cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/35891683
I have changed the original title of this post, as it is imo, thanks largely to discussion in this thread, with a lemmyusa mod, unnecessarily incendiary.
Original Title:
“lemmyusa.com is engaging in vote manipulation, suggest defederating unless it is addressed”
Mod Abuse:
https://lemmy.world/modlog/1432313?page=1&actionType=All
The instance has 3 active subs, it’s unlikely the admins are not also the mods engaging in this.
Banning anyone who downvotes is a clear attempt to foster a chilling effect on dissenting opinions. The mods and admins of this instance are putting their thumb on the scales in order to make their ideas appear more positively received than they actually are.
Thanks for your attention to this.
I realize that doing a cross post here is… unorthodox, and this doesn’t drectly involve my own interactions, and I am technically breaking a number of the rules of this comm…
… but I think this is worth the discussion and consideration of, and potential further investigation from this comm, which essentially functions as a de facto place for discussing things like this.
Further context / info I have been able to gather:
Here is a direct link to their own modlog.
Their dedicated legal page:
Their described ‘sidebar rules’ appear to only be:
We’re keeping it simple:
Be thoughtful, act responsibly, and treat others with respect.
No NSFW content.
Everything else seems to be in the Legal / TOS / Privacy Policy section.
My preliminary, most charitable interpretation of mod/admin activity here… is that they can and will essentially ban anyone who posts on their instance and is not a lemmyusa user, as any other user would not have agreed to their TOS.
???
Further, this instance appears to be hosting an account that is impersonating SatansMaggotyCumFart, a fairly well known, mostly parody/dedicated ‘bit’ account here on lemmy…
The profile description of their version of SMCF claims to be ‘the only real profile!’, and is using a clearly AI generated avatar/profile pic… and uh, to me at least, it seems very unlikely this is the actual SMCF.
UPDATE:
Ok.
After some conversation in this thread, I should add:
There is, and there was at the time this all started, a rule in the comm that much of these downvote bans took place in, which reads:
‘No Serial Downvoting.’
Personally, I find this rather vague.
How many dowmvotes, in what timeframe, across how many comms/comments/posts, etc?
I am also still uncertain to what extent these actually are dedicated, persistent, serial downvoters, vs just a whole lot of randos seeing something on their feed and then downvoting it and moving on.
I get the intent behind trying to stem a mass wave of negativity, nobody likes a wave of mass downvotes and hostile comments…
But on the other hand, there should probably be a bit more clarity and specificity here, less heavy handed actions for less comitted and persistent behavior.
IMO, a balance has to be struck between allowing people to genuienly freely express their opinion via downvoting, but at the same time, there are clearly also cases where people or groups of people basically just downvote all comments or posts from a specific user or in a certain comm or pertaining to a certain topic, etc.
I myself am fairly confident I have managed to attract at least one person who downvotes all my posts/comments on their instance, simply because I am on their shitlist, apparently.
So ideally… we could maybe have a constructive conversation about that.
As to the SatansMaggotyCumFart profile on lemmyusa being an impersonatory account:
We’ve got one mod from lemmyusa here saying he really isn’t sure, and personally blocked him, I think from his own user standpoint, not from the standpoint of himself as a mod.
IMO, the account still strikes me as likely another person, impersonating the actual user… I of course cannot be certain, but the profile still strikes me as very sus.
Finally, I am least personally going to strongly discourage any one reading this from popping in to lemmyusa and going out of your way to downvote every single thing on there simply because it is on that instance.
They are already in more or less lockdown mode, call that a win if you must.
I did not intend nor do I want this very post to act as an attack vector.
UPDATE 2
SatansMaggotyCumFart, the real one, has appeared in this thread and confirmed that the lemmyusa profile is indeed an impersonation, is not them.
If the users are actually serial downvoters, that’s a perfectly fine reason to ban. Votes are supposed to sort the good content (for that community) from the bad, and if someone comes in and downvotes everything, that doesn’t do that. They’re not participating in good faith for the community’s intentions. Voting isn’t a Lemmywide opinion score that must be allowed to run unrestricted. It’s ok for mods to say “this community is only for people who actually like its subject”.
That’s not to say there may not be plenty of good reasons to block the communities or defederate. They’re likely going to stray into hate speech and/or host their own trolls. It’s simply that banning people who are only there to disrupt it isn’t itself some sort of high crime.
Donald J Musk does not want conversion in his posts, he does not want debate, he does not want to argue. He only wants adulation and praise. He goes as far as locking posts so no one can comment. The only thing you are left is block, or down vote his misinformation.
That’s UM, afaict
Nope. He posts conservative content. I’m a socialist and I post socialist content, write socialist and anarchist articles, and maintain socialist communites and a socialist mastadon account.
So quit saying this. I have nothing to do with OP’s post, nor am I the subject of OP’s post, nor do I have anything to do with the subject of OP’s post.
post socialist content
It wasn’t always the case: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/46576874/19393763
Oh, I still post all political spectrum content to my politics unfiltered community: !politicsunfiltered@sh.itjust.works
But if people imply that posting conservative content makes me a conservative, then posting independent content would make me an independent. Right? Same logic. And I post plenty of independent content.
By that logic, posting Democratic content would make me a Democrat, posting pirate content would make me a pirate, and posting anarchist content would make me an anarchist. Right? And I post plenty of anarchist and pirate content.
So why not tell everyone what content I actually post the most and always have? Hint: it’s socialist content.
And I host Socialist Mastodon and X.com accounts. I volunteer for my local city Socialist office. I’ve even had stuff published in their Socialist newspaper. Hmmm, I guess I have good reason to say I’m a Socialist. My posting history is public for all to see.
Lemmy can stay mad that I didn’t vote for Harris.
I voted Socialist, I’m proud that I voted Socialist, and guess what? Voting Socialist next presidential election too. :)
My brother, @eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com , this is a perfect example of why you and I have to stay strong. Lemmy is always going to gang up on us for not voting for the duopoly, not matter what we do. Look how mad they still are that we didn’t bow down. lol
But if people imply that posting conservative content makes me a conservative, then posting independent content would make me an independent. Right? Same logic. And I post plenty of independent content.
By that logic, posting Democratic content would make me a Democrat, posting pirate content would make me a pirate, and posting anarchist content would make me an anarchist. Right? And I post plenty of anarchist and pirate content.
From your comment above
He posts conservative content. I’m a socialist and I post socialist content, write socialist and anarchist articles, and maintain socialist communites and a socialist mastadon account.
Choose one logic and stick with it. Or just say “I mostly post socialist content, but also post conservative content, which is why some people think I’m conservative”
Posting Breitbart articles such as this one 2 months ago is always going to make some people question your political stance: https://sh.itjust.works/post/42448458
My brother, @eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com , this is a perfect example of why you and I have to stay strong. Lemmy is always going to gang up on us for not voting for the duopoly, not matter what we do. Look how mad they still are that we didn’t bow down. lol
I’m on good terms with @eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com , supporting them in previous discussions when other people were trying to paint Eugene in a bad light using bad faith arguments.
I’m not ganging up, I don’t live in the US, I don’t care what you vote. I just rectify incorrect statements such as the one above. I’m not mad either.
why dont you just block him or her.
I would if they got too obnoxious. I actually find it more funny and odd than annoying, definitely not worth blocking.
Impossible. I asked UniversalMonk whether Donald J Musk was him, and he said no, and we all know he never lies.
Sigh. Yet again, you can’t seem to go long without bringing up my name.
I get that you might be fixated on me, but you mention me far too often. Doesn’t it get exhausting having me live rent-free in your head?
I’m not Musk, and I’m not part of OP’s post, not the subject of it, and I have nothing to do with what it’s about.
I get that you might be fixated on me, but you mention me far too often. Doesn’t it get exhausting having me live rent-free in your head?
Somewhat recently, he used the fact you commented in a thread as proof that his words used aginsst him were meaningless, when caught in a lie about his favor troll, PugJesus.
Voting isn’t a Lemmywide opinion score
That is precisely what it is. I would say that browsing only a particular community’s content and none other is not the most common way that people look at Lemmy.
It’s ok for mods to say “this community is only for people who actually like its subject”.
Dude what kind of content are people posting that is prompting any detectable number of people to run around downvoting all of it?
Personally my opinion is that if you’re using multiple accounts to artificially inflate your number of up or downvotes, you’re doing something wrong, but if you just don’t like a bunch of content, it doesn’t really matter whether “you are part of the community” or like its subject in terms of whether or not you should be allowed to enter downvotes. That’s why they’re there, for stuff that people don’t like. You can always visit an instance which just doesn’t allow downvotes, if you feel your stuff needs to be insulated from anyone being able to say that they don’t like it.
There are accounts who genuinely do go around downvoting en masse without any contributions. When I was growing my community, I caught about 5 accounts - some with no post history, and no contribution history on my community doing it. They also had a long mod log history of bans for doing it elsewhere.
So I banned them because they kept burying new posts. That is my right.
Vote manipulation is when you organize voting, whether that’s you with multiple accounts, a malicious instance just sending votes without real people, or stuff like that. Banning people isn’t vote manipulation.
The idea here is that wanton banning of people who downvote things is the issue.
…
They could be doing this in a documented, organized, vote bridage fashion.
They could be doing it in an entirely self directed manner.
And between those two things is a spectrum.
There could also be downvote bots.
Or, maybe they’re just being falsely accused of something like that, without good evidence.
…
But the problem that I see is that… there is no actual rule or rule set to cover any of this, on lemmyusa, nothing exists describing the acceptable bounds of how often and when you csn downvote.
And what that means is that all these people are being banned arbitrarily, which means that there no real rules, the real rule is ‘the admin/mods ban/delete whatever they don’t like’, which would make them Power Tripping Bastards.
…
Actual legit admins and mods will always have a degree of their own discretion and interpretation of rules.
Evaluating those edge cases is an important function of this comm, as is also allowing people such as yourself to inadvertently self-report when they break fairly clearly defined rules and norms, and erroneously identify this as impartial, unfair moderation.
But when mods/admins offer very dubious reasoning for their actions when they are clearly following unstated rules or have obvious double standards… this is bad, and we try to discuss that here.
It would be nice if there was an option to block vote Federation but accept content.
On the other hand, if an instance is largely acting in bad faith, maybe it’s best not to engage at all.
I’ve suggested something like that as a more advanced admin feature but they told me to implement it as a plugin, so I’m waiting until that’s possible
Hey, there you are.
Sorry to uh… yeah, not really follow all the comm rules here…
Uh… yeah.
You tell me if you want me to just modify the post itself in some way to try to be… more compliant.
Beyond that…
Hopefully this is me being overly paranoid, but here goes:
The user who made the post that I have here crossposted is named Coupable.
As in a coup.
As in an undermining and subversion of a complex system.
Their account is only 3 months old.
It has made only 2 posts, one of them this one, and a single comment.
https://lemmy.world/u/Coupable
While the information presented, or highlighted appears to be genuine…
I find the account itself to be fairly suspect.
This could potentially be a throw away, from one of these lemmyUSA people, where the point of doing this would be to create a catalog of other users (me, you, SMCF, everyone here) who seem to respond to their post, such that we could be further studied by them, to later be assesed for future potential harassment and gaslighting.
This sounds paranoiac, but this also is the known strategy employed by essentially professional, extremist, and often state funded internet trolls, to destroy the social cohesion of online spaces by more or less identifying and targetting the … most ‘influential’, or ‘important’ or ‘dedicated’ users, for lack of better words.
I very much hope that I am bring unduly paranoid.
EDIT:
welp.
Hey man, I chose my name while listening to this song https://youtu.be/xUpsyaC25bU (Coupable, by Gisa)
It’s French and it means ‘guilty’, same root as ‘culpable’, and other than maybe expressing a little self reproach, there’s no underlying meaning relevant to my posts.
I found I was banned from the lemmyusa communities when my android client notified me, and so I made a post to let my local instance admins know. I found the running modlog interesting, and so I decided to scroll and refresh it occasionally, only to see threelon abusing his moderation powers even more flagrantly, so I made a post about that too.
Cheers, have a good one :D
That account definitely isn’t me, I’ve had to register my username in every different instance because of the person impersonating me.
I only use lemmy.world and piefed.world so I’m not popping up on user’s feeds who have chosen to block me.
