I used to be a mod on /r/soccer, and there were strict rules around duplicates, and on keeping things related to football news and OC. It's the most popular sport in the world, and when you've got enough subscribers to fill multiple stadiums, just "posting anything football" doesn't scale. You also end up with a huge amount of content about the most popular teams, and when there's a long-tail of fans from other leagues/countries you isolate a lot of people.
I can happily say that in the time I was a mod there were no questionable decisions. The mods went out of their way to verify decisions, discuss them with others, and reverse any bans if the user acknowledged that they'd broken rules. What the mods got in return was:
Probably 5-10 death threats a day. No hyperbole.
A handful of script kiddies that tried to spam the sub with offensive content, CP, and stuff that obviously breaks the rules.
One stalking attempt on a mod that resulted in the police getting involved, a potential arrest, and a kid getting kicked out of school.
Several people getting pissy, starting their own subs, and then realising that keeping things on topic and stopping people posting "Paul Pogba skills compilation 2015-2020 Despacito Remix" several times a day is quite tricky...
Funny enough, pretty much every decision was made by reports. Four reports triggered a message in modmail, and we just followed what users had reported..
Sorry but I'm on the mod's side here. Some content doesn't belong on some communities. Most people upvote from their front page without even checking what community you posted to. If you allow things based on popularity, every community devolves into deep-fried shitposts
These were the complaints I heard about mods before the API debacle. After all the mods quit or got their 3rd party tools nuked, it was all complaints about repost bots not being removed. I've never been a mod, but you couldn't pay me enough to babysit thousands of angry dorks, much less get me to do it for free.
The rules end up there because people complain about things and then the mods implement a rule to ban the things people complain about. Sometimes they let the community vote on it. It does end up being the vocal minority who the rules cater to sometimes.
Nah, upvoters are stupid and will often upvote anything with a pretty picture regardless of whether it fits a sub, regardless of whether it's been reposted 50 trillion times, and regardless of whether it's complete bullshit. Mods absolutely should delete a lot of posts even if they're popular.
My number 1 desire for a reddit replacement is some sort of meta restrictions on voting. Ban people from voting for a post if they're not subbed. Ban people who upvote bad content from voting in your sub. The more and more time I spend on reddit and the fediverse, the more I'm convinced that upvotes as implemented are a broken, shitty way to determine what content I see.
i remember posting in /r/boneappletea a screenshot where a well known brand made a mistake, they deleted it because it was against a rule saying there should be no identifying informations, like people could raid poor multi million brand or something, also the sub was notorious for posting speech to text errors without batting an eye
on the other hand i've been banned on lemmy twice, fist first time was because my rather sexist comment, but second time was because i said something about Uighurs genocide in China, (guess what instance was that?) also both bans were issued without any warning, completely against their CoC
Mods should never use their privileges in discussions where they are involved (obviously they should not be the only mod on a channel either).
I have been on both sides, mod and victim of mod abuse. Mistakes happen. It is a delicate balance on both sides of keeping constructive and not trying to „be right“ by any means.
The most absurd situation is when you have to block a mod because they’re actually the head troll and also an admin of an instance. Its both hilarious and sad.
I think a hardcoded function to file complaints against mods with the other mods and/or the admins and optionally, a way to elect mods and unelect them would be great.
This also applies to Tankie instances like .ml. If you're critical of them in entirely different instances. Last straw for me was getting a comment removed for "bigotry" when I responded that I still visit r/rimworld on a thread asking how things are since the reddit migration. Nothing in my post was bigotted in any way, so I assume one of the mods sifted through my comment history and saw I had recently mocked Tankies in a different thread entirely
On the "Mario Kart Tour" sub, I made a meme during the games "Election" event. I made vague but obvious comparisons to Trump/Mario Vs Biden/Luigi.
Everyone in the comments were having fun, there was no complaining, and the post even reached the homepage.
Then the fucking mods deleted my shit and pissed the community off. I got universal support and the sub was filled with posts requesting the mods to undelete my meme.
Despite the comments here, lemmy is actually better at this because of federation.
If your post gets deleted by some salty mod, you can just hop over to the next instance and post the same thing and everyone on the original instance who has federation on will see it.
Or in the case that there's a mod catfight, then you just have two instances where everyone crossposts anyway.
It happens on Lemmy, as well. I have seen posts removed according to a "rule x", where "rule x" when the post didn't go anywhere near "rule x". I just left the community, even if those posts weren't mine.
I used to help moderating a sub for a while, terrible hobby, you had this feed that was a constant stream of shit that you had to clean it out, some people of the internet are just disgusting.
Also being in part responsible about what to do with the people having a mental health crisis, it does affect you to an extent.
Wouldn't do it again easily.
And people blame us for everything wrong with the sub too without having no clue about the whys, just to be in on the trend, and also endless fking drama, "why did you delete my hate speech 😭😭😭".
Adult babies.
But yeah, some subs are moderated like shit, a lot of times the only people who remain are people who are in for the resemblance of power and don't mind/like that kind of treatment, IE they're as shit as what they're moderating, rchile wasn't really that way and that's why it has been chronically undermodded and basically bleeds mods.
I was downvoted to hell in a gaming sub, I made a reply to my comment and provided examples and got upvoted for that. I got banned by the mod for negativity or something even though my post wasn’t directed at anyone, it was just downvoted because I said something without proof initially.
Same on basically any community here with mods/admins with an agenda. I've had comments removed from multiple communities that don't break any written rules.
The Nazis always chose the biggest losers of a neighbourhood to act as „block wardens“, I.e. snitches who’d report to them what the neighbours were talking about…