Is this being mirrored from somewhere, or is this something that's limited to what people on their instance see?

They are also, apparently, banning users that have never been to their instance.

22 comments

It's the lemmy modlog, it shows all federated actions.
You can see the same thing for lemmy.world here:
https://lemmy.world/modlog
- I did have a look at their modlog for comparison. It seems counterintuitive that an action taken by a mod on another instance would show up in theirs. Wouldn't the act of banning someone inherently federate by the fact their posts would no longer be seen?
  
  I think part of it is transparency. As a mod on lemmy.world, it benefits me to be able to look at the modlog and see a users entire history, not just on lemmy.world.
  
  That's federation. You're on lem.ee, still you don't want all the spam and deleted content to show up when you visit the news community on lemmy.world. That community has some mods and they keep the community clean. And not just for their instance. It needs to spread throughout the network. So naturally every mod action shows up on lem.ee dubvee and everywhere after the originating instance forwards the action to them. Or you'd have a vastly different view on the same community, depending on viewpoint.
I first heard about them because they banned me and I got spammed by their dumbass system with every single community on the instance duplicating the ban via a bot. Never even interacted with them or saw a user or community prior. Seems like it's just some over-controlling instance operator just keeping everyone they don't like out of their instance that nobody would have ever known about had they not spammed mass bans.
- Given how active the instance is, and that 90% of the local activity is from one community (dedicated to the show 30 rock?), it's so bizarre that they're trying to police what happens elsewhere on Lemmy.
  Also, as I suspected, there seems to be just one person running the whole thing.
Apparently I got banned for being an “extremist”
- They didn't list a specific comment that got me banned. I'm left of liberals so that might be a factor.
- I mean, it's fair. You're extremely awesome.
  
  You're too! You're a based poster!
They are also, apparently, banning users that have never been to their instance.
That's literally impossible; every action taken has to be against an entity known to the instance. However, I can ban people from communities that have never posted there (which is what you're seeing). That is to close a loophole where someone is instance banned here but can still interact with the local copies of communities on their home instance.
In such a case, those local interactions would not be moddable on that instance except by the admins. Any reports for that user would not be seen by the mods on my instance, and no mod actions could be taken by them. I think 0.19.4 or 5 addresses that, but that's' not the version we're on right now, so this is how we're handling that.
- You can be known to the instance by interacting with communities they federate with, without ever interacting with a community on that instance, right? They'd just have to know your username to block you.

22 comments