cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/35891683

I have changed the original title of this post, as it is imo, thanks largely to discussion in this thread, with a lemmyusa mod, unnecessarily incendiary.

Original Title:

“lemmyusa.com is engaging in vote manipulation, suggest defederating unless it is addressed”

Mod Abuse:

https://lemmy.world/modlog/1432313?page=1&actionType=All

The instance has 3 active subs, it’s unlikely the admins are not also the mods engaging in this.

Banning anyone who downvotes is a clear attempt to foster a chilling effect on dissenting opinions. The mods and admins of this instance are putting their thumb on the scales in order to make their ideas appear more positively received than they actually are.

Thanks for your attention to this.

I realize that doing a cross post here is… unorthodox, and this doesn’t drectly involve my own interactions, and I am technically breaking a number of the rules of this comm…

… but I think this is worth the discussion and consideration of, and potential further investigation from this comm, which essentially functions as a de facto place for discussing things like this.

Further context / info I have been able to gather:

Here is a direct link to their own modlog.

https://lemmyusa.com/modlog

Their dedicated legal page:

https://lemmyusa.com/legal

Their described ‘sidebar rules’ appear to only be:

We’re keeping it simple:

Be thoughtful, act responsibly, and treat others with respect.

No NSFW content.

Everything else seems to be in the Legal / TOS / Privacy Policy section.

My preliminary, most charitable interpretation of mod/admin activity here… is that they can and will essentially ban anyone who posts on their instance and is not a lemmyusa user, as any other user would not have agreed to their TOS.

???

Further, this instance appears to be hosting an account that is impersonating SatansMaggotyCumFart, a fairly well known, mostly parody/dedicated ‘bit’ account here on lemmy…

The profile description of their version of SMCF claims to be ‘the only real profile!’, and is using a clearly AI generated avatar/profile pic… and uh, to me at least, it seems very unlikely this is the actual SMCF.

UPDATE:

Ok.

After some conversation in this thread, I should add:

There is, and there was at the time this all started, a rule in the comm that much of these downvote bans took place in, which reads:

‘No Serial Downvoting.’

Personally, I find this rather vague.

How many dowmvotes, in what timeframe, across how many comms/comments/posts, etc?

I am also still uncertain to what extent these actually are dedicated, persistent, serial downvoters, vs just a whole lot of randos seeing something on their feed and then downvoting it and moving on.

I get the intent behind trying to stem a mass wave of negativity, nobody likes a wave of mass downvotes and hostile comments…

But on the other hand, there should probably be a bit more clarity and specificity here, less heavy handed actions for less comitted and persistent behavior.

IMO, a balance has to be struck between allowing people to genuienly freely express their opinion via downvoting, but at the same time, there are clearly also cases where people or groups of people basically just downvote all comments or posts from a specific user or in a certain comm or pertaining to a certain topic, etc.

I myself am fairly confident I have managed to attract at least one person who downvotes all my posts/comments on their instance, simply because I am on their shitlist, apparently.

So ideally… we could maybe have a constructive conversation about that.

As to the SatansMaggotyCumFart profile on lemmyusa being an impersonatory account:

We’ve got one mod from lemmyusa here saying he really isn’t sure, and personally blocked him, I think from his own user standpoint, not from the standpoint of himself as a mod.

IMO, the account still strikes me as likely another person, impersonating the actual user… I of course cannot be certain, but the profile still strikes me as very sus.

Finally, I am least personally going to strongly discourage any one reading this from popping in to lemmyusa and going out of your way to downvote every single thing on there simply because it is on that instance.

They are already in more or less lockdown mode, call that a win if you must.

I did not intend nor do I want this very post to act as an attack vector.