I did some analysis of the modlog and found this:

V8lPrxY1qxcISLe.png

Ok, bigger instances ban more often. Not surprising, because they have more communities and more users and more trouble. But hang on, dbzer0 isn’t a very big instance. What happens if we do a ratio of bans vs number of users?

vyfUNYTrX9pHQeR.png

Ok, so lemmy.ml, dbzer0 and pawb are issue an outsized amount of bans for the number of users they have… But surely the number of communities the instance hosts is going to mean they have to ban more? Bans are used to moderate communities, not just to shield their user-base from the outside. Let’s look at the number of bans per community hosted:

Yrc7TofOr88SeGt.png

Seems like dbzer0 really loves to ban. Even more than the marxists and the furries! What is it about dbzer0 that makes them such prolific banners?

Raw-ish numbers and calculations are in this spreadsheet if anyone wants to make their own charts.

  • OpenStars@piefed.social
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    5 days ago

    Wow this is really interesting.

    Actually this might be a great time to ask you for a feature request: lately I’ve been banned from SO MANY AI communities located on dbzer0, the trouble with that being that I’ve literally never heard of any of these, much less interacted with any of them, presumably even with a downvote.

    Is this “harassment” then, to be preemptively banned from something on some other server that I had no intention of ever going to? What if someone were to create 10 communities a day and ban someone from them all? I guess that one would get noticed and shut down, but I would not put it past an AI content generator to do just this sort of thing, if it were given the ability to do so.

    Anyway, perhaps those notifications could be silenced unless I’ve ever commented or at least voted in the community that I am being banned from? I don’t need to know or care about something that I have zero interest in - these unsolicited bans are spam.

    • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      You were targeted by draconic_neo and mystic mushroom.

      They have created a bunch of different communities across the fediverse so they can spam people’s modlogs with bullshit harassment.

      See my mod history, it’s exactly the same pattern.

      A huge amount of bans all within a few seconds of each other, all from communities modded by draconic_neo or mystic mushroom, if you examine the individual communities you find that they have no activity.

      They only exist to spam people’s mod log with nonsense because they can’t press the downvote button hard enough.

      • OpenStars@piefed.social
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        4 days ago

        If a normal person were to call me a troll many times in a row, I would strongly consider blocking them. But I wonder if blocking these people would have any effect upon this spam?

        I also find it the height of irony that we are all told by dbzer0 admins that we should strive hard to understand, since those mods must surely have their reasons for doing what they did, whereas if e.g. Lemmy.World were to block calls for outright murder of themselves personally, then all of a sudden moderation should no longer be allowed to moderate that violent rhetoric spammed at them. One rule for thee while another, different rule for me…

        Also, I am somewhat anti-AI, but not to the extent of trolling anyone. Though do facts matter anymore - i.e. have these two mods been kicked off of dbzer0 for their false accusations, sent preemptively out to half the Threadiverse?

        • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          I also find it the height of irony that we are all told by dbzer0 admins that we should strive hard to understand, since those mods must surely have their reasons for doing what they did

          That would be a fair argument except for the fact that the ‘communities’ that they ‘moderate’ have zero actual activity. Some have posts by draconic, some have exactly zero posts (and the community is locked). They’re just squatting communities with popular Reddit counterparts.

          Though do facts matter anymore - i.e. have these two mods been kicked off of dbzer0 for their false accusations, sent preemptively out to half the Threadiverse?

          Their dbzer0 account is still active, with comments 3 days ago.

      • TanteRegenbogen@feddit.org
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        4 days ago

        I am also sure DraconicNEO has at least an alt that has been active in the days ghe main account showed no activity and when the main is active the alt is inactive and it is for multiple day long periods.

        Also the rhetoric and going overboard with personal attacks is the same too.

        But yeah, they can be very petty. They banned me from their dead communities once, then when beefing with me, they unbanned me from their communities only to ban me immediately again. Like what was the point?

        • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          Like what was the point?

          They were bumping the bans to the top of your mod history so their nonsense is the first thing anyone reads.

      • OpenStars@piefed.social
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        5 days ago

        I’ve only had a single moderator event since I made this account, well over a year ago except a featuring & unfeaturing of a post - huh, I didn’t even know about that one!).

        Then one day I wake up with like 10 bans in my notifications area, from what looks to be pro-AI communities. They did not merely claim to be acting on the safe side with a generic message, they specifically called me names as in an “Anti-AI Troll”. Fwiw I consider myself as someone who desires a more nuanced view of how LLM usage might be appropriate in various real-world scenarios than your average Lemming. It’s not my fault that corporations are deploying technology before it is ready and that the results are exceedingly untrustworthy right now - though ironically I was actually thinking about trying to find a legitimately more helpful and nuanced place that allows those kinds of discussions. Naive optimism is a biased method of thinking, but so too is pessimism, and if at all possible I prefer realism. And I don’t want to exist purely inside of an echo chamber, you know?

        Which is why I avoid Lemmy.ml communities and users, and apparently I need to start doing the same with dbzer0 ones as well. They aren’t quite part of the Tankie Triad, but highly ironically, their admins allow mods that are instead somehow even more authoritarian than them? Like, I’ve never actually been banned by Lemmy.ml on any of my accounts (that I am aware of) - probably bc I do avoid those communities. While on the other hand dbzer0 (apparently) preemptively instance-banned me 4 times in a row last week - not even unbanning me in between them, just like stuttering or mashing the ban button EXTRA hard! Edit: this is starting to look more and more like a bug in PieFed’s modlog display, as in displaying a blank community name or some such, thank you to dbzer0 for correcting me here. I will leave the graphic because it is funny and because it still applies to all the mods on dbzer0 who are enabled and protected by but not actually the same as the admin team.

        img

        Now I know what people mean when they said that being banned from Lemmy.ml was a badge of honor, good riddance! I do find it sad that others are still going to have to discover this on their own though, as dbzer0 converts to authoritarianism like Lemmy.ml (and AN seems on its way to becoming a second Hexbear). A year or so ago, I had true respect for dbzer0 - especially the head admin. I don’t know what happened exactly but I don’t like the result one bit:-(.

        Anyway yeah, I can’t fight back against these abusive words, and if an instance decides to ban me four times a day for the foreseeable future, there is nothing is can do about that either - it almost seems like people are weaponizing the modlog, or at least revealing that someone could do that if they wanted to. I guess it is up to each instance what level of abusiveness they want to allow to their users from these shitty modlog practices. My own “fight” (that I did not realize I was even in?) with them seems over, but this absolutely will affect MANY other users as well.

        As the OP graphs show - these numbers reflect REAL events, with REAL stories behind them, affecting REAL people.

        • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          5 days ago

          You’ve never been instance banned from /0. Also Mods are not admins and we let them moderate as they want so long as they follow instance rules

          • OpenStars@piefed.social
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            5 days ago

            Thank you for correcting me here, I apologize for spreading misinformation.

            @rimu@piefed.social there seems to be a bug in PieFed.social’s modlog? I see four entries that all say done by “lemmy.dbzer0.com admin” a week ago citing “Banned account OpenStars”, but @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com confirms this is not the case. No “reason” statement is given that I can see, and no community name either (which is why I interpreted that to mean a site ban). I just upvoted a post in YPTB that seemed to work (the color of the vote changed) which points to the likelihood that I am not instance banned from either direction.

            • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              5 days ago

              Well the biggest evidence that you’re not instance banned, is that I can see you comments and you can see mine

              • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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                4 days ago

                I will say, I’ve argued with db0 a few times and they’ve kept it professional.

                We may disagree on things, but you’re not even close to being on the level of the petty people with the zero-activity communities which only exist for spamming mod logs.

                They are using your instance to host these fake communities though.

        • Cataphract@lemmy.ml
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          5 days ago

          so I’m not sure what you’re replying too because the comment was deleted but I’ve always been fascinated by the instance-hating and what causes it. Like a particular mod, admin, or even community you’ve interacted with, I kinda get. But the broader instance thing is just… interesting.

          I don’t know if piefed.social has a different kind of setup, but I’m not bombarded with a lot of what instance-haters report to have happening. I’m not getting personal messages or stickied posts on my feeds, it’s basically the same all feed when I use any other instance just browsing without a login (I like to visit places like lemmy.today and their sick ass layout on tablet). My subscription feed would be the same regardless as well if I migrated. I found myself on .ml because years ago instances weren’t as reliable with downtime or loaded slowly/error-ed but .ml was always responsive and up for me. The only reason I’ve stayed is because of people who hate .ml actually, like you don’t look down on someone because of the neighborhood they live in do you? For those that automatically block an entire instance, I’m just kinda glad I don’t have to deal with them in that sense.

          I also might be missing part of your modlog if it’s not showing for me but I only see 5 bans for “anti-ai troll” 2 months ago and 3 for “Pro-Zionist debate/apologia” 9 days ago. The 3 recent are easy to figure out because of the lengthy comments you had in the crazy ass post “Update: anarchist.nexus has been refederated” (I tried to stay away from that because it all looked heated at the time lol). The 2 months ago is easy to find if you manipulate your profile link with changing comment page numbers by 5’s and just look at the dates. You commented on a post that was cross-posted to several of the lemmy.dbzer0.com communities saying anti-ai stuff and got banned several minutes after that. (I’m not a mod of these communities so not judging or stating whether the ban’s were valid, just sharing why they probably happened).

        • Grail@multiverse.soulism.net
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          5 days ago

          Yeah, dbzer0 chose to remain federated with Hexbear, and they got influenced. Now they think every leftist who voted against Trump is an electoralist libshit troll, and they’re handing out bans like nobody’s business. I got banned from dbzer0 for criticising their slide into authoritarianism, they held a vote about it and everything.

          In a couple years they’ll have banned enough people to create their own little bubble that all the sensible people left. And then the troublemakers from Hexbear will move on to trying to influence some other instance. Looks like capitalist social media has to deal with enshittification, and we have to deal with hexbearification.

            • EldritchFemininity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              5 days ago

              I mean, they were at one point urging their admins to “take over other instances and kick out all the non-communists,” so…

              Plus, there’s a reason that Blahaj defederated them. Toxic people will be toxic.

            • Grail@multiverse.soulism.net
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              5 days ago

              Human beings are programmed to seek social approval, and coercive social groups like Hexbear hack that programming by creating a space where social approval is contingent on conforming to their belief system. It’s an abusive religious group, like Scientology.

              • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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                5 days ago

                Love, You have an actual cult that claims to be able to alter the laws of physics through belief and that anyone who doesn’t accept that is being “authoritarian.”

          • mrdown@lemmy.world
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            5 days ago

            Dbzero remove Russian propaganda and zionist propaganda. Lemmy.world is where zionist strive yet dbzero is not planning to defederate first. Funny how you ccomplain about tankis but not zionists

          • OpenStars@piefed.social
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            5 days ago

            When lemm.ee shut down, all the “free speech” incels (to whom no means create a new account and keep going) had to go somewhere. Never mind that it was the weight of all that toxicity that caused lemm.ee to shut down… just create a new account and keep going. And hexbear was defederated from so many other instances, it just makes sense to create an account on an instance that is friendly to HB but that also can reach the rest of the Threadiverse - they want to have their cake and eat it too (which makes sense, I would too in their place, and in fact I strongly considered making an account on dbzer0 myself in the past, thinking that it had defederated from HB but that turned out to have been merely a technical glitch, I think due to HB having lost its domain name at one point).

            I made this image a few days ago but it seems to still fit here as well:)

            img