After being harassed in multiple discord channels by powermod FlyingSquid the news mod blackbeard has shuttered his account and moved to bluesky.
https://lemmy.world/u/Blackbeard
"The recklessness with which people downvote polite disagreements reminds me of all the worst parts of Reddit, and it proves to me that this isn't the social media savior I'd hoped it would be, and is instead just another echo chamber. I hope eventually lemmy.world (and the fediverse more broadly) can grow out of that, but some of the behavior I've seen on the inside from both mods and admins doesn't really inspire much confidence for that kind of evolution in the short term. "
FlyingSquid is the same mod who has the power to siteban people from lemmy.world
Why does lemmy.world keep having issues with their powermods and admins? Why do powermods get the ability to siteban their enemies from the largest instance?
I agreed with you up until you said “FlyingSquid saying he won’t flag anything is super reasonable.” If I’m working with a peer and I’m an asshole to them about our shared responsibilities and they say “well fine I just won’t do the thing both of us are supposed to do any more,” I’d argue that’s childish. Granted I started it and drug them down to my level, but they’re down there too. Both sides get real fucking dramatic after that. It’s pretty clear Blackbeard started swinging and FlyingSquid came along for the ride.
To me, the long discord screenshot is just evidence that FlyingSquid had a bad day and said some dumb shit to someone pushing his buttons. I don’t think it contributes to the evidence that he’s a bad mod; that has to come from elsewhere. If we had evidence that FlyingSquid drops down into the mud a bunch with users, not fellow moderators, that would be sufficient.
But, it’s not a shared responsibility. Two times in a week he saw something in someone else’s community and flagged it, trying I guess to be a good citizen, and then he got this demanding and rude extensive DM chat about it with all these personal accusations. I sort of agree that he let his buttons get pushed, but he tried way harder to keep an open dialogue about it and reach a real resolution than I would have.
I think about the time when he offered to just not report anything, problem solved, and Blackbeard said he was childish and ridiculous, I would have just said “I wasn’t asking. You’re not my boss, I am free to report or not report in any fashion I would like to. If you want to give me grief about my reports, but refuse to clarify which ones you do and don’t want to receive, then I will not report. Have a good one, the matter is closed as far as I’m concerned.”
So they’re not co-moderators in this situation? That definitely changes my analysis. I feel like instance mods have some shared responsibility for the health of their instance so I wouldn’t say it’s completely not his job; the rest of my understanding was wrong if they don’t share responsibility!
I disagree that Blackbeard wouldn’t “clarify which ones you do and don’t want to receive.” Blackbeard laid out their perspective for moderation of the community, which, if FlyingSquid is not a co-moderator, is what flies, not the opinion you and FlyingSquid share. I didn’t think that was unclear at all; FlyingSquid just didn’t agree.
It’s very easy for me to say from my armchair that I’m not going to take shit from a moderator over unclear rules; if it’s not in the sidebar fuck off with telling me what I can’t report. I think you and I both agree Blackbeard was shit at trying to resolve conflict here.
Yeah, FS was just reporting as a normal user in someone else's community.
I do get what you mean. It wouldn't have been hard to read between the lines. Blackbeard was clearly hinting that "No misinformation" in the sidebar means "No linking to Breitbart" but that political misinformation accounts are okay. I think it was pretty fair for FlyingSquid to ask him to clarify exactly what he meant, though, and lay out clearly that in his reading of the rules he was reporting a rule-breaking comment and so didn't do anything wrong, instead of operating off of Blackbeard's hints. Especially since it sounded like he was getting conflicting "hints" from other moderators.
Like I say, my judgement on it is influenced because I personally wish the LW moderators would do a lot more about the accounts that are clearly there just to put political misinformation of some type into the comments, so I probably would agree with FS's categorization of that user and be resistant to someone telling me not to worry about it because it's impossible for anyone "just stating an opinion" to be misinformation.
I personally feel like you’d be justified continuing to report in that situation until the sidebar tells you not to. Getting yelled at in Discord is not a lemmy conversation and it’s not open at all. Your point about differences in mod opinions carries a lot of weight here because, as a user, if it’s not in the sidebar it doesn’t exist.
I am very happy to jump on the anti-FS bandwagon in other threads. I just don’t think this is a good example and it’s very easy to put myself in those shoes here. Thanks for the analysis! I appreciate you.