Is there anything that can be done about troll powermods?

EnglishMobster@kbin.social to /kbin meta@kbin.social – 1 points –

I logged into Kbin today to see 18 notifications where the same guy banned me from all of their magazines for downvoting them.

I was only subscribed to 1 of those magazines, but it's still annoying to wake up to 18 ban messages from someone who got easily angered from a downvote.

(Side note: IMO, this is why being able to see downvotes is bad. Even if anyone could see them by spinning up their own instance, that's a lot of work compared to pressing 2 buttons.)

I've blocked the guy, but is there anything that can be done to stop this from proliferating across the site?

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this is certainly very very worrying. this sort of behavior has to be handled some way or another. @ernest.

honestly, someone like that has already shown they would not make a good moderator, they mass banned over something so petty and small, i don't think it would be unreasonable to revoke their ability to make mags for some time (or indefinitely) and give his mags to someone else who is more mature. he already swiped up some big name mags, do we really want someone like that running popular magazines? no.

edit. honestly fuck it, this deserves to be called out. @Deliverator, this is unacceptable and very childish behavior. you should not be running magazines. reconsider your behavior and grow up, please.

edit. looks like we may not have the full story here. @Deliverator, we would very much like to hear your side and your reasoning for this.

edit. i noticed some people have gone and mass-downvoted Deliverators posts, PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS. do NOT stoop to that level, do NOT contribute to the problem of mass-downvoting, even if the other person has done it, or you are no better and have no right to criticize it.

Looks like he may have just been removed from his mod position on a few magazines, as his profile only shows him modding 14 now. Hopefully the other magazines he's on realize what he's doing and do something about him.

EDIT: Maybe not, I just checked the modlog, and OP was only banned 13 times, not 18. Unless 5 of those were removed and no longer show up in the log for some reason? I feel like there might be more to this story than what we're seeing.

Other people have also been downvoting the mod in question, but OP is the only one who seems to have been mass-banned like this, as far as I can see in the modlog. I don't even see any threads where OP or the mod have interacted before, so I'm doubting that this was caused by just downvoting somebody's comment.

Maybe everyone should pump the brakes on this witch hunt for a sec.

The 18 number is the number of unread messages I had at the time. They were all "you have been banned." I just went back and counted; I have 18 messages (across 2 pages of notifications now).

It's possible that they extended the length of the ban and doing so gave me another message; the bans were all different lengths. Or it could be some duplication happening server-side.

we definitely need his side of the story now, hope he comes out with it soon

I don't think there can possibly be a justifiable reason he was banned from every one of that mod's magazines, and then for the mod to systematically put a downvote on every single one of the user's posts. Clearly they both did it, but still, not moderator worthy behavior.

at this point, i have no idea what happened, but am open to hearing the full story. i'd like to assume there isn't a justifiable reason for it, but we honestly shouldn't assume anything till we see both sides. like someone else said, OP has also downvoted all their comments/posts, it could have been in response to it, or maybe not. we need the full story here

i noticed some people have gone and mass-downvoted Deliverators posts, PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS

Not to be a i-told-you-so but this is why you don't name and shame on the internet. You can influence a person but masses become this uncontrollable horde that does stuff like this.

There definitely needs to be a set protocol to remove mods like this. If the user did something to be removed from a specific mag, that's one thing, but removing them from every mag you're a mod for is an overreach.

Obviously I come from a different instance, but I feel there are things that should result in mass bans and even account deletion, such as the use of racial slurs. Contact the admins and make it happen in those cases.

I don't agree, people can make mistakes, they are punished according to that mistake, and should be given the chance to be better. If someone is banned all across the platform there is no redeeming opportunity.

Not sure how you would say the n word by mistake. Sounds similar to Roseanne blaming her racism on Ambien. They can make another account if they want another chance.

Why do you think it's okay to ban someone from communities where they did nothing wrong because of what they did elsewhere? Unless it's criminal behavior that can endanger the site itself, like posting child porn, I feel like that's a huge overreach.

Because open racists should have no place on the entire site.

I asked a general question about why you think punishments should bleed out into ither communities and you just gave me an example of a conduct to which you think this super-punishment should apply. You didn't say why. Do you also think that every country should jail people for doing things that are crimes in other countries?

I'm 100% against racism, I just want to understand why you believe that someone being inappropriate in a forum about cars means that they shouldn't be allowed to discuss baking in a separate community with different people where they didn't say anything wrong.

My entire comment was the explanation why. Zero tolerance. No racists. Full site ban. No questions.

And since you want to discuss countries even though it's a totally different league, yes, I don't think a drunk driver should be able to get to drive in another country for a period of time. Yes, ban entry from murderers. Yes, a terrorism charge should prevent entering an airplane in any airport.

Being gay is a crime in Uganda so you just supported jailing all the gays the entire world over. Really nice.

I actually disagree with this being an example of why seeing downvotes is bad. I also think it's good we can see which mod is doing the banning; I've noticed the standard lemmy moderation log doesn't show that. This kind of transparency allows for poor behaviour to be discovered more quickly and remedied with less speculation about who did what.

Edit: For example, I can also see this person has gone through your entire comment history and downvoted every comment. I didn't see any troll-like comments from you though. I hope this person is doing OK mentally, but this isn't OK community leader behaviour on their part.

Edit 2: I can also see that OP has downvoted every single one of the other person's comments too. On the same day as the other person did to OP. Uh... I don't know what conversation spawned this entire exchange, but I dont think that downvoting all someone's comments outside of their contexts is productive.

Edit 3: And for the couple of other accounts who are going through the post histories of the people involved and downvoting because of this thread? Also not helpful behaviour. Be better.

This is why we can't have nice things.

This is exactly why transparency is great. These people are ridiculous and lose credibility. Keeping everything visible is the best defense against manipulation

I avoided some of the finer details because the downvoting isn't the point - the bans are. Especially from so many magazines.

But - to give the full story:

I have a Tampermonkey extension which hides posts after an upvote/downvote. Because of this, I'm voting on basically everything in my subscribed feed.

I downvoted something of his - I don't even remember what, exactly. I made some comments and noticed when checking replies later that I had been downvoted on a bunch of them.

Curious, I checked to see where the downvotes were coming from - all of them were this guy. I checked their profile and saw that I had already downvoted one of their posts, hence my guess as to why he was mad.

Usually I'd let these things pass, but I found it a bit childish and I was feeling petty, so I did it back to them. You can judge me if you like; I'm not exactly proud of stooping to that level but I was already in a sour mood that day.

I haven't been on Kbin for a couple days, but I checked back this afternoon and saw 18 messages, all of which said "you have been banned." Evidently they got angry and decided they weren't going to let me participate in any of their communities.

I got pissed at this and banned him back - which is, again, perhaps childish on my part. At the same time, I've been a mod for a long time across multiple platforms, and I have a low tolerance for BS at this point. I've seen folks like this start spamming communities in retaliation to perceived slights - something like that happened on the first forum I ever ran, way back before Reddit even existed - and frankly this guy has already proven to be acting in bad faith.

One reason why I didn't delve into details is because this is going to devolve into petty he said/she said arguments, which frankly isn't the point.

The point is that this guy got pissed off at something I did and decided I wasn't able to participate in any of their communities anymore. Like I said, I was only subscribed to one of these communities anyway - so it didn't really affect me - but I worry what would happen if these weren't small communities. What happens if a powermod that runs multiple big magazines decides to ban people for perceived slights?

I know this was a issue on Reddit (awkwardtheturtle), and I'd hate for it to be an issue here, too.

Agreed, if somebody is spam downvoting comments (Which is honestly quite the pathetic act), then people should be able to see that, and block/report them

Unfortunately, blocking doesn’t actually do anything aside from stopping up from seeing their comments. Someone I blocked is still able to see, reply to, and downvote my posts. It’s frustrating, to say the least.

Additionally - and I don't know if this has been fixed - if you're a mod and you block someone, you also don't see posts they make on your magazines.

So they can easily go in and make spam posts and you - as a mod - would never see it.

Which is the exact opposite of how it’s supposed to work. Blocks are seriously broken right now.

To be fair, wouldn't an admin always be able to see your downvotes, even without the current completely open view of it? Admins in general usually get information you're not privy to on sites.

That said, your best bet would be to just find magazines that offer the same thing, just not run by him. Or make a new one. If he keeps it up you'd likely get traffic.

Looks like he got you for a couple more just recently.

Looking through your post history, I don't agree with the "Troll" statement being tied to those bans...

That was me banning him, a gut reaction on my part when I noticed. Maybe childish, but when they revealed himself as a bad actor I didn't want them coming into my communities.

You appreciate the irony here, right?

Oh yes, I know.

At the same time, I don't trust that this guy isn't going to go into the magazines I run and start spamming the comments section or anything like that.

In 2003? 2004? - somewhere around there - I was the only mod on a small internet forum. A guy got mad at something I did and decided to start putting gore in every single thread. He did it when I was asleep, and I came back on the next morning and had to clean up the mess.

Since then, I've been a bit less forgiving when someone has shown to be a bad actor. Maybe I'm just colored by past experiences, but I didn't want to deal with any BS, and on the bigger of the magazines I run we have a full modteam that can overturn the ban if they disagree. (The smaller doesn't even have any organic activity yet, so I haven't recruited a modteam for it.)

wait, can you see who downvotes you?

Yes, if you click on "more," next to "reply" and "boost." Click on "activity" from there.

Imagine having the time to actually look at all that nonsense just to find out who clicked an arrow icon halfway around the world.

I don't think people really understand just how privileged it is to be here dawdling at all, given time, technology, access, etc ... nevermind dawdling maliciously over something so petty.

Then again you could easily make bots to check all that shit, do the cross referencing, and pump out a black list of folks you don't want to interact with. I can see there's a lot of use in that for moderation and administration, but as a user? Begging for problems. It won't ever create positivity to have people able to see that. I understand the protocol won't hide it, but apps can.

Edit, Wait, I'm not even sure the protocol allows for downvotes anyway, that's specific to the apps isn't it? So there's a conscious decision going on to show them? That's a miss.