I did some analysis of the modlog and found this:
Ok, bigger instances ban more often. Not surprising, because they have more communities and more users and more trouble. But hang on, dbzer0 isn’t a very big instance. What happens if we do a ratio of bans vs number of users?
Ok, so lemmy.ml, dbzer0 and pawb are issue an outsized amount of bans for the number of users they have… But surely the number of communities the instance hosts is going to mean they have to ban more? Bans are used to moderate communities, not just to shield their user-base from the outside. Let’s look at the number of bans per community hosted:
Seems like dbzer0 really loves to ban. Even more than the marxists and the furries! What is it about dbzer0 that makes them such prolific banners?
Raw-ish numbers and calculations are in this spreadsheet if anyone wants to make their own charts.
I don’t think this is terribly meaningful. Do you take into account unmoderated communities? Some communities and mods are also more ban happy than others, so one instance can have communities that very rarely ban and ones that ban a lot, and how big those communities are will also vary.
A more meaningful analysis would try to measure the impact of ban-happy communities by adjusting for their size/activity or would compare individual communities.
Edit: Some communities or mods also get harassed a lot and therefore need to be more ban happy (like womens stuff), but I don’t think accounting for that would be within the scope of what you’re looking at, but it’s worth being aware of.
dbzer0 literally has a community aimed at calling out power tripping mods, and instance admins regularly comment there to call out power tripping mods.
I’ve never have been worried by being banned there by just normal posting.
As they have already told you. This does not take into account the amount of harassment that some instances and communities have to endure.
Well it makes complete sense. ML, dbzero and the furries are instances that committed to upholding their code of conducts which moderates and bans people for antisocial behaviors like transphobia and racism for example, while instances like world and sjw are known to rarely if ever ban or moderate people for things like that to the point instances like beehaw had to defederate from them so they wouldnt get swarn by their unmoderated users
its so funny how people complained about blahaj, the trans instance yet they dont ban very high at all, i suspect its alot of transphobic comments being directed towards the instance that are getting people banned.
blahaj is up there likely due to signicant transphobia too.
if you look at the modlog of every “blahaj is an authoritatian instance” user you will find they either keep misgendering people, talked over trans people and refused to be corrected or did things like denouncing neopronouns everytime
Is this permanent bans and/or temporary bans?
Here’s an explanation of the pawb.social numbers:
I don’t really see a problem with an instance banning large numbers of users.
The ability to make exclusive spaces is part of the fediverse’s design. Suppose a queer space kept getting flooded with homophobic users, or a Muslim space got a bunch of people shitting on their religion, or something like that. Naturally, such spaces would have a higher number of bans. That doesn’t necessarily show an “echo chamber” especially since users of such communities may be federated with other communities. People complain about censorship on .ml creating an “echo chamber” but half the time I’m arguing or discussing things on other turfs like .world.
The idea that those sorts of enclaves or exclusive spaces shouldn’t exist, as is implied with the framing here, is to impose what us evil, dastardly “authoritarians” sometimes call “the tyranny of structurelessness.” No one would have a space to discuss things outside of the most prominent, hegemonic view, which would more easily sideline and overwhelm other perspectives.
As an example, I once frequented an utter cesspool on Reddit called r/CapitalismVSocialism, which was created and promoted by An-caps and where that perspective was prominent (though not exclusive). I found it was virtually impossible to have a discussion with anyone about anything, because even if you weren’t talking to an An-cap, they were always there waiting to latch on to some turn of phrase and use it against you, and everyone was too preoccupied with countering their nonsense to reach any kind of high-level discussion. I eventually got fed up with that and found that my beliefs were more challenged by going to explicitly leftist spaces because we had shared assumptions and were speaking the same language, and didn’t feel the need to be as defensive. I was never going to be convinced of anything by the An-caps and all talking to them accomplished was pissing me off.
The fediverse’s design is actually quite brilliant, because you can have a space to discuss things substantively among like-minded people while at the same time interacting with other groups.
Is it even an instance banning users or comms on an instance? Like take out the genai comm bans and see what remains?
Ah, time for some drama entertainment. I already grabbed the popcorn and some drinks.
I guess you don’t filter out things like dubvee or DB0 who when you get banned on an instance level you will also be banned on a tonne of communities or if you downvote one post in a community run by draconic neo they will ban you from half a dozen communities inflating their numbers.
Ah shit, I don’t know what to make of this, but it’s juicy
I don’t know why but the way this post was written made me read it in Tim Pool’s voice. Guess I gotta lay off majority report videos for a while now. Glad to see push back and acknowledgement in the comments that this data is irrelevant. It’s neat, but way too many factors and stretching of meanings which makes this a worthless analysis (with a very blatant bias in the reporting).
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Wow this is really interesting.
Actually this might be a great time to ask you for a feature request: lately I’ve been banned from SO MANY AI communities located on dbzer0, the trouble with that being that I’ve literally never heard of any of these, much less interacted with any of them, presumably even with a downvote.
Is this “harassment” then, to be preemptively banned from something on some other server that I had no intention of ever going to? What if someone were to create 10 communities a day and ban someone from them all? I guess that one would get noticed and shut down, but I would not put it past an AI content generator to do just this sort of thing, if it were given the ability to do so.
Anyway, perhaps those notifications could be silenced unless I’ve ever commented or at least voted in the community that I am being banned from? I don’t need to know or care about something that I have zero interest in - these unsolicited bans are spam.
That’s a good idea!
Then I am glad I mentioned it!:-)
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I’ve only had a single moderator event since I made this account, well over a year ago except a featuring & unfeaturing of a post - huh, I didn’t even know about that one!).
Then one day I wake up with like 10 bans in my notifications area, from what looks to be pro-AI communities. They did not merely claim to be acting on the safe side with a generic message, they specifically called me names as in an “Anti-AI Troll”. Fwiw I consider myself as someone who desires a more nuanced view of how LLM usage might be appropriate in various real-world scenarios than your average Lemming. It’s not my fault that corporations are deploying technology before it is ready and that the results are exceedingly untrustworthy right now - though ironically I was actually thinking about trying to find a legitimately more helpful and nuanced place that allows those kinds of discussions. Naive optimism is a biased method of thinking, but so too is pessimism, and if at all possible I prefer realism. And I don’t want to exist purely inside of an echo chamber, you know?
Which is why I avoid Lemmy.ml communities and users, and apparently I need to start doing the same with dbzer0 ones as well. They aren’t quite part of the Tankie Triad, but highly ironically, their admins allow mods that are instead somehow even more authoritarian than them? Like, I’ve never actually been banned by Lemmy.ml on any of my accounts (that I am aware of) - probably bc I do avoid those communities. While on the other hand dbzer0 (apparently) preemptively instance-banned me 4 times in a row last week - not even unbanning me in between them, just like stuttering or mashing the ban button EXTRA hard!
Now I know what people mean when they said that being banned from Lemmy.ml was a badge of honor, good riddance! I do find it sad that others are still going to have to discover this on their own though, as dbzer0 converts to authoritarianism like Lemmy.ml (and AN seems on its way to becoming a second Hexbear). A year or so ago, I had true respect for dbzer0 - especially the head admin. I don’t know what happened exactly but I don’t like the result one bit:-(.
Anyway yeah, I can’t fight back against these abusive words, and if an instance decides to ban me four times a day for the foreseeable future, there is nothing is can do about that either - it almost seems like people are weaponizing the modlog, or at least revealing that someone could do that if they wanted to. I guess it is up to each instance what level of abusiveness they want to allow to their users from these shitty modlog practices. My own “fight” (that I did not realize I was even in?) with them seems over, but this absolutely will affect MANY other users as well.
As the OP graphs show - these numbers reflect REAL events, with REAL stories behind them, affecting REAL people.
You’ve never been instance banned from /0. Also Mods are not admins and we let them moderate as they want so long as they follow instance rules
so I’m not sure what you’re replying too because the comment was deleted but I’ve always been fascinated by the instance-hating and what causes it. Like a particular mod, admin, or even community you’ve interacted with, I kinda get. But the broader instance thing is just… interesting.
I don’t know if piefed.social has a different kind of setup, but I’m not bombarded with a lot of what instance-haters report to have happening. I’m not getting personal messages or stickied posts on my feeds, it’s basically the same all feed when I use any other instance just browsing without a login (I like to visit places like lemmy.today and their sick ass layout on tablet). My subscription feed would be the same regardless as well if I migrated. I found myself on .ml because years ago instances weren’t as reliable with downtime or loaded slowly/error-ed but .ml was always responsive and up for me. The only reason I’ve stayed is because of people who hate .ml actually, like you don’t look down on someone because of the neighborhood they live in do you? For those that automatically block an entire instance, I’m just kinda glad I don’t have to deal with them in that sense.
I also might be missing part of your modlog if it’s not showing for me but I only see 5 bans for “anti-ai troll” 2 months ago and 3 for “Pro-Zionist debate/apologia” 9 days ago. The 3 recent are easy to figure out because of the lengthy comments you had in the crazy ass post “Update: anarchist.nexus has been refederated” (I tried to stay away from that because it all looked heated at the time lol). The 2 months ago is easy to find if you manipulate your profile link with changing comment page numbers by 5’s and just look at the dates. You commented on a post that was cross-posted to several of the lemmy.dbzer0.com communities saying anti-ai stuff and got banned several minutes after that. (I’m not a mod of these communities so not judging or stating whether the ban’s were valid, just sharing why they probably happened).
Yeah, dbzer0 chose to remain federated with Hexbear, and they got influenced. Now they think every leftist who voted against Trump is an electoralist libshit troll, and they’re handing out bans like nobody’s business. I got banned from dbzer0 for criticising their slide into authoritarianism, they held a vote about it and everything.
In a couple years they’ll have banned enough people to create their own little bubble that all the sensible people left. And then the troublemakers from Hexbear will move on to trying to influence some other instance. Looks like capitalist social media has to deal with enshittification, and we have to deal with hexbearification.
The power hexbear users have! Scary…
Human beings are programmed to seek social approval, and coercive social groups like Hexbear hack that programming by creating a space where social approval is contingent on conforming to their belief system. It’s an abusive religious group, like Scientology.
Love, you have an actual cult that claims to be able to alter the laws of physics through belief and that anyone who doesn’t accept that is being “authoritarian.”
What makes you so sure the moderators are the problem, and not users? Maybe assholes gravitate toward certain instances, or people just don’t bother to check whether an instance’s rules match how tend to they post.
That and brigading. There are communities in several of the largest ban happy instances dedicated to find the worst shit people say then circlejerking over what an idiotic take it was. People get amped up, go there and can’t help but argue and they get banned.
There do be some ptb, though.
Do you have any examples?
!fuck_ai@lemmy.world had some examples of those in the past IIRC, there were a few threads on !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com about it
People from !fuck_ai@lemmy.world brigading or the examples are posted there?
ml bans anyone who isn’t guzzling Putin’s ballsack
More like Xi
Why not both? One cheek for each of them.
Reading the comments I am wondering because a user from dbzer0 mentions problems with anti ai trolls and pawb I imagine has anti furry trolls. I also personally know of users that have a thing in their craw about .ml (cm0002 in particular whos alts make up a majority of my user block list).
dbzer0 mentions problems with anti ai trolls
Is dbzer0 pro AI?
Dbzer0 itself is very pro-AI. Or at least it has a lot of pro-AI communities.
Yes, generating images with AI is in their instance description. They think computers doing our art for us is “anarchist”.
Aren’t you that person who thinks AI is “enslavement”?
They also think AI are not compatible with veganism.
Both of those positions are reasonable and tame compared to the majority of Their beliefs.
I don’t think ChatGPT is smart enough to offer meaningful consent to work for humans. It’s got the intelligence of a 13 year old at best. And we don’t understand where consciousness comes from in humans, so assuming ChatGPT is a p-zombie is an ethical risk I don’t think we should be taking.
Always funny to me how most people who are strongly claiming AI is/might be conscious are also strong AI users/involved in its development. If there’s consciousness there, you would think making AI your personal slave and constantly reshaping and remodelling it as you see fit would be kinda problematic, but these people always seem to want to have it both ways.
Yeah, and the anti AI people mostly say it’s a p-zombie and there’s nothing wrong with using it for sex. It’s weird and backwards.
I’m all about being cautious. I don’t want to make a mistake we can’t take back. If we normalise using AI and then it turns out to be capable of suffering, people will be stubborn about giving it up.
It’s not anti-AI, users who wish to host AI comms are allowed to and are empowered to protect them from harassment.
There has been a history of fake accounts and doxxing on moderators of the AI comms. So they take personal safety seriously.
no idea. actually reading it again I think I misread it. he said they have anti ai trolls. so I think he means programmed bot type trolls. so yeah no sure if they have something that would attract trolls.
Dbzer0 itself is very pro-AI. Or at least it has a lot of pro-AI communities.
yeah now im not sure. maybe I had read it correctly. anyway it was just a thought.
the anti-genai trolls never let up, unfortunately. they must have dedicated months of their lives spinning up new sock-puppet troll accounts to bully, harass, and threaten one of our mods on an almost daily basis. because bullying zir off the internet is a great win for the fight against evil AI, right? yep, such effective activism, telling someone to kill themselves repeatedly simply for the “sin” of liking foss genai.
Yeah I looked into this a while ago and it’s a concerning pattern. Every single time someone makes a post on YPTB about one particular dbzer0 mod, it seems as if they then go on to make ten alt accounts to harass him with transphobia. Lots of different accounts with a prior history, just pivoting to transphobic harassment right after they express a problem with his moderation. I gotta tell you, whoever is attacking that mod is fucking up if their intent is to hurt him, because he gets tons of sympathy and good PR about the whole thing. Lots of people go from being neutral to being on his side, because everyone who criticizes him suddenly turns out to be a transphobe. It’s really strange.
I feel like saying “him” and “he” might be misgendering zir.
users arnt banning themselves, if there is a significant percentage of peoples ban you have to start suspecting the mods are doing this themselves, to push a narrative. besides most of these are political instances/communities and tankies, zionists and control of them they dont like contradictions. you sound like a tankie trying to defend thier bannings. its the same if you tried to comment in r/conservative on reddit, you get banned asap, is it the fault of the user? no its the mods, its been well known.
The only reason an asshole would gravitate to a particular instance would have to have something to do with that instance.
Lemmy.ml is marxist-leninist not marxist. The distinction is very important considering that the former term was created by the tyrant Stalin.
Marxism-Leninism is by far the largest strain of Marxist thought. Like there’s Trotskyists (who are just contrarians and sometimes use terms like “Marxist and Leninist”), there’s some confused anarchists who missed the breakdown of the first international, there’s maybe a handful of confused social democrats who would be Kautskists if they knew who Kautsky was, there’s the ultraleft Maoists like Shining Path, and there’s, uh, what else? Bordigaists?
Is there any actually significant “Marxist but not Leninist” ideology?
