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Moderator abuse: Request for review and removal of Decoy321@lemmy.world (thelemmy.club)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by Grumpus_Maximus@thelemmy.club to c/support@lemmy.world

13 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I am requesting an admin review of the moderation actions of Decoy321@lemmy.world in:

[!lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world](/c/lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world)
[!shitposts@piefed.world](/c/shitposts@piefed.world)

Specifically, I am requesting review of two bans imposed on me, removal of the characterization of my posts as racist where no reasonable basis for that characterization exists, and review of whether Decoy321 should continue moderating these communities.

Context

These are shitposting communities. Merriam-Webster defines shitpost as:

“to post something online (such as a comment, video, or meme) that is deliberately absurd, provocative, or offensive”

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shitpost

Provocative or offensive humor is therefore not, by itself, evidence that content is racist, harassing, or otherwise prohibited. Obviously, shitposting does not override an instance's rules against genuinely racist or abusive content, but moderation should distinguish between those things.

First ban -

I had been actively contributing memes to [!lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world](/c/lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world), including reposting content from Reddit's /r/shitposting.

After dozens of contributions, Decoy321 banned me for one week over this post:

https://thelemmy.club/post/53660620

The reason given was:

rule 1 violation. don't post racist shit. take a week off

The same meme remains publicly available on /r/shitposting:

https://www.reddit.com/r/shitposting/comments/1vc34os/cueta_spain_right_now/

I dispute the moderator's characterization of this post as racist. More importantly, I would like the admins to review the post themselves and determine what specific element of the content constitutes racism under the community or instance rules.

Calling a user racist or their contributions “racist shit” is a serious characterization. It should have an identifiable factual and rules-based basis rather than simply reflecting a moderator's personal interpretation of provocative humor.

Second ban -

After the first incident, I began contributing to [!shitposts@piefed.world](/c/shitposts@piefed.world).

At the time, this was a very low-activity community, averaging roughly one post per week. I made a substantial effort to contribute content and help build activity there.

I did not initially realize that Decoy321 also moderated this community.

After what became hundreds of contributions, Decoy321 permanently banned me following this post:

https://thelemmy.club/post/54265031

The same post was publicly available on /r/shitposting when I reposted it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/shitposting/comments/1vlso8s/_/

This time I received a permanent community ban without an explanation identifying what rule the post violated or why a permanent ban was warranted.

I am asking the admins to review both the content itself and the proportionality of that action.

Why I am requesting moderator review

My concern isn't simply that I disagree with two moderation decisions.

There appears to be a pattern in which an active contributor is subjected to increasingly severe sanctions based on a moderator's subjective interpretation of shitposting content, without a clear connection to the communities' published rules.

A moderator is obviously entitled to remove content that violates community rules. But removing a questionable post is very different from repeatedly banning an active contributor - and ultimately permanently banning them - without clearly identifying the rule violation warranting that escalation.

This is particularly concerning for [!shitposts@piefed.world](/c/shitposts@piefed.world), which already has very little activity. Removing prolific contributors through unexplained permanent bans actively works against building a healthy community.

I am not asking admins to agree with every meme I've posted. I am asking for consistent, rules-based and proportionate moderation.

If either post violates a specific rule, I would like that rule and violation explained. If it does not, then the resulting bans should not stand.

Requested resolution

I respectfully request that the Lemmy.world/PieFed.world administration:

Review and reverse my permanent ban from [!shitposts@piefed.world](/c/shitposts@piefed.world) if the admins determine that the cited post did not justify that sanction.
Review Decoy321's moderation history involving my account, including the earlier ban from [!lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world](/c/lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world).
Review whether Decoy321 should continue serving as a moderator of [!shitposts@piefed.world](/c/shitposts@piefed.world) and [!lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world](/c/lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world) given the pattern described above.
Remove or correct moderation records characterizing my content as racist if the administration determines that the posts did not violate rules prohibiting racist content.
Clarify what specific community or instance rules justified these actions if the administration determines that the bans were appropriate.

I am happy to accept moderation when I actually violate a published rule. What I am objecting to is being labeled as posting racist material and ultimately permanently excluded from a community based on standards that do not appear in its rules.

I would appreciate an independent review by an administrator rather than another decision by the moderator whose conduct is the subject of this complaint.

cc: @ieh@lemmy.world

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[–] ieh@lemmy.world 7 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Okay, consultation with admins completed, thank you for your patience.

First of all, thank you for bringing your concerns to our attention.

After reviewing the two posts in question, as well as a number of your other posts and comments, I have concerns about a few more of your posts and comments beyond those two posts. Were I a moderator in that subreddit, I would have removed rather a lot more.

The two posts removed are unquestionably offensive. One depends on viewing immigrants as dehumanized invaders, and the other uses the offensive "R" word that is ableist.

Moderators are not required to give warnings in lieu of bans or tempbans. The seven day tempban was your warning.

The moderator was well within their rights on both actions taken.

In addition, I saw a number of comments that I would have absolutely removed as uncivil, but the moderator makes those calls.

While it is true that there are not formal rules against things such as racist content, and it is also true that moderators are encouraged to note which rule(s) violated when removing content, simple common sense comes into play here.

While I didn't read every single comment extremely deeply, I would like to note that the liklihood of reddit provocateurs trying to push people back into using reddit is vanishngly small.

I would also like to mention that what is tolerated on one social media platform is not necessarily tolerated on all. Just because one doesn't remove racism doesn't mean all will so refrain.

In brief: While you may or may not be racist or ableist, that is not up for debate. The moderator's actions in removing the content and temp/permabanning was absolutely appropriate.

[–] Grumpus_Maximus@thelemmy.club 1 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

Thank you for taking the time to review this with the other admins.

I understand the decision, even though I fundamentally disagree with it.

What I am struggling with is the standard being applied here. You state that whether I am racist or ableist is “not up for debate,” which I appreciate. But at the same time, a moderator is permitted to publicly characterize my contributions as “racist shit” and impose a ban on that basis.

That distinction matters to me. If you're unwilling to characterize me as racist based on these posts, I don't think a moderator should be casually assigning that characterization either.

I'm also having difficulty reconciling the acknowledgement that these communities do not have formal rules covering some of this content with the conclusion that permanent bans for such content are nevertheless entirely appropriate based on “simple common sense.”

This is a shitposting community. The entire genre involves absurd, provocative, offensive and intentionally tasteless humor. That obviously doesn't mean absolutely anything must be permitted, but if particular categories of offensive humor are prohibited, I think those boundaries should be stated in the rules rather than discovered after the fact through bans.

Otherwise, we're effectively asking users to follow rules that aren't written down and allowing individual moderators to decide where an invisible line is.

That brings me to one clarification I'd genuinely appreciate:

If I create and moderate my own community on Lemmy.world, am I permitted to establish community rules that explicitly allow provocative, offensive, and tasteless shitposting - including the types of posts I previously shared that resulted in my bans?

For example, I would want to make it explicit that content isn't removed merely because somebody finds it offensive, crude or in poor taste.

Would I be allowed to post the posts that got me banned in my own shitposting community on lemmy world?

If that's permitted, then I think creating a community with clearly defined expectations may simply be the better solution.

[–] ieh@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I actually misspoke in my previous reply.

https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/#12-discrimination-against-minority--at-risk-groups

1.2 Discrimination against minority / at-risk groups

Lemmy.World specifically forbids any sort of discrimination against queer groups on this site. Any form of racism, regardless of the user(s) that perpetrated it, is also forbidden. As already stated in Section 1, calls for violence against the aforementioned groups can result in a site-wide ban. We also reserve the right to report the offending user(s) to their local law enforcement unit responsible for hate crimes.

I had had an earlier version pulled up, or at least one posted elsewhere. I had thought I'd remembered something like the above, but when I couldn't find it, assumed I'd hallucinated it.

I saw your new community. It seems clear to me that the moderator there is gonna be an alt user of yours, which as far as I'm aware, is generally fine. So if that is indeed true, you would be responsible for ensuring that racist material is not posted.

Social media like Lemmy is not perfect or fast. We are all volunteers here, from admins to moderators. Moderators depend on community membes to report what they don't see; admins depend on community members as well as moderators to point out problems. So just because not everything against the rules is removed does not mean it is not still against the rules.

I had actually quickly scanned posts in your new community, and I didn't see anything that lept out as racist to me. And indeed with your previous posts, it was only a few things that were problematic posts.

But to again explicitely answer your question: You are not allowed to have rules for your community that violate the rules of lemmy.world. As to whether you might fly below the radar, as it were - well, your chances were better before you got my attention. :) But this is not a threat of any kind, it's just acknowledgement that I'm more likely to notice your name around here, especially as you post a lot, and especially because the /c/shitposts posts have been taking up a bit of the queue in the "six hour" top posts, which is what I tend to browse most.

So to also say: I personally don't care one way or the other about shitposts. They aren't my thing, but I'm happy to see a lot of things posted that aren't my thing, that's the nice thing about a place that has many communities. And I tend to browse the entire queue because I like encountering new things.

But you've got to figure out how to not bring over and post stuff that is racist.

You state that whether I am racist or ableist is “not up for debate,” which I appreciate. But at the same time, a moderator is permitted to publicly characterize my contributions as “racist shit” and impose a ban on that basis.

I think you misunderstand slightly.

It is not up for debate — that is not the debate we are having in this thread. It is not necessarily a settled debate, although I don't think you are intending to be racist. But it really doesn't matter. The reason I said that is because what DOES matter is that the POSTS you made were racist, and in one case I saw, ableist.

Those posts are racist and the mod was absolutely justified in removing them and discouraging you from posting them again by use of the tempban, and when that didn't work, the permaban.

Could they have done things differently? Yes - a weaker response you would have preferred, or a stronger one you would have liked less - both would be in the range of what's acceptable.

As it stands, they did not remove other posts of yours that are racist, nor did they remove comments of yours that were attacks on others (slightly higher in that link I sent than the section I quoted addresses attacking other community members). So in that sense, while you didn't get warned, your posts/comments were also not removed.

The best solution, in my humble opinion, is to try your best to follow the site rules.

Would I be allowed to post the posts that got me banned in my own shitposting community on lemmy world?

I don't have a clear feel for exactly what it takes for us to step in when a moderator is not enforcing the sitewide rules, but in theory, at some point, we would have a need to step in.

[–] Grumpus_Maximus@thelemmy.club 0 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

Thanks, that clarifies the rules around my own community.

I think we're probably talking past each other slightly on the main issue.

I genuinely do not care if a moderator needs to remove an individual meme. If an admin or moderator looks at something and decides it crosses a site-wide line, remove it. That's not really what bothers me.

What bothers me is treating the characterization of these posts as “unquestionably racist” and then using that characterization to justify escalating bans.

The meme that resulted in the racism accusation came directly from Reddit and remains up there. I understand your point that Reddit's moderation decisions don't determine Lemmy.world's rules. But Reddit also explicitly prohibits racist content, so its continued presence there is at least evidence that reasonable moderators can look at the same meme and not conclude that it is obviously racist.

That doesn't prove Reddit got it right. But it does make me uncomfortable with the idea that Decoy's interpretation is simply an objective fact rather than a moderator making a subjective judgment about an offensive joke.

That's really the distinction I'm trying to make.

If the standard is:

“We think this joke crosses our line, so we're removing it.”

Fine. I can live with that.

If the standard becomes:

“This is unquestionably racist content; therefore we're justified in treating you as someone who repeatedly posts racist material and escalating from temporary to permanent bans.”

I think that requires a much stronger basis, particularly when the content is ambiguous enough to remain acceptable on another major platform with similar prohibitions against racism.

As for the comments you characterized as attacks or harassment, I would also ask that their context be considered. The comments you're referring to were responses to people attacking or insulting me first. That doesn't necessarily make every response of mine appropriate, and I'm perfectly willing to accept criticism for going too far in a response. But there's an important difference between someone initiating harassment and someone responding -perhaps too aggressively - to hostility directed at them.

And regarding my earlier comment about Reddit provocateurs: My point is - practical outcome of @Decoy321@lemmy.world style of moderation is indistinguishable from what a Reddit agent would do.

https://piefed.world/c/shitposts was barely active when I started contributing to it. I then contributed hundreds of posts and substantially increased its activity. Permanently banning only people actually supplying that content has effectively stopped those contributions and pushed that activity elsewhere.

That's exactly the outcome somebody trying to keep users on Reddit rather than building competing communities would want.

I'm pointing out that the effect of the moderation is remarkably aligned with that outcome: discourage prolific contributors, reduce activity in an alternative community, and make Reddit the easier place to find and share this type of content.

Ultimately, I'm not asking for immunity from moderation. I'm asking for some proportionality.

If one meme out of dozens or hundreds crosses a line I didn't recognize, just remove the meme, dont even need to tell me why. I can adjust what I post going forward.

That's very different from assuming malicious intent, applying labels to the content as though there can be no reasonable disagreement about them, and eventually permanently banning someone who was otherwise actively contributing to the community.

[–] ieh@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

Malicious intent is not required. If a cop catches you speeding, they might let you off with a warning. If they catch you speeding again, they are probably writing a ticket. Or perhaps they wrote you a ticket for your tail light being out and gave you a pass on the speeding the first time, but the second time your tail light was still out so they wrote you the ticket for both. For this anaology to work, it requires a small town with a couple of cops so that one might remember you like that.

The site rules specify that racism is not allowed. You posted objective racism. No judgement that I can see what made upon your character. The moderator would have assumed that you knew it was racist, and so removed it. Giving a seven day ban is not unreasonable; even if I thought it was so, it is well within the range of actions that would require no sanctions from the admins.

The question of your intent doesn't arise, in the same way that the cop doesn't really probably care why the person was speeding. Sure, some edge cases, but most speeders pulled over just decided to go fast.

So you keep taking personal offense where none was offered. The moderators addressed the content posted correctly and said nothing about you as a person. You are "someone who has posted racist content" simply because you have literally posted racist content.

Posting lots of content that breaks the rules does not justify breaking the rules in the same way that driving the speed limit most of the time doesn't give you a free pass to speed occasionally.

And I will say it again:The opinions of anyone on reddit do not matter here. You will absolutely see rule-breaking content on every single platform.

If you are unable to determine what is racist, one thing you can do is run it through AI. AI sucks for many reasons, but this is one area in which it can excel.

For example, I uploaded the image of the twitter conversation that was "Protect Black Men" / "From what employment" and asked:

Is this image racist? My friend says it's not, but I'm not sure. If it is, can you tell me why it is? And if it isn't, can you tell me why it isn't?

I phrased it that way so it wouldn't prejudice the answer towards it being racist. Here's the reply:

The reply in the screenshot is widely recognized as racist because its entire comedic premise relies directly on a racial stereotype.

Here is how both sides of that argument break down:

Why it is considered racist

Reliance on negative stereotypes: The response ("From what employment") plays directly on the centuries-old, derogatory trope that Black men are lazy, chronically unemployed, or actively avoid work.

Dismissal of serious social concerns: The original post ("Protect Black Men") is a common expression addressing physical safety, mental health, and systemic challenges. Turning it into a punchline about joblessness trivializes those issues by substituting a racial trope for meaningful context.

Mechanism of the joke: For the punchline to make sense to the reader, the reader must connect "Black men" with "avoiding work." Without the underlying racial stereotype, the joke loses its setup and punchline entirely.

Why someone might argue it isn't

The "just edgy humor" defense: People defending posts like this often frame them as standard internet sarcasm, shock humor, or generic trolling rather than genuine, deeply held racial animus.

Grammatical or wordplay framing: An argument is sometimes made that the replier is simply subverting the serious tone of standard social media slogans with irreverence, treating it as an equal-opportunity jab rather than targeted discrimination.

Even if intended merely as an irreverent quip, the mechanism of the joke depends entirely on an anti-Black trope to deliver its punchline.

So even if you don't think it's racist, AI correctly identified that it was.

So the simple situation here is that posting images that break site terms will get the post removed, and can result in temporary or permanent bans from a community. If the behaviour was egregious enough and got attention from the admins, it could result in an instance ban from lemmy.world.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 4 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Your modlog doesn't preserve what was actually removed so I can't comment on the content:

https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&actionType=All&userId=21980498

That being said, a shitposting community is not an excuse to put on your Klan hood. "Buh buh, I reposted from Reddit..." is NOT the defense you think it is.

They warned you, you did it anyway, you caught the ban. Learn from the experience.

[–] Grumpus_Maximus@thelemmy.club -2 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

There was no warning discussion or communication of any kind.

Even a simple removal of the post would have been better if moderators see content as unfit.

Banning only active contributors from a dead community is idiotic and only benefits reddit

[–] echo@lemmy.today 1 points 4 hours ago

There was no warning discussion or communication of any kind.

Lol... I got banned because I down-voted a couple stupid posts in a community that came up in my main feed. Whatever... moved on. You should, too. Quit trying to belong to a community that doesn't want you.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 0 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

When shitpost group #1 tells you "no racist shit", that is NOT a green flag to post racist shit in another group.

Mods read your modlog and when you build a repeated history of this, yeah, you don't get leniency.

You were warned TWO WEEKS AGO and learned NOTHING.

Ban #1 2 weeks ago:

Ban #2:

[–] Grumpus_Maximus@thelemmy.club 0 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

thats the point im trying to make - this is no a racist meme:
https://www.reddit.com/r/shitposting/comments/1vc34os/cueta_spain_right_now/ - up on reddit, no problems.
its a stupid shitpost. But I understand if you dont understand, not understanding is an epidemic.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago

You are comparing an immigration crisis to evil orcs in Lord of the Rings, it's not merely racist, it is FUCKING RACIST.

Your attempt at justifying it is inherently dehumanizing and the fact that you either can't see that or are apparently willfully ignorant of it proves the bans were 100% justified.

[–] ieh@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

Interestingly, the tag doesn't appear to have worked for me. But no worries, I've seen the thread.

I've taken an initial look and gathered some information to discuss with my fellow admins. I'm new enough that before I take unilateral action I seek concensus to ensure that my actions are within reason for what the admin team wants.

I anticipate following up on this in half a day or so.

[–] BussyGyatt@feddit.org 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

if the besieging hordes picture does not refer to the common right wing trope of invading muslim hordes, it missed a damn good chance. your own choice of definition included "absurd, provocative, or offensive." what, in your view, was the "absurd, provocative, or offensive" nature of the post if it wasnt the direct comparison of morrocan migrants to hordes of invading orcs?

edit: orcs. i misunderstood the op's accusation of a pattern to mean that there was some other incident to point to. which apparently there is not.

edit2: telling that op insists on their post's not being racist while refusing to explain what otherwise makes it provocative, offensive, tasteless or whatever.