this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2024
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FediLore + Fedidrama

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Chronicle the life and tale of the fediverse (+ matrix)

Largely a sublemmy about capturing drama, from fediverse spanning drama to just lemmy drama.

Includes lore like how a instance got it's name, how an instance got defederated, how an admin got doxxed, fedihistory etc

(New) This sub's intentions is to an archive/newspaper, as in preferably don't get into fights with each other or the ppl featured in the drama

Tags: fediverse news, lemmy news, lemmyverse

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After being harassed in multiple discord channels by powermod FlyingSquid the news mod blackbeard has shuttered his account and moved to bluesky.

https://ibb.co/cY44MgF

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?

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[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 3 points 5 hours ago

Flying Squid takes things personally rather often, and can get heated especially on controversial topics. I don't always agree with their behaviour as a user and as a mod, but tbh they are the more reasonable party in this particular exchange, though some of the responses are more annoying. The conversation could have easily ended like 1/4 of the way through by either of them. It's unclear if it's harassment to me, because I am reading it as both persistently acting childishly at times.

If they leave they leave, that's fine. No matter who is right in this, Blackbeard has no obligation to deal with stuff he doesn't want to.

Sounds like this was already resolved within the mod team. So if OP you're posting for history or were unaware, fine (but you ought to look for, ask and add surrounding context and actions, next time). If you're posting just to cause drama and a flamewar, shame on you.

Lastly, discord? Come on, we're on Lemmy here, harass people on a federated FOSS protocol like matrix! /s

[–] Serinus@lemmy.world 6 points 8 hours ago

Hi, LW Community Team here.

We've made efforts to avoid the kind of supermods that existed on Reddit, and this is a great example. We've tried to have more mods with fewer communities each, and to limit the number of major communities under the same mods. This was a disagreement between two mods of major LW communities, FlyingSquid at worldnews and Blackbeard as a moderator of News and PoliticalDiscussion. Notably, this seems to be a disagreement from a couple months ago.

FlyingSquid moderates one major politically involved community (the other is closed). If Blackbeard wanted to ban him from News for report abuse, he certainly could have done that. Admins and the Community Team here try not to get overly involved in individual communities, and that wouldn't seem extremely out of line.

Blackbeard seems to have been concerned about getting side-wide banned by Flying. I've seen no evidence of anyone using the bot outside of extremely obvious scammers, trolls, and ban evasion. And I don't believe FlyingSquid would use that bot inappropriately. If that does become a problem, we'd absolutely take action. You always have the options to appeal directly to the admins (email in the LW sidebar). Currently, it's nice to have the extra help in keeping scams and spam off the site.

I do wish Blackbeard had talked to us about his concerns. He seemed to be pretty reasonable from my interactions with him. He'd be welcome back if we could get through this misunderstanding.

[–] PumaStoleMyBluff@lemmy.world 16 points 14 hours ago

I just wish FS would slow down on commenting. Lemmy world comment sections feel like a FS echo chamber because they feel the need to comment on every single post.

Even if I agree with many of their opinions, that's just not what I want out of Lemmy, so I have them filtered.

[–] Schmoo 18 points 21 hours ago

Everyone Sucks Here.

Oh, this isn't r/AITAH? Sheesh, thought I somehow stumbled back onto reddit.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 12 points 19 hours ago

Speaking to the bot thing, a few of us have access to it in order to remove egregious violations in communities where we may not be mods.

I've used it to remove CSAM accounts and posts for example. Middle of the night spam attacks, and so on.

Really it's for content in which there is no question it should be removed... when the bot is working. :) Sorry @Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world ! ;) It doesn't work a LOT!

[–] Lemminary@lemmy.world 36 points 1 day ago

Whaaat FlyingSquid made a huge deal out of a simple disagreement and made it all about themselves unprompted and made it personal? I'm shocked--that he didn't mention his offspring and him moving to England. 🙄

[–] Chozo@fedia.io 36 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I'm not sure how FlyingSquid is the bad guy here when Blackbeard is the one going around DMing Lemmy users off-platform about their reports. If you disagree with the reported content, then dismiss it. Blackbeard is the one who instigated this by opening a DM with FlyingSquid to begin with. Blackbeard doesn't understand how to be a mod, it seems.

This thread is garbage. OP is bad and should feel bad.

[–] ech@lemm.ee 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If you disagree with the reported content, then dismiss it.

This is what I don't get about "report abuse". It's entirely in their power to completely ignore reports they think are unnecessary or in bad faith. They do nothing unless the mod acts on them. I got an instance ban for reporting someone that instantly resorted to cursing and insults after a minor correction from me. Apparently someone else reported the same comment (shocking) and the admin decided it was "brigading" 🙄

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[–] andrew_s@piefed.social 45 points 1 day ago (11 children)

If you continue to report opinions and simple disagreements as misinformation, we will take action against your account for report abuse, same as we would any account.

It doesn't seem unreasonable to me to interpret that as a threat to ban the account.

[–] Serinus@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

That one was the other way, Blackbeard threatening FlyingSquid. Blackbeard has never had the power to site ban, only community ban.

[–] andrew_s@piefed.social 2 points 3 hours ago

Yeah - I was disagreeing with the OP. I quoted BB because later on they said "I've not even HINTED at banning you [from the community]"

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[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 42 points 1 day ago (13 children)

Full disclosure, I tend to agree with FlyingSquid in the instance that kicked all of this off. I don't have a clear opinion of them as a mod, but personally I wish the LW mods would do a lot more about the "Kamala Harris = Hitler" type of misinformation that gets a free pass on a lot of LW.

FlyingSquid comes across as perfectly reasonable in this conversation. Their arguments that another mod thanked them for reporting stuff, that it's two reports over the course of two weeks which is hardly excessive, and then when the two people couldn't see eye to eye, they said they just wouldn't flag anything, sounds all perfectly reasonable and sensible. For some reason that wasn't okay, and the conversation got personal, with Blackbeard constantly posting these aggrieved attacks about how FlyingSquid was being childish if he didn't continue to report things in someone else's community occasionally, but never anything that the mods there thought was not worthy of removal. And then petulantly refusing to say something along the lines of, "Of course you're welcome to post there if you want" when asked repeatedly if it was okay for them to just post and participate still.

I haven't seen any Discord harassment, so maybe I missed something, but if this is what gets posted as justification for why FlyingSquid is a terrible moderator, I suspect that the "harassment" is more of the same. Maybe it's along the lines of "not saying exactly what I want you to say, or having conversation with other people where you say things I don't want you to say." People are allowed to disagree with each other over what is misinformation, or choose not to report content in someone else's community if they get some hostile responses when they do. Trying to order someone else around and then getting personally insulting with them when they politely tell you "No, I don't agree with how you see it," is ridiculous.

[–] thesmokingman@programming.dev 0 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

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.”

[–] thesmokingman@programming.dev 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] thesmokingman@programming.dev 2 points 4 hours ago

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.

[–] natecox@programming.dev 29 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I’m not sure I’d agree that FS comes off as perfectly reasonable because I do get a pretty strong beg me to stay or I’ll leave vibe… but I am amused that OP here read that thread and decided that FS was the aggressor here.

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[–] WrenFeathers@lemmy.world 12 points 23 hours ago

I’m pretty sure Squid can’t siteban from lemmy.world. He’s not an admin.

[–] Default_Defect@midwest.social 26 points 1 day ago (12 children)

Blackbeard seems to be okay with Harris=Hitler and doesn't want an "echochamber" but is going to bluesky?

lol

lmao

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[–] inlandempire@jlai.lu 29 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Why are Lemmy mods from .world coordinating on discord lmao

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

There are multiple back channels for coordination, I've been invited to Discord and Element, there was even (briefly) a Slack channel, but that seems to have closed due to it being a trial period or something. There are likely others I'm not aware of having not been invited.

But it's good for mods and admins to collaborate.

[–] nimble@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

But they have no mutual servers in this screenshot. So it looks like someone just randomly found someone on discord which is kind of weird. Unless one of them left the server(s) you reference before the screenshot.

[–] MrKaplan@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

they did leave before taking the screenshot

[–] JonsJava@lemmy.world 6 points 21 hours ago

It's an easy way to work together. Yeah, Matrix would have made more sense.

They have other chat solutions as well, but not my place, so not my topic.

When you join, you can verify, and you're added to channels for your community/ies. If you're the first, they create the community channel automatically. Overall, a good idea.

I left the server, but for my own reasons unrelated to the mods/admins. Just needed to get rid of some discord servers.

[–] DmMacniel@feddit.org 19 points 1 day ago

you gotta coordinate somewhere, no?

but yeah, matrix would have been nicer.

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discord 💀

[–] Sundial@lemm.ee 27 points 1 day ago (29 children)

Flying Squid has a site wide reputation for being like this. Arguing/discussing anything with this person is like talking to a wall. Not to mention their overuse and abuse of authority.

[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 6 hours ago

FS is annoying and thinks every single time someone disagrees with them, its a personal attack and they must be aligned to some power.

Literally anytime someone used to just lightly criticize their favorite thing or person, FS would write blocks of text explaining why that opinion or fact was unjustified, and if you continued, you got banned.

FS is annoying and acts like they are better for just random things. Literally recently they said they're trying to leave the United States, and acting like its a noble sacrifice to leave the queer and BIPOC they once "defended and care about" behind. Said "Maybe I'll give some GoFundMes, I don't care."

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 25 points 1 day ago (12 children)

If you want some insight, check this user's comments and sort by controversial. Then do the same for FlyingSquid.

Have some citations for that abuse of authority? OP alluded to abuse of authority by pointing out various powers FlyingSquid has, but in my mind very tellingly didn't actually provide any examples of abuse of authority. The screenshotted conversation, where a person with some site admin powers is reporting things as a regular user, and then when a mod gets really hostile and insulting with them, simply says "Oh, okay, I think I just won't participate in your stuff then, if my presence is unwanted," doesn't exactly paint the picture of some kind of power-mad petulant tyrant.

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[–] thesohoriots@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

So who am I supposed to listen to?

Both of us.

Well that’s your problem right there. If a user (because in this case FlyingSquid was operating as a user) is misinterpreting the rules according to one moderator, but being encouraged to flag content by another moderator (tacit endorsement), the mod team needs to talk amongst themselves and get on the same page regarding the reports. Offering to leave was a bit dramatic, but the mod’s response of “just read the rules” was a lazy move that did nothing to get at the core problem of inconsistent encouragement/discouragement of reporting and clarification among the mod team.

[–] JonsJava@lemmy.world 11 points 21 hours ago

As stated in the screenshot, this happened in August. The team DID actually talk about this, and I put it to rest by hashing it out amongst both parties.

The person posting this is doing so WELL after the fact, out of context, and after resolution.

Neither side shared the screenshots with me, but the ones being shared proved they were shared by Blackbeard to someone. That's their prerogative, but I would have asked the other involved party prior to doing that.

It sucks that we lost a good mod, and that this event happened (again, resolved 2 months ago).

If the parties involved want, I can explain the entire situation. I'll DM both before I do that, though, as this wasn't my fight.

[–] BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Jeeze both people come across as petty idiots. Lots of passive aggressive nonsense, and both sides want to have the last word.

Also it drives me up the wall when 2 people argue and one person tells the other to "calm down". And in this case it's "CALM DONW" and "CALM YOURSELF" between line by line quotes. So fucking childish.

I wish Blackbeard all the best on Bluesky; I think they will be disappointed. Human nature is human nature; I've been around long enough to see the cylical nature of social media. A new thing comes along, everyone joins, there is a love-in, and a "consensus" is built around how this time it's be great and what is and isn't allowed. Then things grow and a consensus that holds with 10 people breaks down with 100 or 1000, and people blame the new people for the change.

And mods at each others throats is just the nature of the beast. This has played out over and over on the internet - Usenet through to X, Reddit, etc, and the fediverse will experience the same. It's just human nature.

[–] KombatWombat@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago

Agreed that both parties look bad here. Blackbeard was needlessly condescending from the onset and FlyingSquid's victim complex escalated things quickly for no reason. Blackbeard was pretty bad at communicating, but I think the calm down messages were meant to reinforce that they needed more time to respond to messages and that the idea that FlyingSquid was going to be banned or not allowed to post was apropos of nothing.

Blackbeard should have asked FlyingSquid to clarify where the misinformation was. Unless you are trying to take the comment literally, the comment essentially says "each candidate's actions resemble those of these despised historical figures" which is too abstract to be falsifiable. Then they should have said that FlyingSquid and anyone else is welcome on the community until they show themselves as a bad actor, and that this was just a misunderstanding. And creating false reports could be rule-breaking in the sense of being spam if it's clearly malicious.

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