Banned for Voting Incorrectly?
Was recently banned from a whole bunch of DB0 communities for, as best as I can gather, downvoting once when I viewed by All (potentially accidentally while scrolling).
Important notes:
- I don't use scripts.
- I don't mass-downvote Communities. If I see a post I generally don't like when browsing All, I may downvote one post, block the Community and move on.
- Some of the communities I was banned from don't have any posts in them so I wouldn't have been able to downvote anything.
- Of all of these Communities, in my history I downvoted one post in one of them. Voting in this manner is not vote manipulation. It's quite literally a feature of the platform and as a mod of another Community, I would consider it pretty good etiquette.
- One of my bans reads "Appeal Granted, not a brigading member" but I'm still banned.
- I don't troll.
WTF is going on here?
EDIT - Updated Info from the conversation below: In the initial image, you can see two "ban waves."
The 10 bans three months ago stem from a single downvote in one Community. It was @[email protected] See here: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/34853477
I was called out by name for a single downvote and culled from a score of Communities I did not participate in by them.
The other bans from two months ago are from four total downvotes over a 10-month timeframe in one Community.
I have also stated in this thread that I don't have issues with AI-gen images, but there are shoddy ones and well-done ones.
EDIT 2: Now unbanned from the ten Communities listed as "3 months ago" in my initial image, but have been banned from three more because of this thread with the reason given being "self-proclaimed anti-AI brigader" which are two things I didn't claim to be. God dammit Lemmy...
I don’t have an issue with this instance being pro-AI, but I find it weird as fuck how harshly skeptics are treated
It's been a common thing for awhile now, unfortunately. My .ee account was randomly banned from a bunch of comms because of being pro-ai or somesuch ridiculous thing.
It's also common practice on .blahaj
It's not a "common practice on blahaj". It's just how lemmy does instance bans.
I generally don't community ban people, I tend to instance ban them, because if they're breaking community rules, but not instance rules, it's up the community mods to deal with, and if they're breaking instance rules, they get an instance ban.
And when you instance ban someone, and choose to remove their content, that's what it looks like in a modlog. It's not because I've gone and selected a whole bunch of community bans. It's just how lemmy works
Blahaj is specifically a safe environment for LGBTQ+ folks who usually face harassment elsewhere, pre-existing homophobia or transphobia is a totally valid reason to be banned pre-emptively in my opinion. The safe environment doesn't exist if you just let anyone in and then ban them after they cause trouble.
(Using "you" in general here, not to mean you specifically, OP) if you're hanging around outside a gay bar talking about how cool your schutzstaffel tattoo is, they aren't going to let you inside the doors. Same idea here.
.blahaj admins/mods will ban you from every space they control for any reason they don't like you. They will then just say that person was a bigot to try to avoid drama.
They do not have consistent moderation policies, and use their small amount of power maliciously.
They try to curate a group of people who will not question them and will tribalisticly defend the space no matter what.
I don't moderate any communities outside of blahaj.
And that group of people seem quite pleased with Ada's strategy, she's one of the most well loved moderators I've ever seen in any community.
If you don't like it, that's fine. The space isn't for you.
I wouldn't expect a community of handpicked loyalists to be unhappy with their idol.
This is the exact type of passive agressive tribalism she curates. Thanks for being the example i guess.
I agree I don't feel safe there, it's better for me to not contribute to that space and let it go the way of the lgbtq subs on reddit with their idol mods who could do no wrong.
Finally someone that speaks out
the amount of gaslighting they do is enormous
Literally never said that.
I'm also trans.
Also I'm a progressive lmao.
It's reactionary, they'll get trolled to hell otherwise.
I moderate a community on Reddit which allowed AI posts. Until recently, the community got less than one AI post per month. Regardless, every post would get an onslaught of hateful comments and false reports full of curses.
Recently, the subreddit got a few more AI images than usual. Less than a third of the posts over the last month before I personally removed multiple of them for quality reasons. The accepted consensus between commenters, however, was the opposite of this reality.
Not to say the actions of this mod were correct, in fact it seems ridiculous. This is just to answer why they would be harsh.
People are assholes to people who disagree with them, no matter the topic.
You can find examples of people on each 'side' being assholes. Social media teaches people to be outraged, not to have any empathy.
As a Mac guy since the 90s, I can tell the hate and bile against AI is on another level, though. Relatively speaking.
I also recognize that the environmental and societal impacts of AI are why it’s so different from your typical fanboy/platform/lifestyle argument.
Like, that guy commenting about AI here does not really deserve the -4 votes his comment had when I started writing this.
I also think r/singularity types are off the deep end too. The way they are frothing at the mouth for societal collapse/UBI/etc is wild.
Depends on the usage:
Yes, and how well do people treat Mark Zuckerbot?
A lot of peope consider it immoral.
Thats a capitalism problem, not an AI problem. AI is just the most recent example.
They shouldn't have to rely on maybe getting paid so they can have food, shelter, and other basic things for living.
Right... but they do... so...
Irrelevant until we fix that problem. And guess what? Advocating for AI in the meantime is only going to give more power to corporations :) so great job, bud!
I dont advocate for corporate AI.
I'd also mention most users on db0 are far more likely to be using fully open models and models they've trained themselves (which is what I do, mostly log/error eval stuff).
That said, "fixing" AI will solve nothing, because capitalism is going to find yet another way to screw them over. Banning AI tomorrow isn't going to provide job security or a stable income, it wasn't before and it isn't now.
I work with a lot of creatives, and so many are contract based and struggle between them. Several of them have been finding work cleaning up (as in, creating new) materials that were AI generated and look terrible.
So again, the issue is capitalism, and AI is just the most recent conversation piece. AI isn't the root of the problem, nor is the problem "solved" without it.
Yes, capitalism IS bad. Labor is stolen and exploited for profit by people who added nothing or next to nothing. Sound familiar?
No, you absolute child, it is LAUGHABLE for you to consider yourself a "leftist".
Real leftists advocate for harm reduction, meaning that defending individual creator's IP rights are a MUST, at least until capitalism is abolished.
In other words... got anything intelligent to say, or just going to keep saying stupid shit?
Liberals advocate for harm reduction. Leftists advocate for revolution.
This just in: Technology makes some jobs obsolete. More at 11.
Right, did you miss the part where the AIs are usually trained using stolen data and also consume huge amounts of energy? Why are you defending AI rn? 🥱
Did I miss the part where you made a terrible argument and are now pivoting to something else?
Nope sure didn't.
well how are you supposed to treat people who roll coal?
Then you check some of those communities and there's like less than 10 posts in them.
There's more banned people than content.
If they are such tiny communities then the question is why do so many trolls go out of their way to find them, downvote everything, and harass/bully the mods? Not saying that was the case in this instance, but it's been an ongoing problem, which is why the mods are a bit twitchy I guess.
the whole "if you don't like the content, don't downvote, but just ignore / block it" is really cringe
That mods/admins can even see who is downvoting is, by far, my least favorite thing about Lemmy.
Db0ero is explicitely pro AI
I would guess the Mod has gone full shizo and banned you from the whole instance and everywhere he could because you downvoted an AI generated image.
I don't make it a habit of downvoting images simply because they're AI-gen, but there are well-done ones and horrible ones just like any images. Do they really ban for simply downvoting ANY AI image? That's... kind of a lot.
I'm still trying to get my head around people giving votes that much attention. Maybe Lemmy has started getting refugees from other places that live and die by the arrows.
Someone go in there and do the same thing and see what happens. I would but you've probably picked up on my apathy by this point.
The mods that banned me for 'systemic down voting' and 'anti-ai harassment' because I down voted a few AI posts and didn't feel bad also lectured me about how horrible down voting is and how much it hurts the fediverse.
My upvote to down vote ratio is far better than either of those two mods.
I've seen quite a few people banned for downvotes in comms. It always makes me wonder what they think lurkers do.
They assume anyone who down votes without commenting is brigading.
Oh i know that. I'm saying it's crazy because it just bans more lurkers than anyone. We're probably on the same page.
Yeah, the mods who are doing this appear to believe lurkers don't exist and anyone who doesn't make a comment but down votes is part of a brigade.
I just said to another here in this thread: Downvotes hurt visibility. Downvote trolls can be a problem for small communities trying to build up. I managed to discover the serial downvoters on my old lemm.ee comm and when I banned them (about 4 of them?) it had a huge impact. They didn’t all downvote /everything/ but they downvoted a lot of things, and no contribution. And if they got in early, they could sink new threads. Now, I wouldn't just downvote randoms for occasional downvotes - but if I kept seeing the same names on threads (and they never actually engaged with the community) with no discernable patterns - I might.
Made a huge difference.
that happens on reddit to, but with reporting. if you report when someone dint respond or you dint respond to them, the mods get mad enough to ban you, or if they feel like even if the report was report-worthy, the mods might not think so.
Well luckily it was just AI slop and they didn't actually make anything.
Disagree. Creativity is in the idea, the composition, and the execution.
A prompter hardly even has the idea in the first place.
On top of that: "drawing" is labor.
Tell that to Andy Warhol.
Not related to the OP here, but downvote trolls can be a problem for small communities trying to build up. I managed to discover the serial downvoters on my old lemm.ee comm and when I banned them (about 4 of them?) it had a huge impact. They didn’t all downvote /everything/ but they downvoted a lot of things, and no contribution. And if they got in early, they could sink new threads. Now, I wouldn't just ban randoms for occasional downvotes - but if I kept seeing the same names on threads (and they never actually engaged with the community) with no discernable patterns - I might.
Made a huge difference.
Thank you for limiting your bans to people who were actual serial down voters and not just someone who happened to down vote a single post.
Fair enough. I tend to block before down voting and that's rare. Haven't thought of how much votes actually matter, but obviously it does on the smaller scale.
I should also add that 2 or the accounts I banned literally had no post or comment history despite being active for years. Their only purpose was to downvote.
reddit monitors upvotes/downvotes heavily, maybe they are coming from reddit, in addition reddit are using other nebelous reasons to ban people in a sub.
No, they don't, at least not the site wide admins.
This community is part of dbzer0, so if you were banned from the instance you wouldn't be able to post here either.
It looks like you pissed off on moderator of a bunch of comms and they banned you from all of theirs. Based off another commentor's link, this seems to have happened when those comms were being hit by waves of drive by downvoting so you may have been caught in the cross fire.
What is 'drive by down voting'?
People (or bots) who go through a thread or comm and just downvote everything without otherwise engaging with the thread or comm.
It personally doesn't bother me, but I can see why some find it distasteful.
They shouldn't be. I've messaged the two mods and asked them to respond, because I don't know the details.
We found the answer (kinda)! It was @[email protected] See here: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/34853477
I was called out by name for a single downvote and culled from a score of Communities I did not participate in by them.
"Create more slop" is, in fact, a message I disagree with rather strongly and did downvote that (and only that) post. I PM'd the the mod in response to that post:
So we've effectively solved the first part, but not the three Stable Diffusion parts... Those also seem to line up with another single downvote a month later. Again, hardly brigading or vote manipulation.
EDIT: Huh. Looks like we had someone in this thread downvoting nearly every post in here.
if it is draconic who's downvoting that would be a hilarious lack of self reflection. Is there any way to check?
Mods or Admin can. I can't.
Yes, a few of the mods will ban anyone who downvotes AI or misinformation without making a comment or because you downvoted 'too many times' or some other bullshit. My 'systemic downvoting' and 'anti-ai harassment' community bans are for downvoting a few posts and not being sorry about it.
i discovered i have several community bans for being an anti-ai troll. i find that so odd because like… i'm not trolling, i genuinely have concerns about a litany of issues surrounding ai such as the environmental cost, the double standard of corporate theft being okay and piracy being a serious crime, the ways the ai corporation ceos want to use ai vs how any technology should benefit the populace. i have a viewpoint, not an agenda. i also think and post about a wide variety of other topics. that said, if an ai community wants to block me, that's fine, i was probably going to block them too. not because i think they're wrong to have their community, but because i have zero interest in engaging there. it's like how i block all communities in languages i don't speak. it's not an act of me censoring or hating them. it's just me cleaning up my feed because it doesn't make sense to be there
I work in IT and think AI is the second biggest threat to the planet in the next 10 years.
samesies. it's grifters leading the blind in that field and it's already had devastating effects in certain areas
100% guarantee that LLMs have already been instantiated on murderbot hardware
You don't need to speculate or go "I guarantee".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI-assisted_targeting_in_the_Gaza_Strip
that should teach ya
It's dbzer0, and that's the instance this comm is hosted on. So no, none of the Admins of the instance "went schizo".
Looks like a mod of multiple comms maybe.
I never said admin.
You said "banned you from the whole instance", which isn't something a moderator can do. Only admins can do instance wide bans, moderators are limited to bans from their own comms.
It wasn't unreasonable to think you were mixing up moderator and admin. Plenty of people did during the first reddit exodus, and still do.
When you see a wall of bans from a dozen communities it looks nearly identical to site wide bans.
@[email protected] - keep going mask-off.
Ban me too, cripplebrain. I am Spartacus.
My pleasure
I don’t use it, but I also believe context obviously tells you that it was meant as a bad choice for "crazy" / "obsessive" and not a discrimination against those people
No need to minimod and taunt
Why would you always assume the worse? That's a great way to get offended at anything and to easily censor people while only giving your narrative
Don't use ableist language in a community where both of the mods are neurodiverse.
It's annoying that the amount the general public cares about schizophrenic people is often less than they care about changing the words they speak.
::: spoiler sidenotes - CW: R-slur, used non-casually This is common with a lot of disability-related terms, I expect this usage to decrease over time similar to how usage of 'retard' has.
I am unsure whether ['schizophrenic people' or 'people with schizophrenia'] is correct here, I am going based off of what I have heard about ['autistic people' vs 'people with autism'] as I could not find relevant information online. :::
The "person-first" formation is debated. Some people like it, some don't. I think most people don't care. I would assume, like most similar things, it was started by someone with only a tangential connection to the subject.
Yeah, the other way is identity-first and autistic people tend to prefer identity first. It does and should differ from minority to minority.
well most people with schizophrenia dont really consider themselves schizophrenic. it takes a lot of work to even get to that point of recognition. so you're really looking for ways to destigmatize the experience of psychosis in general to encourage people to be open to acknowledging it and not worrying about all the social repercussions of being "crazy" and just be willing to find another explanation for the bizarre experiences theyve been having . unfortunately the very definition of delusion is that it persists in the face of evidence to the contrary! and to think that one's beliefs have no ground in reality. it's a lot to swallow!
honestly the best way to phrase it would probably be something like "had a break from reality" or similar
Have you considered perhaps not just saying the r-slur.
EDIT: see below comment
I don't say that either.
You... Literally said it in your post. Big fucking shock to my system.
::: spoiler original comment, see edit first are you kidding me
:::
EDIT: I was confused by her saying 'post': I think she's referring to my usage in the sidenote, which was intended as an example of [slurs towards disabled people that are no longer used], whereas I thought she was saying that I used them casually.
I don't think discussing slurs is harmful to society in the same way that using them directly (as an epithet) is.
Despite this, I understand some people have strongly-negative reactions to seeing them, so I have added a content warning to the section.
Ew what, I didn't know this. I always just saw them as the anarchist friendly instance and I blocked all the ai communities so I guess I didn't notice the correlation. Thats actually dissapointing
Lol.
My first interaction with [email protected] was him threatening to ban me over downvoting his comments.
One of the first things which made me look into what this power tripping bastard is and yeah, a Russian pretending to be an American who's since been avoiding any communities they're not a mod on.
Dude says things like "reality has a well known Russian propaganda bias" while pretending to be American while supporting Putin.
Lemmy is infested with Russians
Lol same. It was my first and last interaction and the most pathetically sad threat that's ever been directed at me.
"Stop calling me out on my bullshit or I'll.. I'll... ugh... I'll... ..."
The continuation is meant to be “or I’ll ban you,” but since you’re not on his server and he has 0 social capital outside that little environment to leverage against you, he is impotent.
https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-weak-strongman applies equally well to Trump, Putin, and the Lemmy.ml mods. I wonder why the similarity.
Tbf, they're pretty easy to spot and they're much less over here than the bad place. They're on a schedule too, so you can kind of be ready for them.
Some are super easy to spot yeah, others less so. And seeing how they obviously wish to pretend they're something they're not, you can't assume you can "always" identify them.
That's kinda like saying "I can always tell a trans person", just because you don't notice a person being trans when they are passing.
Whenever I'm suspicious, I like to just ask people to confirm that Putler has an ICC warrant out for him for his war crimes. Their reaction to that is often very telling, but sometimes they'll go with something like "well, Putin, like all world leaders are inherently blablablabla", sort of faking out admitting to Putler's bullshit while similarly not criticising him personally, but also pushing ideology that is not opposed to Russian goals (ie basic whataboutism)..
I post this because it makes me laugh every fucking time and watch the downvotes pour in: https://youtu.be/TlUsMuz9_RU?t=37
To be fair, at least the guy actually performing is possibly 'one of the good ones', along with a bunch of other members of the orchestra, insofar that 1) they're not fighting, they're singing, and to do that you got to apply to the musical company in the military and 2) they're singing western music, and they probably listen to quite a lot more than they're singing.
Idk they may have actually bought the propaganda, who knows, but like if you're just wanting to do conscription as it's kinda hard to avoid, going to the music companies would allow you to avoid actual fighting usually and western music historically was listened to by progressives in Russia.
But like yeah, it is funny. Especially those old guys in the back.
It's amazing and never fails to lighten the mood.
This guy especially:
Man's looking tired, bruv.
Those sacks under his eyes looking like a hog's scrotum.
I have a backstory for him that I've made up. He went along with all this because his grandson is the lead singer. He's proud but unhappy because he doesn't understand why they like this song. He also has no idea of what anyone is saying in the song, but his grandson seems happy enough.
So, is this legit, or a very well done pisstake?
There's also a similar video of them covering "sixteen tons", featuring a man with the deepest singing voice I've ever heard.
It's real. If you look around, they preformed it for one of the morning shows.
I couldn't find a video of the sixteen tons, that sounds great too. I need to expand my repertoire.
https://youtu.be/dI9KBLb_8ro
Different event at better quality https://youtu.be/Pdm4YF9A7QM
thank you, thank you, thank you. So. awesome.
Can this admin see these votes without diving through the database because he's an insecure douchebag? Like Mastodon only shows some things even to admins without being gross and unethical by digging into the database directly.
any instance admin can see all upvotes/downvotes on any message from the web UI
That feels gross, like if I could see poll voters on Mastodon.
Makes it feel like Lemmy was written by some insecure folks.
I think what seals it for me is that mods and admins can see how you vote, but the mod log just says “mod”.
It's not lemmy, it's just how the fediverse works to prevent double voting
Mastodon also being on ActivityPub, that's really likely the same thing, except maybe not implemented in the UI, but that could be accessed by the API or in the DB
No idea.
Pretty sure Davel is just a mod, so that'd be a "no", but again, "no idea" is my more reliable answer.
I did downvote several of his comments, but not like "spam downvoted", but from honest disagreement. Not my fault everything he writes is bullshit. So after I downvoted a few comments while replying to him, he replied "oh see, here on 'whatevercommunity' we ban people who downvote others for no reason', as if I had no reason.
They're just extremely silly and see through and you ought to question everyone on Lemmy about it. Because while opensource open platforms are great, they're also super easy to infiltrate.
The same user quietly banned me from all their communities for being a "Zionazi apologist" (which couldn't be further from the truth) and it took me over 3 months to even notice.
They are just a special kind of idiot and I hope they don't ever get to mod communities that are actually relevant.
I mean it's 2025 on the internet. If you don't like someone says you either ban them, or tell them they are mentally ill/bigot/nazi.
You can no longer just let other people have different opinions. Everyone who disagrees with you is now an evil demonic force that needs purging from your community/life.
Honestly. Doing this when someone makes dozens of downvotes is ridiculous and stupid. Doing this with a single downvote is… I can't even begin to fathom how unimaginably stupid and ridiculous that is.
I also got banned from some communities for "systematic downvoting". I'd estimate I've downvoted maybe 5 or so posts by a moderator promoting a harmful diet, which was apparently enough for being "systematic". The mod also banned me from other random communities I had never interacted with in the first place. But oh well, nothing of value was lost for me. Just kinda sucks that mods can use this to make it seem like their statements are less controversial than they are.
This was 2 mods that banned you across all the comms they mod, not a site-ban at least, though sitebans look like this too because of a workaround in place to ensure that a site-banned user's content is purged (or something like that)
It's possible they hit the wrong button/inputted wrong script command hence the "appeal granted" thing. I would reach out to the mod of those comms
Where do yall get this ban notification stuff do you pay for some kind of lemmy Bloomberg terminal or?
If on the web (not a mobile client), you can click the three dots with the arrow pointing down under any post (including yours) and hit "NAME Moderation History". It'll show you what mod actions have been taken on you.
thanks. useful to see how i got banned from multiple communities for one comment on a totally unrelated one. these people are insane.
Thanks, I didn't know about that
Everyone beat me to it but thank you for explaining!
We have Lemmy+ it's only $6.99.
I opted for the Ad Free Lemmy Prime $8.99.
People occasionally check their modlogs to see if they got in trouble earlier.
Haha, just noticed I got banned from 2 communities, presumably for commenting in here (they are both dead communities I've never been to). Someone is a very petty and now blocked mod.
If I get banned for a downvote I dont want to have anything to do with that community anyway.
I just block the comms I don't care about, can recommend.
Including that AI generated low effort crap. I don't get the point of sharing that stuff, when you can generate your own if you want. But nowadays I don't get many things anymore.
PTB
I've had very inconsistent moderation experiences on dbzer0
I'm sure some were because of this guy.
Whoa, I thought only the conservative mods were pulling this
there's a lot of conservative / AI bro crossover.
ooh downvotes :D think they're the conservatives upset about being categorized with the ai bros, or ai bros being cranky about being lumped in with the conservatives?
I find it hilarious that they're ideologically identical but despise each other
Which mods are those?
Here's a fun read: https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&actionType=All&modId=13008854
I would have used their server but lemmy.today doesn't let you filter by mod.
Wow, I had no idea there was any presence for them on this side of the defederation wall. Thanks for sharing
EDIT: this dude's ideology is all over the place, it's like deciphering an alien civilization
What kind of person bans links to Fox News and then posts links to Breitbart - all while advocating empathy in the sidebar?
Well, both of those are right-wing media, so I would think it obvious.
The mystery is why the more more "mainstream" news source (Fox) is banned but the fringe/conspiratorial Breitbart is not only not banned but makes up a good third of the posts that he does.
Mind you, a whole other third is from the New York Post which is also a Murdoch property?
I invite you to propose the ideological framework that explains all of that - the closest I can come up with is libertarian
I dare not gaze too long into that abyss.
I can confirm it stares back
The lemmy.today conservatives strike again!
No, they want to control the narrative. This person set their comm to mod-post-only. It's their private blog. They're not making a safe place for others, they're making a safe place for themself.
It'd be fine if they weren't spewing their content across the fediverse. It should be fair game to discuss it no matter what opinion, short of hateful, it is.
I don’t think that’s what these mods were doing either.
An admin of a small instance made a bot that bans someone if they "only have negative interactions"...
And some mods use it.
Which already sounds terrible, but imagine you're browsing by all, see a troll post with a comment from the OP.
You downvote the post and comment, if you have never voted there before you are no labeled a "downvote troll" by the bot.
This can snowball and cause stuff like you're screenshot because the type of person to use a clearly flawed bot like this, also tend to want to mod a shit ton of communities.
It only sucks that it's a hassle to block after you've been banned, takes a couple extra steps.
Quick edit:
The Venn diagram of that behavior and pro-AI subs like your screenshot is basically a blurry circle. They get really mad at anything not agreeing with them or their misguided views on what AI actually is or what it can do.
They're so used to the type of feedback they get from AI they can't handle anything not 100% supportive.
They might not be even using a bot, they may be manually checking who down voted one of their own posts and banning you for it.
They are not so much punishing you as cultivating a vote farm. You are just a weed here.
My first lemmy account was banned from the fed. Because I spoke ill of Israel. I figured this place isn’t much better than Reddit.
You're a bit more easygoing with the downvotes than the average Lemmy user. Those rarely downvote, while you do like 30% downvotes. Maybe that triggered someone if you did something like scroll through a community and hand out several downvotes consecutively. But I don't think you're doing anything wrong here.
There might be a misunderstanding... I only downvoted one post in one of those communities once. The others were untouched. As I said, some of them don't even have any posts to downvote.
How can you tell what you downvoted while randomly scrolling through the all feed or your subscriptions 3 months ago? I certainly couldn't remember.
And the communities you were banned from aren't necessarily the ones you downvoted in... That's just the realm of the admin or mod who banned you. But they could have based the decision on other behaviour or downvotes of yours.
By looking at the ban times and then comparing to the (very few) number of downvotes I made on my account in a range around that period.
I hadn't participated in those Communities outside that downvote whatsoever, so that would be doubtful.
Ah right, maybe that was it. I remember seeing the post as well. You got "called out" by name publicly. For supposed "brigading". And told to F off. That must be the reason for this?! https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/34853477
Oh! That explains it! "Create more slop" is, in fact, a message I disagree with rather strongly and did downvote that (and only that) post. I PM'd the the mod in response to that post:
What are they even alleged to be doing in that post?
They are calling four down votes brigading, because four people disliking something that comes across their All feed is obviously coordinated and not just coincidence.
Good question. I don't know when Lemmy got the feature that mods can see all votes, but looks to me someone is agitated/frustrated or something and goes through the logs. We had some discussion back then about people doing their thing in their communities and then some random people aren't even subscribed and do drive-by downvotes... Which is a bit frustrating. And AI is one of the many polarizing topics here. People tried discussing it in peace but it's not very easy. Maybe OP got caught in the turmoil of this. Or they pissed off that person and then the next downvote was one too many... I don't really know. And the person calling out people by name sounds a bit agitated. I'd say someone with that state of mind is likely going to react a bit more extreme. And they're concerned with voting fraud and brigading in general.
PSA: ALL VOTES ARE PUBLIC INFORMATION. To everybody, not just mods.
Not doing either, actually. After the post was found it linked things up and, as I explained elsewhere, this still stems from one downvote on the thread you see above. "Create More Slop" is a message I disagree with. Slop is just garbage generated content, not even intentionally made stuff. Just... low-tier trash. Not really into destroying the planet for less-than-shitposting purposes.
no no, you don't understand, they are the Good Ones. And anyone else who isn't 100% in agreement with them is the Bad People.
Db0 has unhinged mods, and an admin that doesn't give a shit about it. Simple as.
You mean the admin who built fediseer and threativore and a bunch of other tooling to enable a better lemmy experience for everyone, and has run one of the most popular lemmy instances for years? The same admin who introduced radical recalls to allow instance members to vote out mods they don't like, and encourages community voting for all new policies? Sure bro, if you say so. But why are you even here if you think that?
The guy you're replying to needs to show some evidence, but do you have more than a paragraph of your thoughts to back up any of your claims?
Pretending that an open source AI model that folks run on their own PCs is somehow burning the planet down is nonsense. I have no love for corporate bootlickers or corporate AIs. Although the fuckAI folks have this fantasy we are all pro AI-techno bros on db0, I can't remember the last time I used genAI or any sort of AI for anything.
I agree with many of the arguments about the potential for corporate AI being used to cause massive harm to workers and society at large. But that's not what any of our Stable Diffusion communities use, for example. That's all open source and locally run, and folks who use it can decide to donate some of their PC's resources to help others with the processing, a bit like FoldingAtHome works.
These images use no more energy that it would take to play a game for 60 seconds. Your arguments are simply invalid for the genAI images on our instance.
Local AI models are not more efficient than corporate ones - you might not need as much energy as a datacenter for cooling, but the actual GPUs and the software that runs on them are similar enough that the necessary enery per image is effectively the same.
Stable Diffusion might be open-source software by some definition of the word, but it was trained on mostly the same unlicensed data as the commercial models, so using it is still plagiarism.
If you don't want to be mistaken for techbros, you might want to avoid parroting their talking points.
What claims?
Edit: The claims of harassment and bullying? Yes, see here: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/43560521
fediseer which is basically "get approved by me or people I approved, or get fucked"
they basically have absolute power in this system
i have no idea what's happening and im not sure why im even subbed to this one
i dont care about votes or bans.
no idea what ai has to do with any of this either.
but hey while we're on the subject, i dont like how ai is being used in our culture in general and its pretty cringe to defend that.
i like gardening. i did yoga in my garden today. i made friends with a bird.
hope you all have a nice day, it's just internet memes guys
After reading this thread I gather the following.
OP says they browse all and if they see content they don't like they downvote. They say it's not a conscious move to brigade or anything.
Some mod pointed out that for some of those communities OP only downvoted them, never upvoted a single post or contributed in any meaningful way.
I don't even see why OP is angry with being ban from communities they obviously don't like. I seems like those are AI communities and when OP sees an AI post on All they downvote. Why want OP those communities keep being part of their feed? Why complain for being banned if they don't like their content.
It doesn't make much sense to me. If I was banned of a community that makes a content that I heavily dislike and that I'm actively saying I dislike it via downvotes I wouldn't care on the slightest. I should probably just block the community to begin with.
If some of those communities ban are not AI content communities and the ban is thus unjustified I can see an appeal to uplifting that ban. And the reason for the ban could be a little more cordial. But I really don't know why OP wants to get unbanned from communities they don't like. Which introduced the evident skepticism that maybe (just maybe) there is an intention, more or less focused, of just trying to negatively influence AI communities without being a part of them. Which IMHO would guarantee a ban.
I think general Fediverse etiquette is that if you see some place that does things that you don't like that are both legal and in line with instance rule then you should just issue a personal block to that space, not trying to downvote it to affect their visibility or reputation, as other people may like that space.
OP down voted ONE post. Not even one post per community.
Reading other comment of both the OP and mods from that communities. Have been stated that there were multiple downvotes over the course of several months.
My point is that doesn't seem that OP is interested in those communities anyway, not that they have interacted in any other way than downvoting. That's why I don't see why they are bothered for the ban. It's not like they took them away from a community they liked or were interested in following.
Non-biased explanation: in the initial image, you can see two "ban waves."
The 10 bans three months ago stem from a single downvote in one Community.
The other bans from two months ago are from four downvotes over a 10 month timeframe in one Community.
I have also stated in this thread that I don't have issues with AI-gen images, but there are shoddy ones and well-done ones.
EDIT: Added the info to the initial post along with some more explanation now that we've uncovered it. Should hopefully save me from having to go over it constantly.
The thing is, AFAIK, the ban only preclude you from voting, commenting and posting. From all of those actions it seems that only the downvote button was used. So, not much was loss.
I think the modlog message was too harsh, that's true. And I don't know if the ban is deserved or not.
It's true that if there was an initial wave of bans for one downvote, and after that only the downvote button was used until the second wave, it seems unlikely that there was going to be other interactions. And if we add the factor that some other user pointed out that you may have a higher than usual upvote/downvote rate. So maybe the mods knew what they were doing.
Or maybe baning for just a few downvotes is not justified.
But what I have doubts about is why it's so important to make this post. If it seems that you never saw anything you liked on those communities, and most of them are really small communities, some without even any posts. That's what questions me.
I understand the mod pov and motives, their communities get frequently brigaded so they are extra (probably overly) cautious with downvote behavior of people who doesn't engage with the community.
But I don't really know if you want the ban revoked, if you want to actually engage with those communities in other way, or what are the intentions here.
I was subscribed to one of the communities that I was banned from and was in there pretty regularly.
If I'm unbanned or not, that is ultimately up to the mods. I'm not really stumping for it one way or the other.
My main purpose here would be essentially to say that these kinds (multi-community, permanent, and over very light and expected interactions from normal people) of bans are not justified and perhaps mods should rethink the process and not assume the worst of everyone.
Fair point then, well explained.
I think ultimately I do agree with you. A few downvotes shouldn't be a reason for a multi community permanent ban.
STOP COMMENTING! You have 420 comments. If you comment any more you'll ruin it.
Several over months, whoop de fucking doo.
Why did you downvoted me?
I'm just giving you information that's already disclosed on the thread and my own unimportant opinion.
The default version of up and down votes are described in the lemmy docs, which I agree with, and this instance and community do not have rules that supersede it.
It was such a ridiculously irrelevant point to make that the post was worse for having it. If you feel my comments are the same, feel free to down vote them.
I don't think it was ridiculous.
It's not the same one single downvote than 4 downvotes without any single upvote. One downvote says nothing, several indicate a pattern.
OP says that some bans come from a single downvote. And others come from the mentioned 4 downvotes over several months. Which actually makes me question if mods banned anyone who made a single downvote, or if any other criteria was followed.
I'm not "like that" with downvotes. I mostly downvote rude people. Or maybe people with opinions I consider harmful. Any other opinion politely expressed I don't think there's any reason to try to preclude others to see it.
Surely I don't see the point of downvoting a question that was only directed to you and that you have already read 😅 the intended user that needed to see that comment already did, so there was little point with the downvote, isn't it?
Not spread over months they don't.
It takes literally microseconds to to up or down vote as opposed to writing a multiparagraph comment about how other people are 'down voting wrong'.
There have been frequent brigades of late in ai communities by anti-AI folks.
Your downvote likely coincided in timing and appeared as part of another downvote brigade.
When you assume a single downvote is brigading...
Across multiple communities, all the same subject, a singular downvote in each...
Obviously this is just my guess, but that's what I would probably think based on what's been going on.
Edit: Boy oh boy, you must be one of the anti-AI folks doing the brigading. You are super mad about this all over the place.
Snoogums is correct, there was one downvote in one of those Communities, not in multiple. It was not in any way vote manipulation or brigading. Apologies if you're reading something else, but I felt I was being quite clear with my wording.
My mistake then, it read (to me) like you were saying you down voted once, in each of the communities you were banned from.
Then all I could guess was timing. Multiple communities might depend on what client they are using, but in any case a single downvote to a ban rings as mod silliness to me, I agree.
Actually, if you read the post they said it was a single down vote, not one for each community. They even said some of the communities don't even have a single post to down vote.
You are 'guessing' the opposite of what actually happened, which is consistent with other dbzer0 AI fanatics who treat a single down vote as brigading.
Thats not how their reply reads to me, but your attitude and responses dont interest me. So I'll be done from here, enjoy your day.
Would’ve had a lot more respect for you if you’d just been able to admit you were wrong when confronted with the evidence, but this type of “everyone’s dumb beliefs are valid” response is the cause of a whole host of other problems so clearly that was too optimistic.
Nah, just have no interest in people who behave like babies.
Your respect means nothing to me in any way, so... enjoy not having any for me I guess?
You have no interest in yourself?
I will continue to enjoy it, thanks!
Hit the nail on the head matey.
I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
Wouldn't one glance at my long-standing profile and the fact that it was only a single vote made out of the nearly a dozen communities that I was banned from indicate that I'm not part of a brigade?
Not when you're using AI to silence criticism of AI. Laziness and ineptitude are a feature not a bug.
Wut?
I'd say that it was the dozen communities that made it seem like it was a brigade, as well as an attempt to avoid getting caught by only having one each across a dozen communities.
Edit: a whole word was missing.
And this is exactly why the fediverse needs private voting.
Eh. I see arguments both ways. Public votes makes it easier to catch bad faith (downvote bots) and manipulation. However, it allows abuse from touchy or unscrupulous mods. TBH, I'm personally more concerned with the bots. Everything is federated to one can pickup and move elsewhere of they're on the receiving end of such a mod.
If one becomes active on another instance with the same name it is highly likely the same mods will just ban the other user account too, so moving isn't helpful.
Oh, I meant that one can start a new community on the new instance to remove the problematic mod from the picture. Not that one should try to engage in ban evasion.
So brigading small communities can be easier?
Disabling downvotes can avoid such drama. Some instances do.
Rare to see a beehaw user so far away from spawn.
How did you reply to them? I thought beehaw defederated LW
Beehaw is defed from world, but not vice versa, so when a DB0 community announces a beehaw comment it sends it to world who accepts the comment. The Beehaw user won't be able to see the reply though.
Reading this: https://helge.codeberg.page/fep/final/fep-1b12/
Would LW blindly trust that the object in thewait nvm, beehaw has auth-fetch off.announceactivity exists? I assumed it would try to fetch it to verify it, and beehaw would refuse to serve itMaybe they just don't see my reply, then.
I'm a moderator on ![email protected], where you've never upvoted once, but you have downvoted multiple posts over months instead of blocking the community. This down-ranks submissions, adversely affecting the visibility of the community for subscribers, which is why you were banned.
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/28218497
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/35031819
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/38704142
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/44766239
I don't understand the thought process here. Like many, I don't browse Communities individually, I browse /All and sort by New.
So I am required to see something I like and upvote or else I am not allowed to an express an opinion in the community (or any tangentially linked community)?
If I see something I don't like (which is what the voting system is for), I should go to the Community it's posted in and make sure to upvote things before I downvote? That's the expected order of operations?
If not... what if, while browsing /All /New nothing randomly appears that the viewer likes enough to upvote? Is that then somehow the fault of the viewer and they should then be banned?
Am I interpreting your rulings correctly? 4 downvotes in the span of 10 months (judging by the times on those posts you listed) is a bannable offence? Seems rather heavy-handed to me.
If the community is about something you dislike (which seems to be the case here), why would you not just block them from your feed instead of downvoting?
Maybe I'm indifferent to the majority of the content they spew but there is one really shitty post that I down vote that isn't worth blocking the feed over.
Keep in mind that the pattern that resulted in the OP being banned from over a dozen communities was down voting a single post. That would be triggered if the one post they down voted was literal spam or racist or sexist or any other terrible subject.
Or someone accidentally clicks on the down vote button with their fat thumb unintentionally. The mod assumes malicious intent and overreacts.
I wonder if the "overreaction" was caused by the constant harassment from anti genAI trolls? You helped create this situation, the mods are simply trying to deal with it. Sometimes that's unfortunately going to result in erroneous bans, which can usually be resolved by DMing the mod.
I have yet to see an example of any individual post getting more than a handful of downvotes, which is completely expected to happen when hundreds or thousands of users have the opportunity to come across the content. That isn't harassment, and neither is people vocalizing their dislike of AI in comments.
If people are being harassed, then there should be moderation records, right? Are there dozens of people harassing people who like AI, or is the 'constant harassment' just disagreement that has been blown out of proportion by people who run communities that don't get the attention they think they deserve?
My one vote per post or comment is jot part of any problem. That is how voting works. I don't coordinate with anyone else, it is just me using a feature that exists the way I want to.
I accept you are capable of being an asshole all by yourself, requiring no coordination.
Oh, we get to throw insults around? Didn't think that was the case but have fun I guess.
Just pointing out that every time this has come up in YPTB it is an overreacting mod hiding behind the 'anti AI harassment or brigading' while the explanation is a few people happened to downvote a few things. I don't doubt there have been a few people doing that, but absolutely not enough to justify Draconic Leo's moderation log filled to the brim with accusations of bote manipulation. Pointing things out isn''t sealioning, nor is having a conversation in the comments of the same post.
Here you go though, what comment(s) in my moderation or posting history are harassment?
The answer is none, the accusation in the bans is a lie.
On the other hand, if you've found a bunch of stuff worth downvoting and not a single thing worth upvoting, that's probably a sign.
Nah, it turns out OP has downvoted multiple posts in the comm over time. Somebody posted records elsewhere in this thread
Four downvotes across months means absolutely nothing. Nada. It is a statical blip.
Still nope. Geez, you are really dedicated to thinking the worst thing you can about people, hey?
I didn't say unfairly banned. I was confused as to why I was banned.
I did downvote one post near the time of the ban. I didn't look prior to that. 4 posts downvoted in ten months isn't normally something I'd associate with a ban. People don't generally ban for things that happened ten months ago. Especially since the votes were reasonably more private back then.
It's all one story. The same story. It evolved as I discovered more about what occurred. It's called learning. Make an attempt to do so as well please.
Not commenting on anything else in your comment except to say: Votes have never been private on Lemmy. The have been made more visible, but they were always just an API call away.
Oh, I'm aware, but they weren't as exposed as they are since 19.10 made them easily visible to Mods. It was MUCH harder to get downvote totals prior.
I don't know why people browse like that in the first place. Of course you're going to see a lot of crap. Why not subscribe to communities with content you enjoy?
This isn’t Reddit where there is a firehouse of content all day and at all times.
For doom scrollers such as myself, browsing all is a requirement.
Personally, I use that as a cue that I should put my phone down and do something useful.
I subscribe and am usually filtersd to subscriptions but also switch to All occasionally to help discover new communities.
You don't have to like anything, but consistent downvoting like this without any other kind of participation is indistinguishable from targeted downvote harassment, and isn't consistent with your claims of blocking.
It's perfectly distinguishable unless you're trying real hard to misinterpret what I said. As a Mod of a small Community myself, here's the difference in downvotes:
Bad Faith Actor: Sees a post or a whole Community they don't like. Goes in and systematically downvotes a bunch of stuff on purpose. Topics, responses... everything. Downvotes because they hate the community and everything it stands for. See 50 downvotes in your Community in one day? That's these fuckers. Ban them. They are assholes and are vote manipulating. Probably ban them from related Communities for vote manipulation.
Normal User: (--> We are here) May or may not comment in YOUR Community, especially if it's image-based. Sees a single post that they don't like out of thousands they see daily and downvotes it. Several months later, it may happen again. This is expected behaviour and is how an upvote / downvote system functions. Don't ban these or you're the asshole.
Brigade Users: A coordinated attack to downvote or spam a Community stemming from some other place. They downvote everything and often post garbage. Ban these people. They are assholes and are vote manipulating. Probably ban them from related Communities for vote manipulation if not trying to seek an instance ban.
Lurker: (The overwhelming majority of users are this) Indistinguishable from a Normal user in votes, but may not comment. May be an alt or bot account. Be wary. Check their post history to see if they're real people. If real, leave 'em alone. If empty, use your discretion. Don't ban from related Communities.
Other: Downvotes accidentally when scrolling sometimes. These happen. May appear as a Lurker or a Normal User. Don't ban these or you're the asshole.
Hope that helps!
If the community is promoting misinformation or hate then I would hope this is considered the right thing to do.
Maybe. Just I case, I wouldn't interact. I would report it to an Admin most likely.
From what I've seen, most Admins will either not let that stand or sadly lead the charge on the psycho shit.
If it's the first, you're good. It'll be gone soon.
If it's the latter, get the hell outta that instance and block it.
Yeah, you make really good points, but we get also get the kind of bad faith actor that browses all and downvote community content whenever they see it.
Okay... but that has nothing to do with the matter at hand. By your own admission, this user only voted negatively four times over the course of nine months. That clearly doesn't fit the picture you're trying to paint here. If that constitutes brigaiding, that leaves no room for normal use.
And just so we're clear, I have been downvoting you within this thread, and that is owed entirely to the contents of your responses, as they've been conflicting, nonsensical, and overall harmful to the community.
Just FYI, I'm not downvoting you.
The bad faith actors should be somewhat easy to pick out. They are in my Community anyway. They often have scads of downvotes they throw out in a short time, not a few over the course of months. Dunno if you are, but if you're using automation to ban, you may just want to tune it to be a little more lenient.
Just one more for the road since I think the thread is dying down and I don't like leaving things on a negative note.
It takes some bravery to dip into a thread discussing issues and I wanted to say thanks for clearing what you did up. I may not agree, but I can understand it at least. It's important to remember the human on the other end. Moderating can be hard, and so can finding the line you feel you should walk. Thanks for running a Community on Lemmy. Shit's not easy sometimes.
I appreciate you sharing such a bonkers policy so plainly and candidly, but that makes it no less bonkers.
I'm open to feedback.
Stop doing your stupid policy because it is stupid.
Doing widespread bans and accusing people of 'Vote Manipulation' just because they down voted without joining or making a comment is making a mockery of the moderation process. Like maybe a few of the people you banned were doing that, but the vast majority were probably just served up the same post in All around the same time and decided it was slop and down voted it.
I mean how many people do you really think are actually manipulating votes and don't just happen to share the same opinion that a post was crappy.
Why do those people care of they are banned from "Ai slop" comms then ?
If they weren't putting accusations of vote manipulation and other ridiculous claims in the modlog it wouldn't be nearly as annoying.
It also adds some annoying steps to the end user who would want to block those communities since banning means you can't just click on the post and block the community in the default browser interface. Once banned it is necessary to go to setting and block the community manually.
Since they made a bunch of tiny, barely used communities it also means that they trickle into the feed and you have to block each one individually. They are spamming AI communities and then being dicks about it.
Then there is at least one that expands this to other communities they mod that don't have anything to do with AI. I like the Dem TankieJerk, but got banned for not liking AI. Not harassing, just down voting one or two AI slop posts in some other community and not feeling bad about it.
At the end of the day it's up to community mods how they want to moderate their communities. If they don't want someone with a moderation history like yours in their communities then I can totally understand that. It's not like db0 is the only instance where you've been banned for systematic down voting, now is it matey?
Acting like my moderation history is accurate when shitty mods treat a few downvotes as manipulation is the biggest part of the problem. You are taking their word for it that their moderation is accurate when it is not. The list is long because one mod did like a dozen of them at the same time.
That is the perfect example of why this is a problem!
The other one is jet at hackernews who has a bot that bans people for a single downvote and he has bragged about it right here in YPTB! Some of those bans are cross instance because they mod communities on multiple instances and banned all of them. It is the action of three or four ridiculously over the top mods.
It's like talking to a wall.
Basically what Spankmonkey said.
I feel like sending a PM would have been a more decent and human thing to do. It's an overstep to ban people who may disagree with the kind of art you are producing.
So am I supposed to keep track of random communities when I downvote stuff on my /all feed over months? That is an insane policy.
No, you're expected to block communities you aren't interested in. Curate your feed/all.
And I do. But there is plenty of communities that I am interessted in, just not in the AI content. So I won't block them and and I will downvote the stuff I don't like. Like you're supposed to do.
This sounds really asinine unless I'm missing something.
You say that you're not interested in ai content, but you do not block communities that have exclusively content that you are not interested (like ai).
And you down vote posts that you don't like, so if there is a community that has a type of content that you do not like, you only ever downvote them when something of them appears in your feed.
Which is harmful to that community and the people who do like the content of that community. And you believe that we're supposed to do this? I can't believe that we're supposed to be harming communities that we have no interest in. The kind thing to do, would be to leave them alone.
Just block them and you won't have to see their posts and their votes won't be disturbed by you. Different people enjoy different things, live and let live and all that.
That is incorrect.
Sorry, I had misread.
Well then, thanks OP for making ai slop less visible on lemmy <3
Actually, I've been unbanned from 10 of those subs due to this post because it was found to be an unjust ban. Also, are you able to point at the part where I stated I was anti-image generation, or are you just being standard-issue internet hostile?
Do you have a fetish for weird images? Maybe it's the extra fingers that does it for you?
Or you may just be addicted.
https://internetaddictsanonymous.org/internet-and-technology-addiction/signs-of-an-addiction-to-ai/
That's pretty weird from you. I'm glad we have different opinions.