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This mod stated that they were the one behind the bans (https://feddit.org/comment/8930413)
So, a mod banning downvotes while using several sockpuppet accounts to vote multiple times.
this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2025
54 points (95.0% liked)
Ye Power Trippin' Bastards
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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.
- YDM new - You Deserved More: The commenter thinks you got off too lightly.
- 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.
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@eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com poking me claiming I'd been "caught lying" about something else needled me to actually look up what I was looking at back when this happened. Here's this post:
So what you're looking at there is what percent of the total votes (up and down) came from a lemmy.dbzer0.com account, and then a breakdown of what came in during any given 15-minute window during the two hours immediately following the post.
Having 30% of the votes come in from a single instance when the post was posted to a busy lemmy.world community is hugely sus, since the percent of Lemmy users who are even on dbzer0.com is so small compared with other instances. And then, that pattern of a huge influx of votes in one direction right after the thing is posted, with a ratio of up to downvotes (and a much higher volume in one direction only) that doesn't match the ratio you see for most of the lifetime, is often an indication of voter fraud or coordinated voting. It's actually even more tightly clustered than it looks like on there, those 7 downvotes all came in during one single 5-minute window of rapid fire downvoting, way more active than any time before or after that 5-minute window. It shows on the lemvotes page which is what the script that made that draws from. A lot of Reddit voter fraud was based on sort of "painting the tape" right when something was posted -- people tend to upvote what's already upvoted and downvote likewise, and it'll have a corresponding impact on putting it in front of people or hiding it from them respectively.
For reference if you want to see, here are examples of what a more normal layout of voting would look like:
See? Looks different, right? Maybe it's just me.
IIRC, at the time you were on a full "dbzer0 has turned power tripping" campaign
7 downvotes, from actual different users from what I can see on the lemvotes page, isn't voter fraud, it's just people probably sharing that post in a group chat, and downvoting it, especially as the post itself is trying to spin some drama against them (it's not clearly stated, but anyone aware of what was happening at the time would have known).
I could create the same kind of posts about any instance in the same circumstances, be it SJW, LW, Blahaj, slrpnk, and get a similar result.
I don't have time now to dig into it right now, but from what I remember you were dead set against dbzer0 at the time. I guess that has changed since the post today about goat and !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works just banning everyone from dbzer0
Yeah, probably. I didn't look too closely but they did look like real accounts from what I saw, and the timing to me seemed absolutely impossible to have happened that way without some kind of coordination. Isn't that the exact type of thing that they described as "abusive" and deserving of a ban when it happened to them, though? That's why I thought it was ironic and hilarious, and why I brought it up when someone else mentioned the exact same behavior from someone else who was banning for downvotes. I do think it's sort of a notable (and obvious in retrospect) confluence of behaviors, for the reasons I explained.
Not really. I don't operate along the lines of "everything my friends do is always fine, everything my enemies do is always bad." I do understand that a lot of people on Lemmy do seem to operate that way, but I just kind of call balls and strikes as I see them.
I'm pretty sure I actually prefaced that whole initial dbzer0 drama by saying that generally I had liked the dbzer0 team in the past, and I spent quite a long time going back and forth with db0 specifically, because if someone I usually think is a decent sort is doing something weird, I feel like they deserve hearing it directly to their face.
Overall, I walked away from that interaction thinking that the dbzer0 authority team is kind of children. I still think that, I think I was giving them minor grief more recently about doing something else that I think was dumb. But it doesn't mean that all of a sudden if goat bans anyone from dbzer0 I'm going to start to go "YEAH THEY'RE THE ENEMY GET EM GET EM." Like I say, I know a lot of people on Lemmy seem to operate that way. I do not. I think goat has been weird about a bunch of stuff (and seems actually malicious, as opposed to the /0 team which seems more just kind of childish but nothing really ill intentioned.)
Hopefully that is allowed. I feel like there's somewhat of a possibility that needling the dbzer0 admins and being publicly critical of them is going to result in them turning into Brendan Carr to my Kimmel and deciding that they're allowed to silence or punish or fight me because of that criticism.... meaning interpreting that in the mold of "dead set against dbzer0" -> "enemy" and reacting accordingly, mirror imaged to the way they react to "positive about dbzer0" -> "friend." Maybe not, the admins themselves haven't really done anything like that so far, but others like the slrpnk admins definitely have. Let's see. My general attitude to speaking my mind is more along the lines of "I can say what I want to say, even if it involves some kind of criticism of somebody, and in particular if I think you're being a blockhead I'm going to tell you about it." IDK what most of Lemmy is doing with their tribalistic alternative to that, but that's how I do it.
I don't have time right now, but as a rule of thumb, calling other people children just because they collectively disagree with you doesn't seem like the best way to operate either.
There can be antagonism between instances, that's inherent to the nature of the platform, pretending it's not the case is probably missing an important part of that platform.
I didn't call them children because they disagreed with me. Plenty of people disagree with me, it comes with the territory of me being an opinionated loudmouth, and honestly it rarely bothers me.
I called them children because they were bullying and banning a trans person when she tried to disagree with their handling of trans issues, while crying about "abuse" if people dared to give their friends downvotes, among other similar behavior.
Citation to remind about specifics if you want it