this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2026
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Not just mods, but sometimes even instance Admins. This is one of the main reasons why so many left .ml
well, the .ml mods never seem to be the "power-tripping" type of asshole. they would argue and were combative and were definitely assholes, but they didn't seem to quick to ban people.
The major objection (and why most people left) was because of the explicit political views of the Admins (who also are the main devs for the Lemmy software) and the rampant intolerance of other views by not only them, but the other users of that instance. I ran into users on .ml that were soooo far worse than the shittiest assholes I ever encountered of Reddit or Digg. It's part of why I've switched to PieFed.
Lemmy does help mitigate this by giving the wider community the ability to sort of sequester the trouble-makers and to easily block them.
.ml mods are exactly the type to ban people from every community because they don’t share the exact same viewpoints as the mod in question.
dbzer0 is getting almost as bad with certain admin and certain topics now too.
dbzer0 definitely has a problem with banning people for voting
Their lefty communities are very authoritarian too.
I haven't experienced that personally but I trust you with My life, SatansMaggotyCumFart. You've always been right about these things before.
Source?
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/48662871
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/43560521
TL;DR: The dbzer0 community decided to start banning people for downvoting AI generated posts. They said they'd only ban people who come to a community and do mass downvotes, but Ace T'Ken downvoted four AI posts that showed up in the feed across a period of ten months, and was still banned from several communities by a prominent dbzer0 mod. There was also a side plot involving some person or group of people impersonating every major actor involved in the drama, which is why so many comments in the thread are removed.
There were several other drama threads related to the voting bans:
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/50067209
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/46410988
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/49344640
I remember a few more discussions from back when all this was new, but didn't have as easy a time finding them.
Maybe they should curate their feeds instead going into places they don't like and mass downvoting everything?
With a community like Imaginary Witches, a lot of people like seeing cool drawings of witches, as long as they're by a talented artist. A user might see an AI generated witch as a detriment to the Imaginary Witches community they want to see. Or they might not even realise it's AI, and just downvote it for being poorly drawn in their opinion. So it makes a lot of sense not to block a community when you've only ever seen four bad posts from it over the past ten months.
The mod log suggests people go there just for downvoting everything. I trust the mods of a community that is constantly harassed over the users who have literally made accounts to harass the mods and posters.
After seeing all the times they labelled someone a troll just for downvoting posts they don't like, I don't trust their judgement. I think they're too close to the issue. It strikes Me as paranoia. Nobody is making an alt account so they can downvote one post every couple of months, it just doesn't fit the pattern the mods say is there.
Except for all the times the mod team has shown people making accounts to DM them when they get banned from it, sure no one does it.
People get really hated over images on the internet.
IDK man, I just got banned from there today for downvoting a post that I just thought was bad - I didn't even realize it was from an AI slop community until I got the ban notification.
Seems like maybe it's hypersensitive mods in this case.
Maybe tailor your feed.
For one bad post? I don't even mind the content generally, I just didn't like that post and they're so sensitive they couldn't handle it. That's really not on me if one downvote is all it takes to trigger them to ban me from five different communities.
You've been caught downvoting at least 4 posts
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/46465818 https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/61834209 https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/61834207 https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/46403765
The mods of those comms do not ban from one vote.
But they said it was just once! Why would anyone lie about how much they dislike a community that exist?!
You downvoted the comment where I explain that I think there's a technical issue so it's not like you can claim you didn't see it. And on top of that, their comment even demonstrates they banned me over a single downvote - are you really going to pretend like you can claim a victory here? The instance admin themselves just came in and demonstrated my criticism was absolutely correct.
So... they literally do ban from a community over one vote? Assuming your examples are right, I've interacted with StableDiffusionWitches once and now I've been banned.
Honestly, is the tool they're using broken, or more likely just... not very good? Regardless something funky is going on, because you're accusing me of having downvoted a post which you can see on my UI doesn't show as having been downvoted - the other downvote in Stable Diffusion Art also just doesn't show as something I've downvoted. Does the tool not account for un-downvoting content, maybe? I occasionally bump downvotes while scrolling, which I then undo - but I don't even know if that's what happened here.
It doesn't really matter though - this is absurd behavior for a community to be engaging in. Even accepting the records are right, two of the four votes I've been condemned over were from seven months ago. That's not "downvote troll" behavior, and it's not even indicative of behavior from someone who cares enough that they need to "tailor their feed."
Again, I didn't care about them at all until I was banned from there. Now, I think they're hypersensitive and need to be coddled so they don't have to accept that their content is wildly unpopular with the wide userbase, and that you're trying to defend that behavior with the weakest possible argument you could make for... some reason. Tell them to tone it down, maybe? Because this is ridiculous?
These communities routinely get people serially downvoting them and since lemmy doesn't present a way to avoid that, they resort to banning people who are seen as only downvoting. They don't ban on a single downvote either.
I can see your downvotes on my end. I don't know if your software federation broke or what else happened.
They banned me from StableWerewolves and that doesn't even have any posts for me to have downvoted. And for the more active ones, I can't find another post I've interacted with in StableDiffusionWitches (or the dragons one, or several others I was banned from). Unless there's more there that I'm not seeing I literally was banned from SDWitches because of a single downvote (from seven months ago).
I'm not saying "don't ban the trolls", that's obviously fine - someone downvoting the majority of your posts across your communities isn't interacting in good faith. But you can't honestly say I'm a troll, I've got what four downvotes accross all of them, of which two might be federation issues? Should I really be getting mass-banned with a "no you're the problem for not liking us enough >:( " message?
If I'm a troll I'm the worst troll ever, and that's why I'm saying those mods are being hypersensitive - even in the best case that it's not just a federation issue with the downvotes and I really did do it, I've gone seven months with four interactions. They need to tune whatever method they're using to decide who's a troll, because if that is the threshold they're clinging to to justify how persecuted they are that is incredibly unhealthy. Even r/conservative, the biggest exclusionary echo-chamber I can think of, is more lenient with their bans than the StableDiffusion[Family] mods are being. Are they really so much more reviled than actual unapologetic nazis that they need to be this hypervigilant?
Maybe the reason they get people DMing them isn't just that they run communities devoted to AI slop (and it's incredibly trendy to do things like call it "AI slop" right now), but also that they're banning people from communities with no content, for no good reason, and with a very rude victim-blaming message while they do it? And that's a shitty thing to do?
I agree that banning for posts 7 months apart is not ideal. I'll ask them to take it a bit less strict.
Content for c/YeVeryReasonableBastards
I'm sure it was "just one". For sure.
It's almost like you can just go check and see that it was literally just one:
FYI they have tools that tell them all the downvotes you've ever sent in that community, so if you saw one bad post a month and downvoted it without knowing it's AI, their tools will make it look like you're a "downvote troll", whatever that means.
Sure, and theyre abusing that tool. I just went through every single post in that community for the last year+ and the only other interaction I have had with their content was here, where I upvoted a post I didn't realize was AI:
These mods are pretty clearly just out of control, and it is embarrassing that db0 is allowing them to act like this. It's ridiculous they presume they should be allowed to force their slop on /all browsers but they also get to mass ban people who didn't care prior to ever being prevented from interacting with them over literally a single downvote.
Being right some of the time doesn't mean they're right all the time. Cops arrest drunk drivers and domestic abusers sometimes, but that doesn't mean they can be trusted when they turn their bodycams off and ask us to trust their interpretation of an event. Mods do not wield the same power as cops, but I believe the analogy holds water with regards to the issue of trust.
You're right, banning people who venture into communities to start shit is a good analogy to police brutality.
OK, maybe so. I blocked that instance a long time ago, and haven’t kept up on recent goings-on. If you say that it’s gotten worse, I’ll take your word for it.
Which instance are you talking about there?
oh, sorry-- .ml
I haven't personally run afoul of issues on dbzer0, but I've seen others complain about it for a while.
.ml has always been bad and even some of dbzer0’s admins are questioning the direction they’re taking lately.
when I first joined up during the reddexodus, I followed the lemmy drama a bit, but I'm really over it by now. after 30+ years of following online community drama, I'm just burned out on it. it's all so petty and childish, it holds no interest for me anymore.
Db0 is going further right everyday ever since certain comms thought he was too lefty
dB0 is cool flatworm is going full authoritarian at times
Db0 been more the one to do it but 🤷
They are the sane one.
They see the way their users lean and say nope, not on my watch we must stay right of those positions
What's right wing about db0?
Edit: right wing now means "not willing to put up with bad faith and ableism from so-called leftists"
he's been on the warpath against anyone to the left of shit just works
But also when they would ban someone, they would do so from every single community on their instance, including ones that you've never even heard of.
And then never bother to so much as tell you about your being banned.
And also deny you the ability to appeal or ask questions - e.g. Reddit has both a modmail and the ability to continue discourse directly in a post that has been removed from a community listing. Which as a former mod I would use to communicate rejection reasons and sometimes we'd go back and forth for days talking about the subject further, e.g. ways that the newcommer could modify it as to not piss off the old hands in the community (e.g. NSFW is allowed but must be properly labeled or some such).
Oh, and soon a change is going to give lemmy.ml veto power on what communities are allowed to be suggested to new instances - and being baked right into the code so there is no way to change that - rather than use a third-party listing. Edit: this proposed change has already been walked back, and while still using a centralized source for that information, at least makes it configurable by the new instance admin rather than hard-coding lemmy.ml as the singular authority (except as the default option).
I find it highly ironic that in some ways Lemmy, in particular .ml, is more authoritarian than even Reddit.
this is what I was talking about earlier. I find it to be an absurdly childish overreaction, and the mods & admins on some communities/instances default to this behavior with a ridiculous amount of entitlement. it's not hard to see just by looking at the modlogs.
I find this to be a huge shortcoming of the platform, and something that contributes to a lot of "account churn" where users evade bans my instance-hopping and creating new accounts.
well, fuck that
just another reason to switch to PieFed