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.

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[–] ResoluteCatnap@lemmy.ml 35 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (10 children)

Pretty sure i heard they are banning people based on the downvotes/ upvotes. If you downvote a vegan or upvote a non- vegan then you get banhammered.

That community is a joke though and i refuse to participate (as a vegan).

[–] barsquid@lemmy.world 24 points 5 days ago

That's the most fragile thing I have ever heard of.

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 8 points 5 days ago

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[–] Donjuanme@lemmy.world 17 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I think they're trying to damage the vegan brand by being as excluding as possible.

I don't mind vegans, I really dislike this type of treachery giving any group a bad name.

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

I would definitely agree with that conclusion, and unfortunately it does work, many people think of the angry vegan stereotype when someone talks about veganism, and that's because of assholes like her. She would say that it's because of the meat industry and alt-right think tanks, which is true but they also do feed off the bad examples people like her give and go "see we're not lying".

If she wanted to be helpful or benefit that community she wouldn't intentionally behave in the exact way that people criticize the community for acting, she should shun that behavior and banish people who do it. That's the only way to bring about positive change.

[–] Soup@lemmy.cafe 9 points 4 days ago

They ban anyone that doesn’t agree with their ideology. Regardless how respectful you are about it.

[–] pjwestin@lemmy.world 34 points 6 days ago (16 children)

I've never posted in that sub either, but I was banned today, and the only possible explanation is that it was for downvoting. A lot of their posts are self-righteous and needlessly confrontational, so I've downvoted a lot of their memes when they wind up in my feed, but I've never commented on any of them.

This moderator isn't trying to remove hostile comments or stop rule violations; they're trying to artificially lower the number of downvotes their content gets to make the community look less unpopular. You can actually sort posts by recent and see how the percentage of downvotes suddenly dropped off after the ban spree. This is a blatant attempt to manufacture consent for their community by gaming the system.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 25 points 6 days ago (1 children)

You can actually sort posts by recent and see how the percentage of downvotes suddenly dropped off after the ban spree. This is a blatant attempt to manufacture consent for their community by gaming the system.

That would violate lemmy.world's terms of service, specially 3. (system disruption) and 5.1 (community manipulation).

Perhaps you guys could/should elevate this issue to the lemmy.world admin team.

[–] AceTKen@lemmy.ca 13 points 6 days ago (1 children)

That was kind of what I was attempting to do here. Is there another way to do that?

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 10 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I suggest you (or anyone else here, really) to direct message !lwreport@lemmy.world, the account is a relay to the admin team. Be sure to mention:

The issue (they're banning people left and right)
Concerns (e.g. they might be gaming the system),
This thread (to show that it isn't just your personal pet peeve, plenty people are pissed.)

[–] AceTKen@lemmy.ca 7 points 5 days ago

The issue (they’re banning people left and right) Concerns (e.g. they might be gaming the system), This thread (to show that it isn’t just your personal pet peeve, plenty people are pissed.)

Done! I appreciate the pointers as I would have never known about this on my own.

[–] pjwestin@lemmy.world 8 points 5 days ago

Since I wrote this, things have changed a bit. The mod in question seems to have become extremely unpopular, even in her own community, and she's gone on posting spree on /c/vegan that's getting downvoted. I still think you can demonstrate that she was trying to manipulate the downvote numbers, but it the evidence is less clear.

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[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 18 points 5 days ago

How utterly bizarre and yet entirely predictable based on recent events.

[–] rustyfish@lemmy.world 23 points 6 days ago (1 children)

For a community that just tries to exist peacefully and gets brigaded by “jerks” all the time, they sure are weirdly fixated on becoming the centre of attention every single week.

You should not feed the troll, but it’s too fascinating not to look at it. Like a pack of chimpanzees flinging their doodoo at the glass walls.

[–] MapleEngineer@lemmy.world 11 points 5 days ago (9 children)

They could make the community private. They could keep rabbits as pets. They have made veganism their entire identity, a pseude-religion, and they have a pathological need for validation. Anyone who questions their absolute moral superiority challenges that identity so they seal themselves up in a hermetically sealed, idea tight echo bunker where only supportive ideas are allowed and only validating up votes are tolerated.

They, of course, feel quite free to spread their extremism to discussions outside of the echo bunker, they just don't tolerate other ideas in the echo bunker.

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[–] Zess@lemmy.world 12 points 5 days ago

I'm so tired of hearing about this community. They should change their name to ShittyAntiCarnivoreMemes and move to .ml.

[–] the_crotch@sh.itjust.works 14 points 5 days ago

I love the irony of a vegan community eating themselves

[–] DocMcStuffin@lemmy.world 19 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (3 children)

Holy hell! It's over 19 pages long, and that's over the past day. They even went as far as trying to ban admins.

Edit: it looks like they only tried to ban one admin. I thought I had saw more, but I guess not. But damn, talk about sour grapes.

[–] Rose@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 days ago

There's a lot more to the story on Rooki.

[–] edgemaster72@lemmy.world 18 points 6 days ago (3 children)

"the first amendment holds" lol, I wasn't aware Lemmy was part of the US government

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 11 points 6 days ago

It's doubly stupid because LW is construed and governed by Dutch, German, and Finnish laws. Not United-Statian ones.

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[–] hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 6 days ago (3 children)

It's all also done by a one single moderator, a same one that was complaining about the "carnists brigading" in the community. There was a handful of comments deleted along with more than 300 users banned.

[–] subignition@fedia.io 14 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I wonder if it's the same user who has almost exclusively dominated the front page of the sub with memes in the last day or so. Going back a couple pages, there was a lot more variety and nuance in the content. Subject matter notwithstanding, it looks like someone terminally online going on a power trip.

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[–] red@sopuli.xyz 8 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

The bad: simply downvoting a meme gets you banned

The good: You didn't have to open your apps filter settings to stop seeing the absurd shit they post

Funnily enough, their ban spree is self censoring and will end up creating an echo chamber nobody will see.

I say, tofu and let tofuck it up.

[–] Bitswap@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I don't understand why most people even care. They would have never know this community existed except for for this post.

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 1 points 3 days ago (4 children)

B/c this is just the tip of the iceberg, and b/c a stitch in time saves nine and all that jazz. And b/c some find it entertaining to discuss about:-). And b/c it's not fair, e.g. how would you feel if I told you that because you commented here, you automatically receive a...

Yeah, I don't care about that community either!:-P

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[–] ccunning@lemmy.world 11 points 6 days ago (5 children)

From what I’ve been told there is a rift between mods of the community.

I had the same issue as you and contacted the mod team no understand how I violated rule 5. One of the mods confirmed I hadn’t violated rule 5 and unbanned me. I was then immediately rebanned again by the original mod.

There was another conversation about it on /c/unpopularopinion and it looks like people were getting banned simply for downvoting one of the mods.

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[–] SkyezOpen@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago

https://lemmy.world/post/19731457

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