Moderator banned from their own community for practicing harassment

Good on the admins for not tolerating this.

...

How many downvotes exactly are we talking about here?

Is it, like, two hundred? Or is it, like, ten?

Edit: Wait, what the fuck? I got bored and checked it more. How did dbzer0 pick literally the most helpful and drama-free of all possible Lemmy users to ban? As far as I can tell, literally the only thing the dude does is post about cool stuff and chat. I didn't even know he was active as a moderator in any real capacity.

checks profile to see if he actually did confess to mass-downvoting dozens of votes at some user or some other sin that, while objectively not "abusive," might have been at least arguably not ideal or something

One of the first things I found was:

The only reason it’s “Vote Blue no matter who” is because right now, in America’s FPTP system, the Dems are the only real alternative in most areas to the GOP. It’s a pithy saying, not a political essay. The lesson is not “LOYALTY TO COMRADE BIDEN”, but “Don’t throw your vote away on a symbolic action; preventing fascism is more important than virtue signaling to no one, especially since ballots are secret”

Ooooohhh.... oh. Oh.

Good fuckin' God man. dbzer0, we love you, quit trippin'. Just relax. Not everyone you don't like or agree with is "abusive."

drama-free of all possible Lemmy users
That's... not how I would describe the user.
They're banned from blahaj lemmy for repeated and ongoing gatekeeping and they've got a mile long modlog...
- Specifically, he said (among other similar things):
  There's an argument to be made for neopronouns in the following cases: - People who don't like 'They' as singular - People who believe there should be a neopronoun(s) that is not simply neutral/neuter, but explicitly for NB identities To the first, I will die on this grammatical hill, but I also acknowledge that it's a matter of taste. If you want to push for Xe/Xim or whichever as gender-neutral-singular, that's fine, and I'll respect your pronouns, but I really do think that 'they' is perfectly serviceable as-is and we should just expand usage of it. If the cultural zeitgeist goes against it, though, it's whatever, if Xe/Xim becomes the new norm, I'll swap to Xe/Xim. To the second, I understand the argument, but I find it non-intuitive. I'll respect the pronouns of people who want a dozen different new pronouns added to the lexicon, but I'll also vehemently argue against the practice. Pronouns are meant to streamline communication, and gendered language itself is something of a relict.
  "Gatekeeping." Ban.
  This whole thing is stupid. I don't even want to step into or bring up the other big relevant issue that caused strife because it's even stupider than that.
  You guys are fuckin' with this guy because he did downvoting, and because he expressed what overall sounded to me like pretty reasonable opinions honestly.
  People aren't hating on you here. It's fine. You don't have to turn everyone into an enemy.
- Over the freaking Drag troll issue. You'll forgive us if not everybody shares the same opinion of who's creating the drama in that particular case.
As far as I can tell, literally the only thing the dude does is post about cool stuff and chat.
Nobody's perfect.
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/49556709?scrollToComments=true
https://lemmy.world/comment/15401665
https://lemmy.world/post/26286098/15432273
- Yeah. I missed some drama because I tend to avoid lemmy.world politics forums because they are unbearable. Point taken.
Check out PJs LW modlog, it's not all rainbows and sunshine. I know you love to do that anyway.
Nobody accused him of "mass downvoting", that's a strawman. What he was accused of was harassing one of our users, looking him up for the specific purpose of downvoting past posts/comments and to leave salty comments and reports on old threads like a goddam stalker, because he's an angry turbolib who blames the left (and Eugene in particular, for some reason) for the pathetic failure of the corporate-c**k-sucking Democrats to defeat Donald Trump. There is plenty of evidence for all of those things.
At the very least, his behaviour around this has been petty and childish, not great qualities in a mod. And if he was even a slightly reasonable person, he probably wouldn't have quit our instance in a huff, and started up a personal grudge community to stir up pointless drama all because of a 7 day temp ban. Like just how fragile is his ego, anyway? We've all copped short bans without going into a full breakdown about it.
And it's pretty well known by now (except for you it seems) PJ has a bad temper, and that he's been losing his shit more and more lately. He even states as such in his profile. While I do feel empathy for the fact he lives in chronic pain, that's no excuse for harassing one of our users in this manner.
I believe that Eugene was sincere in his complaint, and he was very upset by the situation. PJ has all the power in this situation as a "power mod" and very active poster. Eugene is just a random user who was targeted for his political stance. And the fact you are defending PJ here instead of believing the victim is concerning to me. Much like the "believe women" slogan during the #metoo movement, my default position is to believe my upset users, not to side with the person bullying them. That's just how we roll at dbzer0 and I'm not gonna apologize for it.
I mean, what's the difference between your position here and something like, "Harvey Weinstein has made lots of great movies and nobody else has complained about him, so that woman must be lying"? There is no difference. PJ is just busy trying to launder his bruised reputation imo, and you are helping him with that project.
- Phillip somehow claims he doesn't have the time/energy to respond to this, but has been replying to everything else for hours.
  I think he just wants to ignore you and say he wins.
  Edit: a few days now and he still refuses to. Almost like he's acting in bad faith!
How did dbzer0 pick literally the most helpful and drama-free of all possible Lemmy users to ban?
Assuming you're not a PJ alt, I was surprised by your comment. It got me thinking.
I'm beginning to wonder if PJ has a psychological disorder. They have stretches of being a nice, helpful person, interspersed with being a melodramatic, rage baiting, borderline troll shit stirrer. They tend to delete many of their shitty comments, showing they know the behaviour is wrong, but are still known and disliked by many for that behaviour.
- Exactly, tell me you look at Pug's comment history and their moderation history and tell me he's "drama free".
  Notice how Phillip didn't respond to this.
I didn't even know he was active as a moderator in any real capacity.
They're a mod for MeanwhileOnGrad of all places and you've regularly engaged in the same debates they get embroiled in. This feels like some strange feigned ignorance.
- You are dead on. I hate that shit, but it's mega popular here, especially these chronically online weirdos who think they're in a holy war against eachothers opinions.
  The dudes who have the time to get in fights and document them, or spend their precious minutes digging through mod logs for evidence. They are telling on themselves.
- Yeah it's feigned ignorance, he knows what he is doing.
Wait, what the fuck? I got bored and checked it more. How did dbzer0 pick literally the most helpful and drama-free of all possible Lemmy users to ban?
He has literally said he wants to start fights online because he finds it fun, and that hell never stop harassing members because he doesn't like them.
- When did he say that? Are you sure he didn't say some totally different and more sensible thing that you're choosing to wildly exaggerate into that?
  I can actually pretty much guarantee that that's not what he said. I guess I missed some LW politics community drama that he was involved with, so sure maybe my side was wrong initially, but I'm pretty confident that particularly the second part of that is just some kind of trumped-up misinterpretation of what he actually said.
Oh, I don't like engaging with him or any of his posts because he tends to be a loudmouth radlib but he is a power user and his posts on other communities are just fine.
It'd be nice if I could, like, put a comment on one of his political posts, though, without it turning into a gigantic, massive thread arguing about the specifics of electoralism and lesser evil and all of that nonsense.
- he tends to be a loudmouth radlib
  Okay, so now we've got "loser," "twat," "loudmouth," has a psychological disorder, "zio," mental issues, the whole nine yards.
  And, somehow, that's not abusive. PJ giving downvotes and arguing about politics, though, is.
  Good to know.
Wth is going on with the db0 instance? Db0 the guy seems very chill and understanding, at least in the posts I've seen.
- Db0 is still very chill and understanding. Seems like the person reported here is having a hard time recently
  https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/49556709/20248126
https://lemmy.ml/post/33527767
Yeah, this had put a target on his back in any lefty instance.
Also, following a user from tiny community to tiny community that you're not a part of just to downvote their posts that you disagree with personally because you got into an argument with somebody is a bit extreme and I agree with the admins that they did the right thing.
- It's hilarious to me that this whole community of people is having a days-long freakout about what a big deal it is that PugJesus commits this multitude of sins (which have gradually reduced in scope from "abusive" "transphobic" "zionist" whatever else into "he's a liberal" (allegedly) "he argues about politics and I think that shouldn't be allowed apparently")... while also accusing him of caring way too much and being a loser therefore.
  Y'all should follow your own advice, and get a life and stop freaking out about what some other person on Lemmy did.

Unsurprising, that user is a power-poster and power-mod that constantly tries to shit-stir. Figured it was only a matter of time before something like this happened.

Bruh... cowbee talking about shit stirring... i only know we're in a glass house cause you started throwing stones.
- I pretty plainly admit to focusing on correcting misinterpretations of Marxism and Marxism-Leninism, I spend very little time power posting, and I don't own and moderate drama communities. I also don't downvote troll people, or stalk them and post about them on drama comms.
  I'm certainly opinionated, and have my own political views I don't shy away from, but I think it's pretty clear that this is a fundamentally different situation.

Why did you feel the need to censor the user name? You know the modlog is public?

Mostly trying to abide by the somewhat imprecise rules of the community as a formality.
When posting screenshots of drama, you must obscure the identity of all the participants.
I have to 'obscure the identity of the participant in the screenshot' in this context meaning blurring usernames, sure no problem. Nobody ever said anything about obscuring non- personally identifying information sources - like the community the modlog came from - that interested people can go out of their way to track down.
- Huh. Yeah, makes sense.

this JOKER made a community to WHINE about their Ls

edit because i forgot to post the LINK!

https://piefed.social/c/fediverseslander

Deeply unserious behavior.
Holy shit this is hilarious, my God. Terminally online behaviour.
Lmao I thought you were joking for a second
Shout out to PJ who embodies the "fuck you, I will NEVER stop posting" mentality
- Doesn't dbzer0 literally have a 'disengage' rule because the default experience there is ""fuck you, I will NEVER stop posting"?
And it got banned by the admin so he made a new one on lemmy.world! Holy shit he's just refusing to consider he's being weird.

Prominent is certainly a choice of words

I wouldnt be surprised if he was the source of the majority if mod reports the last few days - some time off would do him good.

Dbzer0 mods temp banned me for trolling recently. I was actually taken aback because on Reddit my sarcasm would be pretty mild. Can't argue with the premise, glad our mods are trying to make Lemmy less toxic and I learned a valuable lesson actually. Just disengage and move on.

I'm not really seeing any receipts, so I'm going to have to go with "power tripping admins abusing power" on this one.

Honestly, if you look at the receipts, it's even worse. It's a pattern of instance admins harassing this guy, banning him, and then accusing him of being abusive somehow to them (by, for example, using his downvote button) and also telling people he's a piece of shit.
- It’s a pattern of instance admins harassing this guy
  Someone should really ask for receipts on this one.
The person in question is extremely rude and toxic. I have reached out to the LW admins regarding that he seems unfit to be moderating a dozen medium to larger communities. Unfortunately i didnt get any reply.
He regularly insults people and argues in bad faith. About two weeks back he spread misinformation about the compensation of Holocaust victims and their descendents by Germany to justify Israelis stealing Palestinian land.
When i corrected him with sources he called me antisemitic and compared me with Elon Musk. Unfortunately mods chose not to act against him on a report of incivillity, which i can only explain for myself with him abusing his "power mod" position and people being intimidated by him.
https://feddit.org/post/15328489/7640769
- Oh, he's a goddamn zionist, too?
- At no point during that discussion did the mod threaten anyone or abuse their power. They were having a heated discussion about a complex topic.
  The fact that you disagree is entirely beside the point. This isn't harassment in the slightest.

May be this (emphasis mine):

Removed Comment
Me: "Oh look, the ghost said something stupid again. I wonder what they've been up to." [clicks profile] [sure enough, more stupid things are said, including blatant misinformation] Sorry that you say stupid things and break the rules, I guess? > I recall a few weeks back he said that because I don’t call out .ml that much (funny how he ignores me calling out Hexbear) I somehow must mass downvote his posts across lemmy. lol I'm sure you can quote me. It would be awful if your memory was as poor as your ability to construct coherent arguments. AND a place of honor in your bio? That's unironically great. Thanks for helping spread me all over the Fediverse!

Maybe the admin misread? Or they read that and then actually checked the data and found PJ did downvote all that other users stuff or smthn.

I tried to take a short look at the data but PJ has over 150k votes which probably breaks the page I use. (Admins can natively see this info in lemmy)

Or they read that and then actually checked the data and found PJ did downvote all that other users stuff or smthn.
Correct, I gave my admin over 25 links documenting it, after he said he stalks my account to do it.
- That sounds a lot more justified then, thanks for the info.
  For that extra certainty, was it consecutive comments and posts?
  Could you have feasibly come across all of them organically if you used lemmy an unhealthy amount?
Because it's rude and not constructive. It's not a permaban offense but this kind of toxicity is part of why I left Reddit. We can do better and model positive arguments even with people we vehemently disagree with. If someone is being unreasonable, just disengage and move on.

He tends to get into a fight every single time I see him post and somebody says something that's even slightly controversial, which results in an easily hundred long comment thread.

He's more than willing to follow you around from thread to thread to and from community to community If he sees something on your profile he doesn't like or he disagrees with your political opinions.

If this is a Lemmy, anarchist instance, full of a bunch of super lefties, they're not gonna appreciate a Radlib coming in trying to start shit up and downvoting a bunch of people. They're probably just gonna block him like they have.

I think the recommendation here is if you're gonna downvote people, you probably want to just stick to downvoting people directly in the thread you're engaging with and not go in that person's profile and downvote every single thing they've ever done. Or claim that every single thing they've ever done is something you disagree with.

Unfortunately, he's a prolific proster, and some of his stuff is funny 🤷

He’s more than willing to follow you around from thread to thread to and from community to community If he sees something on your profile he doesn’t like or he disagrees with your political opinions.
And when you call him out on it, he'll make a new community to shame you for not liking him.
It's really funny that I called him out for it, he said he doesn't do it, and then make a community that got banned that's all about doing it.
- I went and browsed that community and it's just full of gold.

This the same guy that calls POC perspective of colonisation "melodramatic".

I would love to read that context if you have it somewhere.
Based on the conversations I've had with him, it's gotta be gold.
- It was in response to me linking readsettlers.org it was on my lemm.ee account

While I think lemmy is great compared to reddit I still don't like the whole upvote and downvote system. As it's mostly based on people who agree with something and they will downvote you if they disagree with you. There should just be commends and replies to comments imo. At least downvoted posts don't get hidden from view I guess.

I disagree with you. I'd never want to go back to the old defaults in forums, of un-threaded conversations where every comment is equal (and generally sorted by timestamp). Some comments are just better than others, and a user interface should prioritize the better comments.
Comments that are interesting, funny, or informative can be read by more people when they're shown earlier in the page.
Comments that are rude, factually incorrect, off topic, etc., can be de-emphasized in the user interface, even if they don't technically break any rules. I'd rather it be a community driven decision than a mod-driven decision of the harsh consequences of comment removal or user ban.
The key is to find a community whose collective opinions you respect. Crowds may not be perfect, but they're generally better than individual mods.
And a naive "newest first" sort algorithm just prioritizes frequent posters and incentivizes "bumping" threads, which also detracts from the overall quality of a forum.
- All it really does is prioritize herd mentality though, like if you don't think like the others then you get downvoted and your comment hidden. I think this is just bad and was the main thing I hated about reddit.
- The key is to find a community whose collective opinions you respect. Crowds may not be perfect, but they’re generally better than individual mods.
  Agree with most of this with the * that you don't need to respect the communities collective opinions in every way. Sometimes its okay to think different, know you're saying something many won't like out of sheer difference in principle, and post it anyways. Its okay to be downvote bombed and shuffled down the viewing priority as long as you aren't being outright censored in scummy ways. I feel genuinely bad for actual adults with such thin skin and need for internet community validation who get salty at a bad ratio of up arrows to down arrows to the point of reflexively editing their comment to talk down to strawmen.
  I've been on lemmy a few years now even though I genuinely do not like a lot of the communities prefered topics and conversational archetypes, because I feel respected enough as a user to say and post what i'd like within the bounds of community rules without getting shadowbanned for talking about the wrong thing or having 15 automods tell me im not allowed to post a meme without 15 upvote points. Its a decently struck balance.
Why does this matter? If I disagree and dislike something, why not give me a "don't like that" button?
- You can just say it instead.
- Because they're awful methods of communication that lead to bad community feel? Seems straight forward to me.
Yeah, disagreements should not be buried.
(Upvoted because I agree with you 😅)

I'll never understand people who argue and fight beyond the initial disagreement. I mean, even that should be civil (though I'm often not when I feel attacked by someone misrepresenting my point). I've got way too little free time to try to chase someone around the internet.

Happy to be on Lemmy, though, where my interactions have been mostly positive. Sometimes it's good to know when to sign off and take a break. Think I'll get back to the show I was streaming.

I'll never understand those that hate toxcisity to this degree

Huh I just got banned from that Community a few days ago cuz I got an argument with one of the mods on a completely different community. Wonder if it was the same guy.

edit I understand the mod in question has responded to this comment. But as I blocked him for repeated harassing private messages I'm not going to engage.

He goes out of his way to private message you? 😅

Oh, yeah I think I argued with that guy when I was drunk once. Coolio

So many people are thin skinned and have nothing better to do than to spend their OWN FREE TIME making other people less happy. Imagine instead of having fun or relaxing or playing a game or going outside or hanging with friends ..... you stomp on other people because they have a differing opinion or said something you didn't like. This person should not be a mod. This person has a miserable life.

So many people are thin skinned and have nothing better to do than to spend their OWN FREE TIME making other people less happy. Imagine instead of having fun or relaxing or playing a game or going outside or hanging with friends ..... you stomp on other people because they have a differing opinion or said something you didn't like.
Thank you! Yeah, I 100% agree with all of this.
This person should not be a mod. This person has a miserable life.
Wait.... do you mean PugJesus, or the person that banned him? I was 100% on board when I interpreted it as "the person that banned him," yes.
This thread seems 100% full of people steaming up fake drama as enthusiastically as they possibly can, while also, accusing PJ of stirring up drama and apparently saying he should be banned for it.
- This thread seems 100% full of people steaming up fake drama as enthusiastically as they possibly can, while also, accusing PJ of stirring up drama and apparently saying he should be banned for it.
  You mean his documented actions and the consequences for his actions?
  Pig is currently on a week long temper tantrum. He's currently being a massive asshole to people. Ask me how I know.
  Also weird how you're not responding to the people who've proven you wrong here.

ESH