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Midwest.social banned me a year ago for "Racism" and I only just found out

Instance is midwest.social. Not a solitary clue who the admin was who did it.

A friend was wondering why they hadn't seen my posts and figured I'd been banned from lemmy.world or just left in general. I went to his instance and saw that in the modlog.

Not a damn clue as to why. There are no post removals, no comment removals, no temp bans and I never got any messages from any of the admins about anything that I did. Just one day, they randomly banned me for racism without rhyme nor reason. I have literally nothing that I can point towards and say "This is the reason why" because they never bothered to do anything other than ban me.

I am many things. I am an asshole, I'm a vindictive removed, I'm a petty prick, I'm often antagonistic, I'm also a whiny removed. But racist?

Edit:

Well okay then

98 评论

  • That's a major flaw in lemmy. No ban notifications. Or, I've never gotten one. Like, rock n roll, ban me, especially if it's justified. But since lemmy doesn't let me know, if a mod doesn't send a "fuck off and die" note, I may not find out I'm banned for months (like your situation, it wasn't until someone else brought it to my attention).

    But I do have multiple accounts, and if you want to ban me instead of just this account, you gotta let me know so I can filter shit out so I don't vote on an alt or make a comment while I'm piddling around or whatever.

    Also, apologies for going off topic since the mod action taken against the OP is the point of posting here, PTB. With no specifics given, and the total lack of anything hinting at racism in your years on lemmy, I can't see this being a justified ban. Like you said, you're human enough to put on an asshole hat now and then (less than me most likely, but still), but racism just isn't something you've indulged in even in jest that I've ever seen.

    • I'm not 100% what is going on with ban notifications, but you will get some. Mostly from communities but not all. I think it's depending on which instance has implemented that AutoMod function. But none of them tell you that you've been banned from another instance. Hell, it doesn't even show it in my modlog. I had to go to midwest.social and manually search their modlog for myself and THEN see that I was banned. I'm sure I've probably got that on a few other instances.

      I abhor racism. I was raised in an exceptionally racist household. I cannot say that I never said the N-word because I did. A lot. But growing up in a hateful echo chamber in a small town on a small island when everyone is so white they sunburn at night? You never see anything to break that mold. First person I met who wasn't white was a Native dude at school when I was like 10ish. He was great, invited me over to his place and I went. Met his family. Every single thing I had been told was a complete lie. Was at that point I started second guessing everything that I was ever taught by my shithole parents. I was furious. I'm still furious. Well over 2/3rd of my life later and I'm incredibly furious. I am not okay with being used, especially against people for no reason. Like hell am I going to try and continue that for other people.

      Then there's the fact that I'm gay and have a "vested interest" if you want to put it that way because racism isn't that different from homophobia in how insanely fucking stupid the entire thing is.

      But more than anything? It's just a fucked up way to be. I'm a die hard Trekkie. If I watched that show and came away going "Racism is okay!" then I need to be shot.

    • That’s a major flaw in lemmy. No ban notifications.

      Agreed!

  • Part of a temp ban I got (night have been my other account I don't use anymore) was because I ignored that my other comments were removed and continued an argument.

    How was I supposed to know my comments were removed? There was no warning or anything, no notification about removals, nothing. Only saw the comments I was responding to as they popped in.

    Doesn't REALLY matter, I deserved it, but it would be nice to actually be appropriately warned before catching a ban when a warning was implied.

  • I bet one of the admins just had it out for you and came up with a bullshit excuse. Midwest reminds me of the Tankie Triad sometimes, quite a few of their users are .ml and Hexbear alts and the nonsensical banning is perfectly on brand. Nowhere near on the same level, of course, but still clearly a problem.

    Side note, I hardly ever see anyone posting from that instance anymore. Used to see their users all the time. I wonder why?

    • Midwest is still federated with Hexbear as well.

      What I find bizarre is that I only found out by complete accident.

      Someone else made a post and @'d me. I looked at it and it had a response with someone saying "That account has been banned" and he was from the midwest.social instance. This dude happens to be a buddy of mine and I chat with him on Steam and Bsky so I reached out and asked what he meant while I looked at midwest.social and saw the banning.

      He thought that lemmy.world had banned me for whatever reason (Spam. Spam would be the reason) and that's why he wasn't seeing my posts or anything on Lemmy anymore. That I either got banned or left lemmy on my own (which I did do for a hot second). I responded to him and asked if he could see the response. He couldn't. He then looked at my account and saw all the posts outside of midwest.social and saw all the posts I've been making and that's when I made this post.

      Whole situation is just so weird.

      Thanks again @End0fLine@midwest.social

      • Well, that definitely explains the number of tankies from that instance. On a side note, I'm really glad you're back on Lemmy, the place felt empty without your posts.

      • Midwest is still federated with Hexbear as well.

        Any idea when Midwest was setup? I feel like I only saw Hexbear for a short bit before the blocking function became available. Then I immediately would have blocked Hexbear.

        It just seems very midwestern to take the "just ignore them" approach.

    • I like it because I prefer to have the blocking of instances be my choice.

    • ooo has the redbaiting found a new target?

  • I've said it before but this is a good time to say it again: Lemmy can be more authoritarian than even Reddit.

    Yes there is a modlog, but no notifications, no modmail, no ability to even know who did the moderation other than that it was done by a "mod" - Reddit at least told us that we were banned?!?! and allowed for an appeal process - all of which makes total sense when you consider the authoritarian nature of the devs, who are well-known for site-wide banning upon saying something that they disagree with (even simple facts).

    I am much happier on PieFed, which offers numerous options for democratization of moderation - e.g. you can place icons next to users names, or have that done automatically based on rules, thereby increasing the set of options from the binary "remove post or ban" vs. "do nothing, leave it alone for everyone to see" to allow you to decide what to do based on those. Like there are keyword filters in place (beyond simply "All" vs. "None", also offering "Some", if you wanted e.g. some Trump or Musk content but less than the currently tsunami of it!), thereby allowing a mod to leave a post up and allow the community members to individually tailor the content to suit their tastes. Like for a <2 week account, I may respond differently; or for someone who receives 10x more downvotes than upvotes, I may choose not to respond at all rather than waste time on such sea-lioning tactics.

    Lemmy was made by the people who got banned from Reddit for being too toxic. We are using their tools, made for and by authoritarians, unless we build and use better (like Mbin and now PieFed).

    This specific thing - about notifications - may change (though it has not in the 2 years I moved here from Reddit... only getting worse in fact, as the modlog used to say the name of the mod but now it simply says "mod"), but the overall trend looks like it will not.

      • Like what?

        Any tool can be used in many ways, but overall the trend that I see in PieFed is to place more power into the hands of the individual users rather than force administrators or community moderators or developers to have to do every little thing. Even right down to the choice of implementation language being Python rather than Rust, which shifts the balance downwards allowing more people to control their own instances rather than have to rely upon the developers, and facilitates user contributions to the codebase.

        Of course instance admins should control their own instances - it's their hardware after all, bought and paid for, and with their effort more than simply money - and similarly moderators their communities. I am just speaking to the overall trends (the overall balance being shifted more towards users on PieFed, compared to Lemmy and Reddit) that I have seen, but am open to feedback if others see differently? I should note that PieFed is relatively much newer than Lemmy, despite how features keep being added weekly, so e.g. if PieFed lacks a feature such as notifications for being banned, I would likely chalk it up to it simply being so new, rather than a deliberate choice not to bother with such, which the administrative practices observed on lemmy.ml lends me to believe is the case for Lemmy.

    • Lemmy can be more authoritarian than even Reddit.

      I think it's leaning that way. And I think it's hampering it's growth. I still like Lemmy way more than Reddit though!

      And piefed is awesome!

    • Reddit at least told us that we were banned?!?! and allowed for an appeal process

      Which they promptly reject every single time, because it's not a human doing it.

  • Yeah, that's weird. I wish people would be more descriptive in ban reasons. As the story is so far, it sounds like PTB to me. I get the impression from others on Lemmy that midwest is pretty ban-heavy tho.

98 评论