![[email protected] mod suppresses criticisms of fediverse spam campaign, using mass ban technique to silence opposing viewpoints](https://lemmy.sdf.org/pictrs/image/3c83e0c1-768e-462f-8cba-e2d7dcdadee9.png){kind=link}
Will it be effective?
Spoiler
No, it was not very effective.
EDIT: The banning event continues. Please consult the modlog to observe.
https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&modId=7121342
If you scroll down to about a day ago, you might be able to observe an emerging behavior from this mod.
EDIT 2: The mod in question moderates a total of 108 Lemmy communities. How deep does this conspiracy run? Is this mod a lost Redditor? More to come!
EDIT 3: The mod has now removed my comment all together, one might assume because it was still receiving upvotes in the 2 hours following my ban. Are there similarities here to Watergate? You be the judge!
EDIT 4: The mod in question has now been removed as a mod of the [email protected] community, as a result of their abuse of power.
https://lemmy.world/post/19731457
This was their response:
EDIT 5: This will be my final update, since as far as I see it, the issue this thread focuses on has been resolved. To quote Beaver herself in a very ironic comment she made directed towards someone else:
Clearly this was all just a case of…
Am I missing something here? The vegan community is for vegans and people to ask questions about being vegan but is not for debating about any part of being vegan. That is their rule 5, which I see people break every day thinking it is ok to shit all over vegans there. If you don’t want to hear about vegans then block the community.
The problem is, in my opinion, that they post memes that are clerly provoking non-vegan people for discussion.
It’s weird to jump under a “here are my 15 ways of cooking asparagus” post with anti-vegan content. But “look at these carnovorous clowns” memes are clearly offensive.
Sounds like something a carnivorous clown would say!
(/s)
I don’t think it’s intended to provoke non-vegan people, I think it’s meant to be a ‘for us, by us’ community. PSA to all: there’s a block community button for communities that are not hateful or illegal (you should report those) but are things you’d prefer not to see on your personalized feeds
That’s what private communities are for. Calling people names while perfectly aware of it leaking into the public feed is a provocation. And it worked.
Private communities don’t exist; you can only create an instance and defederate from everyone else. VeganTheoryClub is an instance which defederated from Lemmy.World, for example.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to re: name-calling tbh, and I think this thread is an overreaction, but I agree with you that non-private communities have some obligation to civility or something like that
If that’s the case, I want to know why perfectly innocuous comments are still removed. Seems like they operate on a whim.
Depends on the context maybe? Idk I am not a mod. I’ve just seen comments about arguing for eating meat or saying something like “I’m going to eat 2 hamburgers now because of you” which are just annoying. I thought that was what this was about. I’ll leave my comments up for anyone else confused.
Cause over the last few weeks, a bunch of debates over moderation drama have been full of people attacking vegans over the cat taurine debate. That drama is over and it reached a consensus resolution between the mods and admins. If they’ve made an executive judgement that the moderation drama is no longer relevant and baits carnists into breaking rule 5, then removing that debate is a valid application of rule 5.
Odd then that they’re using Rule 5 bans on people like me who never posted to their community
The mod isn’t banning people for debating in the comments. A lot of people the mod is banning (myself included) are people who only downvoted posts. Considering that a large portion of the posts are blatantly antagonist things like this, it easy to see why they’re getting downvoted. If you’re going to insult 90% of the users on an instance, then you’re going to get downvoted.
The mod could have made the community private so they could insult people without consequences, but instead, they decided to remain public while banning anyone who downvotes their insults. They want to continue to antagonize the instance while removing the instance’a ability to respond. They want to artificially lower the number of downvotes they get, so it doesn’t look like their antagonistic bullshit is as unpopular as it is.
Everyone could block the community, and if you choose to do that, that’s a reasonable response, but it shouldn’t be the only response. We should be able to express our opinion about the content in our feeds, even if it’s just downvoting it. Why should an entire instance be expected to hide from one abusive community?
I think what you are missing is that they’re banning people for breaking Rule 5 that haven’t broken Rule 5.
Nobody is taking issue with them banning people that broke Rule 5.
This good advice. Everyone should block the community.
Well yeah if seeing vegan content upsets you enough to break their rule 5 then it is not a good community for you. And that is ok, honestly I get grief in real life about me trying to be vegan. Having a place amongst other vegans and people not anti-vegan is nice. I also don’t know the context behind the post so if there is something I’m missing feel free to tell me.
I got banned (rule 5) for downvoting a meme with misleading information. I’m not vegan, but I like the idea in general so I did enjoy seeing content. But things have gone off the rails recently.
I’d say not just recently. They’ve stepped it up after the big drama but been at it for a while.
Oh, but the “why do you hate veganism huh??” memes continue. Yeah, it’s definitely the veganism I can’t stand and not the fan club!
Ah I see. Not sure what is going on then.
This is entirely a mod issue. I’m vegan, and they need to be removed. They are ruining the image of the community so that people like OP start pushing for everyone to block it. If that isn’t ruining the prospects of our cause, then I don’t know what is.
Hi there. Things escalated really out of control due to a rogue mod, but the situation has since been resolved, and things should be back to normal.
I personally believe this particular mod may be abusing the community’s rule 5, stretching it to suit their agenda. But I’ll leave the interpretation up to you.
Note that others are reporting being banned by simply downvoting community posts. Suggesting further overreach.
I forgot Lemmy lets you see who downvoted and upvoted. Idk why that is happening. I thought the brigade was about comments.
I’ll be one to admit my own comment was a bit cheeky. I had honestly never really noticed the [email protected] in my All feed until today, when this particular mod started posting a great deal of really poorly formatted memes. My cheeky comment was my only ever comment in the community.
I can’t speak to any actual brigading, as the community normally isn’t worth my time, which is very, very important to me.
Not just poorly formatted…they were full of insults.
Theory: the posts are bait so Beaver can feel powerful banning people.
I’m on a (admittedly slow), slide towards vegetarianism so I’m obviously pro-vegan…but apparently I got banned two days ago for rule 5
Users cannot vote in a community that has banned them. If the mod wants to restrict voting only to people who vote in good faith, that’s their prerogative. It’s probably a good idea, it prevents downvote spam from bots and the like. When you have a community that has very different values from /all, maybe kicking the /all people who vote against the sub’s values out is good. Voting is participation.
Shining transparency on these values and modding decisions to the attention of the fediverse then serves the greater good.
It does. You’ve opened the conversation about voting as participation and helped us reach some new ideas on moderation practice. It’s dialectics. As I said in another comment in this thread, I think the existence of posts like this is good even if this ban wasn’t a problem.
When some of those mods are perfectly fine with lgbtq persecution, and make it out like vegans have it worse, or dont care because they wouldn’t have to see it personally…
I’m just going to go ahead and consider it a toxic shithole. Worst part? Different mod, but they seem to be all over the same vegan communities, so none of them become worthwhile.
I personally don’t care if they ban me since I’ve blocked the communities anyway. Just unfortunate as I really enjoy seeing some of the recipes, as there are a decent number of them that are gluten free (which I need to be).
Which mod is queerphobic? Can I see the evidence?
I’ll have to unblock, so I can do that later on, sure. Working so not paying much attention to Lemmy at the moment.
Edit: Sorry, my mistake, not a mod. An admin on the instance recommended / linked to in the side bar.
Well, spoke to soon. I was banned for being ‘uncivil’ on the .world vegan community for calling out this same behavior, and hoping the community ended up somewhere other than on that particular instance.
Sooo… yeah I’m keeping the block. Maybe expanding to some mods there would be sensible.
Edit: There, all set now.
Fwiw, anyone giving you grief irl is a jerk, unless you’re trying to convert them.
Away from the internet, I know a good handful of vegans that I gladly cook for. Not regions everyone hates y’all for living your beliefs.
And, just for full disclosure, I troll vegans online. That’s where most of the jerks that are vegan do their thing, not irl.
Me and you, if life threw us together, I’d make you my vegan chili, and we’d chill. But I’d still troll you online if you did the usual online stuff that gets vegans painted as crazy.
Which is my best effort at saying that that’s probably what you’re missing. Even people like me that have no problems with the precepts of veganism per se, we can get tired of the vegans that take things too far, and then the entire belief system gets colored by that brush. It creates a general fatigue, then a general stereotype, and that turns into assholes going to vegan spaces and being assholes (as opposed to only doing it in other spaces). That in turn makes militant vegans go on the warpath, and you get stuff like this drama lol
It’s a cycle of annoyance and limited perception. That cycle attracts the worst elements of humanity
Thank you for posting this. I know now that it was because of voting which is ehh not as bad as I thought. But yeah IRL my family and partner aren’t very supportive, I’ve been trying to ignore their comments. It’s just hard sometimes, like just last night my partner said they felt sorry for me during dinner because I didn’t have meat in my meal. I think that’s probably why some vegans become more aggressive online as well as the cycle going on. Idk I just like reading articles and seeing recipes. When I first went vegan my dad tried getting my whole family to convince me to eat meat again. I love my dad but that sucked. I also love my partner and they are otherwise fine, but they seem to have a problem and are adjusting to my new diet. I can understand the fatigue a vegan may go through, but banning people for voting isn’t exactly what I had in mind as their rule 5.
I’m sorry you’re running into such a degree of outright opposition. I never have understood that part, why someone that loves you would be persistent and nigh aggressive about something that’s essentially not their business.
Somebody wants to make a change, move towards something they feel is better, you support that, even if you need to draw your own boundaries about it.
That would be exhausting to deal with for anyone, the opposition.
I kinda get where the mod is at, the way you describe the fatigue. I think it’s better to step aside once your at that point, refresh yourself, maybe make a decision about that being a permanent break from trying to herd cats online or not. I’ve had to do the a few times over the years.
I’m sorry you went through that. It shapes us to have thicker skin, but it can also lead to bad outcomes depending on the friends and family involved.
Ed Winters talked about this on his channel recently. One of the biggest reasons people don’t go vegan, and one of the biggest reasons pushing people away from the movement is the social dimension: living with people and still holding them as on your side when they very clearly violate your moral code. It’s one of the hardest burdens of vegans, as I’m sure it can be for other minorities. Again, I’m not equating vegans to a minority group like LGBTQ or POC. The animals are the minority group. But when you have discrimination and sometimes segregation for specific groups in society, you can start to draw parallels.
Good luck with your vegan life from a fellow vegan 🤙
Rule 5 - This community is an echo bunker.
Doesn’t help much when one of their users is being so fucking stupid that news of it spreads across all of Lemmy.
Consider the absurdity of that statement for a second.
How can a non-vegan ask a question about the lifestyle without engaging in a debate? How do you actively interact with information without debating it?
Debates don’t have to be antagonistic. When both parties are genuinely interested in questioning their own values and opinions they can be incredibly rewarding. I can understand a rule against antagonism, but disallowing debates inherently precludes honest questioning for people interested in growing their knowledge on the lifestyle.
The bans seem to be targeting downvotes without other contribution and cheeky comments such as the one in the OP
Well it gets fatiguing to debate all the time, especially when some people are just trolling. But you can ask questions like what do you do for protein, B12, iron, etc. without debating. What are some staples that vegans eat, is it easy to make vegan food, how expensive is vegan food, what does a balanced vegan meal look like, what are some recipes, etc. Even asking can a person thrive on a vegan diet through all stages of life and you’ll probably be given an article or recommended to watch Game Changers.
I think they want to stop the antagonistic people, especially if all they want to do is say: it is only natural to eat meat/we evolved to eat meat, humans have dominion over animals, animals don’t have feelings, vegans are just being overemotional aka only logical people eat meat, it is ok to kill animals, killing animals in factory farms is ok because it is efficient, there isn’t enough land to grow vegan food for everyone, etc. Just shit that’s been responded to a million times and at this point seems bad faith since it’s been debunked before. Maybe they could have a sticky or wiki about these common arguments, idk I am not a mod.
It also matters what your tone is and that can be the difference between someone asking questions in good faith vs someone doing an antagonistic debate. But yeah at this point vegans do not need to question their values or opinions when it comes to their diet and lifestyle. You cannot convince a vegan it is ok to kill an animal for food but you might be able to convince a non-vegan it is wrong to kill an animal for food. Anyway that was just my thoughts on it.
If they indeed promoted vegan diets for carnivores then I’m for a ban of the mod / community too. That’s very much animal abuse.
I’ve responded to this before and no one cared but here is the original thread since everyone has greatly exaggerated what was said about cats who are obligate carnivores not obligated to eat meat per se.
https://lemmy.world/post/18691022
I’m not sure I can take the people in that community and what they claim seriously.
I admit I have no idea how to respond to that. Every vegan has different views on their lifestyle. I have two dogs, they eat kibble that has meat in it (they are very picky idk if I can change them to a vegetarian kibble), I homemake simple peanut butter biscuit treats for them, and I brush their teeth with meat flavored toothpaste. This is ok to me but is probably out of line for others. Some vegans would never own a cat and would rather own a rabbit or guinea pig instead. This vegan believes more that we shouldn’t have pets apparently. I don’t have this view so I cannot defend it other than they are trying to reduce harm in their own way.
And they’d ban you for your opinion.
Thanks for adding context, I had no idea what rule 5 was.
This is their rule 5:
That rule seems very… Open to interpretation. Thanks for the info though.
deleted by creator
Many people see a post on All, never notice the community name, never read the sidebar, comment, and move on.