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.
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)
I think the best way to visualize it is in terms of who owns what and who has the authority to perform moderator actions.
From those you can derive what would happen under any scenario involving any combinations of instances.
Right, so a user on C could be a moderator for !community@instance_B, and could then remove it on instance B and it would federate; but if they deleted it only on instance C, it would not.
Am I reading that correctly?
Not quite. An account on instance C that has moderator privileges on a community hosted on instance B can’t take any direct actions against instance B content.
All that can do is remove it in instance C. However, because they’re a moderator, that removal will federate to instance B, which will remove it there, and then federate that removal to any instance that the post federated to originally.