Mildly Infuriating

me asf

same here, i tried to understand the dbzero/pefed drama, its all tankies trying argue with the ADMINS how thier misinformation harrasments, and peddling isnt what they claim, but they would not be so kind in return. that staments users was up to something a few months ago with the piefed admins, i assume he leans into tankie territoriy. its the same as arguing with conservatives since they are a mirror image, had enough of propaganda on reddit to ignore this.

The funny part is that as a db0 user, I haven’t even really seen the drama. I’ve seen people talking about the drama, but the only thing I’ve directly seen has been when the db0 admins got banned. Which seemed pretty funny on a petty level, but also raises a lot of questions about whether or not they’d still be able to effectively moderate if they’re banned from instances that their users are still interacting on.

Like if piefed were to ban a db0 admin, could that db0 admin still see (and take action) when a piefed user is causing trouble on db0? Does the ban hide piefed users, and potentially allow them to break db0 rules with impunity? Or inversely, piefed would have no right to complain about db0 users causing trouble on piefed communities if the db0 admins can’t see it to take action. If I were to go post something bad on piefed, could the db0 admins see it to take action against me? I’m honestly not sure how the mod tools would work in that instance, especially if the ban prevents the banned admin from seeing the offending posts in either direction.

I’m not saying instance admins should have carte blanche to do whatever they want without risk of getting banned. But banning an admin should probably be considered more heavily than simply banning a regular user, especially if you’re still planning on remaining federated with that instance.

I can see an argument being made that an admin ban should automatically defederate the admin’s instance, unless the mod tools still allow the banned admin to police their own users. But even then, allowing the banned admin to circumvent the ban using mod tools runs the risk of completely defeating the purpose of the ban. Because it would essentially allow the banned admin to evade (or at least partially evade) the ban by falling back to the mod tools instead. For instance, what if an admin was banned for stalking or harassing a user, but the admin tools still allow the banned admin to stalk and harass that user? In that case, the banning instance has made a good faith attempt to protect their user from the banned admin, and the built-in tools are preventing that action from being effective. Or inversely, what if one instance admin bans another, to attempt to hide their activities on the banned admin’s home instance? If the db0 admin is banned from piefed, can they still see piefed users who interact with db0 communities? If not, that could easily be abused to enable brigading/raiding/takeovers/etc.

It’s a tricky game of push and pull. One side of me wants to say that banning an instance admin shouldn’t prevent them from seeing your instance at all, because you’re still federated. Stop them from posting or commenting as a regular user, but still allow them to do admin things like police their users’ comments. After all, if you’re still federated, they should be fully able to police their own users. If db0’s admin can’t see activity on piefed, piefed loses the right to complain when db0 users cause trouble on piefed.

But that runs the risk of making bans seem pointless, and would push admins towards defederation instead. Especially since basically anyone can spin up an instance and become their own admin. And (at least in my mind) defederation should be a last resort, not a first choice. Because defederation has the potential to affect vast swaths of the fediverse, not just the admin directly.

Does your instance have open signups? I'm pretty tired of the assumptions people make about me due to db0