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Just a heads up, Lemmy is not immune to the same problem. If there are rogue moderators, just like Reddit the only option you have is to message the instance admin or other moderators. If theyre all on the same team and the instance admin doesnt respond or agrees with their behaviour, then you're in the same place you were with Reddit.
Also, Lemmy might have a chance at this being worse. AFAIK, on Reddit reports are anonymous. Moderators didnt know who reported what content. But on Lemmy, reports are NOT anonymous. While some argue this is helpful for identifying trolls/superfluous reporters, for the same reason it can also easily be weaponized by rogue moderators. The only thing Lemmy really has going for it is that its relatively small right now. But as its userbase grows, it will likely fall victim to the same user issues that Reddit has.
Upvotes and downvotes are also not anonymous to instance operators, which I really dislike.
But you are ignoring the biggest benefit to lemmy amd the fediverse. It's not just one reddit with one /r/weirdfetish. It's potentially infinite reddits with potentially infinite /r/weirdfetish. You sign up on one instance and can interact with (effectively) any other instance.
If a mod is abusive, report it to their instance admin. If the instance admin is abusive, subscribe to a community for the same topic on another instance. There's like eight general tech news communities. If one is run by an asshole, use a different one.
Personally, I signed up at the dbzer0 instance, which is run by one of the former admins of the piracy subreddit. I can interact with lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, lemmy.ca, beehaw, hexbears, blahaj, sopuli, solarpunkd, shitjustworks, and a ton of other instances I'm forgetting. Each one has their own communities (subreddits), with a lot of overlap.
Any user I don't like? I can block them. Any community I don't like? I can block the specific community on the specific instance. A whole instance I don't like? Can block the whole damn instance.
I agree that votes being public to admins should not be a thing.
But I think Lemmy's great strength will also be its biggest weakness. Yes, any instance can have its own version of any community. But when you segregate and splinter communities like that you end up with basically all of them eventually being a desolate wasteland of one post a month and one really big one with all the activity. Then the one big one decides "we are leaving/going private," and that basically kills everything. People might try other communities but most people want to be someplace active, and unless they all move to the same one you end up with less activity and less users very quickly.
Votes are public to not just to the original instance admins though but to any instance admin, right? If you setup your own instance and federate with another, then you should be able to view the votes for any communities on the one you federate with. The only privacy is that the default UI doesn't display it, but a different UI could:
e.g. the one for this post on kbin.social that shows Lemmy upvotes as favorites.
I feel like this should be more prominently disclosed to Lemmy users.
It has been regularly announced to people every few weeks, might be time for a refresher indeed
I'd argue that's the biggest inhibitor. Sure the idea of a rogue mod on weirdfetish1 pisses you off so you go to weirdfetish2, but weirdfetish2 has 1/100th the user base of weirdfetish1. Instead of weirdfetish2 getting built up, the people who use it eventually just get bored and move on.
Also with reddit you could just make literally "/r/weirdfetish2" there's nothing stopping you.
But mod actions are also available in the modlog, aren't they?
I haven't been here that long, but I've seen people question moderator activity a few times in ways that are not options on reddit at all.
Yeah, they are. But modlogs don't mean anything if the other mods and instance admin agree with what the mod is doing. Or if they even know, or have enough time to logon and deal with it.
We're talking about rogue moderators, though. Instances have their own separate moderation rules and that's the intent behind how things are organized in the fediverse.
What OP experienced on reddit can't happen here due to modlogs, and rogue moderation usually is called out here publicly.
Consistent issues with an instance also have the defederation option.
There are for sure problems with this all, but I wouldn't say that rogue moderation is as easy here as it was on reddit.
Except you can get banned for something not in the rules. Some subs saying stuff like "no rules" and then keep banning people for memes. "No rules except don't be a dick" and lots of regular people get bans anyway. There was even drama between startrek subs because that was happening. I managed to get a permaban on a community with an explanation saying "ACAB". A public modlog doesn't mean shit. A user can't do much against powertripping mods. It absolutely is as easy as it was on reddit, even moreso because there is more of the same community on different instances.
Except on reddit you don't even know you're banned half the time, and have no way to find out.
All of what you're describing happens on reddit and you wouldn't even know for sure if your ACAB comment was the thing that got you banned.
I'm not saying that it's fixed here. But it is improved more or less compared to reddit.
... What's your point. OP said "lemmy isn't immune to this problem". I don't care about whataboutism, we are talking lemmy now.
I didn't get banned for saying "ACAB". I got banned with the reason saying "ACAB".
First, sorry I misunderstood your ACAB statement. It's an unhelpful modlog comment to get, especially in a ban comment. Your experience sounds similar to OP's and my response was rude to not acknowledge that.
I've been more responding to the upstream comment that "lemmy has a chance to be worse on this."
What drove OP away from reddit wasn't just that moderators abused their power. It was that abuse plus the complete lack of feedback and/or rude feedback.
I didn't pick my phrasing carefully before as I meant to argue that lemmy only has the chance to be the same or better due to the modlog. Specifically it offers an option of transparency in moderation that reddit doesn't.
Lemmy still has people who abuse power as mods. And it clearly has rude feedback as an option as you experienced. But for when it's used appropriately that is better than what reddit can offer.
The original comment also claimed that reporting to the instance admin is your only recourse. But creating an account on another instance is a more drastic option that OP can take on lemmy and it's not available on reddit.
And instance admins can use the federation system to block instances that aren't compatible with their values or for other reasons.
My ultimate reasoning for arguing any of this is two parts.
To be honest I had a moderator ban me for proposing an improvement to the sub.
The modlog is public, but most people don't care. And the instance admin didn't want to get involved as that would be "admin power tripping" (which I understand)
Why would that stop anything?
Because the problem OP experienced involves not knowing what's going on and nobody believed them.