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.

Rules

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.

founded 1 month ago
MODERATORS
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Hello everyone,

I hope this is the good place to ask this question, if not, mods, feel free to remove it.

So as you may know, some LW mods on !world@lemmy.world and !politics@lemmy.world have been denying that the US government is supporting Israel in their attacks against Palestine.

In summary, their stance is

That is NOT why Biden is sending arms to Israel. Biden is rightly sending arms to Israel for the "Iron Dome" protection from outside aggression.

Israel misappropriates that support for use in the genocide. That is NOT on Biden. That's on Bibi and the IDF.

Biden is not complicit in any genocide. Full stop. Never has been.

For some detailed posts

Disclaimer:

  • I live in Europe and am not a US citizen, so I might not know enough about the power split between the US President and other representative structures like the Senate and the House of Representatives.
  • Linkerbaan, the other of the posts above, is usually suspected to be a Trump supporter or a Russian troll. That may be true or not, and they tend to be quite aggressive in the way they convey their message, but they still seem to make a few points.

The US President impact on providing weapons to Israel

A few recent articles about the US President responsibility about providing the arms to Israel

Do you think that Kamala Harris is likely to agree with the calls for an arms embargo on Israel?

I do not think she will agree with those calling for an arms embargo on Israel.

For one thing, as vice president and before that as a senator, Kamala Harris has consistently supported providing U.S. military aid to Israel. This position is typical of most Democratic Party members, as well as most Republicans.

Opponents of U.S. military aid to Israel often argue that this help is solely a function of domestic politics and reflects the power of the pro-Israel lobby, particularly AIPAC. I think that this view is myopic and exaggerates the power of the pro-Israel lobby. It ignores the fact that the U.S. has its own economic and strategic reasons for supplying that military aid. It is a U.S. national interest, not simply a favor for Israel, and that’s why there is broad, bipartisan support for continuing this military aid.

https://theconversation.com/us-is-unlikely-to-stop-giving-military-aid-to-israel-because-it-benefits-from-it-237290

The Biden administration has been doing contortions to provide military support to Israel without reference to U.S. or international law. It paused a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs in May, citing concerns about civilian harm, and even admitted in a report to Congress that month that U.S. weapons had likely been used in ways inconsistent with the law. But the White House said it didn’t have enough evidence to prove that specific violations had occurred, which would have triggered a suspension of further weapons shipments.

The evidence the Biden administration says it doesn’t have is everywhere. Careful investigations by the United Nations and organizations like mine have been documenting and reporting alleged violations since hostilities started in October, including Israeli forces’ unlawful airstrikes, the use of starvation as a method of warfare and torture of Palestinian detainees. The International Court of Justice has called on Israel three times to open Gaza’s crossings for aid shipments.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/10/debate-tip-candidates-theres-correct-answer-weapons-israel

The fear of Trump

The main argument usually used against people who point that the US President has an impact on the weapons supply to Israel is that

  • the Democrats are the lesser evil
  • Trump must not pass

While it is generally admitted that indeed Trump was a bad president and should indeed not pass, why do people go all the way to deny the impact of the US President on that matter?

Wouldn't it possible to both say that Kamala should pass, but at the same time condemn the actions of the US government on that matter?

Genuinely curious, as in Europe is it quite established that the US government chooses to keep providing weapons to Israel.

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Orange man bad, Genocide woman good!

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19264848

Moderation conflict involving c/vegan

Intro

We would like to address some of the points that have been raised by some of our users (and by one of our communities here on Lemmy.World) on /c/vegan regarding a recent post concerning vegan diets for cats. We understand that the vegan community here on Lemmy.World is rightfully upset with what has happened. In the following paragraphs we will do our best to respond to the major points that we've gleaned from the threads linked here.

Links


Actions in question

Admin removing comments discussing vegan cat food in a community they did not moderate.

The comments have been restored.

The comments were removed for violating our instance rule against animal abuse (https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/#11-attacks-on-users). Rooki is a cat owner himself and he was convinced that it was scientific consensus that cats cannot survive on a vegan diet. This originally justified the removal.

Even if one of our admins does not agree with what is posted, unless the content violates instance rules it should not be removed. This was the original justification for action.

Removing some moderators of the vegan community

Removed moderators have been reinstated.

This was in the first place a failure of communication. It should have been clearly communicated towards the moderators why a certain action was taken (instance rules) and that the reversal of that action would not be considered (during the original incident).

The correct way forward in this case would have been an appeal to the admin team, which would have been handled by someone other than the admin initially acting on this.

We generally discuss high impact actions among team before acting on them. This should especially be the case when there is no strong urgency on the act performed. Since this was only a moderator removal and not a ban, this should have been discussed among the team prior to action.

Going forward we have agreed, as a team, to discuss such actions first, to help prevent future conflict

Posting their own opposing comment and elevating its visibility

Moderators' and admins' comments are flagged with flare, which is okay and by design on Lemmy. But their comments are not forced above the comments of other users for the purpose of arguing a point.

These comments were not elevated to appear before any other users comments.

In addition, Rooki has since revised his comments to be more subjective and less reactive.


Community Responses

The removed comments presented balanced views on vegan cat food, citing scientific research supporting its feasibility if done properly.

Presenting scientifically backed peer reviewed studies is 100% allowed, and encouraged. While we understand anyone can cherry pick studies, if a individual can find a large amount of evidence for their case, then by all accounts they are (in theory) technically correct.

That being said, using facts to bully others is not in good faith either. For example flooding threads with JSTOR links.

The topic is controversial but not clearly prohibited by site rules.

That is correct, at the time there was no violation of site wide rules.

Rooki's actions appear to prioritize his personal disagreement over following established moderation guidelines.

Please see the above regarding addressing moderator policy.


Conclusions

Regarding moderator actions

We will not be removing Rooki from his position as moderator, as we believe that this is a disproportionate response for a heat-of-the-moment response.

Everybody makes mistakes, and while we do try and hold the site admin staff to a higher standard, calling for folks resignation from volunteer positions over it would not fair to them. Rooki has given up 100's of hours of his free time to help both Lemmy.World, FHF and the Fediverse as a whole grown in far reaching ways. You don't immediately fire your staff when they make a bad judgment call.

While we understand that this may not be good enough for some users, we hope that they can be understanding that everyone, no matter the position, can make mistakes.

We've also added a new by-laws section detailing the course of action users should ideally take, when conflict arises. In the event that a user needs to go above the admin team, we've provided a secure link to the operations team (who the admin's report to, ultimately). See https://legal.lemmy.world/bylaws/#12-site-admin-issues-for-community-moderators for details.

TL;DR In the event of an admin action that is deemed unfair or overstepping, moderators can raise this with our operations team for an appeal/review.

Regarding censorship claims

Regarding the alleged censorship, comments were removed without a proper reason. This was out of line, and we will do our best to make sure that this does not happen again. We have updated our legal policy to reflect the new rules in place that bind both our user AND our moderation staff regarding removing comments and content. We WANT users to hold us accountable to the rules we've ALL agreed to follow, going forward. If members of the community find any of the rules we've set forth unreasonable, we promise to listen and adjust these rules where we can. Our terms of service is very much a living document, as any proper binding governing document should be.

Controversial topics can and should be discussed, as long as they are not causing risk of imminent physical harm. We are firm believers in the hippocratic oath of "do no harm".

We encourage users to also list pros and cons regarding controversial viewpoints to foster better discussion. Listing the cons of your viewpoint does not mean you are wrong or at fault, just that you are able to look at the issue from another perspective and aware of potential points of criticism.

While we want to allow our users to express themselves on our platform, we also do not want users to spread mis-information that risks causing direct physical harm to another individual, origination or property owned by the before mentioned. To echo the previous statement "do no harm".

To this end, we have updated our legal page to make this more clear. We already have provisions for attacking groups, threatening individuals and animal harm, this is a logical extension of this to both protect our users and to protect our staff from legal recourse and make it more clear to everyone. We feel this is a very reasonable compromise, and take these additional very seriously.

See Section 8 Misinformation

Sincerely,
FHF / LemmyWorld Operations Team


EDIT: Added org operations contact info

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Sorry I'm a bit late to the party, but I was without home internet for a bit. If an admin can pull the deleted comment, please post it here for context. I don't see it on the modlog. I think I said something like "Tell me you have a Hexbear alt without telling me you have a Hexbear alt."

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Figured that this community would appreciate power tripping lemmy world admins :)

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/26218550

(posting to both communities)

A carnist lemmy world instance admin has stepped in and meatsplained to the mods while restoring comments that violated the community's rules. They deleted comments that they did not agree with, citing 'misinformation', and threatened to demod the mods if those comments were removed again. The comments were deleted and the admin was banned from the community as per violating the rules of the community, that was until they unbanned themselves (admin abuse) and unmodded two of the moderators because of "promoting harmfull actions against pets".

As far as it stands, if the lemmy world community wasn't already not a safe vegan place for you (it really wasn't) it most certainly isn't now as carnists (lemmy world instance admin) currently mod it.

I suggest any vegan who wants a safe and welcoming space to come and interact with vegantheoryclub.org. Sorry for any inconvienance that this may have caused. I am deeply upset at the admins actions today and don't condone them whatsoever.

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This one requires a bit of background.:

Hexbears keep opening the_dunk_tank posts about our mods and our instance in violation of their own comm rules. That compels me to go in them and try to correct the bad faith disinformation being peddled about us.

In one such thread one commenter made a reply to me ending it with "disengage", which was a clear indication they didn't want to engage in discussion any more, which I respected.

Did you read the comments (both mine and of others?) we are just chatting, no salt down here. You think I'm salty, I think I'm not.\nMy post won't be reinstated, but we had a cheap laugh at the expense of your mod and had some sane discussions between ourselves, as far as I'm concerned this is a net win for me. You'll think we are all just a bunch of salty lunatics and that's your opinion.\nThere's no point arguing when both sides have unreconcilable viewpoints, our conversation ends here. Disengage.

Note that there's no indication of how disengagement works in any sidebars. And even their own Code of Conduct, merely states:

Any discussions may be opted out of by disengaging.

So it appeared to me this is how it works.

Later in the thread, someone kept making bad faith replies and at some point I thought, "I'll just use this handy disengage rule to avoid being further provoked". So I did, at which point I was gleefully and summarily banned by the mod with the following comment, to which I couldn't respond anymore of course.

user report: Abusing Disengage rule\nA call do disengage must be the only thing in the post. You don't get to respond to people and then call to disengage, this is completely disingenuous.\nI think it's about time we defed from your garbage instance, and I'm glad to make sure you won't be showing you're entire ass around here again.

Now I knew already that plenty of hexbears had a grudge against me for rejecting "left unity", so they were just looking for an excuse to get rid of me, they finally found enough of a plausible gotcha and all they could think of for the reason was "liberal". Note that the first person "abusing the disengage rule" was never banned or affected in any way.

Ultimately this led me to being banned from hexbear itself, but that's a post for another day.

So what do you think? Am I "liberal "enough to deserve a ban for "abusing" an unwritten disengage rule. Power trippin' mod or nah?

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Then removes the post itself for "misinfo".

Suffice to say I think that the mod was just salty that I posted something that was not praising Russia, idfk what they were thinking.

Link to OP: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/25545288

What do you think, is me telling a regular that they're not prescient, banworthy "chauvinism"? Power trippin' bastard or nah?