I tend to browse /All and by New on Lemmy. I went to respond on a thread on !vegan@lemmy.world to thank someone for a recipe that looked good, and found out I had been banned.
Odd, considering I hadn't posted to that sub at any point in the past. I checked the modlog to find that "Mod" had banned a bunch of people citing "Rule 5."
Their Rule 5 states: Bad-faith carnist rhetoric & anti-veganism are not allowed, as this is not a space to debate the merits of veganism. Anyone is welcome here, however, and so good-faith efforts to ask questions about veganism may be given their own weekly stickied post in the future (see current stickied discussion).
I (and hundreds of others) seemingly broke rule 5 of this community without ever posting there. What is going on?
And my apologies if this isn't the place for this, but I had no idea where else to post the question.
If they're indeed using this bot or something similar the amount of idiocy goes up the roof.
The bot author outright says that the bot is experimental. Automatic bans are stupid and silly. Using votes as grounds for banning is something that should be done only to address vote manipulation, or something damn serious. And it should never be done based on a single vote, but on voting patterns.
And they're showing the exact same lack of transparency as a certain instance, except that instead of "rule 1 and 2" it's "rule 5".
They don't even see the contradiction: that in an attempt to fight the fascists (as they say in the post I linked), they have become ones themselves.
Also, I don't mind if they user block me using such a bot - that is simply curating their own feed (I may not think highly of their choice, but at least I agree that it would be their choice) - but to ban me from some place, and more importantly make a note in my modlog to that effect, is something else entirely. It's the difference between choosing not to have an abortion for oneSELF, vs. making that determination for someone ELSE to not be allowed to have an abortion.
And then telling that person what you think about the situation, at whatever frequency that bot is run, essentially spamming the Fediverse with your own speech, in an attempt to silence someone else's (in your community... except that unless you are an instance admin - in which case you don't need to resort to this type of implementation - you don't "own" any community, even if you started it, i.e. there are still instance rules that need to be followed, and anyway you certainly don't own the modlogs of every person across the entire Fediverse!?!!?!).
If I were the author of this bot, setting aside how I never would have made such in the first place, the best solution now would be to throw it away entirely, as it is far too broken to be fixed with mere tweaking, like minimum of five comments rather than one. Even then, that account might end up being banned from several instances, for "vote manipulation", and it even puts the instances that allow users to run it at risk of being defederated as well, eventually if that becomes a pattern and the admins are unresponsive to deal with it, for violation of the rules of the Fediverse, especially spamming. These are like constant advertisements of "I don't like this other person, and want them to only have access to separate but equal communities away from me", which is... not ideal but basically their private thoughts, not something that needs to fill up the modlogs of a large fraction of people across the entire Fediverse, especially mostly innocent people getting caught up in too wide of a net, and making the modlogs of those thus affected no longer human readable.
I disagree with the idea that the bot author is "becoming a fascist" in their attempt to fight fascism. Sure, the bot is a dumb idea; and I predict that it'll reinforce local circlejerks (even if it does nothing, as long as people think that it does). But I don't see it being able to enforce some unpopular and harmful ideology by force, allowing it to take over.
There is a contradiction or two though - votes and moderation are supposed to handle different types of undesired content, so one cannot rely on the other. And by giving votes a stronger effect (they might cause someone to be banned) the bot is discouraging their legit usage (content sorting - what if someone gets banned because of my downvote?) and encouraging the non-legit one (e.g. someone did nothing wrong but I have a pet peeve against them and I want to see them gone, so I downvote them).
That's how I see it too, on general grounds (not just for this bot). Blocking is ultimately about you not hearing the offending party; banning is about the offending party not being able to talk.
The bot does use force though: e.g. if I had wanted to post in the community, now I am unable to b/c despite my consent and against my judgement (in this scenario), I am no longer able to. Granted, this level of "force" does not rise to full "violence":-).
Though does fascism necessarily imply violence? Yes they are willing to use it, and moreover they don't shirk from it as others do, seeing it as a healthy and natural part of the world, but they seem to me to simply want to win, using whatever means necessary, rather than having that be a defining characteristic for them, as if using it were their sole or even primary tool? As the current regime of disinformation warfare is showing us, if lies work better than tanks, then those are what you want to use to convert your target from a foe into an ally. The goal for them being the attainment of said goal, unlike e.g. liberalism that focuses more on the process to get there - the means not justifying the end (for some, though fascists would ofc disagree... violently if necessary).
Also, for me it is not just the improper technique - if they want to do something incorrectly, that's on them, e.g. I don't need their code to compile & run, only my own - but rather the various means of imposition that their application of their tool has upon me / us all. e.g. right now my account has zero bans on it (ironically including this one, b/c outside of Lemmy.World I cannot see this ban, only on that exact server instance), but if this bot makes a new "determination" for me lets say every other day, then in the course of the next quarter I (or whoever) could have nearly 50 mod actions taken against me. That means then that if I get legitimately banned, from a real community that I may actually care about, I will have a much harder time even noticing that, if I have no tools to separate out those automated bans from the human ones (just b/c it has not happened to me yet, doesn't mean that it never will!:-P). It is the email spam issue all over again, or the older I-was-just-sitting-down-to-eat-dinner-with-my-family-when-the-salesman-calls (or shows up at your front door, at a time they figured you would be home): how do you maintain utility of a tool (your email address, your phone number, your front door visitation privileges), when someone abuses those, spamming it at all hours of the day and night with their blitzkrieg approach to "just making sure that I/you are aware of this amazing opportunity... and if you act now then you can..." I am saying: these mod actions are not harmless - they deny us the use of the normal functioning of the modlog.
And even if the modlog issue were fixed, it is still harassment. A white woman stopping an immigrant, or a black person, to "share their opinion" of whether the recipient should be in that particular place... "I'm just saying", or "I'm just asking questions here..." except no you aren't, you're on a campaign to convey a message that "you[r kind] are not welcomed here, you should go elsewhere, imho". It's an attack - a fairly low-key, extremely ineffective one, but a pointed/directed, nonconsensual, not-friendly, abusive message that is being sent. Though unless I am misunderstanding something here, while I can block the sender, I cannot block those modlog entries... right? (do you know?) Thus they deny me the use of that, filling it up with their spam, even if - again - I have never visited nor ever desired to visit their community. Ofc if someone were an admin, or had access to some of those admin tools... then that would solve the issue for them personally, to either not have to see those messages or at least be able to filter them so that they can see others, but it would not help anyone else across the Fediverse - that is an unreasonable expectation that "we should all become admins of our own instances". Thus, these qualify as "attacks" under those circumstances - do they not?
But I suppose where I went wrong was that "fascist" seems to imply a far-right nature? And while far-left totalitarians share a lot in common - the heavy directive role played by the mods/admins, the self-sufficiency not desiring input from anyone outside of the echo chamber of loyal ~~pets~~ subjects, and the purity seeking to separate themselves from the denigrated "jerks" - they indeed differ, I suppose, in the specific definition of their end goals. So what do you think, would the more proper word be "authoritarian"/"totalitarian", rather than "fascist"? I suppose we all (translation: me:-D) are playing fast & loose with that word, as in the concept of certain people being "like (without necessarily precisely being" (a fascist), but I've been doing so long already that I'm not putting it in quotes, and allowing myself to forget even inside my own mind whatever I may have originally meant. (And I may even have offered this exact apology before, to you, yet if so, then here we are again...)
In any case, they do seem to be falling prey to the same format of thinking as those that they claim are "bad"? And then they ramp up the scale - if they downvote, then *I* will ban! (at which point the other side simply gets alts, etc.) And then in the process, as you pointed out, such an arms race nullifies the original/proper/intended use of those tools.
"Authoritarian" does sound more accurate, and I do agree with you that it's a bit too forceful.
On fascism, Robert Paxton has IMO a good definition. The key points are, basically
A lot of those points go completely orthogonal to both the bot+bot author, and the vegan comm mod (if she's using that bot; I don't know, it might be something she coded herself).
I also don't see it as coming from the mod of the vegan community, even if I outright ridicule her actions as being shitty for the community, the Fediverse as a whole, and herself.
I fully agree that it is spammy as fuck, over what would be remotely reasonable. And IMO Lemmy devs should be doing something to make modlogs easier to filter and audit.
(Your analogy with the salesman calls is perfect - the act itself wouldn't be a big deal, if it wasn't consistently obstrusive. I just want to dinner!)
I don't think that you can. And... yes, it leaves a sour taste in your mouth, it's like someone from a shop telling you "YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE!". Even if you never entered the shop, and even if you don't plan to do so.
It's also a really shitty moderative practice. The whole idea of moderating is to stop people from ruining each other's experience; and yet that's exactly what they're doing. (Perhaps I'm biased because I tend to issue a lot of warnings, but barely any ban. Still.)
I think so.
Fascinating. I always enjoy going deeper with you:-).
According to his definition, put forth in his 2004 Anatomy of Fascism (via that wikipedia page), he says:
I picked up on the usage of the wording of "jerks" - at least 3 times in the bot post, and more times still on the actual community page - bc of how much it struck me as a tactic of "humiliation". As in, it's not enough to ban someone - they need to be told about it (just when they sit down to dinner! 😔), everywhere they look, and have that word added, with the link to that word given specifically embedded into the modlog ban message. i.e. it's very "in-your-face". Much like how "the poors deserve their fate bc they're lazy and spoiled and entitled", never mind all the facts to the contrary e.g. what if a store is currently selling (almost expired) steak meat for half the price of ground chuck. But no, Kansas had to pass a law specifically prohibiting people on food social welfare programs - most often widows, whose husbands disappeared for whatever reason and left a single parent to now raise an innocent child - from purchasing steak with those funds, regardless of the pricing. The "luxury" items - even nearly expired ones - are too good for the likes of them, i.e. it's a humiliation tactic used by conservatives to stick it to the poor. Just like that bot calls people "jerks", as in it's not enough to ban them, they must also have that label thrown into their face.
And we could go down, one sentence fragment at a time, one after the other - e.g. "obsessive preoccupation with community decline", yup, check - and we see how well that bot post meshes with this definition of fascism. And even irl regimes don't always meet all the criteria - with only Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy having done so. "working.. with traditional elites" - yup, community mods, check. "abandons democratic liberties" - yup, people's rights to only be banned after they have committed some offense, which downvotes do not qualify as, especially in some other community entirely, and all the more so when a single downvote can do the trick. "and pursues with redemptive violence" - yup, I mean it's anonymous online, so fairly limited, but we agreed how it's an "attack" nonetheless. "and without ethical or legal restraints" - yup, violates various codes of conduct as well as the entire spirit behind federation principles. "goals of internal cleansing and external expansion" - yup, get rid of the "jerks" and thereby make the communities that use the Santa-bot great again.
I dunno, the more I look into this, the full-on term of "fascism", not just authoritian/totalitarian seems to fit better. But I'll be curious to hear your rebuttal bc you definitely have read far deeper than I on this topic:-). I agree it's strange to think in terms of fascism wrt online moderation principles rather than tanks and coups, but if the shoe fits, as the old saying goes...
Don't worry, mate. Take your time!
I fixed it - check the original again 😁
About Kansas: I'm not sure but I feel like the humiliation is accidental, and yet the motivation resembles fascism in its own way - preventing the individual from choosing under the assumption that they'll cause themself harm. As in, "if we let them buy steak they'll wreck their budgets" style.
(It's a discourse associated with authoritarianism, but authoritarianism is one of fascism's "legs" anyway.)
In the case of the vegan mod: I'm really not sure if her bot complaining about "jerks" fits well with fascism. The humiliation that fascists complain about is not just about "wah, you were mean to me, I feel humiliated"; it's more like "you're humiliating me to drag me down from my rightful position". To make it fascist she'd need to insert that into a context, like "if vegans weren't so humiliated they'd be ruling the world/Lemmy!" or something like this.
Note that the criteria work more like a ladder than like a checklist. As in, to fulfill a criterion you need to fulfill the preceding ones. At most we could claim that she reached the third step (arrival to power), but her ability to exercise it is clearly handicapped (as in, the vegan community is clearly not buying her shit).
To be honest I didn't. I'm actually defending my view but I'm aware that it might be completely wrong. I like discussing this stuff with you though.
(1) no it's not; (2) because even if it had been originally, it was explained to them after-the-fact, yet they doubled down on it still, at which point it became "obstinacy" rather than mere "ignorance". Also (3) even if it somehow was, the only other alternative is FAR worse - an outright immoral (and likely criminal) level of negligence, like a wealthy person who despite never having set foot inside of a grocery store... hey, quick side-story, this reminds me of Betsy DeVos who admitted to never having even been inside of a public school building in her entire lifetime in a Barbara Walters interview, even despite knowing about her upcoming appointment, she still never considered it a priority to do that, even just to see it visually with her own eyes. Anyway, despite never having set foot in a grocery store their entire lives, this individual yet still did not bother to do activities like to ask their butler or discuss it with the grocery store CEO whilst golfing, but nevertheless still takes action - not to be responsible with their own budget by limiting their own purchase of steaks, but to forcibly prevent anyone else from doing such "harm" to their own. (4) and even then, the final act itself is still humilating, whether the person is so warped & twisted inside their own mind to even so much as realize that or not.
The amount of money offered to food stamp recipients is already limited, yet the burden of compliance seems higher to prevent this than to allow all the variety of exceptions that would make sense - e.g. the expiration date. If something looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then why would we even entertain the notion that it could actually be a hunter dressed up like a duck? But even if it were, it makes no functional difference to the next step... (offering it a crust of bread perhaps?:-)
Anyway, no matter what it is totalitarianism/authoritarianism. But also, I think it would qualify as actual fascism? “obsessive preoccupation with community decline”, “working… with traditional elites”, “abandons democratic liberties”, “and pursues with redemptive violence”, “and without ethical or legal restraints” (they knew - they were told so even if not at first, after that they knew - yet they did it anyway), and finally “goals of internal cleansing and external expansion” (i.e. budget-friendliness achieved for the former, the latter presumably comes later as they proselytize their belief system to other states, the same as how Kansas itself looks to other states to model their own actions on)
In the case of the vegan mod: I am not so sure that it isn't fascism, but I am also not so sure that it is either, though either way the tool seems to me to be thus, and even if she (the mod) made their own tool, the approach seems overall to be thus. As in, can a single thought that passes through our minds, and then is gone, be called "fascist"? What about one entertained over the course of a bad week, perhaps while going through a personal tragedy at home, or losing one's job at work? I think so, at which point there would be degrees of fascism, like fascism-lite, not changing the quality of the substance yet greatly impacting its power to affect change i.e. the quantity. Like if a 2-year old punches you, it would not rise to the level of "assault", but it is still a "punch"? But then it gets tricky: if a fascist bot/tool is applied by a non-fascist, and crucially I mean for its intended purpose, then does that change its intended purpose any? e.g. if a 6-month old "shoots" a gun, it makes it no less deadly, yet arguably we wouldn't even call that "shoots", or the baby a "shooter", so much as they "accidentally caused the firearm to discharge". But here's the big difference in my mind: a mod is not a 6-month old, and rather in a position of authority, hence by definition of that is to be held accountable to their actions, however ill-advised and resembling those of a 6-month old they might be. Everything a 6-month old does is an "accident" (even smiling - is it intentional, or is it gas?), but everything a person in a position of responsibility does is something to which they can be held account, e.g. by being removed, possibly banned from an instance outright.
I do not understand this at all. The first thought that springs to mind is a white man in America lets say just prior to the Revolution denigrating a black man in any way feel threatened by the latter's mere presence, lets suppose the latter is already working for the former, whilst wearing shackles and bent over in the act of something like picking cotton? Yes, sometimes - especially in modern times - fascists try to reclaim lost glory, but my analogy seems to depict something else entirely, as in a preemptive strike against someone else's dignity as a person, not caused in the slightest by anything that the recipient has done (nor even plans to do - let's further add the stipulation that the slave owner speaks first, and the slave does not even know that the master is nearby, until after the humiliating words have already been delivered; let us also add the stiuplation that the slave has never yet met the master prior to this interaction) but rather by the thoughts and actions and most importantly attitudes held inside the authoritarian's own mind. i.e., in America the current set of neo-fascists seem to play the victim card a lot, and perhaps that is baked right into fascism from the start, but I don't think it's the only way to be fascist, and rather it's more a tool that they very often use, thus it is commonly associated with them but does not act as a defining characterist. imho at least.
Yes, fair, and agreed that the vegan mod was blocked at that point hence it ended. So we can say that she was "attempting to be a fascist" (aka "acting like a fascist"), yet could not get all the way there b/c fascism implicates a continuance until it is entrenched, which she could not manage.
Perfection itself - how will we know about things unless we think about them, and by implication talk amongst ourselves (in a civil manner ofc) to debate the pros & cons, ins & outs, and variety of implications to & from? THIS is what I hoped to find on Lemmy, but it seems exceedingly rare to talk with someone in a respectful and deep manner. Mind you, both of those are already uncommon on their own, but to see them combined... is outright rare.
Kansas: if they doubled down on it then it's hard to claim that it was unintended. Now I agree with you, the humiliation becomes part of the policy - be it due to negligence or actively pursuing it.
And perhaps a better framework to decide if something is fascist or not could be to ditch the concepts of "intention" and "thought" (as blackbox concepts) and focus instead on:
This is also useful to judge what the mod is doing - if it's just a bad week it's kind of understandable, but if she's consistently doing it the actions do lean into fascism, because they stop being simply erratic "people are people, they do stupid shit" and become a policy.
From the fascists' PoV it's all about a glorious past that was "stolen" from them. Mussolini for example would babble a lot about Roman Empire times, i.e. times when Italy was the centre of Europe+MENA.
Sometimes this "past" is outright invented though. It doesn't need to be factual, from the fascists' PoV, as long as people believe it.
[Sorry for the late reply! Kind of off-topic, but finally I can actually read texts in a decent computer screen. I had some computer problems through those two weeks.]
Well now... that's kind of a slippery slope there, imho. If a doctor "has a headache", and thereby kills their patient due to negligence, is that okay? I mean, nobody is arguing that they should never have headaches, but to collect salary, and take up a slot that could have gone to someone else, and basically assert (by showing up for the job, in that role) that they are okay to do it, but then to NOT do it - that's not okay?
Here again, I am saying that people in positions of authority and power are held to a higher standard. A doctor who allows their patient to DIE as a result of their negligence, isn't merely having a bad day, or week, they have a moral failing that allowed them to show up for that day or week, and lie about their own capacity - either to others, knowing full well themselves how they felt, or else to themselves first, and then unknowingly relayed that information to others (especially since as a medical doctor, they should know better - not about every single thing in the world e.g. nuclear physics, yet "headaches" are well within their reputed scope of expertise).
Mind you, I need to be VERY careful here: I am not talking about a "sudden onset" of a headache, that nobody could have predicted in advance. And by extension I also do not mean like one that on a scale of 1-10 was a 1 when they went in that morning but by the end of the day got to a 2, and then suddenly in a single moment of time spiked all the way to 10, whereupon in seconds the patient died - that indeed is a "bad day", unpredictable, if not entirely, then mostly, if lets say that the "reasonable expectation" is that the headache could maybe go up from 2 to 3, but not 10? No, I'm talking about like it started off as 10, remained as 10 all weekend, but then when it's time to go to work it has not gone down but remains still at 10... there exists a set of circumstances that are so blatantly irresponsible that they cross over to become "criminally negligent".
I think Trump crossed that line during the pandemic - causing more "excess deaths" than all wars combined (if you think that I am wrong on that statistic, then please Please PLEASE correct me, but I do recall reading that somewhere... anyway we'll never know, b/c those numbers were hidden from us and we are not allowed to have that information, from certain states e.g. Florida). It wasn't just casually irresponsible - it was genocide. Aside from that, it was also a bad event for him... but it was not MERELY thus, yeah?
So getting back to the vegan mod, if she were to be forcibly ousted as a result of this "bad week", that does not seem too harsh for me? Perhaps if she apologized, seemed sincere about her admission of guilt, and wanted to make reparations somehow, it would conversely not be so bad if she were not forcibly removed from the entire instance... but the mod position is different. The standards that a normal user are held to are one thing, while a leader must be held to different, higher ones. Like a doctor, like the President of the United States, not in spite of the fact that they hold their position of authority, but because of exactly that.
About the past: yes I understand that sometimes the fascists may babble about this or that, but I was saying that I do not think that it should be considered as a core part of their identity structure. A fascist can still be one, even if they use different tools, just like a terrorist who uses a bomb is no lesser than a terrorist who uses an automated rifle, despite the former not using the same tool of the latter - such a weapon may quality someone as a "shooter", but the definition of "terrorist" is more about the action accomplished, spreading terror, than the precise details of whichever weapon was used to make it happen?
And yes, I totally agree that perhaps the concepts of intention need to be, if not entirely discarded, then at least fade into the background? But also, you can't do something at the level of an entire society, without having had the opportunity for at least one person to have pushed back, at some point along the way - like the situation with Kansas & steak for the poors, SOMEONE just HAD to have warned them... and then they did it anyway. Hitler simply cannot use the excuse that "oh, I did not realize... you see, my mother never warned me that full-on concentration camps and death squads were bad things, gasp/shock, I simply never knew that... therefore I should not be punished, b/c of my ignorance". Whatever people who get caught may SAY in their defense, they were in positions of authority and power, hence are held to account for their actions, whatever inscrutable motives they may have had.
Conversely, a scenario like a baby pressing a button that manages to cause a nuclear explosion reveals an entirely different set of factors. For them, intention matters, whereas e.g. for a technician whose sole job it is to stand by that button and press it if the call ever comes, but then also to never press it otherwise, except then one day... "whoopsie! an entire zillion people (yes! with a z I say!!! just b/c!!:-D) just died, my bad guys, I was just trying to adjust my shorts you see..." The reason intention does not matter for the latter person is b/c that was their sole job - they were trained to push, and also (arguably FAR more importantly!) to not push that button. Thus their failure to follow their training - but again, still collect a salary, still take up a slot that could have been given to someone else, etc. - rises to a level of criminality that the baby who has zero clue what is going on does not.
Ergo, if Trump had remained merely a TV star, then the fact that he doesn't even know what a "virus" is wouldn't matter the slightest bit, it was only because he rose to become President - ousting Hillary Clinton who otherwise would have done the job - that that fact became relevant. imho at least:-)
Sorry to hear about your computer problems, but I am so glad that you got them fixed and can now enjoy a more pleasant interaction on Lemmy, rather than try to work on a tiny screen:-).