This one is both upsetting and weird.
So there was a user on ponder.cat who’s been spamming posts. Like a lot. 58 per day, on average. Not 58 comments. 58 posts.
I started seeing a little scattering of reports about it, mostly just figured it was the mods’ business to deal with, and then finally today I actually really took a look at what they were doing and realized it was way over the top. Pretty much everyone in the comments agreed when someone brought it up.
A 25 day old account with 1,400+ posts? What the actual fuck? My entire goddamn feed is this one account…
Touch grass. Good lord. You’re carpet bombing multiple communities with repeats of the same crap.
The user was not receptive.
lol.
I guess people here do not know how to block an account.
:)
Is that a compliment or a rant?
May I introduce you to Lemmy block function.
If you don’t like my posts then block me and you will never see them again. As simple as that.
That’s a bunch of bullshit. The voting was about as you would expect. I said to the user:
That’s not how it works. If you’re interfering with the average Lemmy user’s experience, you don’t get to claim it doesn’t count because each individual person would be able to block each individual problematic account, if they wanted to have a good experience. Honestly, these people have a point. You have been posting an average of 58 posts per day. That’s too much. I post a ton, and that’s about 10 times more than me, and I’ve gotten multiple complaints about posting too much in particular communities. The handful of times it’s happened, my reaction was “Oh my bad what sounds like an acceptable level” and then to more or less stick to an acceptable level. Getting snarky with people who are asking you to cool it is very bad. Please stop posting so much. Anything about 10-15 posts per day starts to feel really excessive to me. Definitely don’t be dismissive about people’s complaints to you about it.
They rejected my suggestion, so I sent them a DM that was a little more direct about it: Stop doing this if you want to keep your account on my instance.
Then, for some reason, they deleted their account on their own.
Well, that was weird, but at least it’s all resolved and we can all get back to what we were doing. Or wait… what’s happening now?
I wasn’t expecting “making sure we make a safe space for the spammers by banning people who complain about spam” to be an important moderation duty, but I guess in the bizarro world that is [email protected] moderation philosophy, it makes perfect sense.
Creating a Lemmy account should not include a “manually block this ever-increasing list of spammers” step.
exactly that’s why im glad Ghyste and OP got an action. for spamming negativity guerilla style instead of participating in any kind of community involved process to improve things.
What “community-involved process”?
You know, registering for the mod elections coming up in the fall, researching the candidates, making sure you’re going to make your voice heard about the issues that are important to you in the community. Or, you can just use the handy button in the corner of your interface: “Different mods please, these ones keep ignoring my reports and lying to me about why.”
Definitely don’t just comment about it, like some sort of sociopath. If people do that, then where will it end?
like… a meta post? make a petition? talk to the mods? there are so many options that were avoided here and we just jumped straight to threats of account termination and posting to PTB lol
To me, talking directly to the person involved is the first and most important step not to skip.
People tried to do exactly that, and the person actively refused to honor the social contract.
Then, the next step is someone “in authority”taking a little more time to explain exactly in detail why it’s a problem, but still directly to the person involved. That’s the part I quoted in the post. It’s weird if someone’s first awareness that something is a problem comes in the form of a “petition” to have them banned, with third parties talking about it.
After that, I progressed to the next step, DM conversation. It keeps the comments a little less cluttered if things become combative, and it helps the person save face if they do wind up accepting the recommendation. They don’t have to sort of “back down” publicly. I do think it’s fair, if mod action is on the table, to clearly explain that it is. But to me “you are getting reports about this, I agree with the reports, there is an overwhelming consensus you are breaking the social contract, our requests to cut it out are not merely advisory” is way more forgiving about it than just “behavior -> sanction” which is the norm.
I thought about doing a temp ban or something, but it just kind of seems silly. Better to talk, try to achieve a meeting of the minds, and if we cannot, then they need to leave. I have such a tiny “userbase” here that I have time for this in depth conversation about it, so that seems better to do than just hitting the ban button. But I didn’t want them to be fooled into thinking that telling me to sod off in the conversation was going to be consequence-free.
YPTB only came into the picture because of the news mod banning the person for complaining about spam. Nothing in particular about the original user was even relevant to that, except tangentially.
I think I would be 100% fine with this progression if there had been a meta post. Your instincts are good they just have some holes.
Your input is noted. Be sure to let my manager know, in case it’s relevant for my upcoming performance review.
Nobody’s account was terminated. They deleted it themselves when the admin reached out to them.
And if the mods ban for merely discussing what’s acceptable in comments, what makes you think they’d be receptive to whole posts? Or wouldn’t just ignore messages?
edited for clarity, i meant threats of account termination, thanks for catching that.
literally everything. the concept of a meta post has existed forever in forums for literally that specific reason of getting discussion out of content-related comments. until i see proof that a meta post on the subject is removed or ignored, my judgement resolves soundly to YDI still.