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Blaze (he/him) @feddit.org

How Lemmy public modlog allows to call out toxic and troll users, and should we have a community about this?

I noticed today an occurence of a user complaining about Lemmy being worse then Reddit. The modlogs shows how toxic they are. When this was pointed out, the user deletes their account

https://web.archive.org/web/20241217101003/https://sopuli.xyz/post/20276017?scrollToComments=true

Deleted account: https://kbin.melroy.org/u/Pyrin

This seems to address the question that comes up once in a while "a public modlog is only useful for mods" (https://feddit.org/post/4920887/3235141), while we can see from this example that it can also be useful for toxic users.

As you may know, !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com is a community dedicated to calling out power tripping mods.

Should we consider having a similar community for toxic users?

There is already !fediverselore@lemmy.ca, but I feel like the "lore" is more about large-scale events (like the cats wave recently) than specific users events.

Edit: Updated the title, and put the emphasis on creating a community to call out toxic users rather than "dunking" on the users that was banned.

94 comments

  • Do we really need to do public shaming?

  • That's a great example of a toxic redditor coming to the fediverse hoping people would tolerate his behaviour, but surprise surprise:

    we don't

    ...and gets banned lol.

    • They didn't even get banned (except from SJW, but that's only one instance), I think they just deleted their account

  • A community dedicated to getting mad at people will quickly become just as toxic, if not more so.

  • I think yall are way to extreme and maybe need to take a break from the internet every so often. It's not healthy to be This indepth hardcore wanting to almost kinda dox ppl bc you didn't, ahem... appreciate their tone. Pretty pretentious. But anyway

    We have an annoying lemmy users community where you can basically call users out, but the main rule is to mark out their username, instance name, all instances showing and community name. But to expose who they are also?

    Number one you'd be making enemies and Secondly, you'd be making lemmy even more hostile then it already is. Which disincentivizes activity and engagement.

    HC has an ask an admin community, annoying lemmy users community, and mod and admin complaints community. Which i think apply here, but highly doubtful anyone will use for the purposes stated in the post.

    In short,

    I think just taking a lemmy break, and breaking away from the internet drama is the best way to go here. The more you get involved, you might be fuckin with the wrong person and that'll blow up in your face.

    I take breaks from lemmy all the time. I feel it's almost necessary in order to continue to use the platform, bc of how toxic, hostile, and extremist the online community is. I don't have time nor desire to drag my mental health into the mud fighting, arguing, and playing gotcha games on the internet.

    I value my time and health more then that

  • No

    I don't think we need that kinda community anymore, pretty sure we already have similar community

    I agree that some Lemmy users are annoying and as bad as Reddit. But, man, if you behave like that, you're no better lol, in fact worse.

    I agree with @OpenStars@piefed.social, I started using recently PieFed and even contributed to the code, and PieFed seems to have a good feature specific to this case, like reputation points (though I have a feeling this could also be abused?)

    • Maybe instead of spending times creating community like that, how about we contribute on making high-quality content on the threadiverse?

      That's what I attempt to do on !publictransport@slrpnk.net anyway

    • even contributed to the code

      NOICE! Thank you for your service to this community:-).

      PieFed seems to have a good feature specific to this case

      Yeah, it's odd b/c on the one hand it has SO VERY MANY features that Lemmy lacks - such as categories of communities, hashtags in posts, YouTube video embedding, showing the community sidebar area for every post (not just on the community page), even on a mobile, and using radically (~25-fold) less mobile data to load 5x more posts at a time than Lemmy. Also, I just subscribed to a new community created last week, and like 2 seconds later it had already pulled in all the old posts.

      On the other hand, PieFed lacks many of the more "foundational" feature sets, e.g. user tagging (so I just happened to see this, but the @OpenStars@piefed.social will not alert me to the tagging as you would expect & hope), and a good fraction of the time I get a Notification to something that I have no idea what it is - sometimes I cannot click it at all, sometimes it is from users that I've blocked, sometimes it is buried in the "continue thread" or whatever that is called where instead of showing the content on the page you have to click to go to some other page entirely (yet the Notifications refuses to follow that), or inside an auto-collapsed or even an auto-removed comment (but at the time that I replied to it, it had not yet been auto-removed, which is why I just turned that entire feature off). I am glad that you are helping bring it up to feature parity with Lemmy though!:-) It is such a fantastic project that I think will radically transform people's experiences on the Fediverse, by offering them tools that at this point I doubt that Lemmy ever will.

      reputation points (though I have a feeling this could also be abused?)

      And yes I do share that same worry. OTOH, people can already do it now, it's just that it takes far more effort, and for the most part the existing options are "block the account" or "nothing", or in certain Lemmy apps (I don't know which ones, maybe Connect or Sync b/c they seem more full-featured?) you can add your own custom label to the account like "hey this person is fun to talk to but don't ever bring up Hamas or YOU WILL BE SORRY". Probably more than one person has added "long-winded" to describe me:-). The beauty of that is that it allows people the CHOICE to do something other than the binary remove vs. retain, like they could read but not reply, or reply but not go into as much depth as they usually would, or like for a new account the content of their reply might be more explanatory than it would if they knew that someone had had an account here for more than a year. Knowledge is power:-). As such, it might be abused:-(. Then again, it might not?:-D

      Since we are talking about merely placing labels next to a username - not like automatically blocking or hiding content from people (that capability does not exist... yet) - I don't worry so much about its potential for abuse at the current stage. But even if the stage were to be advanced - which it seems NOT ready yet atm, imho, but if it were more fully developed - then I should add: even the trolls might have more fun on the Fediverse that way, if the people most likely to respond negatively to them have hidden their content? Thereby leaving only those most likely to respond favorably to their antics.

      So for me, it's not that it's a 100% bad thing, just that care must be taken in its further development. If the actual restrictions were quite narrow, and the mere labelling wider, that does not sound like a bad trade-off to me?

      • Gonna go out-of-topic from the post but I need this to get this off my chest:

        Do you know what prompted me to contribute to PieFed's code?

        Recently, a developer of Lemmy straight up posted a link to a website to a China propaganda in a community in my Lemmy instance. Yes, a propaganda.

        Tbf, slrpnk.net receives a lot of China-related posts, and that's due to China out-competing other countries in many sectors (EV, for example), and in those post OP usually critical enough to acknowledge that while China achievement is good, the crimes Chinese government has done shouldn't be ignored.

        But the post is different. From the domain name, the "About Us" section of the website, the bias in the article. Clearly this was posted with an ill intention. A developer of a platform uses the platform to spread propaganda. Disgusting

        I downvoted said post, but I hesitated to call it out. Because, I'm gonna be honest--I'm genuinely scared of interacting with those kind of people. And I don't want to have a deep discussion about politics or propaganda anyway. I'm not that kind of person.

        This made me realize, I also don't tell people I use fediverse or don't reach out to other forums to open a community in Lemmy. This is because the fediverse, or at least Lemmy have a bad reputation: tankie.

        There is a saying in my country that says "One person ate jackfruit, everyone got the sap". The genocide deniers ate the jackfruit, and everyone got the sap. The genocide deniers ruined fediverse's name and everyone else got the consequence. I don't wanna recommend people to use softwares made by those terrible people, and I doubt most people want to use softwares that has a reputation of being a genocide deniers playgrounds.

        Honestly OP from the link in the post (https://feddit.org/post/4920887) kind of made a good point.

        At this point, I would prefer just quitting Lemmy altogether.

        But I remembered, the fediverse is an open source effort. I use open source software a lot. I feel like I need to give back something. And I have a community that still needed moderating.

        And recently I found PieFed that is still in early days but show some great promise. I happen to understand HTMX (I use it in my personal projects) and Python (I learned it way back in junior high). Seems perfect to me, so I contributed one.

        Honestly, it feels kinda unfair to me that software made by a genocide deniers gets the funding, meanwhile a software made by a good person (PieFed) has to be a hobby project.

    • pretty sure we already have similar community

      Which one is it?

      • You know what, disregard my previous comments and try creating the community. I'm willing to give some benefit of the doubt.

        What I'm kinda worried is the exact same kind of user mention in the post will post on the community. And I also have visited subreddit that calls out bad users in reddit in the past (like r/redditmoment for example) and I kinda don't like it, because to me it's kind of a waste of time. Probably a personal preference.

        But if it calls out/exposes bad users in the community, probably good. Probably

  • Bro looked in the mirror and got such a hard whiplash he astral-projected into a parallel universe where he's a paragon of virtue

  • Fedigrow:

    To discuss how to grow and manage communities / magazines on Lemmy, Mbin, Piefed and Sublinks

    How is this post relevant to this community? You posted it here because you're a moderator so you know it won't be removed?

    Dunking on someone who was (rightfully) banned isn't the kind of post that fosters good community interactions. The moderation system works, that's great. Can we not give more oxygen to the troll's commentary?

    • As I stated on the OP

      Not sure where to post this, but I guess this can be seen as “growing the nice atmosphere of Lemmy”

      I was also suggesting to maybe open another community for this kind of reports, so that fit indeed the purpose of Fedigrow.

      Dunking on someone who was (rightfully) banned The moderation system works, that’s great. Can we not give more oxygen to the troll’s commentary?

      In this case, it doesn't seem like they were banned, just that they deleted their account. Not 100% sure as Mbin interface might look different from Lemmy (where "banned" is visible when someone is banned).

      So it's not sure that it was the moderation system that worked in this case, more the modlog.

      In any case, this post can be used as an evidence when people as "how does a public modlog make Lemmy better than Reddit", which is a question that comes up quite once in a while: https://feddit.org/post/4920887/3235141

      • As much as I do enjoy the Fediverse, I feel as if the intent of this post was more about dunking on an admittedly bad-faith user to show off how cool we are, and not the bit about growing the nice atmosphere of Lemmy. Although to be fair I'm not sure I understand what you mean by

        I guess this can be seen as “growing the nice atmosphere of Lemmy”

        so I could be wrong. Would you mind elaborating?

        I feel it would have been better to just let this guy get banned and forget about it, or to start a post with the title being along the lines of

        how does a public modlog make Lemmy better than Reddit

        instead of what we have, which summarizes the specific actions of the user who deleted their account.

        I am glad a toxic user was banned, no sympathy there, but I feel as this thread is a "Lemmy good Reddit and Redditors bad" party and it was started with this intent, with the thing about modlogs being cool being tacked on after the fact to try to legitimize the post. Yes, I prefer Lemmy to Reddit, but I'd rather keep Fedigrow a nice mature space about how to grow our numbers instead of a place to dunk on the larger, competing site. Maybe !reddit@lemmy.world would have been more appropriate space.

        I came from the Reddit migration too, and back when I was on Reddit there were some pretty nice people over there. There were some awful people too but you get that with every population. Let us not do the whole "Lemmy cool kids, Reddit all neckbeards!" crap, please.

  • Should we consider having a similar community for toxic users?

    I think that it's a bad idea because that community would become a pitchfork emporium. Users posting there would be a textbook example of users that we shouldn't want in the Fediverse: whiny, entitled, assumptive, passive aggressive. It's how the cookie crumbles with this sort of meta-community.

    To avoid that, you'd need to restrict the scope and make it objective, like !yepowertrippinbastards does - that comm is only about mods/admins acting as such and abusing their power.

  • LMFAO

    Because your obnoxious obliviousness makes light on the idea of piracy. Like you expect it to hold your hand in every step of the way. Plus, I am overwhelmingly tired of people like you with that kind of attitude. You’re the kind of pirate that downloads and barely learns. The ones always asking if they need a VPN for the thousandth time when we’ve told you for the thousandth time and more, that you do. So, no, I do not have to treat you with kindness. Enjoy the block. Keep raining those petty downvotes of yours for all I care.

    If someone is asking me about same Piracy Question. I am gonna tell them 1000 times. Because I was also noob at some point.

  • Na, what will it do apart from bringing trolls and other asshats more attention? Attention is what they want.

  • The problem is, you only would see the content that was removed. It is also extremely one sided. The modlog isn't what it was, and now they have removed legitimacy from it by removing the names of the mods and admins who did the enforcement, even though it was already relatively easy and straightforward to create a moderation alt. So you don't get the visibility of any moderator abuse either. There's also the fact that moderators and admins do lie.

    A community dedicated to calling out power tripping mods exists because it affects everybody and there is no moderator of moderator decisions, save for admins who, if not part of the problem also have other problems to deal with. There is no power tripping user because users basically have no power. The counter to yepowertrippingbastards for users already exists, it's called being a moderator, and they get to "post" about it in a modlog where their and only their word gets posted, where they are allowed to do it anonymously under the cover of seeming but not actual unanimity, and where users don't get a chance to tell their side of the story. Mods also have their own internal groups to address concerns of problem users.

    Having a public community about it both makes those moderators who participate seem even more insecure and would also be a source of drama as they try to create a new version of the modlog in community form while finding out communities are not homogeneous.

  • I think its not a great idea.

    Mods are like politicians, they need to be held accountable. Users are like the citizens/residents, if someone did something wrong, there should be judgement by the "court system" or in case of an online forum, judged by moderators. A civillian not involved in politics (aka: doing forum moderation) shouldn't face as much scrutiny as a politician.

    We protest when politicians do bad things. But we don't form a mob and go to a civillian's house to harass them when they do bad things, that just brings the pitfork mob mentality. A user who isn't doing moderation shouldn't have to face a mob, such a community is just gonna become a place to harass users.

    TLDR: Moderators should face more scrutiny than users. Users shouldn't have to face a mob's judgement everytime whenever there's perceived wrongdoing.

  • Lemmy is worse than reddit though. Especially if you don't block .ml.

    Though they have predictably gotten quieter now that the election is over.

  • I don't want to come off all self-righteous as in "PieFed has that already"... but OTOH it's relevant that, yeah, PieFed has something for that already.😄 It is described at https://join.piefed.social/2024/06/22/piefed-features-for-growing-healthy-communities/, and I think its way too sensitive atm, labeling users of comics in particular as potentially troublesome bc they post more than comment, but anyway it seems relevant here as an attempt to do what you are saying: to allow for some measure of an account's "reputation" across the Fediverse, similar to what those aforementioned communities do irt mods to let people know about stuff that they may find pertinent as they make decisions about what to do about it - like not post to certain communities and instead help others grow. In short it's a tool that helps shorten the learning curve rather than make each person have to do all that work all entirely on their own.

    So someone downvotes twice as often as they upvote?

    Someone has twice as many heavily-downvoted comments as positive or neutral? Also a paddling. It also helps provide additional choices beyond merely a moderator's power to "remove vs. allow" - one day a user could perhaps make their own thresholds, or like automatically collapse (to deemphasize, but while still retaining) a comment from such a user. Or not - I have some of that turned OFF at PieFed, but it's awesome that it's there if someone were to want that.

    Someone has a brand-new account merely hours old? That's NOT a paddling, but it is worth its own unique icon to let recipients know that they are dealing with a newborn (ofc they could be an alt) who may not realize how the Fediverse works.

  • I complain about the same thing, actually, and get accused of the same thing. I don't know whether this was true for the person in this example, but the modlog severely lacks context, which is what I'm confronted with as I clash heavily with the extremists on this platform who constantly advocate for murder, mob rule, and genocide, or them simping for terrorist groups like Hamas.

    Same thing happened on Reddit, just opposite spectrum, like them refusing to remove Nazi content, calls for genocide and violence against brown people & muslims. Lemmy has basically the same issue as Reddit, where power tripping mods are in full control of the narrative, and the modlog helps them because they can just scrub the evidence and then claim ridiculous removal or ban reasons. I got recently accused by another user for being a political troll like Linkerbaan (if you don't know, some Nazi shithead troll with the dumbest takes), even though mine and his reputation points (mbin) were literally polar opposites, since he was easily identifiable as a negative karma troll (something Reddit unfortunately made harder by capping their karma system at -100). All just because I have a firm principled stance against extremism. Their alleged proof was the modlog of my account, by directly comparing it to his. His account was older, but he also only had like 90 or so comments, while I'm at like 4700 and also tend to participate in politically loaded topics.

    db0's community is laughable as well, because db0 himself is doing mod abuse and partially responsible for how my modlog looks like, since he's controlling so many communities (good old powermods, another issue imported from Reddit). He's accusing me of painting all leftist (which ironically would include myself) as terrorists or whatever. First example:

    I confronted him later where he tried to blame other mods, then other instance admins: https://
    A while ago I got banned on various communities that db0 moderates, for the same alleged accusation / spin, just because I said that the same people who glorify the murder of that asshole CEO, who now call for more killing, are the same people who also suck Hamas dick. Maybe you don't like my choice of words for those people, but that does not make me a troll. And just because the majority on this platform seemingly seems to swim in this extremist direction, does not mean I have to join that mindset too, just to fit in.

    TLDR: This platform lacks nuance, just like Reddit. Probably worse than Reddit.

    • But can't you see how you are hurting the cause that you are advocating for by using such language? I don't believe that you are a troll, yet you are using language that is troll-adjacent. I will give some examples.

      This platform lacks nuance

      Agreed.

      , just like Reddit.

      Less so I would argue, b/c the modlog does not "scrub the evidence" so much as it preserves it for those who want to see it. BTW being on Mbin you may not know, but a recent Lemmy update allowed people to click on the hamburger menu (3 ellipses) and see the entire modlog history for a particular comment - e.g. if it were removed, then unremoved, then removed again, etc. It's less difficult now than ever before to see EXACTLY what happened to a particular piece of content (again, on Lemmy, I doubt this works on Mbin).

      Probably worse than Reddit.

      This is hyperbole, emotional "feels like" hurt words, which you offered no actual evidence in support of, plus above I've just shown how it seems to many of us that the opposite is true? Yet you did not seem aware of those facts, so how are we to interpret your statements then - that Mbin is worse than Reddit, but that Lemmy can still be better? Note we can't speak to the entire "Fediverse" unless we also have experience with Mastodon, which I for one do not.

      And there are so, SO MANY additional examples like that - e.g. I very much doubt that db0 literally "suck Hamas dick" (I mean even if he were to swing that way and thereby have the motive, the chances for that opportunity seem somewhat slim, on a global scale:-P).

      You can do whatever you want. But so too can others? And yeah, many people aren't going to like your words. Maybe don't be so surprised then when they act on what they like/don't like in their own community, which they created and expend all of the effort to moderate? Instead, create your own, and then feel free to use whatever toxic words you you like inside of it. Although people can choose to defederate from it, so don't be surprised if they do - you do not get to tell others what to do.

      Edit: lolz I misspelled hamberger:-P

      • But can't you see how you are hurting the cause that you are advocating for by using such language? I don't believe that you are a troll, yet you are using language that is troll-adjacent.

        I'm not sure how that example makes me sound like a troll? Both platforms are very extremistic and safespace forming. Both platforms will get you downvoted for disagreeing with a highly polarized / extremist viewpoint. I can see how my language used can rub people the wrong way, but it's specifically targeted towards the people I'm addressing. I know especially Americans are very sensitive about swear words, but that's not something I feel like I have to cater towards. I'm not gonna censor bad words just so someone feels less riled up, while the meaning behind it does not even change in any way.

        Less so I would argue, b/c the modlog does not "scrub the evidence" so much as it preserves it for those who want to see it.

        But you can't. If a mod bans me from his communities, I just see their reasoning, which may or may not be bullshit. I don't see the context that sparked that reaction. And for removed comments, I can't see them anymore either, because they get scrubbed on my end too. On Reddit you were at least able to still read your own comments - at least for mod removals, admin removals were similarly frustrating because this also made appeals extremely hard (try to remember a 3 months old comment that lands you a temp ban or something). Here I can't even make an appeal, I just have to take it.

        BTW being on Mbin you may not know, but a recent Lemmy update allowed people to click on the hamburger menu (3 ellipses) and see the entire modlog history for a particular comment

        I don't know if that is just for registered users to see but I don't see any pancake menu on Lemmy comments if I for example visit this thread on lemm.ee, but maybe that instance isn't updated yet. I don't really follow Lemmy updates. I'd love it if the modlogs would properly link to the offending comments or whatever though.

        This is hyperbole

        Granted, I can't speak for the current state of Reddit, I left during the big protests so maybe the current conflict in Israel & Palestine had similar effects there... But I have never seen so many people simping for literal terrorist groups like I did here, not even in the Nazi infested subreddits like /r/europe I've seen so many calls for violence and genocide. People here constantly make excuses for what those groups do towards Jews in Israel, and when I call them out, I am suddenly allegedly making excuses for Israel - which I don't even do. I constantly see people justifying the rape murder and torture of those people on the festival, I see people justifying Hezbollah rockets targeting civilians, I see constantly people calling for executions of more CEOs since that asshole got shot, along with the glorification of the killer. If you don't see that, then you may just decided to stay out of topics like that, but even then you'd likely should have seen memes going in that direction, or the drama of .world moderating such cases. I blocked SO many communities, specifically news related ones, along with the mods there for their mod abuse, because they not just refuse to moderate content like this or disinformation, but then threaten me for reporting it - and despite the endlessly long blocklist, I still see it everywhere. Reddit at least had a lot of normie subs, but Lemmy lacks a lot of those communities or has them in a very inactive state.

        I very much doubt that db0 literally "suck Hamas dick"

        If he bans me for calling out people who do, then I can only assume that he's of the same mindset. I don't know how else he would come to willfully spinning my comments like that around.

        Instead, create your own

        Hell no. That seemed already insane on Reddit, let alone here.

  • oh i recently had an interaction with this person. i genuinely felt they needed to go outside

  • 1.) NOWHERE is worse than reddit mods. They can diaf.

    B.) I love the modlog. Half the time I have to go "what the hell did I say to get deleted?!" and dredging it up to see what I said and the reason, which is usually "rule 5" or the like. I also like seeing deleted posts responding to mine that got deleted before I read them. Half the time they didn't say anything particularly bad towards me, just used a bad word or went off topic.

    LASTLY.) Any changes that keep mods and admins out of dictatorial power is perfect. I got banned on Reddit for "being racist" because I called out criminals and some other jackasses were saying "black people" as the word "criminal" even though the crimes were in a predominantly white area so it was a bad assumption from the start. I have a black GF and my post history has ZERO racist comments or remarks. I asked the mod and they said it was because I was a racist like everyone else getting banned and blocked me and reported me for harassing them. I appealed it to the reddit admins, they did nothing and said the mod was in the right and i started getting banned in other subs for nonsense, only to find out from others they all share a couple mods...of note, this is how it went down, this isn't me editing the story in my favor, it was exactly that absurd and blatant...don't let Lemmy become THAT bullshit.

  • I've already got one mega-fan following my posts around this site. An entire community where they can network with others to promote my activities would be awesome!

  • This idea sounds conceptually similar to something like kiwifarms, which seems like a red flag imo

  • I'm kind of upset that this 'toxic' person came from the same instance as I'm using. Most people I encounter on the local pages aren't bad folks.

  • This gives me a fun idea, scrape the modlog for ridiculous moderation and post the results.

    Unfortunately only certain people would find it funny, most of them outside of Lemmy.. :)

  • Calling out mods for what? Not allowing your brand of freeze peach? Personally I think Lemmy needs more strong moderators because right now most instance's "all" feeds are just another stale parade of "memes". There is a lot of junk filler, and very few unique communities that make the Lemmyverse something that stands apart from Reddit.

    I would also encourage instance admins to de-federate instances that host your idea of a "community" purpose built to publicly "call out" users. It's toxic.

94 comments