As a person who just left reddit due to being tired of reddit mods’ power tripping, I asked folks here what are their reasons behind migrating here from other forums (most likely reddit too). It seems like none of the folks who answered had complaints on reddit mods. Do folks here not feel the same about reddit mods as I do?
I heard Lemmy mods are volunteers too. How do they compare to reddit mods? Did Lemmy do anything to ensure no power abuse to happen?
The thing is “mods” is not a monolith, not on reddit, and not on lemmy.
I saw a LOT of trash moderation on Reddit, and I’ve seen some on Lemmy as well. There’s good moderation as well.
I think what makes Lemmy different is a) it’s smaller so bad behavior is harder to hide. b) there are layers of administration.
If the mods on lemmy are a problem, take it to the Admins of the instance, let them decide. Admins are a problem? Join a new instance and defederate from the problem instance.
Reddit never had a model like that. The Admins were largely absent and really only took action against mods following the black out.
Mod logs being public helps as well.
Where can I go to see them?
Top right bar, at the bottom, for me. There’s a green Modlog button.
Reddit and Lemmy mods are just people, I do think Lemmy’s decentralized model makes it easier to leave and find an alternative if your views don’t jive.
I’m pretty sure a lot of the mods here on Lemmy are just former moderators from reddit that were fed up with the site (me included).
Fed up with the site, yes, but I was never a mod until I came here.
I was one of the top 1%er redditors. They even included my comment in their FCC listing on Net Neutrality.
Top by karma? Or number of comments? Length of membership?
Karma.
Some probably were but I never was.
I never got people’s obsession with assuming that all Reddit/Lemmy/Discord mods act the same. Like, anyone can create a community if they like, there’s no personality quiz you have to take.
I guess you could make a case that power inherently corrupts, but other than that it’s silly to assume that they are all power tripping boogymen.
Also Reddit mods are also volunteers as well, or at the very least not paid by Reddit.
In terms of moderation, Lemmy and Reddit function basically the same. Mods have absolute power and if you don’t like it you can create a new board. There’s no magical tools to keep their power in check.
I guess post removals are more transparent here because they are listed? But that’s not going to stop people.
… Of course, if you are talking about admins rather than mods, the power structure is completely different. Which has its pros and cons.
Depending on your instance, the mod absolute power isn’t necessarily true
I meant of a specific community.
Depending on your instance, the mods might not have absolute power. In some instances they might dethrone mods who face a rebellion or whatever
Ah right, yeah that makes sense, didn’t think about instances like that.
In general I think of reddit mods as thin-skinned cucks on a power-trip.
Haven’t interacted with many lemmy mods, but I assume they’ll trend in the same direction. It’s a lot of work for no pay, so it’s going to attract people with ulterior motives.
My ulterior motive is I want to help grow the fediverse.
If modding here ever gets as full of behind the scenes vitriol as it was on reddit I’ll probably stop.
(I got asked to help out a few times over there but I lasted less than a month in one of the big ones. A lot of it’s glorified data sorting of some really ick stuff).
What kind of stuff?
I heard Lemmy saw increase in its users recently. When was that?
I’m not sure, probably when reddit made another stupid decision
Lemmy mods are the most sexy people on earth and everyone is in awe when they enter the room.
Aw shucks
I heard Lemmy mods are volunteers too. How do they compare to reddit mods?
Lemmy mods are just discarded redit mods.
Did Lemmy do anything to ensure no power abuse to happen?
Lemmy is lacking seriously in that field.
The major difference between the forums is that Lemmy, for better and worse, have more active admins due to the nature of Lemmy. You are definitely going to have more active admins, which will influence how mods act.
Ok so have you ever seen an admin acting (unless you are one yourself)?
A few times.
The act of federation and defederation is an admin role and I’ve seen discussions where admins ask their users. The defederation from exploding heads and Threads is an example of that.
You have the allowing or removal of subs in an instance. That came about when some alt-right subs started appearing in lemmy.world and they were deleted.
You also don’t have the hard line between admins and mods on Lemmy that you have on Reddit. Beehaw and startrek.website are meant to be highly curated instances where the mods and admins work very closely together. In some cases, admins are also mods.
So, yeah. Admins play a far larger role in Lemmy than Reddit.
I was never a mod at Reddit. But I’m a mod here for a few communities. I try to be as “hands off” as possible, and step in only when needed. It’s been 7 or 8 months as a mod, and I have not yet banned anyone…
What kind of conflicts have you seen here?
The worst I’ve seen is some spam and some petty name calling.
I’ve been seeing a lot more comments removed by mods lately, especially on news@lemmy.world. These don’t appear to be harassing comments either, just something the mod disagrees with and wants to silence. Unfortunately, I’m not sure how to see which mod is the one on a power trip though the Voyager app.
Yep. I tested the censorship water there the other day with a mildly anti-authoritarian comment. Comments deleted and banned from the topic.
They’re people. If you disagree about something, you won’t like them. If you never disagree, you never think about them. Yeah there are shitty mods, just like there are users who have earned their ban, whether or not they would agree.
just realized this is an enlightened centrist take. gotta go take a shower.
There is a lot of variation in how good or bad mods are. On Reddit you get anything from /r/askhistorians mods that are generally qualified in a particular branch of history and do a good job yeeting trash comments and on the other you have the conservative safe space mods that yeet people for not being conservative enough while screeching how pro free speech they are. All in all, I havent dealt much with most mods there.
Here though… theres a lot of automatic moderation going on. At least on the server I am on that yeets comments that say certain bad words which I think is a bit overzealous.
The decentralized model of Lemmy means that there won’t be that weird situation where some individuals were mods for literally hundreds of subs. Mod culture on R was just insanely toxic. Fuck that place.
Depends on the popularity of the /r/ or /C/
I mostly stuck to small technical subs and didn’t have a run in with any mods.
Reddit mods coddle nazis.
I hope lemmy mods never do.
Hate to break it to you about Lemmy.ml
Really, nazis?
Or is this another “anyone even slightly to my left is immediately and permanently all the way to my right” thing?
They are highly sympathetic to the Russian federation and the CCP. Making criticisms to either will get your account banned from Lemmy.ml.
In my opinion, it is reasonable to say that China is a fascist state due to its genocide of Uyghur people, language and culture. I also believe it is reasonable to label Russia as a fascist state, due to the kidnapping of Ukrainian children to Russia, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed towards the Ukrainian people and the banning of the Ukrainian language in Russian occupied schools. These both show clear intent to both eliminate people and their culture.
That doesn’t mean they are Nazis, though. Instead, they are Tankies.
Nazis are authoritarian, but not all authoritarians are Nazis. ML (along with lemmygrad and Hexbear) is full of tankies, not Nazis.
Decentralization makes me feel less concerned about the actions of moderators.
