this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2026
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Ye Power Trippin' Bastards
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254 users here now
This is a community in the spirit of "Am I The Asshole" where people can post their own bans from lemmy or reddit or whatever and get some feedback from others whether the ban was justified or not.
Sometimes one just wants to be able to challenge the arguments some mod made and this could be the place for that.
Posting Guidelines
All posts should follow this basic structure:
- Which mods/admins were being Power Tripping Bastards?
- What sanction did they impose (e.g. community ban, instance ban, removed comment)?
- Provide a screenshot of the relevant modlog entry (don’t de-obfuscate mod names).
- Provide a screenshot and explanation of the cause of the sanction (e.g. the post/comment that was removed, or got you banned).
- Explain why you think its unfair and how you would like the situation to be remedied.
Rules
- Post only about bans or other sanctions that you have received from a mod or admin.
- Don’t use private communications to prove your point. We can’t verify them and they can be faked easily.
- Don’t deobfuscate mod names from the modlog with admin powers.
- Don’t harass mods or brigade comms. Don’t word your posts in a way that would trigger such harassment and brigades.
- Do not downvote posts if you think they deserved it. Use the comment votes (see below) for that.
- You can post about power trippin’ in any social media, not just lemmy. Feel free to post about reddit or a forum etc.
- If you are the accused PTB, while you are welcome to respond, please do so within the relevant post.
Expect to receive feedback about your posts, they might even be negative.
Make sure you follow this instance's code of conduct. In other words we won't allow bellyaching about being sanctioned for hate speech or bigotry.
YPTB matrix channel: For real-time discussions about bastards or to appeal mod actions in YPTB itself.
Some acronyms you might see.
- PTB - Power-Tripping Bastard: The commenter agrees with you this was a PTB mod.
- YDI - You Deserved It: The commenter thinks you deserved that mod action.
- YDM new - You Deserved More: The commenter thinks you got off too lightly.
- BPR - Bait-Provoked Reaction: That mod probably overreacted in charged situation, or due to being baited.
- CLM - Clueless Mod: The mod probably just doesn't understand how their software works.
Relevant comms
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Okay, so with this ban, Serinus has effectively placed himself as an Admin of lemmy.world itself.He is stating positions for Lemmy.world itself, not just himself or his communities. Kaplan and other admins like @Ruud@lemmy.world are not stepping in and not criticising his behavior. With this behavior ongoing, it must be approved from the top level down or that the admins are totally out to lunch and not capable/willing of stepping in.
Moreover, a bot exists and has been talked about in the past. I was given access to it when I was on Lemmy.world. The bot was created by KingOfFlorda to allow for users like myself and Jordan to be able to deal with CSAM and other extremely bad actors when the admins were not available. There is no reason to believe that Serinus does not have access to the bot. The bot in question allows a non-admin user to apply an instance level ban to someone.
It was with this bot that you were banned from the instance.
You were not banned from an Admin account, you were banned from the bot account.
@MrKaplan@lemmy.world and @Ruud@lemmy.world have now, in effect, made @Serinus@lemmy.world an admin by allowing him to repeatedly post positions on behalf of Lemmy.world with stuff such as this:
In conclusion, Lemmy.world can now no longer be trusted for any admin decision. They are not being transparent with their decisions or even who their admins and those who have admin abilities are. They are willing to give total control of the website to someone who has repeatedly lied, repeatedly silenced others for misinformation that have categorical proof and someone who has openly posted a mod level comment condoning the bullying of instances provided they are under a certain number of users. Lemmy.world admins are willing to give admin level control and abilities to a user but are unwilling to force him to take the accountability of an admin.
A defederation vote must be held immediately with the Flotilla. Lemmy.world has surpassed bad acting at this stage and have proven they have no active administration that can be trusted to follow their own Terms of Service.
Kaplan stated about Anarchist.nexus that there is "there is no sufficient moderation of violence on communities there". Yet, Lemmy.world has no sufficient moderation of its admins or mods at all.
FYI, if you want a defed vote, just start it. Any member with access to vote can open a governance thread. https://github.com/db0/threativore/blob/main/README_manual.md#governance
If you don't feel confident about opening the thread ofc, you can always request one of the admins does it.
Talking with some people about it. Kaplan has gone beyond the pale with the petty defederation but Serinus' behavior (and the lack of active admins otherwise) have demonstrated that lemmy.world has insufficient moderation for admin abuse on their instance. Ruud won't lift a finger or even have any input at all. Their admin team is either corrupt or non-existent and letting them run around setting the stage for everything due to their size is untenable and unsustainable. I have no reason to believe that anyone on the admin team will do anything without pressure being applied as they've demonstrated in the past they're not willing to do anything without pressure being applied.
A reactionary administration team, especially one so emotionally charged and driven, isn't trustworthy. I'm not even sure if it can be fixed. Serinus would need to be removed from any/all position where he speaks for admins, that (frankly massive security risk, not to mention totally bypassing of the modlog) of a discord bot would have to be killed and Kaplan would need to be relegated to devops only. I have no reason to believe that @Ruud@lemmy.world will do this. Genuinely believe that, at this stage, the only reasonable option is defederation. They've proven they're not willing to listen and are willing to engage in consistent admin-level abuse.
The dog keeps getting out of its yard and biting people. No owner is around with a leash. Time to lock our gates.
I mean, as much as I like to pile on PTBs, they're only driving their own users away from their instance. A defederation because their admins keep abusing their power isn't sufficient imho, because they can't do anything significant. I feel like defederation should be reserved for cases where their userbase behaviour is overall harmful, such as bigotry, or speech which would drive away marginalized people from our instance to avoid seeing it. Having one of their mods degrade their own instance trust, doesn't do that and if anything would prevent their users from seeing our agitations.
That's my take on this.
The problem lies in with the fact that they're the largest instace on lemmy by a significant margin so they control the playing field. This is like trying to wait for reddit to kill itself. It's not going to because people start relying on it and getting too used to it and don't want to bother with anything else. Combine that with admins that are actively harming the fediverse by driving new people away when their instance is the first thing they see? They need to be held over a barrel until Kaplan and Serinus are gone. As for your usage case:
The official LW Admin account is officially considering sanctioning and defederation from Dbzer0 based off of a purely slanderous case made by Kaplanwas that the admins of this instance didn't take it seriously enough based off of their feelings.
Kaplan has no evidentiary basis for a consideration for this defederation and even admitted as much. If we roll over and accept that then what is even the point? Just accept that Lemmy.world is going to continue throwing hissyfits and the rest of the Fediverse just has to accept it? I want to see something done for outrageous threats made against not just the instance but all 20 thousand users that Kaplan is ready to handwave away based off of their feelings.
To use Kaplans own words here, it is not my intention to control who can or can't be on admin teams on another instance but I do expect other instances to understand that an individual admin's actions reflect their instance as a whole. Something Ruud seems to not care about and something that Kaplan belives does not apply to themself. Overall, the primary response by the LW Admin team has been to frame AN and Dbzer0 as either a small instance that "only has 165 users" or a "vocal minority with an agenda". For 20,000 users.
There is a significant difference in the tolerance of hypocrisy on our platforms.
Sorry but I just don't agree that pre-emptive defederation is the right play here. Even with reddit, we still do outreach and try to remind people lemmy exists and that they should move. I think it's better to keep federated and continue agitating for people and communities to migrate away.
Which will be unable to do because Lemmy.world hoovers up everyone instantly and then sets a false narrative with abusive admins. I mean I'm proof of that. I was there for ages because I didn't realize they were whole ass lying to me.
I'm not certain that's true anymore. The early times of the rexxodus were something else. Most of the people doing outreach are not suggesting L.W anymore and power users like blaze are constantly agitating to move comms away. Plus the fact that the mod team of l.w. is rapidly losing quality and trust is also pushing more and more people away. I just don't think L.W. hoovers everyone anymore. The paradigm has changed. In fact lemmy as a whole is not gaining as many users as piefed.
And if that were true and people defaulted to l.w. right now, defederating would be even worse, as these wouldn't even know we exist.
I'm also in favor of starting a vote. I messaged an admin about it but they said it would probably be best to wait for the drama to die down. I agreed then but I don't think I agree now since this is just getting worse and worse.
Eh, there's not really much urgency here. It's not like these actions are driving our users away.
Apparently they leaked someone's email I feel like that and this are good reasons to distance ourselves from them even if it's not immediately urgent.
OK but this is just hearsay though. I'd rather pick up the pitchforks about something more solid.