So, I saw a report from one of my users. They reported:
https://ponder.cat/post/1594852/1813842
For the reason:
Unreasonable fighting with everyone in every simple post
I think that’s ridiculous, so I talked with them about it. Posting private communications is frowned upon I guess, but long story short, they weren’t receptive. I’ve decided to ban the account.
IMO the general culture on Lemmy is that users are entitled to their free account and everyone needs to be careful and circumspect about limiting that entitlement in any way, but I don’t see it that way. I don’t think it’s a requirement for me to provide hosting space for anyone who wants to use my stuff as a jumping-off point for abuse of Lemmy’s systems, and isn’t apologetic or receptive when I talk with them about not doing that. The fact that it’s in service of harassing FlyingSquid in particular is just icing on the cake, since my perception is that people like to harass him apparently for no legitimate reason at all (with this as an example).
AITA?
Thats enough to see why they are polarizing across lots of people.
Here is the exact instance when I flipped the bit on them
https://hackertalks.com/post/3884023/4550323
Yeah. It’s not ideal to have someone with that habit doing moderation. I just don’t get how people jump from it to “PTB PTB he’s awful.”
I feel like, in general, people have to categorize as “good!” or “bad!”, and FlyingSquid clearly gets in these bitter arguments sometimes which isn’t a good thing to do, and so by default he turns into “bad!” and any bad thing about him becomes true. Like I say, I’m not saying he hasn’t been banning people who argue with him, just I’ve never seen it in several times of checking what was behind people complaining about him. Every time that I remember, it basically boiled down to “He said a rude thing to this person! In a comment!”
I feel like maybe there was one that was recent that was a lot more of an actual PTB, so maybe I am wrong. I can’t even remember the details.
I updated my post above with the example that was too far for me.
Regardless, they are a good user, but a questionable mod of so many communities, and given their argument style plus wielding the ban hammer on those same arguments people can come away with a bad experience/perception… Which manifests elsewhere as just emotion.
Hm.
The user said:
(This is in the context of https://hackertalks.com/post/3884023, Imane Khelif)
I don’t feel like that’s all that outlandish to hand out some kind of sanction for. I probably wouldn’t, but I’ve seen people get banned for a lot less. I think they were banned for calling her “a freak” and repeatedly saying she isn’t “normal”, not for arguing with Squid. Plenty of people argue with Squid and it seems to just be arguing, no?
I don’t think kemsat’s factual point is wrong, but I don’t think the factual things he was saying or disagreeing with Squid were the motivation for the ban. It’s in the modlog that “freak” was the issue.
Sure, in isolation thats a good moderation reason, but when you egg someone on to debate then use the ban hammer when they engage. Was their language great, no… but where they earnestly engaging with the prompt provided by moderator yes…
Yeah, I get it. You’re not wrong. They’re just going to learn not to be forthcoming in moderator conversations in the future (which is a funny thing for me to say under this post). Also, as a more general issue, this is why I really just don’t like forbidding points of view in general.
I’m probably way in the minority on this, but even some really offensive things, if that’s really what you think, I think you should be able to talk about it. It’s the only way people can ever work themselves out of certain types of wrong thinking, is if someone’s willing to talk with them. It doesn’t mean you have to put up with unrepentant bullshit or hatred, or let it feature in your comments section. I think that’s what Squid thought he was taking a stand against, there. But yeah I kind of agree with you on it.
Like think of Wade Watts talking with the KKK and talking people out of racism. If someone’s being serious about what they think, and they’re open to hearing and talking about why it might be wrong, I don’t think it does anyone any favors to say “No you are bad get out now.” They’re just going to learn to carefully not raise certain subjects, and never have their mind changed about any of it. Or else, they’re going to decide you’re the enemy now, and talk to other people who think like them, and attack you when they do interact with you.
Again there are certain lines you have to draw. I’m not saying “free speech.” I’m just saying that honest debate means you have to let some people in with wrong opinions. Like I say, I actually agree with certain parts of what kemsat said factually. I think he just used some trigger-words,and trigger-words have this unfortunate outsized importance right now.
Agreed.
I think the banned user was using freak when they meant abnormal, but freak does mean abnormal in the dictionary. They even contextualized it by saying all athletes are abnormal by dint of being athletes.
So someone asking for a debate wont give the person they requested a response from the benefit of the doubt and engage with their meaning and not their exact vocabulary (which is still correct, if a little triggering - as you said)
For a third party moderator to jump in and say thats not allowed vocabulary, fine. For someone who asked for the debate to do it, thats constructive abuse and arguing in bad faith.
Anyway, this was a old moderation decision, its not the point of this current post. I think i’ve illustrated why this user/moderator is so polarizing to many people - which was the inquiry in the actual post here :)
Yeah, fair enough. And getting hung up on which specific words are being used, and saying that certain words make you a bad person when if you’d said the exact same thing while carefully using other words, it would have been fine, leading to extensive discussions about which are the allowed words and not, is a popular but poisonous pastime.