That moment when, if I ever get banned from the ML instance, one might as well tell me to treat it as an extension of the act of fleeing while entrusting Archive Today and the victim to relay this message (totally becoming of the spokespeople for the people's liberation, /s also I would not voluntarily remove a thread of mine, so if this is gone by the time you get the archive...).
I consider myself a typical Orwellian person within the ML instance (fun fact, stands for Marxist-Leninist) who believes in the validity of debate, diplomacy, and standing up for oneself, having signed up for ML because the others were overcrowded when I was led to see Reddit as bad news due to the API (yet here I am). If I don't want to engage with someone, I leave, and if someone disobeys the rules of something I'm the admin of (not any instance), I ban them with tools already at my disposal (as opposed to actual attacks using tools not anyone's business, and that was after banning her). Sadly this isn't everyone. Worth mentioning on behalf of someone afraid of breaking rules against block evasion/retaliation, being the Orwellian I am who won't stand for things like the creed-based/LGBT discrimination I see. I see this (unauthorized username revelation and a false excuse of finding a rabbit hole) and I think "what's next, will admins threaten to reveal our passwords as the norm in due time". The US is on the verge of banning Tiktok for such shit, and here we are thinking of ourselves as invincible, like some cult.
When someone then mentions it on Reddit with her permission (and yes I have permission too), he shows up, claims she has the same name on 20 sites (when the dox that anyone can read clearly shows otherwise, and I did doublecheck his new claims, they're false again), and tries to demoralize the thread. I'm ashamed personal attacks and stealing info/photos is the norm for my brethren. And I'd bet a pretty big wager to prove me wrong, just to see if people would think they can.
This is out of hand, can we either overhaul admins or defederate ML considering all the threats of banishments make it dead weight? Because I feel like a sanction is in order.
Was going to answer this earlier but I thought maybe someone else might before I did.
Yes, you're on the right track, give or take a little nuance. On Reddit, this would get someone banned in a heartbeat, which is arguably not entirely out of left field.
To explain it in summarized terms, basically there's an admin of the ML instance and a community mod (the mod is from the community !casualconversation@lemm.ee).
The mod and the admin happened to meet up on a post about LGBTQ+ rights, the mod herself being on the asexual spectrum. The mod brought up (because she thought it was relevant, as a third party member I guess) that the American Democrat Party often appeals to groups (such as Islam, even not minding their extreme side) who have a history of not seeing eye to eye with the LGBTQ+.
The admin, who is known for being very articulate but reached a new low I've ever seen with this incident, tried getting his opinion in to no avail before removing half of her (the mod's) replies there, banning her from a bunch of random communities to get a point across, effectively made her leave the instance, exposed private information of hers out of spite if that wasn't enough, and then backlashed on Reddit when someone called him out on it.
Reading between the lines makes me think of the encounters I've had with Islamic extremists.