I did some analysis of the modlog and found this:
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?
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:
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.
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.
That's a good idea!
Then I am glad I mentioned it!:-)
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!
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.
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
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.
The power hexbear users have! Scary...
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.