Ye Power Trippin' Bastards @lemmy.dbzer0.com

2d ago

Banned for Voting Incorrectly?

Was recently banned from a whole bunch of DB0 communities for, as best as I can gather, downvoting once when I viewed by All (potentially accidentally while scrolling).

Important notes:

I don't use scripts.
I don't mass-downvote Communities. If I see a post I generally don't like when browsing All, I may downvote one post, block the Community and move on.
Some of the communities I was banned from don't have any posts in them so I wouldn't have been able to downvote anything.
Of all of these Communities, in my history I downvoted one post in one of them. Voting in this manner is not vote manipulation. It's quite literally a feature of the platform and as a mod of another Community, I would consider it pretty good etiquette.
One of my bans reads "Appeal Granted, not a brigading member" but I'm still banned.
I don't troll.

WTF is going on here?

EDIT - Updated Info from the conversation below: In the initial image, you can see two "ban waves."

The 10 bans three months ago stem from a single downvote in one Community. It was @Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com See here: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/34853477

I was called out by name for a single downvote and culled from a score of Communities I did not participate in by them.

The other bans from two months ago are from four total downvotes over a 10-month timeframe in one Community.

I have also stated in this thread that I don't have issues with AI-gen images, but there are shoddy ones and well-done ones.

EDIT 2: Now unbanned from the ten Communities listed as "3 months ago" in my initial image, but have been banned from three more because of this thread with the reason given being "self-proclaimed anti-AI brigader" which are two things I didn't claim to be. God dammit Lemmy...

402 comments

I banned you dipshit because ur a faggot who doesn't recognize that I am a real woman with a real penis
If I get banned for a downvote I dont want to have anything to do with that community anyway.
My first lemmy account was banned from the fed. Because I spoke ill of Israel. I figured this place isn’t much better than Reddit.
- this place isn’t much better than Reddit
  It's 95% enthusiastic Reddit users/former users! The advantage (which has pros and cons) is the structure not allowing top down control of the entire network. I prefer this to the monolithic Reddit for the most part.
- The .world experience
Haha, just noticed I got banned from 2 communities, presumably for commenting in here (they are both dead communities I've never been to). Someone is a very petty and now blocked mod.
They are not so much punishing you as cultivating a vote farm. You are just a weed here.
I also got banned from some communities for "systematic downvoting". I'd estimate I've downvoted maybe 5 or so posts by a moderator promoting a harmful diet, which was apparently enough for being "systematic". The mod also banned me from other random communities I had never interacted with in the first place. But oh well, nothing of value was lost for me. Just kinda sucks that mods can use this to make it seem like their statements are less controversial than they are.
- Lemmy (and Reddit) are a collection of little dictatorships. But dictatorship is bad, I think, maybe.
  
  The true power of the fediverse is that little dictatorships should, in principle, balance out each other
- If you want to have a debate about my diet, I'm open to that - but just downvoting every post you see because you don't like it... that doesn't work for me - that isn't the kind of community I want to grow.
  
  I don't want to debate your diet, just want to add my voice of disagreement to it (i.e. downvote). There was nothing systematic about any of my votes. I came upon your posts without seeking them out, read them and thought they shouldn't be promoted, so I downvoted them to reduce their algorithmic visibility and voice my general opposition. I upvoted people who argued against your points, as I agreed with them and wanted to promote their viewpoints. In my opinion, that's quite a normal way to use this platform. Otherwise, do you also ban people who only upvote you without stating why they agree with your points?
  
  I support you. Stay strong against the serial downvoters and don't let them bully you.
Honestly. Doing this when someone makes dozens of downvotes is ridiculous and stupid. Doing this with a single downvote is… I can't even begin to fathom how unimaginably stupid and ridiculous that is.
- You mean "dozens of downvotes" specifically directed at a single community?
  
  I don't even have downvotes on my instance but would that really be unusual? I often see a lot of people on a thread making the same wrong statements. I could see how that kind of thing would lead to a lot of downvotes in the same community and I was never very heavy handed with my downvoting.
the whole "if you don't like the content, don't downvote, but just ignore / block it" is really cringe
- I don't use upvotes to express my support, I upvote when a contribution was insightful, interesting or funny and downvote when I find the contribution off topic, not helpful or diverting/trollish.
  If I personally find something uninteresting, I block. And report if something is against the communities the rules/TOS/law.
  
  To each their own I guess
  Downvoting posts in the All feed isn’t that bad, as it reduces their visibility if you believe it doesn’t interest you at all and probably ~~most~~ won’t interest many other people, so you let a chance to other posts to show up
  Edit: typo
- It depends. If there's certain types of content you don't like that a community mostly deals in, you downvoting it effectively means you're downvoting almost everything on there - and at that point, it's just little more than a very crude attempt at community vandalism.
  
  Your voice matters. Downvoting can be useful to prevent echo chambers (ex: downvoting lemmy.ml bs)
  Now if the thing is just not fundamentally wrong like it’s just subjective and you don’t like it, yea it could harm, but the most likely is that less people will do it than people liking this type of content will upvote
  Its only really problematic on smaller instances or if you do it continuously for every single post without a good valid reason
That mods/admins can even see who is downvoting is, by far, my least favorite thing about Lemmy.
- Yeah I would like it if it weren't the case, but I'm not sure it's actually technically possible given the design.
- These comments are an eye opening experience for me; and I’m not sure I like that feature. It seems whatever the good it does, it’s open for endless abuse because at the end of the day, we are all human and petty at times.
- It is an invariable aspect of lemmy though. It is open source. Anyone can make a server. The servers need to have a database for the up- downvotes and they need the info specific to the user, so it can't just be said by another instance "heres 1000 downvotes, deal with it".
  E.g. on reddit and any other corporate social media the admins can also see exactly who up- and downvoted stuff.
  
  Admins, not mods. Enormous distinction here. And I don't understand why that information can't be anonymized or attached to a user identifying number rather than username, but I will admit I'm not a develop not a sysadmin so I am a layman speaking outside my field here.
- It's incredibly helpful and helps cultivate a high-trust culture. On Reddit, many posts get swarmed with downvotes right off the bat, no matter what they are, due to voting anonymity.
- They should really just remove up/down -votes.
  
  Beehaw actually does remove down voting, so that you are forced to actually find things you agree with and upvote them to curate.
  
  And how would content be organised and curated?
My first interaction with davel@lemmy.ml was him threatening to ban me over downvoting his comments.
One of the first things which made me look into what this power tripping bastard is and yeah, a Russian pretending to be an American who's since been avoiding any communities they're not a mod on.
Dude says things like "reality has a well known Russian propaganda bias" while pretending to be American while supporting Putin.
Lemmy is infested with Russians
- Can this admin see these votes without diving through the database because he's an insecure douchebag? Like Mastodon only shows some things even to admins without being gross and unethical by digging into the database directly.
  
  any instance admin can see all upvotes/downvotes on any message from the web UI
  
  No idea.
  Pretty sure Davel is just a mod, so that'd be a "no", but again, "no idea" is my more reliable answer.
  I did downvote several of his comments, but not like "spam downvoted", but from honest disagreement. Not my fault everything he writes is bullshit. So after I downvoted a few comments while replying to him, he replied "oh see, here on 'whatevercommunity' we ban people who downvote others for no reason', as if I had no reason.
  They're just extremely silly and see through and you ought to question everyone on Lemmy about it. Because while opensource open platforms are great, they're also super easy to infiltrate.
- Lol same. It was my first and last interaction and the most pathetically sad threat that's ever been directed at me.
  
  "Stop calling me out on my bullshit or I'll.. I'll... ugh... I'll... ..."
- Tbf, they're pretty easy to spot and they're much less over here than the bad place. They're on a schedule too, so you can kind of be ready for them.
  
  Some are super easy to spot yeah, others less so. And seeing how they obviously wish to pretend they're something they're not, you can't assume you can "always" identify them.
  That's kinda like saying "I can always tell a trans person", just because you don't notice a person being trans when they are passing.
  Whenever I'm suspicious, I like to just ask people to confirm that Putler has an ICC warrant out for him for his war crimes. Their reaction to that is often very telling, but sometimes they'll go with something like "well, Putin, like all world leaders are inherently blablablabla", sort of faking out admitting to Putler's bullshit while similarly not criticising him personally, but also pushing ideology that is not opposed to Russian goals (ie basic whataboutism)..
PTB
I've had very inconsistent moderation experiences on dbzer0
I'm sure some were because of this guy.
The same user quietly banned me from all their communities for being a "Zionazi apologist" (which couldn't be further from the truth) and it took me over 3 months to even notice.
They are just a special kind of idiot and I hope they don't ever get to mod communities that are actually relevant.
- How do you know who banned you
  
  Because there's only one account modding in those communities. Some Lemmy UIs also let you see which mod took action in the modlog.
- I mean it's 2025 on the internet. If you don't like someone says you either ban them, or tell them they are mentally ill/bigot/nazi.
  You can no longer just let other people have different opinions. Everyone who disagrees with you is now an evil demonic force that needs purging from your community/life.
  Was recently banned from a whole bunch of DB0 communities for, as best as I can gather, downvoting once when I viewed by All (potentially accidentally while scrolling).
I don’t have an issue with this instance being pro-AI, but I find it weird as fuck how harshly skeptics are treated
- To clarify, we [admins] didn't do this. It was a mod of the community that moderated lots of other communities that decided to ban them from everything
  PTB, banning people from unrelated communities is very much overstepping
  
  It's been a common thing for awhile now, unfortunately. My .ee account was randomly banned from a bunch of comms because of being pro-ai or somesuch ridiculous thing.
- I find it weird as fuck how harshly skeptics are treated
  It's reactionary, they'll get trolled to hell otherwise.
  I moderate a community on Reddit which allowed AI posts. Until recently, the community got less than one AI post per month. Regardless, every post would get an onslaught of hateful comments and false reports full of curses.
  Recently, the subreddit got a few more AI images than usual. Less than a third of the posts over the last month before I personally removed multiple of them for quality reasons. The accepted consensus between commenters, however, was the opposite of this reality.
  Not to say the actions of this mod were correct, in fact it seems ridiculous. This is just to answer why they would be harsh.
- I find it weird how harsh AI haters treat people who use it.
  
  Depends on the usage:
  Generating images of witches - Not very harsh.
  Perpetrating genocide - Very harsh.
  
  People are assholes to people who disagree with them, no matter the topic.
  You can find examples of people on each 'side' being assholes. Social media teaches people to be outraged, not to have any empathy.
  
  A lot of peope consider it immoral.
Then you check some of those communities and there's like less than 10 posts in them.
There's more banned people than content.
- If they are such tiny communities then the question is why do so many trolls go out of their way to find them, downvote everything, and harass/bully the mods? Not saying that was the case in this instance, but it's been an ongoing problem, which is why the mods are a bit twitchy I guess.
I just block the comms I don't care about, can recommend.
Including that AI generated low effort crap. I don't get the point of sharing that stuff, when you can generate your own if you want. But nowadays I don't get many things anymore.
Where do yall get this ban notification stuff do you pay for some kind of lemmy Bloomberg terminal or?
- People occasionally check their modlogs to see if they got in trouble earlier.
- We have Lemmy+ it's only $6.99.
  
  I opted for the Ad Free Lemmy Prime $8.99.
- If on the web (not a mobile client), you can click the three dots with the arrow pointing down under any post (including yours) and hit "NAME Moderation History". It'll show you what mod actions have been taken on you.
  
  thanks. useful to see how i got banned from multiple communities for one comment on a totally unrelated one. these people are insane.
  
  Everyone beat me to it but thank you for explaining!
  
  Thanks, I didn't know about that
Db0ero is explicitely pro AI
I would guess the Mod has gone full shizo and banned you from the whole instance and everywhere he could because you downvoted an AI generated image.
- Banned Luffy@lemmy.ml from the community Ye Power Trippin' Bastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com
  reason: Ableist comments, abusive towards mods. Was given the opportunity to edit their comment and they did not.
  duration: 7 days
  Was this seriously for "the Mod has gone full shizo"? "Ableist"?
  That's so fucking stupid. Where's the !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com for db0?
  
  Holy fuck this guy should not have had any action brought against them for that comment.
  Seriously embarrassing behavor from the mods.
  
  yeah, it was. do you wanna cop a ban too? cause if you use that sort of language here, I bet you'll get one as well.
  if you're the sort of person who thinks using that sort of language is fine, then we won't be losing anything worthwhile.
- I don't make it a habit of downvoting images simply because they're AI-gen, but there are well-done ones and horrible ones just like any images. Do they really ban for simply downvoting ANY AI image? That's... kind of a lot.
  
  I'm still trying to get my head around people giving votes that much attention. Maybe Lemmy has started getting refugees from other places that live and die by the arrows.
  Someone go in there and do the same thing and see what happens. I would but you've probably picked up on my apathy by this point.
  
  No, they don't, at least not the site wide admins.
  This community is part of dbzer0, so if you were banned from the instance you wouldn't be able to post here either.
  It looks like you pissed off on moderator of a bunch of comms and they banned you from all of theirs. Based off another commentor's link, this seems to have happened when those comms were being hit by waves of drive by downvoting so you may have been caught in the cross fire.
  
  They shouldn't be. I've messaged the two mods and asked them to respond, because I don't know the details.
  
  Yes, a few of the mods will ban anyone who downvotes AI or misinformation without making a comment or because you downvoted 'too many times' or some other bullshit. My 'systemic downvoting' and 'anti-ai harassment' community bans are for downvoting a few posts and not being sorry about it.
  
  that should teach ya
- It's dbzer0, and that's the instance this comm is hosted on. So no, none of the Admins of the instance "went schizo".
  Looks like a mod of multiple comms maybe.
  
  I never said admin.
- Don't use ableist language in a community where both of the mods are neurodiverse.
  
  It's annoying that the amount the general public cares about schizophrenic people is often less than they care about changing the words they speak.
- Ew what, I didn't know this. I always just saw them as the anarchist friendly instance and I blocked all the ai communities so I guess I didn't notice the correlation. Thats actually dissapointing
  
  Oh no the transphobic genocide deniers are disappointed!
Db0 has unhinged mods, and an admin that doesn't give a shit about it. Simple as.
- You mean the admin who built fediseer and threativore and a bunch of other tooling to enable a better lemmy experience for everyone, and has run one of the most popular lemmy instances for years? The same admin who introduced radical recalls to allow instance members to vote out mods they don't like, and encourages community voting for all new policies? Sure bro, if you say so. But why are you even here if you think that?
  
  fediseer which is basically "get approved by me or people I approved, or get fucked"
  they basically have absolute power in this system
  
  The guy you're replying to needs to show some evidence, but do you have more than a paragraph of your thoughts to back up any of your claims?
i have no idea what's happening and im not sure why im even subbed to this one
i dont care about votes or bans.
no idea what ai has to do with any of this either.
but hey while we're on the subject, i dont like how ai is being used in our culture in general and its pretty cringe to defend that.
i like gardening. i did yoga in my garden today. i made friends with a bird.
hope you all have a nice day, it's just internet memes guys
This was 2 mods that banned you across all the comms they mod, not a site-ban at least, though sitebans look like this too because of a workaround in place to ensure that a site-banned user's content is purged (or something like that)
It's possible they hit the wrong button/inputted wrong script command hence the "appeal granted" thing. I would reach out to the mod of those comms
Whoa, I thought only the conservative mods were pulling this
- there's a lot of conservative / AI bro crossover.
- Which mods are those?
  
  Here's a fun read: https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&actionType=All&modId=13008854
  I would have used their server but lemmy.today doesn't let you filter by mod.
- You think only conservatives mods would want to create safe positive environments for their users?
  I don’t think that’s at all what conservatives want to do.
  
  No, they want to control the narrative. This person set their comm to mod-post-only. It's their private blog. They're not making a safe place for others, they're making a safe place for themself.
  
  I don’t think that’s what these mods were doing either.
WTF is going on here?
Illegal Voter Suppression, Appeal to the #Lemmy Supreme Court™, actually nvm it's packed with partisan hacks.
- no no, you don't understand, they are the Good Ones. And anyone else who isn't 100% in agreement with them is the Bad People.
You're a bit more easygoing with the downvotes than the average Lemmy user. Those rarely downvote, while you do like 30% downvotes. Maybe that triggered someone if you did something like scroll through a community and hand out several downvotes consecutively. But I don't think you're doing anything wrong here.
- There might be a misunderstanding... I only downvoted one post in one of those communities once. The others were untouched. As I said, some of them don't even have any posts to downvote.
  
  How can you tell what you downvoted while randomly scrolling through the all feed or your subscriptions 3 months ago? I certainly couldn't remember.
  And the communities you were banned from aren't necessarily the ones you downvoted in... That's just the realm of the admin or mod who banned you. But they could have based the decision on other behaviour or downvotes of yours.
I love it when anti-AI trolls act all confused about why they've been banned.
- Actually, I've been unbanned from 10 of those subs due to this post because it was found to be an unjust ban. Also, are you able to point at the part where I stated I was anti-image generation, or are you just being standard-issue internet hostile?
  
  "Create more slop" is, in fact, a message I disagree with rather strongly
  you're anti-AI, so YDI. fuck off to whatever liberal shithole you came from.
Disabling downvotes can avoid such drama. Some instances do.
- Rare to see a beehaw user so far away from spawn.
  
  How did you reply to them? I thought beehaw defederated LW
After reading this thread I gather the following.
OP says they browse all and if they see content they don't like they downvote. They say it's not a conscious move to brigade or anything.
Some mod pointed out that for some of those communities OP only downvoted them, never upvoted a single post or contributed in any meaningful way.
I don't even see why OP is angry with being ban from communities they obviously don't like. I seems like those are AI communities and when OP sees an AI post on All they downvote. Why want OP those communities keep being part of their feed? Why complain for being banned if they don't like their content.
It doesn't make much sense to me. If I was banned of a community that makes a content that I heavily dislike and that I'm actively saying I dislike it via downvotes I wouldn't care on the slightest. I should probably just block the community to begin with.
If some of those communities ban are not AI content communities and the ban is thus unjustified I can see an appeal to uplifting that ban. And the reason for the ban could be a little more cordial. But I really don't know why OP wants to get unbanned from communities they don't like. Which introduced the evident skepticism that maybe (just maybe) there is an intention, more or less focused, of just trying to negatively influence AI communities without being a part of them. Which IMHO would guarantee a ban.
I think general Fediverse etiquette is that if you see some place that does things that you don't like that are both legal and in line with instance rule then you should just issue a personal block to that space, not trying to downvote it to affect their visibility or reputation, as other people may like that space.
- I don’t even see why OP is angry with being ban from communities they obviously don’t like. I seems like those are AI communities and when OP sees an AI post on All they downvote.
  OP down voted ONE post. Not even one post per community.
  
  Reading other comment of both the OP and mods from that communities. Have been stated that there were multiple downvotes over the course of several months.
  My point is that doesn't seem that OP is interested in those communities anyway, not that they have interacted in any other way than downvoting. That's why I don't see why they are bothered for the ban. It's not like they took them away from a community they liked or were interested in following.
I'm a moderator on !stable_diffusion_art@lemmy.dbzer0.com, where you've never upvoted once, but you have downvoted multiple posts over months instead of blocking the community. This down-ranks submissions, adversely affecting the visibility of the community for subscribers, which is why you were banned.
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/28218497
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/35031819
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/38704142
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/44766239
- where you’ve never upvoted once, but you have downvoted multiple posts over months instead of blocking the community
  So am I supposed to keep track of random communities when I downvote stuff on my /all feed over months? That is an insane policy.
  
  No, you're expected to block communities you aren't interested in. Curate your feed/all.
- Well then, thanks OP for making ai slop less visible on lemmy <3
- I don't understand the thought process here. Like many, I don't browse Communities individually, I browse /All and sort by New.
  So I am required to see something I like and upvote or else I am not allowed to an express an opinion in the community (or any tangentially linked community)?
  If I see something I don't like (which is what the voting system is for), I should go to the Community it's posted in and make sure to upvote things before I downvote? That's the expected order of operations?
  If not... what if, while browsing /All /New nothing randomly appears that the viewer likes enough to upvote? Is that then somehow the fault of the viewer and they should then be banned?
  Am I interpreting your rulings correctly? 4 downvotes in the span of 10 months (judging by the times on those posts you listed) is a bannable offence? Seems rather heavy-handed to me.
  
  If I see something I don’t like (which is what the voting system is for), I should go to the Community it’s posted in and make sure to upvote things before I downvote? That’s the expected order of operations?
  If the community is about something you dislike (which seems to be the case here), why would you not just block them from your feed instead of downvoting?
  
  Nah, feel free to downvote. But to go into that same community and just downvote every single post is not cool. Not only that, some people go to that same community every day to keep downvoting every single post. Regardless of content. And some, in my personal case, go to other comms I run and do the same thing, even tho they are totally unrelated posts and unrelated subject manner.
  I'm not saying you did that, but it's happening so much, that you probably just got caught up in it. If you really want to get back into those comms, email the mod.
  
  I don't know why people browse like that in the first place. Of course you're going to see a lot of crap. Why not subscribe to communities with content you enjoy?
  
  OPs story keeps changing so much.
  "Oh I was unfairly banned"
  "Oh I only downvoted 1 post"
  "So what I only downvoted 4 posts"
  
  You don't have to like anything, but consistent downvoting like this without any other kind of participation is indistinguishable from targeted downvote harassment, and isn't consistent with your claims of blocking.
- I appreciate you sharing such a bonkers policy so plainly and candidly, but that makes it no less bonkers.
  
  I'm open to feedback.
- I feel like sending a PM would have been a more decent and human thing to do. It's an overstep to ban people who may disagree with the kind of art you are producing.
  
  I feel like sending a PM would have been a more decent and human thing to do.
  I used to think that, too. But I sent a PM to someone about this very subject once because I didn't wanna ban them. He replied that PM'ing him was one of the most pathetic things he'd ever seen in his life and said I was an idiot. Maybe a one-off.
  Ok, so another person was giving me issues and stalking me and downvoting everything I posted (I'm not well-loved on Lemmy haha), I PM'd them and said I didn't wanna ban them, but downvoting across all my comms was in bad taste. He told me to fuck off and that he could downvote anything he wanted to.
  Lesson learned. Way too many people on Lemmy who don't like your attitude or views, are freakin crazy. As in stalk you crazy. One person, whom I won't name (and admin here knows their name!), would regularly write to admins with pages of "proof" about how terrible I am for Lemmy. And why the outrage? I voted third party in the election. LMAO
  Now I have no problem banning problem children without notice. The crazy on Lemmy is a whole 'nother level of crazy. lol
  What I don't get, is why the serial downvoting? If ya don't like a community, just block it. But some refuse to block and just go in and downvote every single post. It's happening more and more.
  Not saying OP did that, but it's happening. And we can see it happening because as mods, we are able to see the names of downvoters. Other people in this thread are noticing the same thing, so it's not just me saying that.
  
  The best move is to remove them and not engage.
  These people wont' reflect and suddenly become good members of the community.
There have been frequent brigades of late in ai communities by anti-AI folks.
Your downvote likely coincided in timing and appeared as part of another downvote brigade.
- When you assume a single downvote is brigading...
  
  Across multiple communities, all the same subject, a singular downvote in each...
  Obviously this is just my guess, but that's what I would probably think based on what's been going on.
  Edit: Boy oh boy, you must be one of the anti-AI folks doing the brigading. You are super mad about this all over the place.
- Wouldn't one glance at my long-standing profile and the fact that it was only a single vote made out of the nearly a dozen communities that I was banned from indicate that I'm not part of a brigade?
  
  Not when you're using AI to silence criticism of AI. Laziness and ineptitude are a feature not a bug.
  
  self important to think your profile deserved a single look. ;) dont worry about it mate. these are jsut made of 1s and 0s.
  
  I'd say that it was the dozen communities that made it seem like it was a brigade, as well as an attempt to avoid getting caught by only having one each across a dozen communities.
  Edit: a whole word was missing.
- And this is exactly why the fediverse needs private voting.
  
  Eh. I see arguments both ways. Public votes makes it easier to catch bad faith (downvote bots) and manipulation. However, it allows abuse from touchy or unscrupulous mods. TBH, I'm personally more concerned with the bots. Everything is federated to one can pickup and move elsewhere of they're on the receiving end of such a mod.
  
  So brigading small communities can be easier?
  
  fediverse needs no voting
Just gonna downvote this in solidarity.

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