I generally don't particularly see anything wrong with this. Spam and harassment is a weak point on lemmy and we're all just coasting on good faith that dedicated actors won't abuse it. Having tools to detect harassing isn't a bad thing, especially when they mention the exact cases they're trying to handle. At the end of the day, you need to decide if you trust your admins to handle this appropriately. If you don't, then you can always switch servers or open your own.
this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2026
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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.
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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.
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Expect to receive feedback about your posts, they might even be negative.
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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.
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- 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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Just letting you know that this post has been significantly altered from what it was when I posted this.
Now it looks like this mostly a PR issue where their basement nerd accidentally was allowed to do customer support for a brief second.
It's not power tripping, as you said in a comment.
But it is bullshit, and they can fuck right off with the "too much detail, done locally" shit.
Look, I'm all for auto mod tools. I've been vocal about it being why I would never mod a large community on the fediverse. There's just too much assholery online to not have a tool that filters out the assholes before anyone else is exposed to it.
But, with reddit, anyone could look at the documentation on what auto mod could do. You knew, if you wanted, what was an wasn't possible. You could easily figure out why your comment or post ran afoul of it. Despite the complaints aboue its misuse, it was the thing that made modding a subreddit halfway bearable. And, when used appropriately, it made being part of a sub a much better experience.
But this? The lack of transparency about what's going on, what the tool does, how it does it, just ain't cool. It flies in the face of what the fediverse is supposed to be.
It's llm/ai surveillance without even source available access so a given user can decide to opt the fuck out.
Like I said, a tool like that is a good thing, not a bad one. But not being open is abhorrent for this use.
Edit: for any stragglers, do read the responses made by people from the instance in question before raising any hell. They seem to be on board with providing good info to possible new users and informing current users that might object.
Theres no LLM involved. This version of the post doesnt have the tldr to clarify some things so ill just repost my comment here
- Were not sending data to an LLM but the method is hidden so bad actors cant bypass it (you can disagree on that but the main issue is bots that are able to check blacklisted content and then just edit messages slightly to bypass it)
- The things that are checked are public (posts, comments, and dms that are also sent to other servers we dont control) and can be moderated on regardless of this. There isnt anything that breaches privacy
- Worst thing it can automatically do is temporarily remove a post/comment until an admin can approve or deny it just so its not there for people to run into (for example if someone spams slurs at someone else the someone else doesnt see that instead of it being there until an admin is able to come online)
Aight, that's a great response :)
What I'm taking away from that is that the method is more like what auto mod on reddit did than a separate piece of software running. That, as such, it's something admins have full control over beyond just choosing to have it in place or not; as in an llm would be a closed box with limited ability to influence what goes on inside. And that it's serving pretty much as a filter as opposed to an automated decision maker.
Which is exactly what the fediverse needs tbh, assuming I'm understanding what's being used correctly.
With that assumption in place, my only remaining "bullshit" is in a little more transparency on exactly what it is. Not the details of keywords and such that would allow bots to easily bypass, but as in whether it's some kind of custom built code y'all have put together, vs an externally sourced program. If it's external, then it should definitely be made known where it comes from so that prospective users can make a decision based on that.
yeah pretty much exactly that. It's custom built 100% by our team with no external tools or anything (just a way to notify us using apis). it's technically a separate running code since we can't hook it into the base lemmy code that easily but acts the same way
Not strictly ptb, but just didn’t expect to see something like this anywhere on Lemmy.
We don't have much of a choice.
Not because of real users, but bots. We've seen a huge influx of bots lately, to the point different instances have different solutions.
I know of one instance that is planning on removing all comments and posts of users that delete within a week of being created, as there is a group with an agenda doing this.
Well, auto-remove feature looks like a bit too much for me, especially with no clear write-up on rules it follows - getting unexpected automated false positive bans often sucks a lot emotionally; good thing you've announced it at least.
I have an opinion (just a personal vision on the big picture, I have no desire to instill it in others) that whenever we start needing automated tools like these in Fediverse, it's a sign that decentralization concept starts failing locally and it's time to federate more: make more servers with smaller governance.
I personally think new user monitoring is bad.