Mods of !news are now banning people for criticizing the MBFC bot?

I got banned earlier today with the message "rule 1", no other information about why, or which comment broke the rule. As far as I can tell it was this one, which just says "We want the bot gone. That’s it. It’s really that simple."

So I checked the modlog for other bans, and @aniki@lemmings.world was banned today as well, also just for "rule 1", probably either for the comment saying "a stupid bot writing useless bullshit" or "This is what you call "Not listening to criticism."", neither of which are an attack on any person.

(Also earlier today @MindTraveller@lemmy.ca was banned with the message "fuck off", which I'm pretty sure is not a reason to ban someone from a major community, but doesn't appear to be related to the MBFC bot.)

One more today, @stormesp@lemm.ee was banned, again just "rule 1", last comment being this one, again not an attack on any person.

So what's the deal here? I couldn't find any rules for mods on lemmy.world with a brief poke around, but are we letting mods run major communities like little fiefdoms, banning people for criticism?

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Let's review some of these bans, as called out by ChomskyWasRight@slrpunk.net:
https://lemm.ee/post/40926293/14446156
https://imgur.com/YSoJbgs
From the top:
LagrangePoint@lemmy.world https://imgur.com/4XsXuOC
Quote: "LW admin/mod team seem to have this overbearing and weird belief that they need to tell everyone else what to think and how to think it. How about... you all just fuck off and don't?
Result: Permaban
=====
aniki@lemmings.world https://imgur.com/LIye27F
Quote: "All rights are won through violence, child. Bans on here means less than the nothing platitudes you utter"
Result: 15 day ban
=====
catloaf@lemm.ee https://imgur.com/ONGdgNo
Quote: [the quote is really long, pls dont make me type it and just look at the link lol]
Result: 15 day ban
Note: the comment precedes the ban by 26 days, but catloaf's recent comment history contains opinions critical of the LW News mod team
=====
DoctorButts@kbin.melroy.org https://imgur.com/q2kktNQ
Quote: "Damn what a shame, guy almost stopped being a moderator on an internet forum, would have been a grave tragedy"
Result: Permaban
=====
stormesp@lemm.ee https://imgur.com/ZCRtuJe
Stormesp's profile at lemm.ee: https://lemm.ee/u/stormesp
Quote: [there were no comments removed in the modlog, but stormesp's recent comment history contains opinions critical of the LW News mod team, read them yourself]
Result: 15 day ban
=====
MindTraveller@lemmy.ca https://imgur.com/YwIMSOq
Quotes: [multiple quotes, there are a lot, check out the link]
Result: 15 day ban
=====
Summary
Most interestingly here is that the two users who got permabanned didn't use slurs and didn't call for violence, they merely insulted the moderator team. I guess in the LW News mod team's eyes, that's a horrible, terrible, awful, unforgivable offense, so.......... PERMABAN.
Aniki literally is saying "words are useless, let's resort to violence" but that's a 15 day ban only, OK, makes sense, right????????
Catloaf and Stormesp were actively leaving comments sparring with the moderator team in that thread. To be honest, none of what I'm seeing in these comment seems worthy of a ban. Unless of course, you're a LW mod and you go "this guy is disagreeing with me, therefore they deserve a ban."
Edit: I forgot to write about MindTraveller since that guy was a last minute addition. But look at those aggressive comments, guy deserves a ban for sure.
=====
Conclusion
Not a good look. Does LW want to grow into a good Reddit alternative or do they just want to turn it into Reddit for themselves only?
LW can at least come clean about this and say "yes, the rest of you can get fucked" or maybe they will have a moment of realization at some point "oh my god, are we the baddies?"
- Lol I didn't even know I was banned until I saw this comment
  
  Yeah the way these federated systems are handling bans and moderation right now is not very transparent. It's very easy to have moderator action taken against you and not know why it happened, or to even know that it happened
  
  True. However, I don't think my comment was that bad, so I also wasn't even suspecting anything would happen.
  It's like these guys just started using the internet yesterday and everything offends them.
  
  Yeah that's what I mean. And systemically the way the system was developed encourages such behavior. Which... In a way is I guess what I've been trying to say for long time about "letting tankies be who develops your platform has consequences for the systems they develop"
  Which probably seems like a non sequitur to you. I'm just making connections between what you're saying, what's going in this specific situation, and overall with Lemmy as a construct
  
  Lemmy provides for inadequate moderation tools and the developers of Lemmy don't see adding additional tools or improvements to existing tools to be a high priority, so there's not going to be more transparency from anyone running a Lemmy instance or moderating a lemmy community.
  
  How dare you not take the situation seriously! totally not on the mod team for throwing someone to the wolves
- As always: if you're unhappy with !news@lemmy.world , there is !globalnews@lemmy.zip
- Small clarification, @MindTraveller participated in that thread, but was banned while a comment of theirs was removed in a separate post. That's why they're not included in the list.
- Quote: [the quote is really long, pls dont make me type it and just look at the link lol]
  Result: 15 day ban
  Note: the comment precedes the ban by 26 days, but catloaf’s recent comment history contains opinions critical of the LW News mod team
  I copied it for you:
  Link to the study, because the fuckers never do: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2405334121 Here's what I was looking for:
  In all studies, we made certain that the participants and the people in the images were from the same nationality, since cultural familiarity is critical for the face–name matching effect to occur.
  Additionally, this survey was conducted by Israelis, and since it says it was translated into English in the paper, I assume it was conducted in Hebrew. They say "socioeconomic cues such as age and ethnicity are experimentally controlled", but I don't see that they explain how. My suspicion is that the results are affected by non-facial cues like clothing, hairstyle, facial hair, and indeed age. For example, if I showed you a picture of an old woman and asked if her name was Doris, Helen, Megan, or Kayley, which do you think it is? If I showed you a picture of a guy with short dark hair, possibly graying, beard stubble, and a collared denim shirt, is his name Edgar, Clarence, Emil, or James? Further, since they did some kind of control over the prompts, I have to assume they presented faces and names the respondents would be familiar with, meaning this does not necessarily hold outside of Israel and Israelis (and I assume mostly people ethnically Israeli Jewish). This reinforces my belief that their methodology is flawed, and while people might look like their names, their faces themselves do not change to fit, rather there's a correlation with other factors like age (i.e. name popularity over time), grooming style, and so on.
  
  I can't imagine that comment was why I was banned. If it was, then it seems to me like they went digging to find an excuse to ban me.
  I wasn't given any reason that comment was removed, either. As I replied to myself there, my only rule I can guess at violating was calling news article authors who don't link or name the study "fuckers", but as I said, I'm happy to remove that if it's unacceptable.
  
  I'm not sure why you were banned, I was just annoyed about reading a screenshot of text.
- To be honest, none of what I’m seeing in these comment seems worthy of a ban.
  I don't agree with this. It seems like people are harassing the mods for the mods having a different opinion. These people don't seem interested in any counterpoints or evidence that undermines their opinions which don't seem to take relevant facts into account.
  
  These people don't seem interested in any counterpoints or evidence that undermines their opinions which don't seem to take relevant facts into account.
  Just like the mods and admins
  
  It's different in my view. As the mods and admins are experiencing a loosely coordinated brigade of vitriolic messages. It's no surprise to me that they responded by filtering out those who are being persistent in bad faith communication. But they have in fact been receptive to improving the bot based on feedback. They have not, however, instantly determined and implemented any improvements.
  Reviewing the situation as an outsider. It seems that the mods and admins are not wrong and those complaining are ill-informed about many aspects of what they're complaining about and are being belligerent in their ignorance. But even if they were 100% informed and correct about Media Bias Fact Check, their behavior has been out of line.

59 comments