this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2025
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Ye Power Trippin' Bastards
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124 users here now
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.
Relevant comms
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Running a public website of any sort is an incredibly vulnerable position. You can't 'run' or even meaningfully 'fight', all of your information is ultimately traceable back to you, and your main asset is at the whims of the institutions of capitalist society. The more 'battles' you fight using the website as a means not just of organization, education, and agitation, but of a challenge to the law itself, the more your website's effective lifespan will be shortened. In any area which one is going to challenge the law itself using the website, one should be prepared for that fight, not simply as a one-off "Fuck you pigs, I don't answer to your laws" (which anyone who has attempted with a cop squad with a judge-signed warrant outside of their door can assure you is ineffective), but with meaningful arguments and preparations within the context of the society we are fighting these battles in.
Put another way - running a mutual aid nonprofit is generally not the time to give the middle finger to the government on tax filing status, helping immigrants evade ICE is not the time to be flagrantly breaking traffic laws, and a soup kitchen for those abandoned by capitalism is probably not a good arena for challenging sanitation regulations. IF you are going to pick any of those additional fights, you should be prepared, not simply dismissive on ideological grounds - it might warrant the dismissal on ideological grounds, but on practical grounds, you are headbutting a 20 meter-thick brick wall and saying "It's me or you!". The end result is not in question; only the timescale.
You don't have to like the law to use the law against itself; you don't have to be a supporter of the rules of the game to use them to protect yourself. But refusing to acknowledge their existence in a society where the law remains extremely powerful may sate your ideological urges, but it will sink all your ideological projects.
I feel you have a very US-centric and litigious take on this. Afaik it's not illegal (in most places, yet) to discuss the topics of piracy or anarchism on the internet, or to allow younger folks who are interested in these topics to participate in the discussion. Maybe we just have a different outlook on these things. There's nothing we talk about here that hasn't also been discussed on Reddit and many other websites for decades. The alternative is to go the LW route and preemptively self-censor discussions to the point that users can't express their honest opinions any more (e.g. about Luigi). And at that point we might as well close the instance down ourselves as it wouldn't stand for anything.
Anyway, appreciate you being concerned about us.
On the contrary, I want you to discuss the topics of piracy and anarchism online. That's not even close to what I'm trying to get across here. I love that about dbzer0.
The issue comes with the heightened scrutiny from allowing those underage to participate in the instance. There are a whole host of laws regarding how the data of minors is to be handled, and the reason that many sites, at least nominally, exclude minors is because it's a significant burden on limited resources, with a very hefty financial sword of damocles swinging overhead if it's not done 'correctly'. For non-profit, and especially small non-profit, orgs, this can be a deathblow.
CHOOSING to allow minors to participate is not inherently an issue, but DB0 calling other instances PTB and unreasonable for exercising caution in dealing with minors very much calls into question just how seriously it's being taken, especially considering the opinions of other admins in this comment thread. If you aren't covering your asses on this, and on the ball about it, not just "Well, we don't follow laws in these parts", it can end very badly - and very abruptly. It's not some minor point of law that only the bootlickiest of bootlickers even bother to follow - it's a weapon used to take down the unprepared.
On one hand, I certainly have a US-centric take, because that's what I'm most familiar with, and a litigious one, as that's what I'm most concerned with. On the other hand, the EU is considerably stricter about the data of minors than the US, so that's not necessarily against the main point being made here.
Again, I feel the need to point out that censoring Luigi support was done by a couple of mods who interpreted the .world ToS in a very... questionable way. The actual admins clarified that support of Luigi was always allowed, and you see it constantly on .world, because fuck CEOs.
But also, like I said above, I'm not saying censor yourselves. Not in the least. I'm saying be prepared, and don't take underage issues as a non-issue that only chuds are worried about. It can fuck you.
Legit, I just don't want to see dbzer0 go down one of these days because of something that could be guarded against. You're one of the better instances on the Fediverse.