this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2025
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Hi I'm the mod of these two communities, so I'm going to give my input on this. Basically this started back when I began before I started my first community and I noticed that other AI communities receive a surprisingly large amount of downvotes, however when I started my first community !stable_diffusion_mycology@lemmy.dbzer0.com I found that number to be much higher, and when I looked into the Voter data I found that it was being brigaded from users who moderate !fuck_ai@lemmy.world as well as very active participants there. So I made a decision that instead of allowing them to suppress and hurt my community I would ban the ones who do it so they can't hurt my community. Eventually I found that that wasn't enough because there were too many of them just waiting to take the place of banned users, so I started screening users by post history, and if they made bad faith anti-AI arguments I banned them, and yes I also used posts like the linked one as honeypots to catch other Anti-AI trolls who would complain about banning. When I began !stable_diffusion_witches@lemmy.dbzer0.com I transferred the bans from my already established community because I knew that these same people would continue at it again.
I know that these people will not block and ignore these communities on their own, they are intentionally trying to suppress it, some of them have actually admitted to doing such and saying they won't block posts. If it's considered unacceptable or against the rules to ban people in this manner then that means it's essentially impossible to fight large scale brigading and hate voting like this, which I do not think is fair for people wanting to start communities here.
In addition to simply brigading my communities I have had people harass me in DMs, make death threats towards me, and make fun of me for being a recovering alcoholic. I've had these people deny my gender identity, claim I'm a woman, deliberately use the wrong pronouns, and even one person impersonating me while acting like a pig. Really vile stuff.
In short these are not knee jerk reactions, the vast majority of the bans I cast are for good reasons, and while I have made mistakes on occasion, the majority of these bans are correct, and I don't believe we should be forced to allow known problematic users to hurt our communities just because they haven't left comments there yet.
Thanks for coming here and providing your PoV.
After reading the comments on YPTB I can only say this: the f is wrong with some people… I must be living in some bubble where people can have sane reasonable discussion even if they disagree.
I understand you are trying to build communities and defend them against users with ill-intent. I don’t know what your ambitions are as far as the target size of these communities goes, but I just thought that banning users like described simply sends a bad message and, unfortunately, brings unnecessary attention to your person (especially if user does not agree or understands a reason for a ban). Forgive me for inadvertently being a part of the problem.
On the other hand, if you are right that some users made it a hobby out of downvoting all posts from your community and we both want to provide a space for it on Lemmy (on any instance), then this potentially calls for some software feature? Like joinable, discoverable but semi-private communities that don’t appear on "all" with limited voting and posting rights for non-members? I don’t know - you tell me what would be your dream scenario! But definitively I don’t believe you can have it both ways, be totally open and not exposed, especially for controversial themes.
Lastly, allow me to address you as a person. Please don’t understand me wrong as my wording might upset you but I really mean good for you. If you are going through some hardships in your life - don’t ever let the trolls see you are vulnerable. In general, the social media, be it federated or corporate, is not a good place to seek support or publicly confess intimate details of your life. If you really have to because you find that helpful, at least make a second account not used for moderation. Don’t feed the trolls.
Love.
P.S. - you can probably unban me if you are not mad at me, I promise to behave ;)
Where is this bubble? I wanna be in that bubble!
~~In lemmyverse? This thread seems to be one? :) everyone looks to be respectful so far.~~
Other than that the communities I subscribe to…
it really caught me off guard when I saw comments directly attacking Mystic without even addressing the question, I was not prepared for this shit! Like if there was some history that I missed and I just relit an old flamewar or something
EDIT: yeah I just scrolled down… nevermind my first part of this message
It's so strange to me that I'm fairly hated and some people permaban me on sight, but then I see comments like, "Fuck you stupid alcoholic vodka baby. I bet you’re a russian troll, they love Vodka over there. Also quit pretending to be a woman no one buys this sympathy act that you’re “transgender” by a now just-banned member, @SlipperySlime838585@sh.itjust.works.
I'm floored. Who in their right mind makes fun of recovering alcoholics and mixes it with transphobia in the same fucking comment?
People act like I’m destroying Lemmy just because I post links to news articles they don’t like, meanwhile, there’s garbage like that being said all over the place?
Compared to the homophobic, transphobic, and flat-out hateful words I’ve seen on Lemmy lately, my posts are like reading preschool stories in a padded nursery while the rest of the site sets itself on fire and screams the most hateful slurs ever through a bullhorn.
This place is going down fast.
So yeah, I need to stay in your bubble. I thought I was doing that, but I gotta try harder.
Thank you for your response. I do agree that banning people en masse can have a negative impact in how people see me, and I don't exactly like it even though I do it a lot. But I do it because at the moment Lemmy doesn't have any other options to ameliorate the mass downvoting that my AI communities receive and they would be in the high negatives by now being seen and enjoyed by no one if I didn't try to do something.
Yeah I agree with that last part, it's not good to let people see vulnerability. I don't know about having a second account I'm bad at managing two accounts especially since I don't use any fancy Lemmy apps, just the browser and my phone with a PWA thing so having more than one account would be a pain and I would probably forget. Also I feel like people would identify my alt anyway from my history here since I would still vent just as much there about the things I've already vented about. I already do try my best by not interacting much with them or simply reporting them. Though Lemmy is my only social media since I cut everything else off a while ago so it's hard to do anything beyond not responding to and simply reporting trolls.
Not as much as youd think. Especially if you put your venting account on another home server.
The combination might be a little rare, but users dont typically use advanced fingerprinting methods here, and it's not totally implausible there's more than one person who roughly matches your identity+fuckedness profile, especially if you use the more common/generic they/them pronouns on the alt, phase certain issues into ranting abt them on the alt from this one, etc.
Even on your phone, you could add another lemmy app with different credentials.
Oh I wasn't thinking that deeply that server admins would identify me through advanced methods I was thinking more that regular users including the trolls from fuck_AI would identify me through my behavior and the things I talk about. Since I already talked about them here.
Like i said, users.
Fancy writing style analysis is not something people are gonna do.
Youd need to be either a serious slightly analyst flavored lit-fucker or use (and this is a rare actual (but evil) use case) your precious LLM's. The former is vanishingly rare in yhese parts (at least as users), the latter i wouldn't expect your exact threat profile to just use fucking reflexively.
You're fine. Maybe clean up your writing style if you want to be extra sure.
Before I say anything else, I wanna say sorry that happened to you. I've personally seen people struggle with alcohol addictions in my inner circle, and the fact that someone would use that to attack you, makes me sick. This pisses me off way more than all the other random shit I see on Lemmy combined.
Please stay strong, and don't give those fuckers a chance to knock you down bully you out of here.
I support you in your modding efforts as well, brother. You're appreciated here.
I mean that. I'm not saying it as Universal Monk, I'm saying it as a person. I appreciate that you are here.
You may wanna say this in Ye Power Tripping, I'm trying to defend you there. But I understand if you don't wanna, the people there can be weird.
I try to avoid that place, it has a lot of toxic people there and most of the ones there are just upset about being banned, they don't care that it's actually for a good reason or not, they just want to be unbanned so they can do whatever they want. My comment about the reasons largely fall on deaf ears. And also since many of the people there are the people who have been brigading even if they know and understand they will double down because it's in their interest too.
Also by the way I saw your comment there and just want to clarify that I go by Ze/Zir pronouns I don't go by she/her, I tolerate it sometimes but being called by she/her gives me mild dysphoria and ickyness, so I'd prefer not to be.
Fair, and I am trying to edit my posts. Please lemme know if I missed any!
Will do 👍
Thank you!! I'm still learning neopronouns and proper use of them. :3
Just a random thought, its a shame flairs aren't better implemented (and available lemmy-wide) so they could be used for preferred pronouns, that would be great.
Sorry pretty far OT, just thinking that would make communication here even easier
Yeah it would be nice. Display names work well enough, but it would be better to have flairs since they can be more noticeable.
Smart. YPTB seema to be flooded with the same kind of morons who think they should be able to say whatever they want without repercussions. I'm blocking it myself after making this comment.
I think it's a good idea to be able to call out bad moderation practices but I think that bellyaching and free speech entitlement needs to be culled way more aggressively to make it actually work, otherwise it'll just be filled with the worst people all the time complaining that they got banned, even though it was for more than good reasons.
It cannot be neutral, it has to have some level of bias to balance out the natural bias of moderation disproportionately affecting those who really deserve it, otherwise it'll be a majority of people who really deserve it commenting and shit-talking there, and they'll talk over a lot of the real issues and make them harder to discuss, or worse seem less credible.
I used to be head mod of a 1M+ subreddit some years ago. Believe me - I get it.
We mitigate all we can, but there will always be sore losers in public forums. YPTB was probably made with good intentions, calling out obvious tankie bullshit and the like, but it's just turned into cesspool.
"Pro-AI people are kind and defend artists."
So the transphobia is cool with you because you agree with them?
Edit: oh it's an alt to hate Mystic when they got banned. Charming
I'm going to leave these comments up as a clear demonstration of the "good intentions" of the anti genAI trolls.
While acknowledging that not all anti genAI folks are arseholes and trolls, there appears to be a significant proportion who are just that and need to be dealt with accordingly.
For those folks that get caught up in the mod actions, you can always appeal by sending a polite note to the mod involved. But maybe also have a think about the company you are keeping as well, and also please consider simply blocking the communities which have policies you don't like.
Whoops, I purged them 🫠 I think there were a few screenshots of them, sorry
Dork lol