I’ve been posting in the meme communities in Lemmy for a few months now. For the most part, if I make some silly meme about how broke I am or how bad American healthcare is, it doesn’t get removed and the meme does well. But I’ve had several memes get removed that I was pretty sure don’t violate the rules of the instance or the community and now I’m getting pretty frustrated. In each case, I’ve gone to the modlog and (if there’s any reason given at all) they say that I violated a rule that is written so generally that anything could count as violating it. Meanwhile, a meme about American kids killed in a school shooting makes the top of front page.
Now, if you’ve made it this far, your first reaction is to question whether my posts are crossing the line. But I think all of my memes are pretty light hearted even if they’re about controversial subject matter. Let me give you a few examples.
A few weeks a go I posted a meme with the caption “My wife out-drinking everyone at the table-- Our unborn son:” [picture of Tom the cat in the womb]. I understand abortion is a touchy subject for some people, but it’s not like I was advocating for or against abortion. After that, I posted a meme complaining about the lack of specificity of the rules on Lemmy and that post also got removed. That’s enough to let me know that the mods on that instance (lemmy.ml) will delete anything they disagree with. But I’m sure that a meme about killing the rich 1% with guillotines would stay up no problem.
I know what your thinking: Lemmy is a big place, just post on a different instance. And I thought the same thing. I went over to lemmyshitposts@lemmy.world thinking that if they’re allowing shitposts, then they would have a more lax mod policy. Post a few memes about innocuous things, it goes fine. Then I post a meme that pokes fun at the LGBTQIA+ acronym for being too long and that gets removed too. So I’m coming to the realization that any post that is completely innocuous or anodyne to the mods is fine, but if you even touch on certain subjects (e.g., miscarriages, queer culture, Lemmy’s rules, etc) it will get taken down.
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lemmy.ml is a cesspit
Came here to say this. Their mods are in bed with the tankies.
Sad but true. Just avoid it
It seems to be mostly not-quite-incels, or angry teens.
Or both.
It doesn’t even have to be a touchy subject.
I’ve seen plenty of complaints about lemmy.ml being the worst offender for this, removing stuff that is so innocuous that you could show your grandmother at church, because someone in charge found a contorted way to be offended by it. (or worse, because it was critical of China or something)
I think users will ultimately find the path of least resistance, and the least heavy-handed instances will have a healthier growth.
People here are focusing too much on the examples and too little on the core complain (that Lemmy moderation is inconsistent and this frustrates users). I think that the later is worth investigating, IMO for two reasons:
- The way that federation works, up to three groups can moderate your content: comm mods, admins of the comm’s instance, admins of your instance. As such it’s possible that users find mod problems far more often here than expected. And, while all those three groups are avoidable (unlike in a forum or Reddit), it’s possible that users are having a hard time settling down in instances that work for them.
- Lots of mods here were previously Reddit mods (inb4: myself included). It’s perfectly possible that we brought Reddit’s idiotic moderation culture into Lemmy, without even realising it. And… well, Reddit mods aren’t exactly known for being transparent, smart, or consistent.
- makes it especially hard for users to know what the exact rules aree, as all three of these groups can have different rules, and usually only the community mods put their rules into the community.
And the modlog doesn’t show which mod/admin actually did a moderator action, so it’s almost impossible to appeal to the person who e.g. banned you and clear up potential misconceptions.
Relevant detail: the modlog shows who did what, but only if you’re a mod of that comm. Based on that, I think that it doesn’t show it to the rest of the userbase to avoid mod harassment.
However I think that it should show to the rest of the userbase, at least, “[comm name] mod” or “[instance name] admins” instead of simply “mod”. And there should be an easy way to contact the relevant group behind a certain mod action, that does not involve direct messages!
Another thing that I feel like missing is a proper channel for comm mods to “upstream” reports to instance admins, when the content fits the community rules but may or may not be in violation of the instance rules. That would indirectly help other users because there’s a clearer division of responsibility, and you won’t get situations like “comm mods need to take an educated guess on how to enforce instance rules that they did not set up”.
Very good points!
Yeah, right now, you could only write to any of the mods directly, but that mod might not be the mod who did the mod action at all.
Moderation tools are lacking pretty bad, but in both directions.
“lemmy.ml” nuff said imo
I’ve had three removed comments, no posts, But every time the mod has eventually told me that even though I haven’t broken any rules, they don’t like what I’ve written and have decided to take it down.
I think it’s just the nature of the beast at this point. Smaller communities so the mods are identifying their personal politics with the impersonal rules of the communities.
At least one of those is super innocuous and I have no idea why it got moderated. I have thoughts on the others.
LGBTQ+: You probably just don’t want to fuck with any marginalized communities, even if it’s a pretty light touch. It’s not hard to apply a valid slippery slope argument here.
Unborn child: Abortion is a touchy area, but what is reaaalllly touchy is miscarriage, Your meme could be pretty upsetting for someone who has had one or knows someone who has (we all do). I obviously can’t mindread the mods, but there’s a another angle that could explain the deletion. People get worked up about this shit man
Bottom line: if you wanna do edgier memes, fire up an EdgelordMemez community and have at it.
Someone was writing counterfactual garbage about a religion on worldnews@lemmy.ml and I corrected the statement.
They banned me for 14 days with the reason that I am a Nazi, because I “defended” a “white nationalist religion”. Mind you, it’s about a religion with 29% of non-white membership in the USA and more 59.4% of the members living outside the USA.
in other words, you’re upset that memes that punch up are accepted and memes that punch down aren’t
I think that’s willfully distorting the situation. Punching down should refer to jokes that seem to be or obviously are made with malicious intent, it’s not about certain groups being protected from humor altogether, that’s infantilizing. From what OP said and posted somewhere in this thread I don’t think their jokes were in any way malicious.
I just want to chime in and agree.
Treating any demographic like they’re too fragile to hear a clean joke (not hateful or malicious) is insulting in its own way.
Maybe that’s what’s happening. I just don’t know where the line is anymore. Feel like I have to stick to “I can’t function without my coffee” type memes.
Or you could just not care so much.
If you post memes that are likely to offend someone somewhere, then there’s a risk that one of those someones is going to be a mod, and they’re going to delete it. And really, that’s just the way it goes.
Certainly you might prefer that they have explicit, precise and closely followed rules so you can accurately predict what they’ll do, but there’s really no requirement that they do so - if they want vague rules arbitrarily enforced, that’s their prerogative.
And really, what are you out if they do delete a post? It’s not like you paid for it or you have some sort of quota you have to meet. You just toss things out into the internet, and some of them float and others sink.
Reading this comment, I think you may be right. It’s just outside my control. It is frustrating to spend time editing images and trying to create something funny only for it to be taken down. But maybe there’s a lesson to be learned here in not letting it bother me so much.
The lesson to be learned here is that Lemmy mods are fickle, unpredictable and prejudiced just like Reddit mods. It’s a rare mod that can moderate objectively and consistently. In a way, mods tend to moderate their own values above and beyond the community’s needs. Lemmy.ml mods have a strong reputation for being skunks. Take that time you are putting into meme making and spin up an instance. Call it LemmyMemeWorld. Then post to your hearts content.
The image is still ok your device, no? Try another community.
deleted by creator
We should let the vote system handle unfunny or mean-spirited memes. Moderation should be light handed, IMO.
not referring to this specific case, specific user, or specific instance — but that policy is exactly how you get an instance full of porn, white supremacy, homohobia, transphobia and general chuddery
It’s really not that hard to distinguish outright hate from a shitty joke. It’s also fairly easy to address things with the community if they get out of hand.
The problems with “let votes decide” are that most people won’t vote on the best interests of the community in question, and that it increases the impact of brigades. It’s specially bad when dealing with marginalised minorities - because even if “outsiders” don’t underestimate the impact of the mean-spirited meme in question, people put their own enjoyment over the well-being of the others.
As such, even if I’d usually agree with you (moderation should be light-handed), I don’t think that relying on the votes is a good idea.
Instead I think that mods shouldn’t jump at the gun and assume. Context is king; a meme about the LGBTQIA+ acronym being too long can go from anything between “it’s fine” to “it’s prejudice”, depending on:
- how it’s worded
- presence/absence of similar memes in the same comm
- how OP presents oneself (e.g. a trans person posting a meme about this would be interpreted as self-humour)
- other things that OP posted (e.g. does OP target those people?)
Also, sometimes mods should talk officially with the users. Speaking officially is seriously underused, even if it defuses issues before they even happen. Simply commenting “I’m leaving this up because it’s about the acronym alone, but I don’t want to see bigotry here, OK? Everyone, please be excellent to each other, including the LGBTQIA+ members of this comm.” and then watching OP’s reaction is often enough.
Hey OP, just for the record: you got a good chuckle out of me for all of the content you created that was removed. Thanks for trying to keep the fediverse interesting.
I’m coming to the realization that any post that is completely innocuous or anodyne to the mods is fine, but if you even touch on certain subjects (e.g., miscarriages, queer culture, Lemmy’s rules, etc) it will get taken down.
I think polarization plays a big part of it. People are quick to downvote/remove stuff that looks like it’s from the “other side.”
lemmy.ml and hexbear communities are generally not very friendly IMO
I look forward to the update when we can block instances, I think lemmy will be much better with those two on ignore.
it’s hard to think anything about posts like those, because everyone complains about “bad/unfair moderation”, including people who post absolute bs and have no clue about it :<
not to accuse you of anything op, it’s just kinda hard to get an opinion on the matter
Mods and admins on Lemmy can remove your comments and ban you because they don’t like what you said and it doesn’t matter wether you broke the rules or not. It’s a huge issue but what you gonna do, except just keep making new accounts. It’s not like you can appeal it anyways. Hell, you don’t even get a notification. There’s a ton of people here posting and not realizing that almost no one can even see their messages.
Ok that tom meme as youve described it is fucking hilarious
Sorry. I am late to this. I am the mod here and the mod on lemmy shit posting. I firmly stand my decision to remove your posts. You have to be very careful with what you post memes about and I got user reports about the meme which is why I decided to act on it. People can and will take things the wrong way and that’s before I even go to the potential comments and users memes like that tend to attract.
