ieh

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.

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.

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.

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.

If you feel that you have been mistreated egregiously by moderators, you can always make your case in a polite and well-documented thread in !support@lemmy.world, and if egregious behaviour by mods is found, it will be addressed.

This is also a good reminder to me that I do have to be careful what I say... since I am an admin. heh.

I do want to be a little more visible - I've always liked when reddit admins were. I think one of the problems with reddit is that you could never talk to the admins. So I'm trying to change that a bit.

Probably there won't be a whole lot of visible change for anything I manage to do. But I'm hoping it's still helpful and an improvement.

Excellent timing on this post.

First of all, I'm not sure how new users are invited to the Discord that I'm aware of, so I don't feel very comfortable in addressing that - but there is a Discord where some mods hang out.

But second of all: I've relatively recently been added as an admin here on lemmy.world. It's been a very slow onboarding process for any number of reasons - for one, it's summer so I know in places that actually have vacation days, some folks have been out on vacations. Also, there's not really a formal admin on-boarding process, if I may be so bold as to say so. Not that I think it's a problem - I'm slowly gaining access to more of the tools we use, and slowly seeing what all we do, so I've started to take a few actions, but not much yet.

But one of my big missions is that I have had some moderation and administration experience in other places that I want to bring in here.

Just yesterday in one of the admin's groups I posted something about trying to pick up more of what we are doing so I can participate more in doing those things. But also:

One of the things I've noticed about sites like Lemmy - but also reddit, which I will say I ahve some experience with as well - is that because anyone can start a community, and by starting a community become its sole mod, and remain its sole mod unless they add more people - the people who start communities are not always good moderators. Just because they may well lack the skills and experience.

And I think that's an issue on sites like Lemmy and reddit, where a lot of the users' interactions with "authority" are community (or subreddit) moderators.

When I asked about moderator onboarding, the answer I got so far was "I think we have a few things somewhere" - but not an answer where yet. I'm sure someone will point me there, but I don't have it yet.

I think it's very important. I've had a few idea on some things I'd like to do. One of which is to find communities that the mods have abandoned - well, we do keep an eye on those already. And in fact, if you find a community that appears that the mods haven't done anything on Lemmy in a few weeks or more, and you'd like us to consider handing the community over to you (or perhaps start a thread in the community discussing and give us a list of people who volunteer), post over at !support@lemmy.world and we'll investigate. I've been involved already in a couple of communities that had mods who hadn't been around for a couple of years and helped get them handed off to new mods.

But I also want to have a dialogue with new mods - particularly those who don't have previous moderating experience. I see a lot of mods taking actions that are rather unfriendly and unwelcoming - from removing things and banning people for insufficient reasons to just handling moderating poorly.

I've found that while you can't do much against people who come just to troll, opening a dialogue with people who are new to your community who break the rules usually without intending to - or not understanding WHY the rules are the way they are - a surprising amount of time, being patient with them and explaining actually helps.

Also, over on reddit where there are some good moderator tools and the ability to have notes on a user that only mods can see (that also link to the comment where the note was added so you can easily see the reason for the note) - it allows for doing things like first giving a warning; then, if they repeat the behaviour, escalating to a one-day, three-day, seven-day, thirty-day, and THEN a permaban only if needed. (Although egregious violations can skip steps and go immediately to permaban if bad enough).

It can be difficult because it requires time, energy, patience, kindness. And a lot of the time, you still get personal attacks from the moderated user. But a lot of the time… it's worth the effort.

So I don't yet know where this will end up. I've sent a message to one of the admins who does a lot of the looking at abandoned communities to see if some of what I want to do is plausible without interfering with their work. Haven't heard back, but gotta give a couple/few days - everyone is busy with life.

I don't plan on doing anything too radical, I can't imagine. But I definitely want to work with mods to help show them a better way to interact with users - although again, understanding that, to quote Cool Hand Luke, "Some [people], you just cain't reach". But the ones you can can turn into valuable community members. I won't give specific details that would identify myself, but I saw this firsthand on subreddits I moderated as well as other sites.

So I'll be keeping an eye on this thread and hopefully posting here again in a few days or so with some updates - maybe giving those who express interest whatever info I can as I'm able.

So nothing concrete yet, but I'm hoping to help change this exact experience.

Thank you for pointing them there. :)

Thank you for making a request in !c/support. After a review, we have approved your request.

To the community: Welcome your new mod! :)

Thank you for your request. After investigation, it has been approved and you are now the moderator for the community. Thanks for your patience! :)

Admin here. Well, I'm a new admin, so I'm going to start working on this; I've let our other admins know. Please be patient with us, or at least me. :)