this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2026

98 points (79.9% liked)

Ye Power Trippin' Bastards

1772 readers

1 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.
Keep the comments in YPTB posts about the moderation action itself, not about the general topic in which the moderation took place.

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

!fediverselore@lemmy.ca

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com

Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com

unruffled@anarchist.nexus

Apparently, you can't downvote if you have no comments/posts in your account (lemmy.today)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by Lirton@lemmy.today to c/yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com

91 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Not my account, but want to advocate for it. Because of, personally, I find it hilarious.

So, it seems like a mod with username MysticMushroom1776 @lemmy.dbzer0.com has some interesting policies about interacting with their content.

I agree that this user called PyroRondo has no content for 5 months straight. This is unusual but totally isn't against any rules of Lemmy.

As I suspect, they reacted to a few posts of MysticMushroom1776 @lemmy.dbzer0.com during random session of content scrolling. No brigading or any other types of harassment. I even suspect that these reactions were in communities connected to mod's AI art, not political ones.

And this for some reason triggered a ban in all comunities. Not in 1 or 2. Moreover, it seems like this mod uses specialized tools, that allow to track downvotes on their content made by other users with ability to get their usernames. I may be wrong, but I don't think that such tools are basic for moderators on Lemmy.

Edit: typo.

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] commiunism@lemmy.dbzer0.com 57 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Yeah unless there's an actual attack where a bunch of throwaway accounts mass-downvote certain posts, banning a single individual for daring to downvote is wild

It's also my first time seeing that vote-viewing website and it's honestly a bit insane that this quirk is part of Lemmy design ngl

[–] xep@discuss.online 40 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Federated voting means both up and downvotes have to be shared.

[–] Natanael@slrpnk.net 9 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Yes but it doesn't have to share usernames to anything but the originating server for the vote and host server for the content. All others only need the sum.

This does still mean instance admins can do broad bans. There's other privacy techniques if that matters like cryptographic blind signatures for voting, etc, where you can know each user only cast one vote (and can see totals per originating server) without revealing the specific users.

In theory you could also make this ban compliant (such that you can't vote if you're banned, but if you're not and cast a vote you still can't be identified).

If you do extra fancy stuff like transparency logs with anonymous credentials and secure multiparty computation (MPC) you could do it while still allowing abuse detection. Although for now that's very complicated and compute heavy 🤷

[–] grue@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If you actually understand how to implement all that maybe you should go contribute to PieFed.

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Piefed already tried exactly that and had to revert because it's indistinguishable from vote manipulation

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] Azzu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 1 month ago

I don't quite see why up+downvotes wouldn't be public. Everything you post is public, up/downvotes can be used by bots (and posts are actually heavily influenced by them on reddit), so it makes sense that you can see who down/upvoted what.

Of course it's an additional tool for people to abuse, but if they're the type of people who do that, then they're going to find some way to abuse something anyway.

[–] Luminous5481@anarchist.nexus 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

it's a sockpuppet account used to mass downvote. likely ran by the person who just created OPs account. literally the only thing the account has done is downvote all but a single post.

[–] commiunism@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Actually yeah that might be it, https://lemvotes.org/user/PyroRondo@lemmy.world shows that they essentially just mass downvoted every post of Mystic Mushroom in like a span of a minute.

Nevermind then

[–] Luminous5481@anarchist.nexus 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

yeah, this happens probably once a week to Mystic. @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com @flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com can we get some mod action on this account, it's def a sockpuppet.

[–] Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 month ago

If this account doesn't look like a downvote troll account then wtf does?

[–] Lirton@lemmy.today 9 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I bet 10 dollars, that mod hasn't even send a message to that person asking what that was a thing.

[–] UniversalMonk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

One time I sent a dm to someone who was mass downvoting in my communities and just asked what was up. They then commented somewhere in some thread, saying that it was so inappropriate for me to send an email asking them why they were downvoting so many things. And lots of people were agreeing with them. So in my experience, sending a DM is not taken very well. So I don't. I just ban.

But hey, if you hate every single thing in my community, then you shouldn't be upset about being banned from it. You hate it anyway, right? :)

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's also my first time seeing that vote-viewing website and it's honestly a bit insane that this quirk is part of Lemmy design ngl

It's kind of in the nature of the fediverse.

For the most part though it just proves that you don't know why people upvote or downvote something until they post. Otherwise it just reveals chronic haters.

Like, I got a couple haters that downvote my post history periodically. I know it's just primarily just a proud german nationalist and an australian racist that can't stand to see my username.

But I do see that people use vote lookups to provoke fights and, well, pursue people for their votes, which is kind of silly.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 33 points 1 month ago (24 children)

Moreover, it seems like this mod uses specialized tools, that allow to track downvotes on their content made by other users with ability to get their usernames. I may be wrong, but I don’t think that such tools are basic for moderators on Lemmy.

That information is readily available. For example: https://lemvotes.org/

[–] homes@piefed.world 33 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If you are that obsessed with individual votes on a comment or a post, you’re spending far too much time here

[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 14 points 1 month ago

Agreed.

[–] FlordaMan@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It’s open for admins to see. So lemmyvotes either hosts their own instance or has admin access to one, and then just relays that.

[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 13 points 1 month ago

Exactly. Anyone in the fediverse can arbitrarily become an admin, simply by deciding to host an instance.

load more comments (22 replies)

[–] MysticMushroom1776@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (7 children)

Looks like this account and their main got what they deserved. I don't know why anyone would lie about something so easy to prove or disprove. Mods can see votes, so can admins. They're also easily viewable on Lemvotes.org.

This isn't organic voting, anyone can see that.

[–] Hadley@piefed.social 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

this looks similar to maddddddddddddddddd@sh.itjust.works, and oji@lemmy.world is the more organic kind you can see when finding someone oji hates you see theres mass downvote within short interval time

load more comments (6 replies)

[–] Pogogunner@sopuli.xyz 23 points 1 month ago

So in general, I agree that moderators who ban people for downvoting are absolutely PTB, and are basically engaging in vote manipulation themselves through their actions.

In this case however, we're looking at an account that has upvoted 1 post and downvoted 49 (With no comment interaction whatsoever) in the span of 3 minutes. This is a pretty clear downvoting account.

This is with you being banned from the same communities 3 days ago, which I understand is great motivation to look at the moderation practices, but the fact that you're posting about another users bans, rather than your own is suspicious with regards to the accusations in this thread of it being your sockpuppet.

If you want to discuss your bans by this mod, I would be interested in the conversation. But this user deserves the ban.

[–] Luminous5481@anarchist.nexus 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

an account only used to downvote, being championed by a new account with no history. did your sockpuppet getting banned bother you that much?

[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 month ago

Gotta love how Hexbear is okay with harassing our community when they support the cause.

[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Account made to downvote/stalk a community, they deserved it.

And fuck the Hexbear users defending the banned account because they hate the content. Fucking jackasses.

[–] UniversalMonk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Yep. This happened to my communities, and STILL happens when I create a community. When I create a new one, I have to immediately pre-ban like 12 usernames that just downvote my posts, regardless of content immediately after I post.

Sure, I guess they are allowed to do that. But I'm also allowed to ban them for it. :)

load more comments (2 replies)

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Has noone told the mods of the 90/9/1 rule of the Internet? 90% lurkers, 9% commenters, and then the rare 1% that actually post stuff.

[–] KernelPanic@anarchist.nexus 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

An account that performs no activity other than issuing fifty downvotes within a single minute is highly unlikely to be operated by a human, much less a typical user. This pattern is strongly indicative of an automated sockpuppet account, which explains why the dbzer0 administrators chose to ban it once the behavior was brought to their attention.

Appreciation to @lirton@lemmy.today for highlighting the issue and enabling appropriate action to be taken.

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments