I'm going to tell this one entirely through screenshots

I’m shocked!
Shocked you weren’t permabanned from that instance long ago. Maybe admin privilege at work.
But yeah I mean PTB obviously, barely even worth saying since it applies to almost every ban on that instance.
- They rarely permanently ban users. Tons of 1-2 week bans, though. More “get in line” than “get out.”
  
  They banned cm0002, and breadsmasher after he commented "and .ml is the tankie instance" in a thread I made.
  
  I've been banned for a long long time because of a comment i made in a different instance.
  
  Unless you're part of the .ml in-crowd and get a little too spicy for their taste in a thread, then they dish out 24 hour "Pwease chill 🥺👉👈, others are watching" ~~bans~~ slaps on the wrist lol
  
  Deff caught month long bans
- Shocked you weren’t permabanned from that instance long ago.
  Me too tbh. I’m not trying to extraneously do anything offensive, but I don’t think it is good practice to adjust your opinions so you won’t be banned by the opinion police, so I don’t, which to some instances / communities here seems to create this constant recurring crisis.
  Actually I do feel like people constantly griping about how ban-happy Lemmy.ml is has had a certain positive impact on how ban-happy they are willing to be. Which is more or less how it’s supposed to work, when the social contract and networks of respect and criticism are intact.

PTB for sure, but I gotta say- when one lies down with dogs….
You’re just not allowed to disagree with them there. Even if you’re cordial about it. Respectful and rule abiding comments are removed daily from there. It’s in the modlogs. I honesty don’t know why anyone bothers with them.
It’s one thing if a rule can be cited as a reason for removal/ban, but they just slap “rule 1” on everything.
- Yeah, the rules stop mattering if you don't enforce them in a way that makes sense.
  
  And very little about .ml makes sense.

PTB. You highlighted immoral shit done by one of the two governments that the .ml admin team licks the boots of, then you get banned while they lie that you're being a bigot (rule 1), since they have the same transparency as a chunk of charcoal and that makes them too dishonest to list "don't criticise the RF or PCC here" as an actual rule.

Oh hey! Sorry if I stole your thunder for !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works lol but it was a such good one for posting there lmao
- All good

While i've seen numerous well-argumented and thought-provoking posts disappear from ml communities over the last two years, almost everything that ends up in the YPTB community is some kind of bad faith trolling, flamebait and so on. The post above is good example; it might not be YDI but it's clearly BPR. There's definitely no valuable contribution here and if post like this got deleted from any other instance, it wouldn't cause much drama.
- some kind of bad faith trolling, flamebait
  Absolutely not.
  The point that I was making is that systematized fake participation in online forums has been developed and polished to an incredible grade of effectiveness in the modern era. I don't think that's as widely known as it should be, but among practitioners in the field it's absolutely common knowledge and has been for a while, because of Russia primarily.
  I do understand that some people have a strong negative reaction to hearing that. That's not my problem and it doesn't mean that me talking about that is "trolling." I just thought it was kind of funny that, at least in the headline, these guys were saying they were testing whether it could be made effective when it is already extremely obvious to experts in the field that it's extremely effective and these researchers have quite a bit of catching up to do. And, in fact, the voting of every single one of the lemmy.ml users except the mod who sanctioned it seemed to indicate it was taken in the same way it was intended: Relevant commentary wrapped up with a little bit of humor.
  Again, I do understand that certain people in authority on Lemmy tend to throw massive hissy fits about anyone who comes in and frames things in a way they don't want to hear. That doesn't mean the hissy fit becomes my fault, or my problem, or that me posting it meant I was aiming for that to happen. I do get that it doesn't take some crazy extrapolation to think the point of my post was "lol Russia sucks amirite," but honestly, in this case, it wasn't.

I don't know why but I can't get your screenshots to load. Not even on the web app.
- % wget -O /dev/null https://ponder.cat/pictrs/image/de2c8167-28e6-4550-a436-385802cd445d.png --2025-04-28 20:24:48-- https://ponder.cat/pictrs/image/de2c8167-28e6-4550-a436-385802cd445d.png Resolving ponder.cat (ponder.cat)... 2a02:4780:f:5977::1, 141.136.42.129 Connecting to ponder.cat (ponder.cat)|2a02:4780:f:5977::1|:443... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: unspecified [image/png] Saving to: ‘/dev/null’ /dev/null [ <=> ] 63.77K --.-KB/s in 0.1s 2025-04-28 20:24:49 (653 KB/s) - ‘/dev/null’ saved [65297]
  shrug
  It works for me. Want to try that command and see what it tells you?
  I looked in the logs, and the only thing I see that could be what you're talking about is some HTTP 400 and 499 errors. I have no idea what that's about, it could be a server bug or at a guess it could be some weird interaction with some router in between that's doing something odd? If it's affecting both Sync and the web app? I don't even know if it's you, that's just the only thing I can see on my end.

ML and world shave created the same issue... They control some of the largest communities for generic topics.
So without fedi can be rather empty. I doubt they will change their ability ops, so only alternative left is to educate new comers and seed alternatives.
- .ml doesn’t hold the largest communities for anything. You know who has more MAU than Lemmy.ml? !dull_mens_club@lemmy.world and !futurology@futurology.today.
  They have retconned it now as “we never wanted to be the flagship instance” since most of the world has decided that they’re ridiculous but I have a hard time believing that was the plan. As with most authoritarians, their plan was to keep their iron grip on all the little feeble people under their control and expand it out to more and more people, and they’re just confused when it’s not popular for anyone who’s not already trapped inside isn’t psyched about coming over and joining up.
  Edit: Out of curiosity, I went to join-Lemmy.org and told it I wanted to join a server, English speaking, anywhere in the world, focused on politics. Its first recommendation was szmer.info. Second one was Lemmy.ml.
  
  Linux and privacy subs?

I think your first screenshot got cropped wrong - I think it cuts off much of the comment you want to display, while leaving one that's not relevant
(Otherwise, PTB)
- The comment is the second screenshot. I had to show it from the modlog since it was gone after having been deleted by the mods.
  
  Is there a version of this screenshot that has more text above and to the left? Maybe it's just my client, but it's hard to read:

They definitely have a sense of humour 😂
Fortunately, bans are usually not applied cross-communities. At least... not yet.
- I feel like you are vastly overestimating how much I care about being banned from this type of place.
  If I go and start talking to the Young Republicans, and they tell me I have to adjust the things I'm saying to match what's going to make them comfortable and then physically eject me when I don't, as far as I'm concerned that means I was making good sense. If I stopped because I didn't want them to kick me out, that would be a problem.
  
  I feel like you are vastly overestimating how much I care about being banned from this type of place.
  Eh? I didn't suggest you care.