this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2025
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Actual Discussion
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We’re back! Instead of putting a neutral topic in the introduction, I'm placing a bit of opinion on an issue to see if it helps spur discussion. We are also actively seeking moderators and people who enjoy discussion (and understand that being wrong is an important part of being a better person)! Send me a message if you’d like to help out.
This week, I'd like to discuss something that's been a bit of an issue for me personally.
Lemmy (and Reddit before it) appears to have a problem with overly-aggressive bannings for perceived slights. In the topic linked above there were people permanently banning users from multiple communities (any they moderate - dozens in some cases) for single downvotes, 4 downvotes across a ten-month period, and bannings because a moderator thought they maybe sorta kinda read that a user may have had a negative thought about their pet issue.
I've personally been banned from Communities (and sent some pretty vile PMs) for posting in our weekly threads here playing devil's advocate where I state hard questions that I do not necessarily feel are correct. They think they've discovered some secret agenda by finding posts I've made here and use them as "receipts" in order to dismiss anything they think they're reading that may be contrary to their opinion. Any context provided for the post falls on deaf ears.
I'm someone who operates on the idea of "If you can not defend an opinion from scrutiny, you should probably not hold that opinion."
To quote myself:
It’s pretty tragic that people can't handle opposing opinions. I think the activist nature of Lemmy is kind of a self-destructive spiral and people need to learn how to live with each other again. But I guess that’s the issue with modern social media as a whole… Nobody has any idea how to convince anyone else, only to yell at them louder.
Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):
- Are niche Communities correct for banning anyone who downvotes?
- Do downvotes represent a "disagree" button for you (this Community notwithstanding)?
- Most importantly, what would it take to change this?
- Does it help build the Community? What about the platform as a whole?
- Is there a way to build a "safe space" without building an echo chamber online? Is that even a valuable thing to build?
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I think this take is just a tad dismissive though, because participating in a community and running a community are two entirely different degrees of participation.
It also places the burden of responsibility on the victim. If I get kicked out of a coffee shop because of my race or sexual orientation or gender identity, the solution shouldn't be "just go make your own coffee shop if you don't like how they run theirs." There needs to be reasonable accountability.
The only accountability for a niche forum somebody else runs elsewhere is that you tell people how they suck and to not go there. You can't send the cops on them like how you could call them on a coffee shop where they're doing illegal discrimination.
If other people agree they suck they'll block that community and leave for another that's better run.
But in the context of Lemmy/Piefed/other Fediverse platforms, you'd expect admins to intervene in cases of community moderators gone rogue.
If that doesn't occur, then defederate. But if an instance has a code of conduct that moderators are violating, that shouldn't be the user's problem.
I mean, yeah, some instances will have rules that community moderators must abide by. In that case you could have some recourse. Then if they still back them, you could go on a wide "defederate this instance" campaign!
But at a certain point, is it worth the energy?
Probably less energy than starting a community yourself and supporting it long-term, to be honest.
Eh, I think trying to get an entire instance defederated because of a grievance with a particular community there that they won't back you up on might well be more effort personally.
you got banned from an internet forum. not kicked out from a physical place serving goods. these are not the same. you are not a victim.
you don't have a right to force yourself onto an online community that doesn't want you there, regardless of how reasonable you feel your opinions are.
Are you able to elaborate on this? Why do you feel that they are not somewhat equivalent?
In the real world, could you not just go to a new coffee shop (since both places are commonly found)?
If you are obeying the stated rules, why shouldn't you have an expectation that you would be able to participate in either?
Edit: Downvoting a clarifying question is kinda... counter to this whole Community. Don't be a goof.
@AceTKen@lemmy.ca
Well, I wasnt being "a goof". I think your framing attempts to steer this discussion in ways I dont agree with. Hence the downvote.
I also think commenting with mod privs is problematic for the conversation flow. You'll get more honest conversation using an alt thats a non-mod account.
You said:
That seems an unworkable proposition. Besides Reddit there are few other large anonymous boards. In your coffee shop metaphor its like being banned from a michelin 4 star coffee shop and being told theres a hot dog stand on the corner that serves coffee, so theres no possible issue with banning. There is no seperate-but-equal to be had here. The Worldnews or politics subs here for example arent easily replicated with a new set of rules in any other small similarly-focused sub. Subs that get large tend to stay large and get larger. There is a natural monopolizing effect. So I disagree that commonality is any sort of reasonable basis for comparison. I recognize that this is debateable, but worldnews, news, and politics are core to lemmy, so saying those subs can be operated in any way the mods there feel they want to works less well as they accrue influence and become the core Lemmy product. I suppose federation in general is messy.
You also said:
I really do appreciate that moderation is a hard thankless task and mods deals with profoud hatred and human ugliness and bigotry. Its toxic and poisonous. So thank you for your service. But--mods are human too and they wield a ban hammer in a biased fashion at times. The existence of this sub kind of proves this point, so I assume you agree somewhat. Often some mods (not you, as far as I know) end up editorializing and stretching the definitions of the rules to suit their own biases. For a while it was trivially easy to end up banned if you said something against the actions of the state of Israel, and it was branded by mods (like jordanblund in worldnews) as bigotry against an entire people, and loosely equated to being against global judaism or supporting terrorism. Its also pretty easy for a mod to ban a progressive from pushing back on centrists, both here and on reddit. Or if you defend equality and human rights for muslims in general, or treat a religion as a bundle of philosophical ideas to be studied. This place models all the biases out in the wild, and they dont always effctively serve the noble goals of the carefully moderated forum that we hope for. So obeying the stated rules, as you said, is not cut and dried when enforcement is flawed. Its another difficult balancing problem that could use examination.
This community was built (somewhat) from a sizeable bunch of people banned or pissed off by over-modding and astroturfing on reddit, but increasingly lemmy has started experiencing similar disseases. I get it, the mods are volunteers. Its an ugly and demanding job. But saying its simply about users following the rules discounts the nuance of the conversations. Underenforcement or light enforcement has to be part of the modding model or you become reddit, which I sure wouldnt want. I have started seeing threads that are clearly being brigaded for fascist, Russian or Israeli memes-- same as the enshitification that took over reddit. And its not like I'm not wading through r/nazi when I see these excesses, these are purportedly "normal" threads. So, theres another difficult problem the status quo doesnt recognize.
To add to that, there are whole industry of companies built on the idea of steering social media discourse. Much of that is by employees of those companies becoming mods. On reddit you arent even allowed to bring up the idea, and here we just ignore it. There have been some mods particularly on worldnews who have acted in extremely biased ways and made biased comments and then deleted them. Most mods are great volunteers, but a handfull abuse. It stands to reason that some are paid to abuse and steer. Its easy to hide your tracks if you're a bad mod or paid mod. We users arent privy to any discipline or leveling done within the mod community. Maybe there is some, maybe not. Do mods police themselves? I'd guess not so much. Yes we see the modlog, but thats strictly a transaction log, insufficient to this use case. So, more problems.
So here we are, downvote explained. Not goofing.
All good, and this was exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for and appreciate the answer. I didn't really see anything that disagreed with what I asked though.
As I mentioned, some of those questions were unanswered by the original responder and some were just assumptive next steps based on what I was reading. They weren't leading, they were clarifying and harder to answer and asked from another perspective. I try to ask (at least somewhat) challenging questions in order to get a more nuanced and informed take on topics and hope that asking them helps those that can explain as well. I'm on the side of bannings being generally bad for discourse and Communities as a whole. Permanent multi-Comminuty bans for small slights is even worse and makes Lemmy look thin-skinned and childish.
And to borrow the coffee analogy again, Reddit would be like Dunkin' Doughnuts (in which nobody gives a fuck about you as long as you get your swill there and make them money) and Lemmy would be more like an ethically-sourced small-batch experimental coffee shop where some batches are great and some are dogshit (except some of the baristas are kind of dicks because the band on your tee shirt said something they didn't like once). I don't think either is perfect, but I like it here better.
I like it better here too.
Lemmy communities are not businesses, usually they are just hobby projects run by people in their free time. So a closer analogy is that posting in someone's community is like being in their house (or garden). And when you're in someone's house they are free to throw you out for any reason.
I get that. It's a solid analogy, but on the other hand you also have some people who run a dozen or more Communities. To borrow your analogy, these people claim whole unrelated neighbourhoods and permanently remove you from all of them for accidentally stepping on their lawn 3 towns over. This absolutely is a problem as I see it. It hurts discussion and discoverability.
Well this is where lemmy being federalised plays out. On Reddit, a community is basically completely captured by the first-movers if it has the name people are going to look up first. Lemmy allows people to compete with the same name, on different instances - and even on the same instance as the display name can be different to the original URL.
I agree that you can do that stuff, but most people don't have the time or wish to do it. Instead, they just get turned off the Community (or even platform) altogether and just... leave.
Even if they do start their own Community, that's not even a sure way to stop it. As I described above, I have been banned from other Communities for playing devils advocate in my own Community.
Well this stuff can just as viably happen on Reddit.
Oh, absolutely. It's worse on Reddit without a doubt!
Its definitely a problem. One way to fix it would be for admins to be more strict with the moderators of local communities, and replace them if they go too far. But it seems most admins are quite hands off and prefer to let things run their course.
We almost need like... some kind of "Supreme Court" or Mod review system. One way or another, it's a really hard problem to solve for certain.
Thats not possible because instances are completely independent from each other, and one one can force admins to do anything (except their local governments and hosting providers). So different instances will always have different standards, and at most other instances can defederate if they disagree.
in addition to what others said, it l matters who is making the rules.
in my own home i make my own rules and they are subject to my discretion and may change whenever I want. and even if someone is following all my stated rules if I don't want them there, they aren't allowed to be there.
following a community's rules doesn't guarantee anything and the person making the rules has a right to remove or keep whoever they want. you have no right or expectation to remain in a community if the community owner doesn't want you there.
businesses and hoas and neighborhoods make the majority of their own rules but can be superseded by rules from the county, town, state, or federal government.
when a business runs afoul, a customer may bring a lawsuit to the higher authority. in lemmy communities, other than instance admins there are no higher authorities so you get what you get.
furthermore if we lived in a fully libertarian world where there were no higher authorities governing business (which is a closer analogy to lemmy) you would either have to deal with being discriminated against, or try to organize with other members of your community a boycott to pressure the business into behaving as you want through capitalism. you can do the same on lemmy. you can boycott a community or instance and try to guide others to better communities.