this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2025
75 points (96.3% liked)

Ye Power Trippin' Bastards

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18 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:

  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.

YTPB matrix channel: For real-time discussions about bastards or to appeal mod actions in YPTB itself.


Some acronyms you might see.


Relevant comms

founded 8 months ago
MODERATORS
 

Case 1

Original post

Moderator carrotcypher says "removed for paywall." When asked about which rule this breaks, receives no response. The post is then locked.

Case 2

Original post

Same as the first, except this time there is no paywall - the link is to a freely accessible advocate.com page.

It is censored with no explanation.

Case 3

Original post

Same as Case 2, moderators censor the post and leave no explanation.

Case 4

Original post

This one is finally given a removal reason: a rule that does not exist in the sidebar, and seems to have nothing to do with the post ("Your post has been removed for being too specific to a company or single product.")

But in a censored comment, the OP of the post says they received a different removal reason:

Holy shit I'm banned for 30 days for "conspiracy spreading". This sub is cooked

This time, other people notice the censorship and the nonsensical nature of the official removal reason.

Since this removal, there has been no further post of this news in r/privacy. Sources tell me the moderators refuse to explain their decision.

top 11 comments
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[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

Carrotcypher is one of the moderators of the FOSStodon server.

https://hub.fosstodon.org/team/

Carrotcypher also moderates over 50 other subreddits, and is often the top active moderator on them. Here are some of those subreddits, from most to less popular:

  • r/opensource
  • r/OSINT
  • r/tails
  • r/signal
  • r/opsec
  • r/KeepOurNetFree
  • r/Mastodon
  • r/Infosec
  • r/europrivacy
  • r/netneutrality
  • r/snowden
  • r/foss
  • r/SimpleXChat

I presume the FOSStodon admins, as well as some of the moderators in the subreddits that aren't fully taken over, are not aware of this activity.

Here are some other assorted notes:

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Well I know which Mastodon server I'm blocking now. I feel like I should bring this to @[email protected]'s attention because I can see this person from the blahaj.zone Sharkey instance (have since blocked carrotcypher and muted fosstodon).

Perhaps you would consider block fosstodon.org as a whole, Ada? Thank you for your consideration.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 days ago

Malignant power-tripping asshole this guy. And also a Nazi. Who would've guessed?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

PTB, they've been on this comm before for this exact behavior. They're not interested in privacy, only propaganda.

I've sent the FOSStodon admins proof of this fuckhead's evil behavior before. If they're still in power there, it's only reasonable to assume that FOSStodon is accepting of this behavior.

In fact, if you Google "FOSStodon Elon Musk," an interesting trend appears. Anything I clicked that was critical of Musk and posted to the instance this year was deleted...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

In fact, if you Google “FOSStodon Elon Musk,” an interesting trend appears. Anything I clicked that was critical of Musk and posted to the instance this year was deleted

Holy shit. Can you provide some examples?

Carrotcypher freaks out about any anti-Musk article in any subreddit he doesn't control, and many he does, but I didn't think the moderation was happening behind the scenes on FOSSTodon too. Which is especially reprehensible because the creators, admins, and other mods of FOSSTodon all seem pretty resolute in condemning Musk before he went full fascist.

I noticed this stuff was more measured before mid January (almost right around the Trump inauguration) but it's started expanding pretty rapidly. Maybe I need to put in a little extra legwork and figure out which news sites are being auto-censored based on his personal opinions faster than I had anticipated.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Well, there is a problem with this idea, admittedly. All the missing posts are from one user, @[email protected]

At the same time, however, it doesn't look like he suddenly became a Musk fan, so...

There's also no archive of these apart from Google's previews.

AkaSci 🛰️: "Inside Elon Musk's War on Wash…" Feb 7, 2025 — One of the Project 2025 lead authors, Russell Vought, said in a speech 2 years ago that he wanted civil servants to be “traumatically affected”

AkaSci 🛰️: Feb 22, 2025 — Other astronauts are speaking out against Elon Musk and offering their opinions on his character or rather the lack thereof.

AkaSci 🛰️: Mar 10, 2025 — Elon now claims that the cyberattack on X was launched by Ukraine. Without much proof. He indicated that the IP addresses came from Ukraine.

This is the only Elon-critical post from this user that comes up on Google and hasn't been deleted:

https://fosstodon.org/@AkaSci/112838449092743174

EDIT: I contacted AkaSci, and he informed me that he more than likely did delete those posts, as "I tend to delete old posts that are political or news related." So it seems there's no evidence his abuses have leaked onto FOSStodon yet.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 days ago

Typical powertripping reddit mods keeping crucial information hidden. There’s so many moderators on reddit who permanently ban you if you post vegan positive articles.

It looks like [email protected] is your new home.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 days ago

PTB, fuck Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago

Holy shit, that's a massive PTB

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 days ago

This seems awesome. What awesome times we live in.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago

And as we all know, it's always immediately obvious what a person's orientation is so there's no way this could ever be abused.