Yesterday I created a post on a regional community on lemmy.ca.
Fairly quickly thereafter, I got a DM saying that the post had been removed because someone who disagreed with me complained. Oddly though, the DM came from a @Automod@lemmy.world - not the server hosting the community.
Furthermore, I still see the post when I go looking - and there has been a bit of discussion about it.
So my questions:
(a) Can a post be removed from a specific federated instance without being removed from the original instance?
(b) Is there an appeal process for removed posts? I'm sorry that the guy got all butthurt, but my post was sincere, measured, and (I think) reasonable. If it offended someone, they should discuss it.
Ok, there's your instance, instance A, that hosts your personal account. There's the instance that hosts the community, instance B, and a random instance that your content has federated to, but doesn't host you or the community directly. This is instance C.
If an admin on A (instance A mods can't remove this post) removes your post, it gets removed on other instances too, including B and C.
If an admin or community mod on instance B removes your post, it gets removed on other instances too, including A and C.
However, if an admin on C removes your post (a moderator on C can't), then it is only removed on instance C. Instance A and B and any other instances the content has federated to aside from C, continue to see replies, edits, votes etc
One final point. My example above only works if there are no mods for the community on instance C.
If there is a community mod on instance C, that moderator can remove the post and the removal will federate, even when an admin removal on instance C will not (unless that admin is also a community mod for the instance B community)
(a) Yes. Instance admins have the ultimate say in what's on their server. They can delete posts, entire communities, ban remote users and delete remote users. At least they had the decency of notifying you!
Since lemmy.ca owns the post, lemmy.world can't federate out the removal, so it's only on lemmy.world.
(b) You have to go appeal to lemmy.world. Each instance have its own independent appeal process.
That's the beauty of the fediverse: instances can all have their rules to tailor the experience to their users, and it doesn't have to affect the entire fediverse. Other instances linked to lemmy.ca can still see and interact with your post just fine, just not lemmy.world.
I don't think there's a problem with posting it here. I didn't do that initially because I wasn't trying to draw attention to the post as much as I was trying to understand how it all worked.
And in answer to your question, no the automod is not a moderator on the community.
From what I understand, yes, moderation is not federated. That’s good in that instances can enforce their own mod standards, but it also means spam/harmful content has to be removed by each server individually.
No idea if there’s an appeal process but you could ask on the lemmy.world support community.
Moderation does federate out, but only from the originating instance, the one that owns the post on question.
If someone post spam on lemmy.ca and lemmy.world deletes it, it only deletes on lemmy.world. If a mod or admin on lemmy.ca deletes it however, it federates and everyone deletes it as a result (unless modified to ignore deletions, but by default Lemmy will accept it).
There's some interoperability problems with some software, notably Kbin where their deletions don't federate to Lemmy correctly, so those do need to be moderated by every instance. But between Lemmy instances it does federate.
I had something similar just happen and I'm pretty confused because I see in the lemmy.world modlog that my post was deleted but I posted here, on .ml... though when I look here I don't see it either but it's also not showing up on modlog...
I'm curious as to what rules were broken? You mentioned 'somebody complained' but that is surely not enough for the bot to remove your post?
I don't like cancel culture but I don't see anything wrong with your post at all. There's no obvious issues (sexism, swearing, harassment, etc.). It's written fairly respectfully. So I don't really see what grounds there are for removal (I don't know, and haven't checked the posting rules for your instance though).