Want to drive a power drunk redditor crazy? Block them, do not interact with them at all. It drives those types up a wall.
Hi, LW Community Team here.
We've made efforts to avoid the kind of supermods that existed on Reddit, and this is a great example. We've tried to have more mods with fewer communities each, and to limit the number of major communities under the same mods. This was a disagreement between two mods of major LW communities, FlyingSquid at worldnews and Blackbeard as a moderator of News and PoliticalDiscussion. Notably, this seems to be a disagreement from a couple months ago.
FlyingSquid moderates one major politically involved community (the other is closed). If Blackbeard wanted to ban him from News for report abuse, he certainly could have done that. Admins and the Community Team here try not to get overly involved in individual communities, and that wouldn't seem extremely out of line.
Blackbeard seems to have been concerned about getting side-wide banned by Flying. I've seen no evidence of anyone using the bot outside of extremely obvious scammers, trolls, and ban evasion. And I don't believe FlyingSquid would use that bot inappropriately. If that does become a problem, we'd absolutely take action. You always have the options to appeal directly to the admins (email in the LW sidebar). Currently, it's nice to have the extra help in keeping scams and spam off the site.
I do wish Blackbeard had talked to us about his concerns. He seemed to be pretty reasonable from my interactions with him. He'd be welcome back if we could get through this misunderstanding.
Thanks for jumping in
Flying Squid takes things personally rather often, and can get heated especially on controversial topics. I don't always agree with their behaviour as a user and as a mod, but tbh they are the more reasonable party in this particular exchange, though some of the responses are more annoying. The conversation could have easily ended like 1/4 of the way through by either of them. It's unclear if it's harassment to me, because I am reading it as both persistently acting childishly at times.
If they leave they leave, that's fine. No matter who is right in this, Blackbeard has no obligation to deal with stuff he doesn't want to.
Sounds like this was already resolved within the mod team. So if OP you're posting for history or were unaware, fine (but you ought to look for, ask and add surrounding context and actions, next time). If you're posting just to cause drama and a flamewar, shame on you.
Lastly, discord? Come on, we're on Lemmy here, harass people on a federated FOSS protocol like matrix! /s
I just wish FS would slow down on commenting. Lemmy world comment sections feel like a FS echo chamber because they feel the need to comment on every single post.
Even if I agree with many of their opinions, that's just not what I want out of Lemmy, so I have them filtered.
So that's why my comment on Harris' position on the genocide in Palestine has been removed for misinfo, even though a quick search proved my point.
Whaaat FlyingSquid made a huge deal out of a simple disagreement and made it all about themselves unprompted and made it personal? I'm shocked--that he didn't mention his offspring and him moving to England. 🙄
Everyone Sucks Here.
Oh, this isn't r/AITAH? Sheesh, thought I somehow stumbled back onto reddit.
If you continue to report opinions and simple disagreements as misinformation, we will take action against your account for report abuse, same as we would any account.
It doesn't seem unreasonable to me to interpret that as a threat to ban the account.
That one was the other way, Blackbeard threatening FlyingSquid. Blackbeard has never had the power to site ban, only community ban.
Yeah - I was disagreeing with the OP. I quoted BB because later on they said "I've not even HINTED at banning you [from the community]"
I'm not sure how FlyingSquid is the bad guy here when Blackbeard is the one going around DMing Lemmy users off-platform about their reports. If you disagree with the reported content, then dismiss it. Blackbeard is the one who instigated this by opening a DM with FlyingSquid to begin with. Blackbeard doesn't understand how to be a mod, it seems.
This thread is garbage. OP is bad and should feel bad.
If you disagree with the reported content, then dismiss it.
This is what I don't get about "report abuse". It's entirely in their power to completely ignore reports they think are unnecessary or in bad faith. They do nothing unless the mod acts on them. I got an instance ban for reporting someone that instantly resorted to cursing and insults after a minor correction from me. Apparently someone else reported the same comment (shocking) and the admin decided it was "brigading" 🙄
Report abuse can be tiring for moderators to deal with, especially since they already do their job for free.
Full disclosure, I tend to agree with FlyingSquid in the instance that kicked all of this off. I don't have a clear opinion of them as a mod, but personally I wish the LW mods would do a lot more about the "Kamala Harris = Hitler" type of misinformation that gets a free pass on a lot of LW.
FlyingSquid comes across as perfectly reasonable in this conversation. Their arguments that another mod thanked them for reporting stuff, that it's two reports over the course of ~~two weeks~~ a week which is hardly excessive, and then when the two people couldn't see eye to eye, they said they just wouldn't flag anything, sounds all perfectly reasonable and sensible. For some reason that wasn't okay, and the conversation got personal, with Blackbeard constantly posting these aggrieved attacks about how FlyingSquid was being childish if he didn't continue to report things in someone else's community occasionally, but never anything that the mods there thought was not worthy of removal. And then petulantly refusing to say something along the lines of, "Of course you're welcome to post there if you want" when asked repeatedly if it was okay for them to just post and participate still.
I haven't seen any Discord harassment, so maybe I missed something, but if this is what gets posted as justification for why FlyingSquid is a terrible moderator, I suspect that the "harassment" is more of the same. Maybe it's along the lines of "not saying exactly what I want you to say, or having conversation with other people where you say things I don't want you to say." People are allowed to disagree with each other over what is misinformation, or choose not to report content in someone else's community if they get some hostile responses when they do. Trying to order someone else around and then getting personally insulting with them when they politely tell you "No, I don't agree with how you see it," is ridiculous.
Edit: I don't know why I said two weeks, it was one week.
I’m not sure I’d agree that FS comes off as perfectly reasonable because I do get a pretty strong beg me to stay or I’ll leave vibe… but I am amused that OP here read that thread and decided that FS was the aggressor here.
I fully ack with this statement.
There is a failure to settle what Misinformation is, FlyingSquid can't be "more discerning about flagging/reporting" that Blackbeard wished him to do. YET Blackbeard failed to answer FlyingSquad exactly what he meant by this. And in that little inciting report "equating the US runners to X,Y,Z." is not just an opinion, its defamation, a felony.
Blackbeard had the option to clearly say, "We want to allow people to say any bad thing about the Democrats that they want, even if it seems clearly disingenuous or like a pattern on the part of that particular user. We don't consider that to be misinformation." That would have clarified things and my guess is that FlyingSquid wouldn't have argued with it. Blackbeard's desire to tiptoe around saying that directly, for obvious reasons, and just say "be more discerning," was what led to FlyingSquid's confusion which Blackbeard for some reason interpreted as being hostile and obstinate about it.
It's like a flashback to every boss who gives unclear direction about expectations, even when giving you a bollocking about how you did it wrong this time and even when asked point-blank. Except, FlyingSquid isn't getting paid to put up with it, hence the "I think I just won't participate then" which is probably a lot more polite than I would have been about it.
Speaking to the bot thing, a few of us have access to it in order to remove egregious violations in communities where we may not be mods.
I've used it to remove CSAM accounts and posts for example. Middle of the night spam attacks, and so on.
Really it's for content in which there is no question it should be removed... when the bot is working. :) Sorry @Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world ! ;) It doesn't work a LOT!
Flying Squid has a site wide reputation for being like this. Arguing/discussing anything with this person is like talking to a wall. Not to mention their overuse and abuse of authority.
What else does an old disabled white dude have time for?
FS is annoying and thinks every single time someone disagrees with them, its a personal attack and they must be aligned to some power.
Literally anytime someone used to just lightly criticize their favorite thing or person, FS would write blocks of text explaining why that opinion or fact was unjustified, and if you continued, you got banned.
FS is annoying and acts like they are better for just random things. Literally recently they said they're trying to leave the United States, and acting like its a noble sacrifice to leave the queer and BIPOC they once "defended and care about" behind. Said "Maybe I'll give some GoFundMes, I don't care."
If you want some insight, check this user's comments and sort by controversial. Then do the same for FlyingSquid.
Have some citations for that abuse of authority? OP alluded to abuse of authority by pointing out various powers FlyingSquid has, but in my mind very tellingly didn't actually provide any examples of abuse of authority. The screenshotted conversation, where a person with some site admin powers is reporting things as a regular user, and then when a mod gets really hostile and insulting with them, simply says "Oh, okay, I think I just won't participate in your stuff then, if my presence is unwanted," doesn't exactly paint the picture of some kind of power-mad petulant tyrant.
Hey, yo, I got one! I once argued with FS about something where he continuously attempted to goad me, argued disingenuously, and acted childishly, and when I rightfully called him out on all of that, he removed my comment. It was a rather small abuse of power, but I have seen him act righteously indignant, especially when he is called out for acting like a child. He does not differentiate this from a personal attack, especially when he was very much responsible for escalating several interactions he has with others.
What community did this take place in?
Edit: I think I found it.
https://lemmy.world/comment/12606768
https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&userId=1040702
It's sort of an ESH situation, and after that length of bickering I can't see why either of you continued the conversation. But I don't at all agree with your summary. It looks to me like he wanted to talk facts, you wanted to insult him and avoid the factual discussion, and he ended the conversation and then removed one comment afterwards where you started going after him personally ("insipid" "impetuous" "childish").
I'm not sure what you were trying to accomplish by refusing to answer his questions and instead inflaming the bickering, but ending the conversation and removing the escalation sounds like the right response to me.
Additionally, I called him childish because he was mocking others, and I pointed that out to him with his own quote.
He was not arguing in good faith, and to believe otherwise is to, frankly, underestimate him.
I did answer his questions. He didn't like the answers. They weren't either-or question, and it can, indeed, be answered with answers he doesn't like, because those questions were leading.
There’s a mod log, but also from this post I just found out a bot is used to hide the admin/mod doing the actions.
Why are Lemmy mods from .world coordinating on discord lmao
you gotta coordinate somewhere, no?
but yeah, matrix would have been nicer.
There are multiple back channels for coordination, I've been invited to Discord and Element, there was even (briefly) a Slack channel, but that seems to have closed due to it being a trial period or something. There are likely others I'm not aware of having not been invited.
But it's good for mods and admins to collaborate.
Blackbeard seems to be okay with Harris=Hitler and doesn't want an "echochamber" but is going to bluesky?
lol
lmao
I’m pretty sure Squid can’t siteban from lemmy.world. He’s not an admin.
discord 💀
Jeeze both people come across as petty idiots. Lots of passive aggressive nonsense, and both sides want to have the last word.
Also it drives me up the wall when 2 people argue and one person tells the other to "calm down". And in this case it's "CALM DONW" and "CALM YOURSELF" between line by line quotes. So fucking childish.
I wish Blackbeard all the best on Bluesky; I think they will be disappointed. Human nature is human nature; I've been around long enough to see the cylical nature of social media. A new thing comes along, everyone joins, there is a love-in, and a "consensus" is built around how this time it's be great and what is and isn't allowed. Then things grow and a consensus that holds with 10 people breaks down with 100 or 1000, and people blame the new people for the change.
And mods at each others throats is just the nature of the beast. This has played out over and over on the internet - Usenet through to X, Reddit, etc, and the fediverse will experience the same. It's just human nature.
FediLore + Fedidrama
Chronicle the life and tale of the fediverse (+ matrix)
Largely a sublemmy about capturing drama, from fediverse spanning drama to just lemmy drama.
Includes lore like how a instance got it's name, how an instance got defederated, how an admin got doxxed, fedihistory etc
(New) This sub's intentions is to an archive/newspaper, as in preferably don't get into fights with each other or the ppl featured in the drama
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