this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2026
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This definitely happens here on Lemme, too. There are asshole mods, here who register a ton of communities, and getting banned from one of them instantly means you’re banned from all of them. Possibly even the entire instance. I’ve seen this in the mod logs where someone has a relatively innocuous comment removed just because the mod disagrees with them, then they are suddenly banned from both that community and 10 or 12 other communities. All run by the same moderator.
If you think you escaped asshole mods just because you’re switched over here to Lemmy, think again.
From StumbleUpon to fark to digg to Reddit to Lemmy… Asshole, power-tripping mods are everywhere and aren’t going away.
Not just mods, but sometimes even instance Admins. This is one of the main reasons why so many left .ml
well, the .ml mods never seem to be the "power-tripping" type of asshole. they would argue and were combative and were definitely assholes, but they didn't seem to quick to ban people.
The major objection (and why most people left) was because of the explicit political views of the Admins (who also are the main devs for the Lemmy software) and the rampant intolerance of other views by not only them, but the other users of that instance. I ran into users on .ml that were soooo far worse than the shittiest assholes I ever encountered of Reddit or Digg. It's part of why I've switched to PieFed.
Lemmy does help mitigate this by giving the wider community the ability to sort of sequester the trouble-makers and to easily block them.
.ml mods are exactly the type to ban people from every community because they don’t share the exact same viewpoints as the mod in question.
dbzer0 is getting almost as bad with certain admin and certain topics now too.
Db0 is going further right everyday ever since certain comms thought he was too lefty
What's right wing about db0?
dB0 is cool flatworm is going full authoritarian at times
Db0 been more the one to do it but 🤷
They are the sane one.
They see the way their users lean and say nope, not on my watch we must stay right of those positions
OK, maybe so. I blocked that instance a long time ago, and haven’t kept up on recent goings-on. If you say that it’s gotten worse, I’ll take your word for it.
Which instance are you talking about there?
oh, sorry-- .ml
I haven't personally run afoul of issues on dbzer0, but I've seen others complain about it for a while.
.ml has always been bad and even some of dbzer0’s admins are questioning the direction they’re taking lately.
when I first joined up during the reddexodus, I followed the lemmy drama a bit, but I'm really over it by now. after 30+ years of following online community drama, I'm just burned out on it. it's all so petty and childish, it holds no interest for me anymore.
dbzer0 definitely has a problem with banning people for voting
Source?
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/48662871
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/43560521
TL;DR: The dbzer0 community decided to start banning people for downvoting AI generated posts. They said they'd only ban people who come to a community and do mass downvotes, but Ace T'Ken downvoted four AI posts that showed up in the feed across a period of ten months, and was still banned from several communities by a prominent dbzer0 mod. There was also a side plot involving some person or group of people impersonating every major actor involved in the drama, which is why so many comments in the thread are removed.
There were several other drama threads related to the voting bans:
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/50067209
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/46410988
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/49344640
I remember a few more discussions from back when all this was new, but didn't have as easy a time finding them.
Maybe they should curate their feeds instead going into places they don't like and mass downvoting everything?
With a community like Imaginary Witches, a lot of people like seeing cool drawings of witches, as long as they're by a talented artist. A user might see an AI generated witch as a detriment to the Imaginary Witches community they want to see. Or they might not even realise it's AI, and just downvote it for being poorly drawn in their opinion. So it makes a lot of sense not to block a community when you've only ever seen four bad posts from it over the past ten months.
The mod log suggests people go there just for downvoting everything. I trust the mods of a community that is constantly harassed over the users who have literally made accounts to harass the mods and posters.
After seeing all the times they labelled someone a troll just for downvoting posts they don't like, I don't trust their judgement. I think they're too close to the issue. It strikes Me as paranoia. Nobody is making an alt account so they can downvote one post every couple of months, it just doesn't fit the pattern the mods say is there.
Except for all the times the mod team has shown people making accounts to DM them when they get banned from it, sure no one does it.
People get really hated over images on the internet.
IDK man, I just got banned from there today for downvoting a post that I just thought was bad - I didn't even realize it was from an AI slop community until I got the ban notification.
Seems like maybe it's hypersensitive mods in this case.
Maybe tailor your feed.
For one bad post? I don't even mind the content generally, I just didn't like that post and they're so sensitive they couldn't handle it. That's really not on me if one downvote is all it takes to trigger them to ban me from five different communities.
I'm sure it was "just one". For sure.
It's almost like you can just go check and see that it was literally just one:
FYI they have tools that tell them all the downvotes you've ever sent in that community, so if you saw one bad post a month and downvoted it without knowing it's AI, their tools will make it look like you're a "downvote troll", whatever that means.
Being right some of the time doesn't mean they're right all the time. Cops arrest drunk drivers and domestic abusers sometimes, but that doesn't mean they can be trusted when they turn their bodycams off and ask us to trust their interpretation of an event. Mods do not wield the same power as cops, but I believe the analogy holds water with regards to the issue of trust.
You're right, banning people who venture into communities to start shit is a good analogy to police brutality.
Their lefty communities are very authoritarian too.
I haven't experienced that personally but I trust you with My life, SatansMaggotyCumFart. You've always been right about these things before.
But also when they would ban someone, they would do so from every single community on their instance, including ones that you've never even heard of.
And then never bother to so much as tell you about your being banned.
And also deny you the ability to appeal or ask questions - e.g. Reddit has both a modmail and the ability to continue discourse directly in a post that has been removed from a community listing. Which as a former mod I would use to communicate rejection reasons and sometimes we'd go back and forth for days talking about the subject further, e.g. ways that the newcommer could modify it as to not piss off the old hands in the community (e.g. NSFW is allowed but must be properly labeled or some such).
Oh, and soon a change is going to give lemmy.ml veto power on what communities are allowed to be suggested to new instances - and being baked right into the code so there is no way to change that - rather than use a third-party listing.
I find it highly ironic that in some ways Lemmy, in particular .ml, is more authoritarian than even Reddit.
this is what I was talking about earlier. I find it to be an absurdly childish overreaction, and the mods & admins on some communities/instances default to this behavior with a ridiculous amount of entitlement. it's not hard to see just by looking at the modlogs.
I find this to be a huge shortcoming of the platform, and something that contributes to a lot of "account churn" where users evade bans my instance-hopping and creating new accounts.
well, fuck that
just another reason to switch to PieFed
!yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com
But doctor, I am Pagliacci!
oh, the irony
lol