u/LeninMeowMeow moderates a large amount of big subreddits, r/therightcantmeme, r/gamingcirclejerk, r/animememes, r/greenandpleasent (a known russian propaganda subreddit source: Center for European Policy Analysis (think Lemmygrad)) and much more.

Anyways on r/lemmy, he says that lemmy.world is right-wing and thatcherite. I reply that it is more social democratic.

I instantly get banned from the subreddits he moderates and blocked by him. I have not commented or participated in any of their subreddits before, and this is my first ever encounter with them.

Weird and concerning behaviour. I fear that tankies are taking over most left wing spaces on reddit (not that I really use reddit for politics anymore, that’s why I’m on lemmy, but for the implications to our democracies, as a non-negligible chunk of voters are politically influenced by reddit).

  • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
    171·
    3 months ago

    Dude I would fuckin LOVE to. Spending extensive time whining about moderation decisions is rarely productive, but I was definitely a little salty about it and I’m happy to discuss. Disclaimer; I’m aware that I was being a cockhead at certain points during the thread, which certainly factored into the decision, but also some of my perfectly reasonable comments were being deleted and a lot of people who were way more (and are way more consistently) cockheads didn’t earn a permaban for it. It remains sort of a curious moderation decision to me.

    Here’s the thread. There was quite a lot of discussion in it about the presence of shills clearly distorting the discussion. I’ll reproduce some of the threads including restored versions of comments that were deleted by mods (you can verify all of this on the modlog.)

    I’ll indicate deleted comments with a strikethrough.

    OP: These framings we see in the media have absolutely nothing to do with which candidate is more qualified to run the country

    Me: Actually I would add to that that these framings are specifically inserted into the discourse by corporate media to elevate some candidates and depress some candidates, with the depressingly effective aim of making people dislike the corporate unfriendly candidates

    Posters ITT: Hey like 20 or 30 of us have the exact same new framing we’d like to present that has nothing to do with which candidate is more qualified to run the country. It might be a much much better framing than, which candidate is better to vote for, or factual things about the candidate’s record. We all feel that exact same way about it being important to look at it this way.

    You can have the best product in the universe, but if you can’t sell it, then it doesn’t matter. When trying to argue a douche is better than a turd, you really need your presentation going. None of the American politicians (except maybe Bernie) are remotely qualified to run a country of any size, so stop trying to make it about who is the most qualified.

    Aw man

    I tried to set you up to say something like, yeah but what has Biden even done other than “not Trump” (as if that “doesn’t count” somehow as a reason to pick him instead of Trump), but you didn’t take the bait. You just came out with conflating “which product is best marketed” with “which is the product we actually want”, and somehow came down on the side of best-marketed. Idk what that’s about. And then you simply said that no one is qualified.

    Idk, that’s a little bit close to teeing up what I wanted to say (talking about Biden’s qualification), so I’ll go ahead and put it up anyway.

    • 40% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030
    • 15% minimum corporate tax
    • Actual labor people in charge of the NLRB for the first time in God knows how long leading to all these union wins
    • Hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan forgiveness
    • Big wage gains at the bottom end of the scale even when adjusted for massive historic inflation

    That’s a partial sampling. And that was with a pretty hostile congress and Supreme Court; most of it was watered down versions after he tried to do more aggressive stuff.

    That’s a weird removal, no? Reason given was “stalking.”

    I’ll have to reply to myself to talk more about the stalking; I’m meeting the character limit. Ask me if I’m still salty about these events. 🙂

    • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
      111·
      3 months ago

      I think the assertion was that I was following around particular users and posting hostile comments… which, I was doing the second thing, not the first. Here’s a relevant exchange that deals with the removal more directly (from this thread during the same unit of moderation action):

      Wind dat same shit I always post in these threads back selecta!

      If you’re reading this and you don’t want to vote for biden or trump, consider party for socialism and liberation. They’re running Claudia de la Cruz for president this year on a platform of Palestinian statehood and ending arms shipments to Israel.

      It’s okay to not want to vote for Biden or trump.

      Hey let’s talk about how Biden shut down Trump’s insulin price cap

      You already explained to me how that happened, I know, but explain it again for the rest of the class

      How come you stopped replying to me in the thread where we were talking about that?

      Why are you dragging that into this thread? Why did you drag it into that thread (I’m pretty sure it was off topic drama there too)?

      Because you were talking nonsense… I’m not obligated to keep talking to you indefinitely about why water is wet and world is round

      Go on, tell ‘em what you told me. I’ll let you figure out why it might be relevant to this conversation. Oh also how Trump’s a formidable stage presence and Biden should be worried about having to go head to head with him in a debate. But let’s start with Biden shutting down the insulin price cap. The people need to know! If they are thinking of voting Biden when he wants their insulin prices un-capped.

      Please stop stalking me. Thanks.

      Stop stalking political threads and posting propaganda. I’m not going out of my way to find you, but since I saw a post of yours, I thought it was relevant to throw it in there that you have in the past posted explicit propaganda of a type so dishonest that anyone here will be able to see through it. Why would that not be relevant to what you’re saying now?

      If you mean me tagging you when I used you as an example of a person posting propaganda, I can stay away from that in the future if you want. I was meaning to do it so you could defend yourself if you wanted to try, but I’m fine with not doing that if you prefer. If you’re just ordering me not to point out your propaganda when I happen to see it, then no, I think I will continue.

      Removed (“stalking”) and permaban. I reached out to the mod and said hey I can see I was being a dick (it happens sometimes), but I wasn’t stalking and what’s up with this permaban. No response.

      Just as a random additional data point, here’s a post of mine that was also removed from the same threads:

      Let’s say this:

      I have no idea if you are a shill or a genuine person. But, there are some behaviors that are bad things to do regardless of which you are:

      1. Recasting your opponents’ views as other ones that make less sense and are easier to argue against, consistently, as a way of muddling the discourse, instead of being honest about what you’re saying and what you are disagreeing with and why, and just letting your point of view speak for itself whether or not I personally would agree with it
      2. Consistently posting a drumbeat of memes in support of your viewpoint (within that same dishonest framing)

      I mean, you can do what you want to do. I’m not gonna try to tell you you are or aren’t allowed to say whatever suits you. But to me, saying “fuck the whole US politics join my coalition for positive change we need a level of change that the current system will not allow” would make sense. Sounds great. I actually would be right there in that coalition. Anything from Bernie Sanders to Ralph Nader to someone further out-there who is working for something to produce actual change in some other way.

      But if instead of that, you misrepresent the “other side”'s viewpoint “fascism is so bad that we need to resist it even if the alternative involves continuing the US’s longstanding policy of allowing some war crimes,” as if it was “I <3 war crimes and genocide”, and post a drumbeat of attack against specifically the least war-crime-friendly big contingent in US politics, I think people will wind up accusing you of bad faith. They’ve got a right to say that too.

      I mean, does that seem fair? If you were posting a big stream of memes about how to put pressure on Biden to do more (like, a fuck of a lot more) to stop the crimes, or in favor of some faction that was plausibly able to produce a better outcome, I don’t think you would be getting near this level of derisive responses. But the message you’re sending doesn’t match the outcome you say you want. I think that’s why you are getting these maybe unfair accusations.

      Removed, civility

      • mecfs@lemmy.worldOP
        7·
        3 months ago

        Reading through all that, I’d have to say I’m on your side, as I don’t really see evidence of “stalking”.

        I reported an account for stalking once on politicalmemes that got permabanned, but thats because in the three minutes after I replied to them, they went out of their way to comment insults on random posts of mine from MONTHS ago.

        The same memes over and over “both sides are bad don’t vote” usually decently downvoted but still appears in my feed just the same are really annoying on c/politicalmemes, so I really get where you’re coming from.

        I have to note its a funny coincidence that I couldn’t find your original thread as turns out the account you are arguing had been previously blocked by me.

        • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
          4·
          3 months ago

          Yeah. Which users are the bad users is generally blatantly obvious, I feel like.

          It is wild to me that there’s such a consensus among the “normal users” about certain things (MBFC bot is bad, the shills are a problem, which users are the shills), and such an opposite consensus among the mods. IDK where even this “mod versus user” mentality came from (on both sides, honestly – part of the reason I try not to complain about moderation is, WTF, they’re all volunteers doing an important job and it’s impossible for any human to be perfectly patient and evenhanded when dealing with the tide of nonsense they put up with in order to create a good space for conversation.) But it is still very weird to me that there’s a visible “mod viewpoint” and “community participant viewpoint” and that they are different from each other.

          • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
            2·
            3 months ago

            I really, really, doubt there are actual shills on Lemmy. People that hire those types of people don’t know we exist.

            But there are lots of weird people with weird beliefs about politics.

            • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
              4·
              3 months ago

              I am also confused by why there would be organized shills on Lemmy. But to me the evidence is pretty clear (e.g. an account that’s super into talking about US politics that one day uses $5.000.000 with decimal points to separate thousands in a number, and people ask hey what’s up with that are you not from the US? and they get hostile and pretend not to understand the question) (e.g. a strong correlation between accounts that say “Democrat party” and that want you not to vote for the Democrats claiming to come from a left wing point of view) (things like that).

              IDK, there are a few tens of thousands of people on Lemmy; maybe it makes sense to allocate a single person from a troll farm to run a bunch of accounts. I have no idea. It also seems weird to me, I get what you’re saying, but to me it does seem clear that quite a few of them are here.

              • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
                31·
                3 months ago

                There are lots of foreign people who take an interest in US politics, I don’t think that’s sufficient evidence personally.

                But it’s really hard to prove or disprove anyone is a shill so who knows.

                • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
                  3·
                  3 months ago

                  Yeah, that part makes perfect sense. Getting hostile and pretending not to understand the question is what seemed more damning to me about it.

                  You’re right that there’s no way to know for sure. But to me the circumstantial evidence is very strong.

                  • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
                    12·
                    3 months ago

                    Yeah I didn’t comment on that because I’d have to see the whole context to make an assessment. I’ve definitely been known to respond with hostility when accused of being a shill (though that rarely happens since my views don’t line up very well with any authoritarian groups that tend to be behind these efforts). So I could see a sarcasm or willfully playing dumb being mistaken for a different kind of obfuscation.

          • mecfs@lemmy.worldOP
            31·
            3 months ago

            Yep. I’m very confused though because the tolerance towards tankies makes me think the mods are further “left” (authoritarian left) then the userbase, but then the MBFC bot makes me think the opposite.

          • Eccitaze@yiffit.net
            1·
            3 months ago

            I think the mod v. user viewpoint is why moderators are so cagey and timid about banning the Usual Suspects. I remember when mods actually followed through and temp banned one of them (iirc it was givesomefucks?) and pretty much all of Lemmy lost their collective shit. If you just read that one thread, you’d have left with the impression that Lemmy mods were a bunch of far-right, protofascist, power tripping assholes hellbent on silencing dissent.

            The lesson I took from that episode is that Lemmy has a sizable, vocal minority that either agrees with what the Usual Suspects are saying, or at minimum don’t think it’s banworthy. They might also think there needs to be a bright line rule violation (and either don’t recognize or don’t care that every good troll is well-versed in skirting the rules and gently pushing the line, but almost never clearly steps over them).

            • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
              2·
              3 months ago

              Yeah, 100% agree

              Lemmy has a sizable, vocal minority

              This part I think is the key portion

          • Blaze (he/him)@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            1·
            3 months ago

            But it is still very weird to me that there’s a visible “mod viewpoint” and “community participant viewpoint” and that they are different from each other.

            It might be specific to political communities? I haven’t seen this in other communities, be it as a mod or a standard user

            • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
              3·
              3 months ago

              Yeah, it totally is. That’s what I mean. You don’t see like an animal pictures community where the mods are like “NO MORE FOXES that is the rule” and the users get all confused like “but… bro half the pictures are porcupines, can we do something about that, no one thinks it’s too many foxes and anyway we like fox pictures” and the mods say “like all of you I am concerned and fearful to think sometimes that I might be in a community with too many porcupines, but I can assure you that it’s not true” or anything like that.

              My analogy is very bad but hopefully the point comes across