1y ago

Why do posts frequently get removed on Lemmy when Reddit would not remove them?

If a topic is in any way controversial, there's a good chance it will get removed, when I'm sure the same content wouldn't get removed on Reddit. I know it depends on subs and instances but I mean more generally, and for example AskLemmy vs AskReddit. Reddit seems to have more leeway for things, whereas Lemmy doesn't and seems harder on censorship. Not only that but they remove things even when they're not controversial such as when I just asked a question about savory fruit and sweet vegetables that got removed. They also give no reason at all for why things get removed nor any notice of its removal until you realise later. It happens so frequently that I wonder if this post will get removed too for some reason.

32 comments

They also give no reason at all
There's an automated bot in LW that sends users the reason for why their content got removed or why they got banned, etc. Not only that, but every communities modlogs are public. You either could have received a reason by the bot or you could have checked the modlogs. And also, the title or the content is not the only factor I take into account when I remove someone's post. I, for example, also consider how the OP behaves in the comments section to determine if the post is made just for the OP to troll people or not. I might also lock the post if the post gets too many reports or there's too much drama going on in the comments section.
And by the way, the reason why I deleted it for rule 3 is very obvious:
- Hi, I never received a bot message that I was aware of. I thought that the links I posted in the comments were providing examples of what I meant and helping to describe the question. I don't really understand why it was removed. I can see that this post was also locked and then unlocked seemingly.
  
  I see, I guess the bot also has its own problems sometimes. Anyways, the problem indeed was your spam in the comments section. As I mentioned in the parent comment, I don't only take the title and the body of the post into account, but the behaviour in the comments section as well, which wasn't well as you can see in the photo above. This was ultimately spam or nonsense, therefore I decided to remove the whole post. In further posts, make sure to include them in the body of your post instead of spamming the articles in the comments section, editing a post is a feature in Lemmy. As for the lock, that was a missclick.
- Hello,
  Thanks for jumping in, seems reasonable

2 days ago mod Removed Post What are the best sweet vegetables and savory fruits? reason: rule 3 and 5
I imagine the moderator feels that you are flooding the community with nonsense as described in the rule about spam. It's likely that moderators in communities with fewer posts and fewer voters take a more active role in removing content they feel is low-quality, while post volume and voting would hide such content from most users in a higher-volume community.
- They also give no reason at all for why things get removed
  reason: rule 3 and 5
  yeah but...
  🙄
- So how do we determine if a question is nonsense? I didn't realise the questions had to be necessarily important

Hello,
Do you have any example, with a link to the modlog? Your fruit example seems strange.
- ~~https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&userId=4806265~~
  The fruit one does seem odd, but the next result? Yeah I could understand being on a short leash after that. Also OP just posts some really weird shit.
  
  Thank you for this, the fruit one is indeed odd, maybe there was something in the post body?
  
  Context is key, I'm just curious to gain more info and views. I'm not antisemitic but I saw a trend of people being accused of antisemitism when they disagreed with a Jewish person for something completely unrelated to anything to do with Judaism or even Israel. For the pedophilia one I was arguing with someone why pedophilia was immoral but just needed some back up. I can see why the titles look sus. Anyhow I understand those are controversial topics but I also think they should be allowed and Reddit would probably allow them unlike Lemmy seemingly. And I don't see why my fruit question was removed.

I am on Lemmy because on Reddit, a subreddit moderator went through my post history, saw me complaining about them taking down a post for no reason, and decided that was brigading. They proceeded to have my account banned from Reddit entirely for ban evasion, something I did not do. Whatever Lemmy moderators are or are not removing, I am certain they are more reasonable and judicious than any Reddit moderator.
- I got IP banned on reddit for reporting a transphobic comment with an implied death threat. IP banned. The reason given was "abusing the report button," and they wouldn't accept my appeal.
  I don't feel like I'm walking on eggshells here like I did on reddit.
  
  Yeah thanks for your reports, I've handled a few of them here. Reports are always welcome.

Typically the mod log will give a reason for the removal. The link to the mod log is in the footer if you're using the web interface.

Some communities have shit moderators, just like Reddit.
If you don’t like the mods in a community, start an alternative community and publicize it.

Next time that happens take note of both the community and instance it happened on. The mod log is public. Check it.
Edit: also, if you're referring to this community specifically, always feel free to reach out

Lemmy is no more or less arbitrary in its enforcement. It's slightly different in what is acceptable, but that's to be expected.

One way to avoid this is to not post on lemmy.ml
- Lol yup. It's real sketch over there.
- Happens on lemmy world too.

My first point is that Lemmy/Kbin is a community run community. The moderators are volunteers, and so are the admins. Please keep that in mind. We have families, jobs, and other commitments. Moderating is something we do to contribute to that community, not something we are paid to do or have to do. It's not a power trip, it's a gift of unpaid labor.
My second point is that many posts/comments are clearly follow the rules, or clearly break the rules. But some sit in a grey zone where it's not entirely clear. Whether such a post/comment breaks the rules might be a matter of perspective, might require the mod to try to guess the intent of the author, or might require consideration of detail that is not explicitly stated in the rules. For a particular post/comment, the author might think it was reasonable, but what they may not know is that we received reports from other users. Ultimately, someone has to make that call, and that's what mods do.
AskLemmy@lemmy.world is the largest community I help mod, so I can really only talk about it, but from what I've seen mods try to moderate fairly, reasonably and in the best interests of the community. That's why sometimes you might see a post from a mod asking for community input into how to apply the rules.
Some of your recent posts, including this one, are examples of ones that tend to sit in the grey zone. The nature of the questions, and the way that you frame them could be interpreted as spam, or as enabling pedophilia, as astroturfing, or as in the case of this post outside of the intent of the community (I'll let it slide because it's important discussion about community governance). On the other hand, they could also be interpreted as entirely reasonable questions that fit the community. Only you know your intent, so the mods have to make a call based on what they can see on their screens. That tends to be done on the basis of balance of probabilities, NOT beyond reasonable doubt.
For this community, I disagree that topics are removed if they are controversial. They are removed if a mod thinks they break the rules, or the TOS, or are outside the purpose of the community. The moderation in other communities may differ however.

One part of it that hasn't been mentioned here yet is that admins moderate the moderating of moderators more. As a mod, I've gotten admins for example asking me why the inbox has been unchecked after a few days. The place I think is trying not to repeat Reddit's "anarchy" if that's the right word to use.
- I wish this site was more like Reddit's anarchy tbh lol. I see it as essentially a free speech platform aside from extreme cases.

My best comments (global warming denial) were removed. I was very proud of them: they achieved -125 points. I also was banned from lemmy.ml due to it
https://endlesstalk.org/comment/6471802

i don't know what you're talking about OP. i love it here. we need a place where radical liberals can call for change by whatever means necessary without getting modded by lame centrists.
- I kind of agree with your last sentence... but that's why I think this platform doesn't serve that purpose unfortunately lol. Interesting or radical liberal posts seem to get removed a lot.
  
  i call for heads to roll all the time and i don't think they've removed one of my posts yet.
  let's give it a quick try. KILL ALL CONSERVATIVES FOR THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY.

This question gets-at an underlying problem in the whole world's misconception of expression-rights:
"ABSOLUTE & ARBITRARY FREE Speech" vs VALID Speech having Rights & Protection..
Do serial-murderers hold that their serial-murdering is their "Right"?
Obviously they do:
that's why they're committing serial-murdering.
WHEN one frames it as "ARBITRARY FREE Speech Right",
THEN the cutoff is by definition arbitrary, & violation-of-FREE, which the no-context cult holds "justifies" not limiting in any way any expression/action.
Narcissism/machiavellianism, that.
However, that framing always has been, is, & always will be, incorrect.
Do Ebola, Rabies, Cancer, & Parasites have the "Right" to exercise their free-expression within your body??
IF one is a FREE Speech ABSOLUTIST,
THEN one's having, & exercising, of an immune-system, ..
.. is violating the FREE Speech of all pathogens, within one's body:
which is 2-facedness.
EXACTLY as censorship of pathogens within one's body is required for your health, so-to is censorship of pathogens-against-our-country's-health required within our country.
That includes pathogens pushing child-molestation, rape, serial-murder, treason, disinformation, smear-campaigns, prejudice's protection, etc.
Health & disease are mutually-exclusive conditions, and forcing out disease requires both objectivity-in-one's-action AND it requires ruthless integrity in one's enforcing.
VALID Speech MUST have rights.
Whistleblowers, actual-journalism, etc, MUST enforce accountability.
Pathogenicity, however, cannot be permitted to control the process of a country, or that country's viability is corrupted, & its time rightfully short.
Corrupt-entities have no "entitlement" to viability, in this Universe.
As for Reddit vs Lemmy-instances,
Reddit sides with cancer-intent having rights to free-speech, and systematically removes posts & comments which either threaten it with accountability, OR which push accountability that it won't tolerate
( some r/Superstonk posts removed, because they threatened money's special-interest-group with accountability, e.g. ).
Each Lemmy instance has its own rules AND each Lemmy community has its own rules, too.
So, in Lemmy, it's more ad-hoc.
But nobody is trying to discover & hold-to the objectively most-viable standards, because political-conforming is preferred, and that will be either near-fatal for humankind or it will be fatal for humankind, as this "armageddon" century unfolds:
ClimatePunctuation is still accelerating.
The curve of climate-change-speed looks like a Bell curve:
climate-change-speed is small, at the beginning, becomes big, then tones down again, as the planet reaches its equilibrium, century/centuries later.
We're in the climbing/accelerating portion of that curve.
Consensus "Science" has been ignoring that.
It has been ignoring the last 2M years of data identifying that the equilibrium-temperature for our current atmosphere is a MINIMUM of +5C ( and that is ignoring the artificially-boosted methane, too, which puts it between +8C to +9C )
( Evolution of global temperature over the past two million years https://www.nature.com/articles/nature19798
280ppm CO2 * 9th-root-of-2^1 == planetary +1C == 302.5ppm CO2
280ppm CO2 * 9th-root-of-2^5 == planetary +5C == 411.5ppm CO2
280ppm CO2 * 9th-root-of-2^8 == planetary +8C == 518.5ppm CO2
280ppm CO2 * 9th-root-of-2^9 == planetary +9C == 560ppm CO2
We're currently in the 417..421ppm range of CO2, alone.
Factoring in the excess 1.3-1.4ppm methane, only, NOT including ANY of the other greenhouse-gasses we're producing, brings it up to 8-9C planetary-heating equilibrium, using methane's 20y CO2 equivalent factor of 82.5x.
526..534.5ppm CO2-equivalent, with the methane, only, factored-in. )
Both arbitrary-free-speech-absolutism AND consensus-conforming-only are delusional/nonviable.
Objectivity is the correct standard for deciding what pathogen-action is, and objectivity isn't found within our feelings, it is found by our squelching our political-motivations & studying actuality, accepting evidence's speech as being more valid than ours.
So, the answer to your question is "culture".
That is why what gets removed is systematically-different in Lemmy than in Reddit.
But the question is a tiny portion of the survival-importance question of will humankind understand the difference between arbitrary-free-expression vs Valid expression, and will humankind understand it in-time for human unconscious to begin committing viable life-committing?
The answer to that question, at this time, looks like ..
"not likely:
too totally different in values".
_ /\ _
- Wat
- In my opinion, lots of posts get removed here which would fall under reasonable (and even important) / valid free speech. So I do think the mods are abusing their censorship ability.

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