So, I saw a report from one of my users. They reported:
https://ponder.cat/post/1594852/1813842
For the reason:
Unreasonable fighting with everyone in every simple post
I think that’s ridiculous, so I talked with them about it. Posting private communications is frowned upon I guess, but long story short, they weren’t receptive. I’ve decided to ban the account.
IMO the general culture on Lemmy is that users are entitled to their free account and everyone needs to be careful and circumspect about limiting that entitlement in any way, but I don’t see it that way. I don’t think it’s a requirement for me to provide hosting space for anyone who wants to use my stuff as a jumping-off point for abuse of Lemmy’s systems, and isn’t apologetic or receptive when I talk with them about not doing that. The fact that it’s in service of harassing FlyingSquid in particular is just icing on the cake, since my perception is that people like to harass him apparently for no legitimate reason at all (with this as an example).
AITA?
My general approach is to look into things, when one or a bunch of people claim that it’s true. Often it is true. Sometimes it is not. Usually, the times when it is not are a lot more interesting.
I don’t plan to abandon that approach and replace it with “if a whole bunch of people say something then it automatically must be true.” That way is easier, of course, and you can go with it if you like. I’ll stick to my approach.
The receipts are all there, if you care to look. Nobody has deleted them.
But in this case, despite your underhanded implication, let’s just admit you have a preconceived notion and aren’t interested in the many documented instances of FlyingSquid and jordanlund being assholes. You aren’t going to look into this.
Why are you talking to me about this? Pretty much every time it comes up, I ask people for examples, and then I go and look at them. I actually have a bookmark saved right now for a good example of FS being kind of a jerk that I found all on my own and thought might be relevant, at some point. Why did you come back to sort of hassle me about this on a week-old topic?
Couldn’t be because you created a thread to ask everyone what they thought about it. If you don’t want to talk about it, don’t come to my home instance and ask what I think about it. You don’t get to shut down discussion when you don’t feel comfortable with where it’s going.
Oh, no, you’re fine to ask questions or talk with me, I was just wondering what the impetus was for asking about it almost two weeks after I created a thread to ask everyone what they thought about it.
I’m not upset at the questioning. But also at the same time, I don’t have the preconceived notion and am indeed extremely interested in the many documented instances blah blah, so I’m not sure where the conversation could potentially even go from here. You’re welcome to continue discussion, you don’t need to feel like you’re being shut down just because I don’t feel like going back and forth about it.
I wasn’t aware the discussion had a time limit on it. A quick search through this community reveals thread upon thread of receipts, with FlyingSquid being voted the PTB nearly every time. You might not agree with that, but you’re one person against a very many. Of course, I don’t dislike FlyinSquid myself just because he’s a shit mod, I dislike him mostly because he’s a shit person who justifies genocide and immediately cries antisemitic whenever he’s questioned about his views. He was not just a horrible mod, he’s also intellectually and morally bankrupt, and the Fediverse was improved by him finally being removed from power. You supporting someone like that doesn’t really say much about your own character, but it’s obviously up to you how you want to be remembered.
In the end though, it really doesn’t matter whether you’re a PTB yourself for what you did, does it? Until this thread, I never even paid attention to what your instance was, let alone realized you were the admin, and I don’t believe I’ve ever actually seen anything from your little kingdom show up on the front page of db0. If you hadn’t made this thread, it’s likely nobody would have even noticed, let alone cared. So while others might say you’re the PTB, I would instead say IDM, or “it doesn’t matter”. The actions of of admin for a small instance don’t have any impact on the Fediverse at large, so don’t sweat it. Even if you were tossing out instance permabans left and right, there’s not going to be a disruption for anyone.
You must have mistaken me for someone who loves getting in long pointless arguments. Actually never mind! I do. It’s the best. At least for short little bursts of time, I guess I enjoy it, probably more than I should.
I think your assessment is great, Mr. AI. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
I don’t know what’s more embarrassing, that you pretended to ask an AI that, and then wrote it out in-character, or that you thought it was particularly clever.
I promise you, I was not pretending. You can try the experiment for yourself if you like.
I did bias it a little bit to the kind of answer I wanted, by asking the question in terms of “hinged” versus “unhinged” instead of along some other axis. If you try the experiment yourself, you might want to see if you can bias it some other way by asking a different question.
I’m satisfied that not much more can come of us saying our opinions at one another. Cheers and have a nice evening.