How do we effectively report users and/or communities?
There's a user on lemm.ee who has been making hundreds of communities over the last few days, but it seems like a flag-planting operation more than anything else. It would be impossible for one person to moderate all of these communities, and they have zero post or comment history.
Is this a bot, or a person with way too much time on their hands? Regardless, is there a way to, like, address this? Or is that a dead-end?
You can tell an admin about it. But it would be ultimately up to the admin on whether action is taken.
Also, sidenote for anyone reading this, most lemmy instance modlogs are publicly readable. You can see what actions your moderators are taking and this goes a huge step towards keeping mods accountable. It also gives you a greater appreciation for the absolutely fantastic mods that have to sift through all the garbage they take out. Its quite eye opening. A thankless job, and I thank the current mods for doing it.
other than those specific names on that specific instance being "claimed", they have no real value or purpose. XeNoX (or whomever) doesnt know how decentralized media platforms work.
Don't sweat it. You'd have to create a profile on each instance and then create all of the subs on each. And some have decent bot protection, so that is tougher. Then if they're not active and you want one, start/find it on your home instance and petition your home instance's admins for mod control. They'll probably see whats going on and cut that power(-crazy) user off.
It's not like Reddit where there's only one version of a community. It's a double-edged sword, this feature, but in your case it's a clear benefit.
Exactly. If their communities go to unmoderated hell, no one is going to use them but open a community with the same name/purpose on another instance. Problem solved.
You could report an unmoderated community to an admin. I would imagine most reasonable admin's would give the mod plenty of time to respond. Other than that, just make your community on a different instance and post a link in the dead moderators shell.