Banned for calling out a mod after they claimed that criticism of Japanese Internment was "not legitimate"
Banned for calling out a mod after they claimed that criticism of Japanese Internment was "not legitimate"
https://lemmy.ml/post/28111691/17749466
This is actually insane. Another user was criticizing the New Deal era and brought up a bunch of points, I commented refuting a bunch of their points but describing two of of them, Japanese Internment and the Red Scare, simply as "legitimate criticism."
@Decoy321@lemmy.world responded "No they’re not. Those two things were caused by far greater international factors. Like, you know, the 2nd World War."
I cited a commission that found that internment was not caused by a legitimate threat posed by the Japanese but was rather caused by racism and hysteria, and that even Reagan agreed with that conclusion and signed a bill paying reparations to the victims.
Well then the mod responded that I was jumping to "inflammatory conclusions" and "personal attacks" because I assumed that when they said that criticism of internment is not legitimate it meant that they were defending internment. They continued to refuse to explain how else I was possibly supposed to interpret such a claim. I still have no idea. Apparently their stance is, "It's not legitimate to criticize the thing I oppose." If anyone can make sense of that, please enlighten me.
Since they refused to explain, I took a guess that maybe the misunderstanding was that they were interpreting "legitimate criticism" as "damning criticism," like that because a bad thing happened during that era, nothing good came of it at all. I made it clear that this was speculation and that any criticism of interpreting it that way only applied if that's what was happening.
The mod responded by permabanning me, removing all of my comments so they don't show in the modlog, and adding this:
Edit: the other commenter essentially proved that they were just baiting people into inflammatory discussion. They kept resorting to personal attacks and flip-flopped on their position solely to continue arguing. This behavior is not tolerated here. Please report such trolls in the future.
At literally no point did I "flip-flop" my position of "internment was bad, actually." Nor did I "bait" them, unless "criticizing internment is legitimate," is somehow "baiting" someone into saying "no it isn't." By far the most "inflammatory" thing that was said was when they said that criticism of internment was "not legitimate." The "personal attacks" I made were stating the fact that the position they had expressed was to the right of Reagan on the issue, and also making a quip about a .world mod defending the Red scare and Joseph McCarthy.
This seems to be a case of a clear case of PTB, the mod apparently misspoke but because they're a mod they can just ban people for calling them out instead of owning up to it.
Edit: My comments are still visible on kbin.earth (thank you @Skua@kbin.earth) so I can provide screenshots:
screenshots
Interesting to see the "banned from community badge"
"criticized internment badge"
They added it recently to the new Lemmy-UI version since it helps making it clear that someone has been banned from a community or an instance in their comments to make people aware before replying to them. It was something I suggested a while ago based on the Badges which used to be in the Liftoff Lemmy App (unfortunately now defunct).
The entire chain is still visible on my instance, so maybe there has been some kind of technical error in the moderation tools? https://kbin.earth/m/til@lemmy.world/t/1148463/TIL-About-the-Smoot-Hawley-Act-Which-was-the-20-Across/comment/5979684#entry-comment-5979684
Thanks!
Since several people are saying, "it's impossible to weigh in without seeing what was posted," I'd like to invite @Decoy321@lemmy.world to say if anything I described was not accurate and also explain why they mass removed my comments instead of at least leaving them up in the modlog.
PTB, it's well known that Lemmy.ml mods are power trippers and the fact that he ticked remove content on ban so the comments wouldn't show in the log seems telling enough. It's a well known trick mods on Lemmy use to make sure there isn't a modlog record of the comments they removed from a person.
If I were you I'd recommend blocking all their communities and not engaging there anymore, but an even better idea would be simply to migrate to another instance and then block lemmy.ml. I'd say that's the best thing you can do since lemmy.ml admins have also been known to power trip in similar ways.
Edit: Whoops it was a .world mod, well I think my main point still stands, would be best to block those communities.
The mod responded by permabanning me, removing all of my comments so they don’t show in the modlog
A mod can only hide posts and comments. Only an instance admin can use the purge function, but even then that leaves an entry in the modlog indicating that something has been purged for accountability.
The only case where I could see the comments being removed and not showing in the modlog is when a mod use the option to remove content when banning, but it's still technically in the DB.
The entry in the modlog just shows I was banned and accuses me of "baiting," but none of my comments are visible.
With no screen shots of the removed comments, this comes down to ifs.
if the mod's reason for the ban in the mod log is accurate, it's YDI.
If your take of things is accurate, it's at least clueless mod, probably PTB.
Rule 5 of that community requires some degree of personal judgement on exactly what is and isn't baiting, so it isn't necessarily power tripping to be wrong in that judgment. So, they could have been wrong in their determination without it being them just swinging mod dick, and it looks like that's what happened here, based purely on the rest of the thread that's visible.
Not knowing the exact wording used in your comments makes it hard to make a clear estimation though, so that's all I got.
With no screen shots of the removed comments, this comes down to ifs.
And who's fault is that? They made my comments totally inaccessible. Am I supposed to screenshot everything I post in case it gets arbitrarily mass removed?
The fact that they didn't even leave my comments up in the modlog reflects worse, not better on them. That sort of thing should be reserved for clear cut cases. The modlog exists for a reason. We can see where the mod replied to my calling internment and the red scare "legitimate criticism" with "no they're not," frankly, I don't think they deserve the benefit of the doubt after that. If anything, that should be removed, and I'd be justified being much harsher about it than I actually was.
Impossible to provide any opinion without seeing what was actually said. Is there actually a way to remove comments completely from the modlog? I did not think so.
Yes, it's reserved for cases like CSAM or discussions where the mods know they would look bad.
Actually I think it happens automatically with the 'remove data' option enabled when banning. Purging is what you described, and only admins can do that
Once you remove a users data, only the instance admin can see it. Nobody can see purged content (iirc). Not to be pedantic tho