this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
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Ye Power Trippin' Bastards
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This is a community in the spirit of "Am I The Asshole" where people can post their own bans from lemmy or reddit or whatever and get some feedback from others whether the ban was justified or not.
Sometimes one just wants to be able to challenge the arguments some mod made and this could be the place for that.
Posting Guidelines
All posts should follow this basic structure:
- Which mods/admins were being Power Tripping Bastards?
- What sanction did they impose (e.g. community ban, instance ban, removed comment)?
- Provide a screenshot of the relevant modlog entry (don’t de-obfuscate mod names).
- Provide a screenshot and explanation of the cause of the sanction (e.g. the post/comment that was removed, or got you banned).
- Explain why you think its unfair and how you would like the situation to be remedied.
Rules
- Post only about bans or other sanctions that you have received from a mod or admin.
- Don’t use private communications to prove your point. We can’t verify them and they can be faked easily.
- Don’t deobfuscate mod names from the modlog with admin powers.
- Don’t harass mods or brigade comms. Don’t word your posts in a way that would trigger such harassment and brigades.
- Do not downvote posts if you think they deserved it. Use the comment votes (see below) for that.
- You can post about power trippin’ in any social media, not just lemmy. Feel free to post about reddit or a forum etc.
- If you are the accused PTB, while you are welcome to respond, please do so within the relevant post.
Expect to receive feedback about your posts, they might even be negative.
Make sure you follow this instance's code of conduct. In other words we won't allow bellyaching about being sanctioned for hate speech or bigotry.
YTPB matrix channel: For real-time discussions about bastards or to appeal mod actions in YPTB itself.
Some acronyms you might see.
- PTB - Power-Tripping Bastard: The commenter agrees with you this was a PTB mod.
- YDI - You Deserved It: The commenter thinks you deserved that mod action.
- BPR - Bait-Provoked Reaction: That mod probably overreacted in charged situation, or due to being baited.
- CLM - Clueless mod: The mod probably just doesn't understand how their software works.
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When did this happen? I feel like they get sucked into long pointless debates the same as some people on Lemmy, but I feel like it's kind of mutual combat.
I know everyone brings up that one example from months ago when FS arguably threatened to take some kind of unspecified action against someone they were mid-argument with, but did they actually ban someone in that scenario? I have them pegged as more of just an argument junkie than any kind of PTB about it. Maybe I have missed / forgotten about some actual ban they handed out of course.
Thats enough to see why they are polarizing across lots of people.
Here is the exact instance when I flipped the bit on them
https://hackertalks.com/post/3884023/4550323
Yeah. It's not ideal to have someone with that habit doing moderation. I just don't get how people jump from it to "PTB PTB he's awful."
I feel like, in general, people have to categorize as "good!" or "bad!", and FlyingSquid clearly gets in these bitter arguments sometimes which isn't a good thing to do, and so by default he turns into "bad!" and any bad thing about him becomes true. Like I say, I'm not saying he hasn't been banning people who argue with him, just I've never seen it in several times of checking what was behind people complaining about him. Every time that I remember, it basically boiled down to "He said a rude thing to this person! In a comment!"
I feel like maybe there was one that was recent that was a lot more of an actual PTB, so maybe I am wrong. I can't even remember the details.
I updated my post above with the example that was too far for me.
Regardless, they are a good user, but a questionable mod of so many communities, and given their argument style plus wielding the ban hammer on those same arguments people can come away with a bad experience/perception... Which manifests elsewhere as just emotion.
Hm.
The user said:
(This is in the context of https://hackertalks.com/post/3884023, Imane Khelif)
I don't feel like that's all that outlandish to hand out some kind of sanction for. I probably wouldn't, but I've seen people get banned for a lot less. I think they were banned for calling her "a freak" and repeatedly saying she isn't "normal", not for arguing with Squid. Plenty of people argue with Squid and it seems to just be arguing, no?
I don't think kemsat's factual point is wrong, but I don't think the factual things he was saying or disagreeing with Squid were the motivation for the ban. It's in the modlog that "freak" was the issue.
Sure, in isolation thats a good moderation reason, but when you egg someone on to debate then use the ban hammer when they engage. Was their language great, no... but where they earnestly engaging with the prompt provided by moderator yes....
Yeah, I get it. You're not wrong. They're just going to learn not to be forthcoming in moderator conversations in the future (which is a funny thing for me to say under this post). Also, as a more general issue, this is why I really just don't like forbidding points of view in general.
I'm probably way in the minority on this, but even some really offensive things, if that's really what you think, I think you should be able to talk about it. It's the only way people can ever work themselves out of certain types of wrong thinking, is if someone's willing to talk with them. It doesn't mean you have to put up with unrepentant bullshit or hatred, or let it feature in your comments section. I think that's what Squid thought he was taking a stand against, there. But yeah I kind of agree with you on it.
Like think of Wade Watts talking with the KKK and talking people out of racism. If someone's being serious about what they think, and they're open to hearing and talking about why it might be wrong, I don't think it does anyone any favors to say "No you are bad get out now." They're just going to learn to carefully not raise certain subjects, and never have their mind changed about any of it. Or else, they're going to decide you're the enemy now, and talk to other people who think like them, and attack you when they do interact with you.
Again there are certain lines you have to draw. I'm not saying "free speech." I'm just saying that honest debate means you have to let some people in with wrong opinions. Like I say, I actually agree with certain parts of what kemsat said factually. I think he just used some trigger-words,and trigger-words have this unfortunate outsized importance right now.
Agreed.
I think the banned user was using freak when they meant abnormal, but freak does mean abnormal in the dictionary. They even contextualized it by saying all athletes are abnormal by dint of being athletes.
So someone asking for a debate wont give the person they requested a response from the benefit of the doubt and engage with their meaning and not their exact vocabulary (which is still correct, if a little triggering - as you said)
For a third party moderator to jump in and say thats not allowed vocabulary, fine. For someone who asked for the debate to do it, thats constructive abuse and arguing in bad faith.
Anyway, this was a old moderation decision, its not the point of this current post. I think i've illustrated why this user/moderator is so polarizing to many people - which was the inquiry in the actual post here :)
Yeah, fair enough. And getting hung up on which specific words are being used, and saying that certain words make you a bad person when if you'd said the exact same thing while carefully using other words, it would have been fine, leading to extensive discussions about which are the allowed words and not, is a popular but poisonous pastime.