this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2026
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Ye Power Trippin' Bastards

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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:

  1. Which mods/admins were being Power Tripping Bastards?
  2. What sanction did they impose (e.g. community ban, instance ban, removed comment)?
  3. Provide a screenshot of the relevant modlog entry (don’t de-obfuscate mod names).
  4. Provide a screenshot and explanation of the cause of the sanction (e.g. the post/comment that was removed, or got you banned).
  5. Explain why you think its unfair and how you would like the situation to be remedied.

Rules


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.


Relevant comms

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cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/51288619

Hi All,

Due to some ongoing issues with harassment campaigns, we've had to setup a rudimentary monitoring system for all new users.

  • When a user's signup is accepted, they will be automatically enrolled into the monitoring system. The admins team may also add accounts manually if they have been given a strike.
  • The system will monitor all posts, comments and DMs sent by new users, and bring them to the attention of the admin team if it appears suspicious. In egregious cases, it will auto-remove posts and comments if required, but a human admin will always review and reverse any false positives as soon as required.
  • Once we have validated that the user is not a spammer, they will be removed from the system.

We don't want to go into too much detail on how it all works, but we can say that all the processing is being done locally on the instance server. For most of you, this wont have any impact, but some of you have been impacted by the systems false positives. It is also a good time to point out that DM messages are not private, and should not be used for anything that requires strong privacy.

There will likely be teething problems, but we are actively working on improving the bot to minimize impact and we are always open to feedback.

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[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

It's not power tripping, as you said in a comment.

But it is bullshit, and they can fuck right off with the "too much detail, done locally" shit.

Look, I'm all for auto mod tools. I've been vocal about it being why I would never mod a large community on the fediverse. There's just too much assholery online to not have a tool that filters out the assholes before anyone else is exposed to it.

But, with reddit, anyone could look at the documentation on what auto mod could do. You knew, if you wanted, what was an wasn't possible. You could easily figure out why your comment or post ran afoul of it. Despite the complaints aboue its misuse, it was the thing that made modding a subreddit halfway bearable. And, when used appropriately, it made being part of a sub a much better experience.

But this? The lack of transparency about what's going on, what the tool does, how it does it, just ain't cool. It flies in the face of what the fediverse is supposed to be.

It's llm/ai surveillance without even source available access so a given user can decide to opt the fuck out.

Like I said, a tool like that is a good thing, not a bad one. But not being open is abhorrent for this use.

Edit: for any stragglers, do read the responses made by people from the instance in question before raising any hell. They seem to be on board with providing good info to possible new users and informing current users that might object.

[–] Ategon@programming.dev 17 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Theres no LLM involved. This version of the post doesnt have the tldr to clarify some things so ill just repost my comment here

  • Were not sending data to an LLM but the method is hidden so bad actors cant bypass it (you can disagree on that but the main issue is bots that are able to check blacklisted content and then just edit messages slightly to bypass it)
  • The things that are checked are public (posts, comments, and dms that are also sent to other servers we dont control) and can be moderated on regardless of this. There isnt anything that breaches privacy
  • Worst thing it can automatically do is temporarily remove a post/comment until an admin can approve or deny it just so its not there for people to run into (for example if someone spams slurs at someone else the someone else doesnt see that instead of it being there until an admin is able to come online)
[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Aight, that's a great response :)

What I'm taking away from that is that the method is more like what auto mod on reddit did than a separate piece of software running. That, as such, it's something admins have full control over beyond just choosing to have it in place or not; as in an llm would be a closed box with limited ability to influence what goes on inside. And that it's serving pretty much as a filter as opposed to an automated decision maker.

Which is exactly what the fediverse needs tbh, assuming I'm understanding what's being used correctly.

With that assumption in place, my only remaining "bullshit" is in a little more transparency on exactly what it is. Not the details of keywords and such that would allow bots to easily bypass, but as in whether it's some kind of custom built code y'all have put together, vs an externally sourced program. If it's external, then it should definitely be made known where it comes from so that prospective users can make a decision based on that.

[–] Ategon@programming.dev 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

yeah pretty much exactly that. It's custom built 100% by our team with no external tools or anything (just a way to notify us using apis). it's technically a separate running code since we can't hook it into the base lemmy code that easily but acts the same way