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?

59 comments

MindTraveller being banned could very much just be because he's a trolling douche nozzle in general.
- calling other people pedophiles is not trolling.
  such allegations can be life-ruining and should not be done lightly.
- He's the only one whose fair to get bounced from all instances.
  Others just looked like the mods didn't like talk back.
  
  The level of vitriol that the banned users have been spewing seems like harassment of the mods.
- Not that person again, I lost my entire community because of that troll
  
  I remember that, that was a mess
  
  Best part of that was they still immediately turned on Ada after.
  So glad Ada did so much to prop up mind in those sagas
  
  I asked you directly what link_opens_chest.wav did to be removed and you replied "It's the strict rules tbh". Then the entire community spent a week telling you the changes to the rules weren't wanted before you back tracked. The problems on libertyhub were your doing not a trolls, and it really seemed like your goal was to take over the community and change it to your liking.

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
  
  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.
- 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

Bot personhood. Just wait til someone says the wrong thing about cat food.
- That's quacking funny.
- 👌🤣

A .ml mod recently banned me from the entire instance after I complained about being called a "fucking idiot". I suspect they didn't like me saying China doesn't have a clean record on genocide.
The fediverse is great because it's not corporate, but you still have to deal with folks who put the hell into "Hell is other people."
- You were banned from .ml for not being a tankie?
  
  They got banned for being a shit head nothing else
  
  https://lemmy.ml/modlog?page=1&actionType=All&userId=753738
- Cool story. I thought everyone hated that other instances did that and it wouldn't be an issue on world?
  
  It's not a game changer for me, but I like to cruise All and I do run across their posts wishing I could chime in. Usually just jokes or middlebrow irony, but it passes the time.
- You are, in fact, a fucking idiot
  
  Sure, but you didn't need to make an alt to say that to me.
  
  What does their sexual partner have to do with this?

What a shitshow. Admins and moderators are screwing up. This is completely of their own making, by doubling down on a stupid bot nobody wants.

The what bot?! Clicks link.. ooohh the spam generator that I blocked a while back. Gotcha. The thing was stupid and the posts unnessicarily long. At lease give a short and sweet and chuck the rest under a spoiler.. jeez.
- They added spoilers, but they don't work on the boost app or some others.
  
  The boost app developers really should fix that. Spoilers are working the vast majority of lemmy frontend UIs.
- Some folks are putting links to MBFC in the posts, which, imo, is better than the bot but just as annoying as the people putting the anti-AI copyright link in their comments.
  
  My favorite part of it is that the bots logic seems to either prioritize the comment part of the post or mbfc links over what the post is linking too.
  So instead of getting the op content it just has mbfc at top
- this is what annoys me about the complaining. the complainers could ignore it or better yet block it but its not about them but what they think other people should see. I don't block it although I rarely look at it but im fine with its assesments.