No problem, sorry for my mistake :)

Hi, please consider reposting tech questions about Lemmy software on !lemmy@lemmy.ml

Hi, please consider reposting tech questions about Lemmy software on !lemmy@lemmy.ml

Old boss, same as the new boss. I don’t think spez made the decision on their own, they absolutely suck but they’re just the scapegoat., the problem is the whole company and its structure.

The symptom is that they even considered it. The problem is that they are a for-profit company that systematically doesn’t care about us at all.

Eh, I don’t see anything ‘new’ about this news. They’ve been doing this for years, coup/assassination attempt and everything.

OK guys I just got out of my 2 day ban for “trolling”. All I did was make post on here and it wasn’t even the type of thing that would get you in trouble for posting it on reddit.

This is a great time to emphasise that Lemmy should not be treated as “reddit, but here”.

Reddit had serious userbase issues that people here often don’t want to see replicated, so instances took efforts to prevent them. Whichever communities you end up deciding to join, learn about the place and their policies first.

They created an instance that was the biggest for some time if I recall correctly

It was for a long time, at least a year, even up until a week ago if we ignore non-federating instances.

You joined a site and didn’t read the global rules. There are many places for shitposting, some that even embrace it, and this place makes it as clear as possible that this isn’t one of them.

Hmm, I’m not sure I understand what you’re suggesting. The host running Invidious on a server would have a different fingerprint to the same person accessing it through a web browser or phone app. Do Invidious hosters even use a Google account? I assumed it just accessed Google servers like an anonymous user.

Reposting the classic:

I just want to say the maintainer who wrote that appears to have handled this gracefully. It gives me hope.

They’ve made a transparent public announcement, making it clear what we should and shouldn’t expect from them, and how we should handle it. They understand the FOSS paradigm (no, I correct myself, the digital paradigm) and have given their blessings for the community to do what they do best. I’d guess the smart thing to do is play along with the cease notice to avoid consequences, go underground and make YouTube play whack-a-mole with sock-puppets and hostile jurisdictions.

Cut off one head and three shall take its place. Wind in your back lads, wherever you go.

Yeah, I heard someone pitching the old let “AI” handle it line. Machine learning can’t moderate those communities to even a mediocre standard. It’s just too variable, subjective and nuanced. Even actual members of communities can be crappy at moderating them!

Well, while it is surprising it’s all happening within a year or so, it’s not unexpected at all.

They’re ultimately for-profit companies. They have openly demonstrated the obvious truth that when push comes to shove, users don’t matter to them, at least not as much as money. Our attention was the product.

These companies have proven time and time again that a quick moneygrab will win over retaining the people who make the site work. capitalism 101 baby.

Nationalistic, xenophobic, raxist, anticommunist frenzy is actually a very Nazi thing to do, though I was using the example of displaying Nazi tattoos, as I think most people would be able to, at least in theory, sympathize with socially policing the display of Nazi symbols.

Like you said, most people recognize that glorifying Nazism is wrong.

Most of the people coming to lemmy.ml don’t recognize that calling PRC an genocidal authoritarian dictatorship is wrong. This is an extremely normalized POV in places like USA and lots of Europe. Even among people who consider nationalism, xenophobia and racism to be wrong. People who have Nazi tattoos know what they are doing, and know why they are being ostracized. So this is why I emphasise that finding ways to systematically hint out that orientalism IS xenophobic and not just “stating the objective facts”, is important.

It’s rarely something that happens by reading some rules or having one discussion

Yes, and that documentation or discussion is one of those times they disagree repeatedly. And if it’s in the sidebar, that’s an efficient one that can be referenced (like you suggested). If anything, it more easily filters out those unlistening bad faith ones by just saying “Read the link in rule 1” and seeing if they even read it. When these people are arriving in large numbers, that efficiency goes a decent way to prevent burnout.

It’s rarely something that happens by reading some rules or having one discussion, so the user is getting banned in the meantime anyways lol.

Oh of course, they’re getting banned regardless lmao

I notice (and I realize it’s most likely an issue at the source and not the fault of the creator) that some now-dead instances which were formerly top-10 aren’t show here. Hexbear also isn’t shown: while it (currently) doesn’t federate, similarly to bakchodi, it is also a fork and so technically not Lemmy, but pretty much Lemmy.

Thanks for clarifying!

Yeah, I realize this is bad timing for the devs because everything is so busy, but cross-instance moderation, and global-vs-local community moderation, can do with some improved clarity.

it should be a normal thing to assume this is unacceptable behaviour, even if racism and bigotry was normalised on Reddit.

It should be, I agree!

It isn’t a normalized thing, and the current policy of staff isn’t helping to make it normal. They have a good opportunity to teach people normalized orientalism is xenophobic, but this opportunity is squandered through their poorly-explained ban reasons and rules. Very simple steps can make it clearer to offenders that they are being chauvinistic when they (mistakenly!) think they’re being anti-racist. The way things are, they think they’re being banned “for no reason” and will just do the same thing again.

The issue is that they don’t realize their attitude is demeaning, it’s not that they think racism or xenophobia is ok, they just actually don’t understand why what they’re doing is racist or xenophobic, and so small adjustments to the rules page (such as “racism and xenophobia, including orientalism” with a link to an explaining page) would provide an up-front opportunity to explain that they are being chauvinistic and give a chance to learn.

I haven’t sided with you once.

I am neither a westerner or orientalist.

This is extremely offensive and chauvinistic, I don’t know why you would think this is ok to say.

I do support the need to make Nazis feel unsafe in public, but ostracizing them is never going to teach them anything except how to disguise their acts. This tactic has a purpose to prevent the spread of a minority opinion in public, but that tactic doesn’t apply in this scenario, where a bunch of people are coming in who think they’re doing nothing wrong because they’ve normalized ignorant criticisms of PRC and think it might as well be Nazi Germany.

Don’t compare them to Nazis, these people sincerely believe that the CPC are “committing genocide” and an “authoritarian dictatorship”. The problem isn’t that they think racism or xenophobia, as a concept, is acceptable, it’s because they don’t realize what they’re saying is racist or xenophobic, they think it’s an objective fact.

Banning them for “orientalism”, without clearly linking it to “Rule #”, evidently doesn’t teach them that their comments were xenophobic or ignorant or racist. It makes them think this place is run by propagandists who won’t accept a critique of PRC, and doesn’t solve anything.

If the sidebar explains that orientalism is all these things, at least there is an opportunity for them to understand our perspective and learn and change their behaviour, instead of just assuming we’re the problem and doing the same thing everywhere else.

They are not advocating for racists.

Hah, I think it’s a good idea, but the only other site I’ve seen with demand for one was rejected by the staff who were most out-of-line, and resulted in them censoring any mention of it. It’s an uphill battle if the staff don’t share the passion for democracy, because the union needs some way to create staff accountability.

Does the bear site have any user union?

Just to be clear: Are you claiming that I am Western, and that anyone being Western or non-Western would have any relevance to those arguments whatsoever?

Because it’s a “no” to both.

It is guilt by association when OP makes a post, other people reply in a chauvaistic manner, and you decide the OP is the one you need to argue with.

I see you’re not subscribed to !fuck_cars

Hah, it’s possible in theory but would require co-ordination that we are almost never going to see.

Most people will just do them correctly to pass, and if 997 responses say yes and 3 say no, they’re probably confidently right.

“Commies? In MY computer?” More likely than you think.

Now with 300% more diplomacy!

Hah, I haven’t heard that analogy before, but I see what it’s getting at. I wouldn’t say it’s a rule to live by, but as you learn more about technology you (usually) also learn more about its constant abuse and its critical flaws.

It’s the mediocre and peri- technologists that drive hype. Right?

I’m not sure exactly who you mean, but never believe the hype:

• Steve Jobs didn’t know shit about computers and took the fame from people who did, just like Edison and Musk.
• Most people studied in machine learning hate the term “Artificial Intelligence”, it’s a marketing gimmick used by marketing.
• There’s a similar, but lesser, sentiment in security being called “cyber”.
• Anything saying “better privacy” or “more secure” without giving a specific threat scenario (like, more secure against [x] attack) - they don’t know shit. Privacy and security are not linear values you can have more or less of.
• Internet of Things (‘smart devices’) is a privacy and security NIGHTMARE, and we’ve known that since day 1. Companies don’t care. It’s easy money.
• If you can’t (hypothetically) run it yourself, you’re the product.

They probably can, judging by how other software handle logs. I think it’s just non-public to prevent stalking and harassment, and that’s a valid concern, I can say from experience in other communities. Transparency and security is often a tough balance.

Well, I think (since it’s a common offense and not one a typical newcomer will understand as ‘racism’ or ‘bigotry’ in typical western discourse) I think it would be helpful to add the word “orientalism”, maybe even with a link to an explanation, in the rules.

While it may be obvious to us, I think it’s reasonably expected that a new reddit-refugee wouldn’t understand that. It would prevent avoidable drama, lowering mod workload.

My objection isn’t the actual decision to take those posts down, it’s that the ban message leaves a typical user guessing and the rules can make it more clear to newcomers what not to do.

Hey, and I appreciate you taking the time and respect to have a fruitful discussion :)

That’s a good point you made, I was writing this with the assumption that social change would be through a rapid revolution uprising, which (unless the bourgeois and their security just let it happen… unlikely, I’d assert) would imply mass violence.

And while my impression is that Marxists (and certainly M-Ls) assume that is generally inevitable, there is evidence that it is not always the case, even with the transitional-state approach to communism: the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia came to power through a (uncontested) federal election. Sure, this was immediately post-WWII so the conditions can’t be assumed as typical, but it and some other example suggest that mass violence is not inherent for socialists to gain control, at least until resistance against them forces it (such as banning political parties and engaging in violent repression).

I just feel like there are much more honest ways of building your industry than stealing the knowledge with which to build it.

I personally don’t support the idea of intellectual property being valid. It’s artificial scarcity, especially relevant when it comes to technology and industry. It’s why we have life-saving drugs with prices arbitrarily raised 5456% (US$13.50 to $750 per pill) or 525% or the many other similar price gouging cases commonplace in the industry. Science should not be proprietary, it’s knowledge that benefits us all. Everyone should be able to use it.

For an exaggerated example, Cuban scientists or a USA corporation developed a vaccine to a deadly disease, I wouldn’t think twice about whether it’s “honest” to copy that discovery. Letting thousands or millions of people die so a corporation can earn money off their employee’s work is completely immoral. And while that is extreme, the same concept applies to smaller things, like greener technologies and more efficient industries.

I do acknowledge that copyright has a reasonable purpose under capitalism, but I certainly don’t support it to the extent it is now: copyright for up to a year makes some sense, 90 years after the author’s death is egregious and anti-social. But for materially-significant discoveries like medical and industrial innovation? That is all in the public interest. LibGen, the anit-paywall academic library, is completely justified in their mission and a huge benefit to humanity.

When anyone, at least in America, thinks of the word “fascism” it basically means authoritarianism.

And when they say socialism, (according to polls and common discourse) they usually mean capitalism with basic nationalised services like healthcare.

So I am reluctant to excuse an idiom just because it’s popular. It trivializes important concepts and encourages an ineffective oversimplified view of history, which prevents us forming a model of predicting and understanding present events. At the very least, using those idoms in a political discussion is not appropriate. Even if it weren’t used as a pejorative, it’s still confusing terminology that contradicts the expected meaning of fascism in the context.

The two founding devs run the lemmy.ml instance, along with other global admins recruited to assist in moderation. Unfortunately the modlog doesn’t show which staff perform an action, so it could even be the community’s own mods, or other admin/s.

[edit: a user has informed me that the modlog can show staff, it’s just not a clear process]

Poor ban reason is absolutely a major issue, and unfortunately not a new one.

While some of those posts actually do deserve bans under existing rules, even those are very poorly done.

The last example correctly cites a clear violation of “[Global] Rule 2” in the deletion, albeit confusingly not mentioning Global and a flimsy citation of Rule 1, and also gives a justified and appropriate 1d ban for [global] Rule 2. But even so, this is confusing when there are global rules and community rules. So staff should make an effort to mention whether the rule they enforced was global.

Another example [EDIT- see reply from CriticalResist8] of a justified but poorly given ban was this recent one. It’s a clear global rule 2 violation, but the reason “not nice” comes off as if no rule was broken, they just didn’t like the post. Ideally, it would be something like “Global Rule 2: Disrespectful”

Unfortunately it’s hard to know who is responsible due to the username redactions in the modlog by default (is it an individual rogue moderator, or accepted staff policy?) and therefore harder to resolve. Tagging @dessalines@lemmy.ml and @nutomic@lemmy.ml, because this is a systematic issue that potentially affects the global staff, with significant negative impacts.

While I know there may be more pressing development issues, I think it would be excellent to add to the roadmap a feature for instance staff and community staff to write a list of rules, and have them as selectable options in the ban reason/length form. This will incentivize staff to give descriptive, valid and more consistent bans and deletions, which don’t give the impression of arbitrary and personal deletions.

It is very hypocritical for you to critique others for “refusing to listen and debate” when you’re:

• repeatedly completely ignoring what pineapple is saying
• dismissing their concerns of moderation practice with an irrelevant deflection that we need to keep banning liberal trolls (which pineapple has twice reconfirmed that they agree and never said otherwise), and then
• playing guilt by association, by saying “I have to convince you because of the comments your post has attracted”, which is a completely ineffective method because you’re not even talking to the people who you take issue with, you’re just wasting your efforts arguing at someone who never even disagreed, and keeps telling you that.

This does not even acknowledge the critique of this post or my reply. You’re apparently not listening or discussing our side.

We’re not saying those new users’ attitudes aren’t an issue!

We’re also not saying that such people shouldn’t be banned!

We’re saying it’s being handled inappropriately by people who don’t apply the rules they are obliged to enforce.

In a situation, like you said, their offense isn’t “orientalism”. Their offense may be vitriolic bad-faith discussion, and if it isn’t, then the rules should be updated to align with moderation standards.

If such content should be banned, then the admins or mods should put it in the rules. Simple.

Otherwise, it is a violation of the site’s stated policy and what we call “power-tripping”, individuals promoting personal beliefs through site moderation abuse. There are communities like Lemmygrad which are (more) clear on what users and staff expect from each other.

I say yes for the music one, maybe not for the first. There are literally different materials being used and increasingly optimised-for-profit-to-effort-ratio processes. Many things are just straight up made more cheaply because we have the technology to do that.

Although for the music one, a relevant lyric comes to mind:

Hip hop? Buddy, don’t get me started

So how do you get yourself charted?

Kids love this stuff 'cause it’s so new

Put in a sample from a pop song too

You’ve got a hit, how come it sold?

The melody and it’s 30 years old!

Agreed, I remember being shocked about a decade ago learning that there were services run in developing countries where you pay about $1 for 1000 CATPCHA solves for your spam bot to pass along and a person solving it.