this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2025
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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.
YPTB 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.
Relevant comms
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I don't see how I've done any mental gymnastics here. I've given you my logic plainly.
No? The intent doesn't matter. I can't know why someone is bulk downvoting, but all the same - if it's all they're doing, I reserve the right to ban them for negatively decreasing the visibility of posts on the community without having any evidence of engagement via posts or comments. If it seems they fundamentally dislike the entire community itself, then I will ban them. It doesn't happen very often though.
I refer you to my !metal@lemmy.world example.
In what ways should the system change here? I don't necessarily think the upvote-downvote system is sacrosanct and irreplaceable, but it's clearly going nowhere anytime soon - so I work within the confines of that.
How could I do that?
Perfection. Thanks:
Your example is my example for how you keep changing the goalposts and trying to frame the people we are talking about as acting with malicious intent.
Yea no I would not have imagined more than that from you.
Great excuse 10/10 moral high ground statement
How is that changing the goalposts? It's exactly the type of scenario I'm referring to here. People who have no interest in a community just instantly downvoting any post they see from there.
I obviously can't know what the intent of someone who say, mass-downvotes every post on !television@piefed.social is (the community I run) but the impact is the same. If they downvote almost everything on there, and never post or comment, they obviously aren't that interested in it.
What? You realise I am not a Lemmy dev, right?
Excuse for what?
Intent does matter intent doesn't matter you really are confusing me dude I can't imagine this is easy for you, either.
It would be wrong to think only a developer could fix something especially when it isn't broken technically.
Your actions?
In terms of mass downvoting, it doesn't. From my perspective, they would just be a user who downvotes every post and who has no interest in the topic of the community. My instinct is that they likely just don't like the community.
You're right, the downvote-upvote system is working as intended - and community moderators respond as they choose to towards it. I think it's working much closer to "as intended" compared to Reddit actually.
They're not excuses, they're perfectly valid and justifiable reasons.
So now it is EVERY post and you know how they feel about a community? Has anyone you banned in the past met these latest requirements?
It shifts blame it is an excuse that is extremely basic. You should have absolutely no authority you are stupid as fuck
Most posts. And I obviously don't know, but I'm thinking if someone comes into a community and downvotes everything that they probably just don't like it. It's not that deep.
Shifts blame to what? Who is blaming anyone?
So you're getting personal now?
I absolutely do literally have 'authority' over the community I run, and it's considered entirely acceptable by most instance owners for community owners/mods to ban people for mass downvoting without post/comment contribution.
Your own words... You described an excuse. It's kinda interesting to watch you deny things you said 2 posts ago like when you said multiple times you never called anyone a troll but it's like right there for all to read...
Is every explanation according to you an excuse?
Ah yes, my original post (I was quoting myself as I've had these discussions before) was "downvote trolls". I missed that. Fine. Just "downvoters" then. People who downvote every post in a community. I'm thinking if someone does that, they simply don't like the community and it's completely reasonable to ban them for it if you find it damaging to the posts that they downvote.
I don't believe there's ever a particularly good reason for someone to mass-downvote every post on a community - and in doing so they risk getting banned from the community. This is public knowledge on the Fediverse at this point.
When explaining your actions and you justify it by blaming something else... Wait because you didn't intend for it to be an excuse you think it isn't an excuse?
Ah yes, you miss a lot. Yes yes I know you have painted pictures in your head of people based on meta data you dislike, that is what I am saying is part of the problem.
Blaming what? It just is. Some people spend their time on the fediverse downvoting entire communities. As a result of that they risk getting banned from those communities. As I said, it's not that deep.
I don't think about these users full stop. I just see that an account is mass-downvoting all content in a community I moderate and ban. When it happens. It's pretty rare.
Yes but the people you banned didn't mass downvote all content in the community you run. We covered this already, you need to make leaps of judgement in order to justify this to yourself because you know what you are doing is wrong. No it isn't deep.
No, not literally every post. But a good chunk of them. And none of them had ever commented or made any posts. So I banned them. Some of them had no post or comment history whatsoever, as I said.
Why is it wrong? They never interacted there, (or even on the fediverse at all in some cases) and they just downvoted a lot of posts, sometimes straight out of the box. It was a pattern I observed and after observing it for a while, I banned the users who did it.
You tell me I am not the one making broad leaps of judgement to justify my actions to myself.
I think it's perfectly reasonable to think that a user who never posts or comments on a community, but instead chooses to just bulk downvote content has no real interest in the community and therefore can be justifiably banned if the community moderator deems their downvoting damaging.
In all cases, by the way, the accounts I did ban also had a mod-log of history of doing it elsewhere. They were just downvote accounts.
If that was true why did you come to this thread in the first place. No dude, you came in hard trying to justify banning random people based on your feeling. Yes downvote accounts should be banned but they aren't really relevant to the discussion other than you trying to frame normal people as them.
To give my opinion. Why are you still here?
They aren't banned randomly. I've told you why they get banned. We're talking about accounts that downvote a lot of posts within a community.
They weren't "normal people" in this context. Each account I banned were accounts that had a long history over the platform of mass-downvoting many communities and being banned from many other communities from doing so. As I said, some of them didn't even seem to use the platform to post or comment. All they did was downvote. You're berating me for responding like this to habitual community downvoters, when it's clear that it's a normality on the platform to begin with. Most communities will respond negatively to this. Users coming into a community to just downvote lots of posts has always been frowned on.
As for "framing them" - why would I ban accounts on that reason who didn't really do that?
Are you under the impression I engaged with you first? You saw this thread, saw my comment, felt challenged then decided to try justify your actions and you want to have a cry about being replied to? If you feel I am berating you stop replying to me and I'll stop responding take some fucking responsibility jackass. You have been all over the place with denying your own words, making up poor excuses then not understanding what an excuse is, constantly changing goal posts to justify your poor actions it's just non fucking stop with you isn't it. You have no integrity you could at the very least apologize for very weirdly attempting to deny your own words. I mean that was just weird yea hindsight 20/20 you are just a dumb person but you could still apologized for it. You know the difference between right and wrong, right?
Well sure, I initially replied to your comments in the thread about downvoting to provide wider context to why community mods sometimes ban people for downvoting. Because the cumulative impact of repeat downvoters is to negatively impact the spread of content from a community, weakening the ability for the moderators to grow it.
I didn't feel personally challenged on this point.
Are you back to throwing insults again? Do I need to point out the rules of the community to you?
And you reply to me, and I'll reply back if I have something else to say. I've always operated like this. My point about berating here is that banning for repeat downvoting is a normal fediverse practice done by a lot of moderators. You're pissing in the wind complaining about this.
I've given explanations. I don't consider an explanation the same as an excuse. I'm not bound by your semantics.
I missed what I said initially in my opening post to you because it was an old copy and paste from myself that I bring out on this issue. In any case, are you really hung up on this? Whether or not I think they are "trolls" or not doesn't change the fact that I would ban mass-downvoters all the same.
I don't see any reason to apologise to someone currently hurling insults at me. Especially when I didn't insult you in the first place. You're hung up over a descriptor.
ahaha you did think that
personally?
Wow you operate in such a way where you reply to people who reply to you?
It isn't my semantics it's the part of the language we are speaking. It's uhm not really up for interpretation either. I think it would help if you understood that just because it is an excuse, doesn't inherently make it wrong. What makes it an excuse it is an explanation or justification which moves responsibility from one thing to something else. That should help you.
FTFY
You didn't apologize before I hurled descriptors at you. I mean it wouldn't make a difference now I had to tell you that it was the right thing to do. That fact that you never thought of doing the right thing is what matters here. Actually you keep trying to double down and dismiss it rather than just bite the bullet. Hung up? Judging you based on your actions buddy.
Whether or not downvoting in bulk is "trolling" or not, or is seen as that doesn't change that I would ban people for doing it on communities that I run. It is a descriptor that changes nothing here.
I don't see at all why it is wrong to choose to ban a user who only interacts with your community by downvoting lots of posts.