I cannot repost what Flying Squid was posting here, because it involved highly disturbing and dangerous content, including:
Content Warning
Graphic content, harassment, self-harm, and suicidal ideation, which I reported immediately.
While this behavior is shocking, it’s not completely out of left field, as members of this community and platform will already be familiar with their behavior. Flying Squid has long been regarded as one of the least productive and most problematic mods on all of Lemmy, often picking fights and abusing their mod privileges. I view this change as a positive step for Squid, .world, and Lemmy as a whole.
And the sick thing is we have been CALLING THIS GUY OUT FOREVER. The .world admins are ABSOLUTELY partially at fault for this for letting this user have the power they have had for so fucking long. Sorry for shouting I’m upsetti. 🙃
+1 to your edit though. The content was so vile and triggering, I was not up to the task. So, fair warning to anyone who wants to further investigate a case where every party is so obviously in the wrong. Tread carefully.
The mods aren't the only ones at fault either. He got so much support for this insanity. Call out his BS? Get asked for evidence. Provide text book evidence and it isn't enough. Be clearly in the right from a PTB and downvoted 10:1. The one time he's not technically being a PTB, but rather exhibiting symptoms of manic-depression, and people defend him saying 'this post isn't appropriate' when the history makes it absolutely so. All you upvoting MFs in the past have been cheering a clearly insane person, so maybe do a personal inventory of what seems rational to you and double check reality eh?
I'd be cheering for his removal except he's still mod of a few communities I'd like to participate in. L.W admins need to delete all his content and ban the IP address. I for one can't wait to never see that name on Lemmy ever again and I know I'm not alone.
I'm not a fan of his moderation style, but isn't the last paragraph a bit much?
It'd only be enforcing what probably is going to happen voluntarily anyways. My guess is it will be months before he uses the account again because he'll want the drama of 'did he do it?' to play out. (edit: turns out he could only wait 24hr, guess he is less patient than I assumed)
If I thought it wasn't too much I wouldn't have said it, and you saying it is literally supports the first paragraph (edit: which makes it a hilarious joke if that was your intention). He shouldn't be on Lemmy. The damage he's done over time is incalculable and what good would come of letting him back on? Besides it's not like even that could stop him anyways.
I agree he shouldn't be moderating any community. But IP banning him from the whole site seems too much.
What the fuck? What is this comment?
I definitely think, at this point, that there is a little cabal of people who are devoted to harassing FlyingSquid, not just about his moderation but on a personal level, and they aren't stopping even when it sounds like he is clearly mentally struggling right now. That's fucked up. Don't do that.
You said "call out his BS, get asked for evidence, show evidence, it isn't enough" along with a lot of personal attacks towards FlyingSquid. What is your evidence of him being a PTB? Literally the only thing I have seen after asking this question a few times is that he sometimes argues with people, and a few months ago made a mistake on a report and didn't realize that multiple copies of the same message were all different reports about duplicated spam content, IDK, some weird honest-mistake situation like that. And he's rude to people sometimes. Nothing about banning people unnecessarily, or setting arbitrary rules for content removal, or anything like that, which is normally what I think of as PTB. Not "arguing."
What is your evidence for him being a PTB? I promise, it'll be "enough," I'll take it seriously if there is any.
Definitely. I haven’t seen evidence (though I might be wrong) that it’s any more than one user with a bunch of discuss.online alts. One of their alts DMd me immediately after Squid’s removal saying “you’re welcome” as though I am thankful for harassment just because I don’t like the guy. Honestly I hope this user doing the harassment gets IP banned. Imagine taking pride in provoking someone’s mental health. Freakish.
Thanks for pointing this out
For what it's worth, I just had a look at !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com and couldn't find any documented example of actual power tripping naming him. Maybe the posts about him didn't use his nickname. Maybe there was nothing about him in the first place. Definitely not a clear case.
Edit: https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&actionType=ModBanFromCommunity&userId=580006, see other comment
I've directly asked a few different people who claimed he was a PTB what it was that he did, and it's always some kind of bizarrely hyped-up misdemeanor. Every time. Not even "he banned this person who arguably wasn't actually a troll, but it's a gray area" but literally like "he sent this person a rude comment while they were in an argument OH THE HUMANITY." It's actually always the same two or three examples from four to six months ago. And they're always incredibly vocal and emotional about how terrible he is.
I'm not trying to get involved in lemmy.world moderator drama. I haven't even looked into this latest thing with him posting self-harm things. But I've formed a much more firm opinion, just as of today, that there is some kind of organized effort to drum him out of being a moderator, which seems to be succeeding.
To be fair, even if there's no evidence of actual power tripping (e.g. banning users without reasons), the way he interacts with users is still not ideal as a moderator.
Using an alt to moderate would already help in that regard, as he wouldn't be able to threaten "I'll ban you" in the middle of an argument
Recent example: https://lemmy.world/comment/14488436
In this case the user indeed seems to be trolling, but just banning them without further comment would probably more effective than commenting like he did, which can contribute to the PTB reputation
Yeah, picking the argument with the user in the first place didn't seem like a smart move. I think he likes to argue with people on the internet, which is fine obviously, but it's better to keep it separate from being a moderator. I agree with you that it's not exactly power tripping, but he shouldn't have been in the argument in the first place and he was absolutely the primary aggressor.
Agreed
https://biglemmowski.win/post/3776122/6537167
I already talked about that one, and found your explanation for why that was a horrible thing for him to say pretty unconvincing, but sure, I'll look into it more. Who was he talking to? Where was this so I can see the comments context? I already gave my reaction but maybe if I looked at the full context, I would feel differently, and it's so old a comment that it's not on my instance and obviously I'm not going to look through 4+ months of comments to find it and see the context for myself.
Lemmy's search is quite good: https://lemmy.world/comment/11470634
Got it, thanks. So FS had an extended argument with two people with a certain amount of embitteredness on both sides of the argument, in a community he moderates, and then at some point in this extended argument, he mentioned in passing that the person he was talking to seemed like a habitual rule-breaker, also.
I can't find the user anymore, which usually means their account was deleted at the home instance, right?
https://biglemmowski.win/u/Timii
Am I wrong about that? That kind of makes it sound like FS might have had a point about how that person was talking in bad faith in that particular argument, and also in some of their other on-Lemmy conduct. Right?
I stand by my assessment. Maybe you could say there's no point in FS getting in that long and fairly pointless argument with two separate people, but I don't think his POV in the argument was wrong, and there's absolutely nothing of PTB anywhere in there. If this is some of the best example you can find going back through six months of heavy Lemmy participation and moderation, I have no idea why anyone thinks FS is "insane" or needs their moderator abilities taken away. IDK, I haven't looked into the recent stuff so maybe they are unstable and it's better if they're not in authority, but still not a PTB in my opinion.
He literally says out loud he went through a users comment history looking for ammunition.
do you know who you're talking to?
Which seems reasonable to assess whether the user is a troll or bad faith actor
Whatever. Ya'll proving my point. He has a cabal of users that make excuses and gave him tons of leeway and support when he clearly doesn't deserve it. Those users experience are just what I found quickly. I've seen numerous arguments where he ends it with mod action. Him claiming there's a good reason for it is BS when it is clearly his MO: argue with people and ban on loss.
Regardless. He's ... gone... World News et al are def going to be better for it.
Then just show them. Seriously. The closest I got was this example, but in this case the other user is indeed trolling, so it's not even power tripping.
Edit: https://lemmy.world/comment/14488436
Ding ding ding lol
It's like "how DARE you be doing moderation of users when you are a MODERATOR, and having disagreements with people, the shame."
I do that too, in a freelance capacity, although I've also been accused of that being a terrible thing to do. But it honestly makes perfect sense to me. If I've been arguing with someone who is insisting that trans men are women and not just that but being totally weird about their conduct of the conversation, I will yes start to wonder after a certain point what their deal even is, and look into it.
Wait.
Why on earth does this complaint not apply to you digging through FlyingSquid's history to find something he said to someone six months ago, and telling other people he is insane and needs to be IP-banned and all his content removed, because of, for example, that thing he said to that one user six months ago?
lul. You asked for proof. I supplied it. That's the difference. I have actual reasons to say what I say. You support him blindly just because ?
Oh, I think it's entirely reasonable to look through someone's history and find stuff that gives context about their behavior, and fair game to bring up examples if people are talking about them, so that people can reference objective things which may or may not justify the conclusions or personal attacks that are being made about that person. I'm just saying that it sounds like you don't think it should be allowed, apparently, except when you do it.
Update: some pointed pointed about the ban from this user 5 months ago: https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&actionType=ModBanFromCommunity&userId=580006
I don't have much more context unfortunately
What, return2ozma, the precursor to UniversalMonk? That's the PTB is that FlyingSquid banned him?
He's calmed down recently, but he used to be pretty spammy and unapologetic about it. He was finally banned "officially" because he basically said that he was seeking out specifically anti-Biden stuff and posting a steady stream of it to make sure that side of the story got some heavy airtime on Lemmy, as if there was a shortage of it. I'm not convinced that that should be the final straw in terms of handing someone a ban, but there was broad agreement from the mod team that he should be banned.
It also, as far as I can tell, wasn't FlyingSquid that banned him. Unless it was from an alt used for admin, or something?
https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&actionType=ModBanFromCommunity&modId=477305&userId=580006
Edit: Update: Here's all the actions that FS took against return2ozma. Looks pretty legit to me.
https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&modId=477305&userId=580006
TIL, then I'm surprised he didn't get banned earlier.
Wait, aren't bans impossible to trace to the mod who did them? I remember this being something to avoid mod harassment
Yeah, Jordan made a whole specific post explaining about the ban, it was that big an issue. That's why I called him the precursor. He was stumping for third parties and flooding various channels with reasons why Biden is the worst, every single day, and they let him do it for quite a while before eventually taking action on it.
Interesting