I sent the MOD this message:

Hi XXXXXXXX, I just noticed that you banned me 2 hours ago from c/Science for Spam. I am confused. I mostly lurk and haven’t commented or posted anything in several months. I definitely don’t post ads or spam. Can you please let me know what happened?

The only reason that I noticed that I am banned is that I watched that (long-ish) video about Brainrot on the feed and the top comment is asking for a tldw.

  • frongt@lemmy.zip
    1175·
    19 天前

    It was probably an admin ban. They ban if non-.ml users downvote anything on their instance. And if you ask about it they’ll block you.

        • aloofPenguin@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          17 天前

          do you still have to block the other two (hexbear and the other one, can’t remember the name rn.)? I have .ml blocked, but I thought the other 2 got de-federated so blocking them wouldn’t be necessary?

          • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
            4·
            17 天前

            Both hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml are defederated from your instance of lemmy.world (see their names in the blocked part of instances, so you are safe there.:-)

            Be aware though that you don’t truly have Lemmy.ml blocked - that function is horribly misleading and despite how you requested to “block” the entire instance, and how Lemmy devs marketed it as a personal type of defederation, that was a lie and instead users from those instances can still: read your content, vote on it, reply to it, report it, send you DMs, and trigger notifications, the same as any unblocked user. The only thing it does is “hide communities” from that instance so that you won’t see those communities, but you will still see those users everywhere else you go across the wide Threadiverse.

            There is really no way to block all users from an instance while you are still using Lemmy. PieFed can easily do this (that feature being available for a year ago, though I doubt Lemmy will ever catch up in that respect - the Lemmy devs have little interest in helping people using their software to block their own personal instance), but other than that you would be looking at now-outdated (iirc) 3rd party apps or implementing custom uBlock Origin filtering rules for the web UI.

            If you are interested in checking out PieFed, your own instance maintains both a Lemmy and a PieFed version, the former you are already on and the latter at https://piefed.world/, though I think your Lemmy login probably won’t work for both?

            • aloofPenguin@lemmy.worldEnglish
              4·
              16 天前

              Thanks for the reply! I found it very informative, also with regards to the blocking.

              I do think it’s stupid that there’s no complete block feature in Lemmy. Also just found out that it apparently has a slower development speed compared to PieFed (with regards to features). This, and the founders of lemmy, are some factors making me consider switching to PieFed. I also heard that there were more features, but also stability concerns. Also most of those extra features are not there on mobile clients yet i believe.

              I also checked, and Lemmy login does not work on PieFed.

              • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
                3·
                16 天前

                Thanks for the thanks! I didn’t want to be like proselytizing, unless it was helpful information that you genuinely might have wanted.

                The “stability” feature isn’t anything to be concerned about at the moment - that’s for if we got hundreds of millions of subscribers, which… we are nowhere close to now, nor seem likely to reach anytime soon (and we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it). Also a lot of people seem to forget that the true backend of PieFed is not Python but rather an SQL database (PostgreSQL), and all of the ACTUAL (non-theoretical) analyses have proven PieFed to be 25-fold more (not less) efficient than Lemmy (that article says 5x less data for 5x more posts, thus 25x more efficient data usage per post), which also has long-standing bugs that seem to never get fixed.

                Anyway it’s not like one is fantastic and the other crap - they both have their strengths and weaknesses, and very few people actually put in the time to bother reading about or do direct testing with either one before spreading their opinions. As an end-user, feel free to use whichever one you want - or like I literally use both at different times and for different purposes, though PieFed is my main that I use 100x more than my Lemmy anymore (several times a day rather than once a… month anymore).

                As far as stability, the choice of instance admin team will matter more than whether they use Lemmy or PieFed. Your current team is pretty handy there, somehow in spite of the enormous number of people using their machines. It’s quite impressive actually, imho. I’m not saying there aren’t excellent reasons to spread ourselves around the Threadiverse more than concentrate onto one single server (there are), but neither am I saying that there is much of a reason to flee (unless you don’t like the moderation practices, e.g. the filtering of cusswords). That said, here’s a list.

                So instead I’ll recommend this: use the website interface and make an account on PieFed.world, just to see what it’s like. I bet the start-up wizard alone will convince you to stay! The entire model of consuming the content on the Threadiverse is so vastly superior to what we all were forced to do when we used Lemmy that it’s not even close (e.g. you could subscribe to literally zero politics or news communities so that that content does not flood your feed, but then when you want to see such, it’s only a click away - meaning that you can literally have your cake and eat it too! And that hasn’t even gotten yet into the user-customizeable and shareable Feeds! Caveat: the set of predefined Topic areas on PieFed.world does seem rather slim, wow 😔). All that said, if you absolutely want to stick with a 3rd party app, then most of the additional features that PieFed offers won’t be accessible, yet - they will get there but just aren’t yet.

                Although some will, including the ability to block all users from an instance. You’ll likely need to make that happen on the webpage interface, but after you do that all of once, it will affect anywhere you log into your instance from - including any 3rd party app you choose to use (I don’t really use 3rd party apps but I did like Voyager btw).

                PieFed also allows you to import your account meaning blocklists and community subscriptions, and it can even import entire communities, though sadly no Threadiverse platform currently allows you to transfer your actual full user account - presumably security issues that while not insurmountable just haven’t been the priority yet, as everything gets built up from scratch. PieFed does release features practically weekly though, so lots of other stuff is on the way and one day that will too - just not now.

                Goodness this is long, but I hope it helps you find what you are looking for in this shared space!:-)

    • [deleted]@piefed.worldEnglish
      331·
      18 天前

      Seems like the devs of lemmy who also happen to run .ml could add some code to lemmy that lets instances disallow down votes from outside the instance if they want to. Or set it to not display from within the .ml instance so their precious fee fees aren’t hurt.

      • Jiggle_Physics@piefed.zipEnglish
        131·
        18 天前

        Yeah, they are not powerless to prevent downvote brigades, and serial downvoters. There are a number of ways they can throttle downvote frequency, monitor sources of varying accounts, etc.

    • MathGrunt@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      301·
      19 天前

      Thank you for that clarification. I’m surprised, but then I suppose there really isn’t much else they can do about vote bots and brigades. A warning would have been nice, but given that Lemmy is starting to show evidence of the kind of bots that are killing reddit (and all social media), I can understand their position.

      • frongt@lemmy.zip
        344·
        18 天前

        No, there’s plenty they can do. They’re the developers of Lemmy itself, they could easily implement something that limited the interaction of external users. Some instances already have downvotes disabled entirely. But I guess they get off on this.

      • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
        157·
        18 天前

        There is a serious amount of serial downvoters and upvoters on lemmy to cause drama or direct the flow of conversation. They might let you back in once they realize you’re not a bot or a troll.

        • anyhow2503@lemmy.world
          368·
          18 天前

          Even so, what does it matter? Where is the indication that a user with a high downvote ratio is doing anything harmful, let alone worthy of a permaban?

          Edit: Can someone please ban the people downvoting me? I can’t deal with this.

          • Eldritch@piefed.worldEnglish
            191·
            18 天前

            There’s nothing indicating that specifically. But if you’re downvoting THAT much more, it’s notable. There are people I see that I regularly downvote for solid reasons. Hypocrisy, whataboutism etc. But vote totals don’t get that lopsided without some effort. All that means ultimately it’s the ratio is lopsided.

            • Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              2·
              17 天前

              So let’s ban those who doesn’t downvote enough? /s

              It’s a stupid argument IMO, and as with all statistics you can show what you want with it. That doesn’t mean the person didn’t downvote abusively of course, just that you can’t tell from global statistics.

          • Vespair@lemmy.zipEnglish
            7·
            17 天前

            I agree with this. Far as I’m concerned, even if somebody only engages with posts they hate so all of their interactions are downvotes, why the fuck should they be banned? What does forcing faux positivity gain us? Yes I understand the value in stopping vote manipulation bots, but imo there should need to be more evidence of bot status or nefarious intent than just “downvotes a lot.”

      • frongt@lemmy.zip
        1112·
        18 天前

        Notorious amongst whom? I don’t spam votes, I evaluate each item on its merits as I see them.

        • TʜᴇʀᴀᴘʏGⒶʀʏ⁽ᵗʰᵉʸ‘ᵗʰᵉᵐ⁾@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          369·
          18 天前

          Notorious amongst whom?

          There’s a post about you on the mildly infuriating comm rn

          I don’t spam votes, I evaluate each item on its merits as I see them.

          Your apparent 3rd strike for vote spamming suggests otherwise

          Please consider curating your feed rather than downvoting content you don’t like

          • frongt@lemmy.zip
            1511·
            18 天前

            My feed is perfectly well curated. But I also downvote (and report) a lot of spam, like actual chatgpt-generated ad spam.

            (I also downvote “deleted by creator” comments, but that’s just to push them down in the comment trees, because they’re just noise. They changed the behavior a while back to leave that instead of actually deleting it when it had no replies, and I wish they’d revert that change.)

          • Ledivin@lemmy.world
            42·
            16 天前

            “Vote spamming” is actually the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard on this platform. Oh no, don’t engage in the primary way the platform allows! How horrible!

            And you people wonder why lemmy hasn’t and will never actually take off?

  • Deceptichum@quokk.auEnglish
    827·
    18 天前

    It’s .ml, so it’s to be expected. They have the most fragile power hungry mods around, and zero tolerance for diversity of thought.

    Your crime was probably downvoting a post, they don’t like people doing that.

  • Wildmimic@anarchist.nexusEnglish
    395·
    18 天前

    It’s lemmy.ml, many wear that ban like a medal because if you are somewhat sane you have a good chance of triggering the mods or admins, which are not sane. I’ve filtered out lemmy.ml long ago, so even if they lift your ban, i’d recommend you do the same instead of engaging there in any form.

  • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
    31·
    18 天前

    Uh. And it’s a permanent ban. Not just a temporary timeout for a minor offense… I’d take it as an invitation to switch to different Science/Ask/Open-Source communities on different instances. Might be an improvement anyway. (I mean I myself diversified my subscriptions and left most lemmy.ml ones a long time ago.)

  • rose56@lemmy.zip
    312·
    18 天前

    Have you thought not lurking ? /J Aside joking, ml is not a good instance, don’t bother with them match. I don’t for once.

    • MathGrunt@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      4·
      18 天前

      I’m beginning to see that. I’ve found a few other science communities in other instances that I think will work better in my feed.

      • protist@mander.xyzEnglish
        11·
        17 天前

        I just clicked the “share” link in the community and copied and pasted the link. It not only links you to the same place, but it’s faster than what you typed out

        • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
          3·
          17 天前

          I don’t see that link (or a match to the keyword “share” anywhere on the page) - are you using a 3rd party app to do that?

          One problem with the link that you sent is that for most people it will leave their current instance and to to mander.xyz, whereas the format that Blaze used will allow seeing the community from the recipient’s instance (where they are already logged in). Some places, like PieFed’s webpage UI, will auto-translate the link to do that, but most people on Lemmy I think won’t be able to do that.

  • gkak.laₛ@lemmy.zipEnglish
    25·
    18 天前

    matrix thread

    It has happened to me as well! It’s the “vote-only” part that triggers it, to filter out bots

    Dessalines:

    […] We don’t usually allow vote-only accounts on lemmy.ml, those are mostly bots targeting specific users or communities. That’s our rule 4, spamming.

    Since it was an .ml account I just stopped using it; I don’t know what you could do about voting on .ml communities though (aside from using your account to post more)

    • Wren@lemmy.todayEnglish
      6·
      18 天前

      This makes sense, since I’ve downvoted .ml posts and admins and haven’t been modded, but I wonder if there’s a better way to block bots?

      You need an account to curate your feed and folks are gonna vote. There shouldn’t be an obligation to participate in the comments.

      Maybe some kind of random bot test sent to vote-only accounts?

  • MathGrunt@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
    212·
    19 天前

    I don’t have a screenshot of comment or post that caused the ban, because I haven’t commented or posted anything whatsoever in more than six months.

    Mod has been very active over the last 24 hours but hasn’t responded to me.

  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
    86·
    18 天前

    ive been seen a suble takeover of the political memes sub by the tankies, yea thier own communities arnt getting enough engagement .