actually, only those who pay the admins take a part, the others serve as a tie-breaker at best, unless i missed a memo.

You missed the memo. It’s for verified and vouched members of the instance. One way you can get voting rights is to donate. Another way is to support the community and be active on the instance. Another way is to be vouched for by someone else who has voting rights. There are a number of ways, all listed in the link in the sidebar.

Find it odd that you’re gonna give me shit for not having quotation marks in a post and then (twice) in this thread misrepresent stuff.

I added quotation marks. That being said, I refuse to accept that a single off-color ban reason is enough to ‘taint’ an encylopedia of abuse by Kaplan.

Sorry for being unclear. That was the reason that Luminous gave in the modlog. I have no idea/input on that personally, especially when Luminous isn’t an admin anymore.

Yeah if I remember correctly it was around about the same time when I left Lemmy.world over the Jordan Lund situation and seeing glacial movement from admins over abuse of power reports. Funny. It’s important you do things without them being reported on for Lemmy.world but you have to report shit for months to get an admin to even consider looking at stepping in.

Unfortunately, Kaplan refused to even attempt to do so and instantly resorted to defederation. No attempt was made at reaching out to the admins of Dbzer0 or Anarchist.nexus before the initial defederation. Now, despite the offending admin being gone, Lemmy.world is still threatening to defederate from Dbzer0 with no fact-based justification.

If you would like to file a complaint about this situation, it will have to be with the admins of Lemmy.world.

I made a very similar post to this on the LW Announcement post, but this has since been slightly edited and fleshed out. But… for those unaware…

A user by the name of Luminous was an admin on Anarchist.nexus. They banned MrKaplan from a community for ‘posting zionist apologia.’ Luminous also had ‘Murder all Zionists’ as their display name. MrKaplan took this as a personal death threat. Instead of speaking with any other admin from Anarchist.nexus and reporting the behavior, MrKaplan instantly defederated from Anarchist.nexus. In the next couple of days, Kaplan messaged other users/admins of Lemmy about the defederation and suggested defederation to others as well.

After being posted in the Piefed general chat, PugJesus pushed back against the defederation.

The conversation moves elsewhere.

So, I messaged Kaplan. Conversation goes on and one thing is made clear, that Kaplan did not reach out to any of the Admins of Dbzer0 or Anarchist.nexus until after defederation had occured.

LWAdmins made an announcement post discussing the defederation but the post was not featured unlike all other recent posts made by the LWAdmin account, which felt underhanded. To make matters worse, Serinus (a moderator with admin level abilities), proceeded to step into the conversation and start removing offending posts for reasons listing anything from “We’ve heard your opinion” to “Misinformation” when screenshots proved otherwise. I say he has Admin level access because @[email protected] was banned from the Instance by an Automod I (and Jordan Lund) previously had access to. It sort of sidesteps the Modlog by not logging who actually did the removal, which I’m not a huge fan of, but this was also admitted by Serinus in a comment where he said he was the one who banned them. This being the same Serinus who said this of defederating with Anarchist.nexus:

Kaplan later doubled down in the LemmyWorld Discord Server, after the conversation I had with them in which they admitted having exactly zero evidence for this stance other than it “feeling odd”, by stating:

Ruud, the head admin of Lemmy.world, has had no feedback on this position. The only natural conclusion one can come to is that the LW Admin team (of which Serinus now seems to be a part of as he speaks for the admins in the admin community and has admin tools) are not just fully willing to act based off of knee-jerk reactions, but aren’t capable of communicating with other admins on issues that they may have with their instance. Or that they only will confer with you if your instance has enough users for them to consider a valid one.

Now, they have refederated with Anarchist.nexus since this situation but they haven’t backed down from the threat of defederation. This is much like every other major problematic issue that has been brought up in the past with Lemmy.world. Their admin team drags their feet for an absurd amount of time, despite rolling in reports about moderator abuse or whatever else, and then expects people to act with pre-cog abilities without them informing you of their problems with your instance. Also seem to be willing to police how good your reasoning is on how you feel about the situation to judge whether or not it’s appropriate to defederate.

To paraphrase what Kaplan said in one of those screenshots, it is not my intention to control who can or can’t be on admin teams on another instance but I do expect other instances to understand that an individual admin’s actions reflect their instance as a whole. Something Ruud seems to not care about and something that Kaplan belives does not apply to themself. Overall, the primary response by the LW Admin team has been to frame AN and Dbzer0 as either a small instance that “only has 165 users” or “only 71 monthly users” or a “vocal minority with an agenda”. For 20,000 users.

How long before its your instance on the chopping block for not telling them exactly what they want to hear? How many of your users will be silenced by Lemmy.world for a perceived sleight against them?

What Luminous did was idiotic and troll-esque. But what Kaplan is doing is considerably worse.

I don’t think I have to state where I stand on this.

Which will be unable to do because Lemmy.world hoovers up everyone instantly and then sets a false narrative with abusive admins. I mean I’m proof of that. I was there for ages because I didn’t realize they were whole ass lying to me.

The problem lies in with the fact that they’re the largest instace on lemmy by a significant margin so they control the playing field. This is like trying to wait for reddit to kill itself. It’s not going to because people start relying on it and getting too used to it and don’t want to bother with anything else. Combine that with admins that are actively harming the fediverse by driving new people away when their instance is the first thing they see? They need to be held over a barrel until Kaplan and Serinus are gone. As for your usage case:

or speech which would drive away marginalized people from our instance to avoid seeing it.

The official LW Admin account is officially considering sanctioning and defederation from Dbzer0 based off of a purely slanderous case made by Kaplanwas that the admins of this instance didn’t take it seriously enough based off of their feelings.

Kaplan has no evidentiary basis for a consideration for this defederation and even admitted as much. If we roll over and accept that then what is even the point? Just accept that Lemmy.world is going to continue throwing hissyfits and the rest of the Fediverse just has to accept it? I want to see something done for outrageous threats made against not just the instance but all 20 thousand users that Kaplan is ready to handwave away based off of their feelings.

To use Kaplans own words here, it is not my intention to control who can or can’t be on admin teams on another instance but I do expect other instances to understand that an individual admin’s actions reflect their instance as a whole. Something Ruud seems to not care about and something that Kaplan belives does not apply to themself. Overall, the primary response by the LW Admin team has been to frame AN and Dbzer0 as either a small instance that “only has 165 users” or a “vocal minority with an agenda”. For 20,000 users.

There is a significant difference in the tolerance of hypocrisy on our platforms.

Talking with some people about it. Kaplan has gone beyond the pale with the petty defederation but Serinus’ behavior (and the lack of active admins otherwise) have demonstrated that lemmy.world has insufficient moderation for admin abuse on their instance. Ruud won’t lift a finger or even have any input at all. Their admin team is either corrupt or non-existent and letting them run around setting the stage for everything due to their size is untenable and unsustainable. I have no reason to believe that anyone on the admin team will do anything without pressure being applied as they’ve demonstrated in the past they’re not willing to do anything without pressure being applied.

A reactionary administration team, especially one so emotionally charged and driven, isn’t trustworthy. I’m not even sure if it can be fixed. Serinus would need to be removed from any/all position where he speaks for admins, that (frankly massive security risk, not to mention totally bypassing of the modlog) of a discord bot would have to be killed and Kaplan would need to be relegated to devops only. I have no reason to believe that @[email protected] will do this. Genuinely believe that, at this stage, the only reasonable option is defederation. They’ve proven they’re not willing to listen and are willing to engage in consistent admin-level abuse.

The dog keeps getting out of its yard and biting people. No owner is around with a leash. Time to lock our gates.

That user was banned from the instance, not from the community. You just admitted to banning them. So you just admitted to having admin level tools without having any of the accountability of an admin level account.

Lemmy.world admins cannot be trusted if they’re giving you access to that discord bot after you say stuff like this:

Okay, so with this ban, Serinus has effectively placed himself as an Admin of lemmy.world itself.He is stating positions for Lemmy.world itself, not just himself or his communities. Kaplan and other admins like @[email protected] are not stepping in and not criticising his behavior. With this behavior ongoing, it must be approved from the top level down or that the admins are totally out to lunch and not capable/willing of stepping in.

Moreover, a bot exists and has been talked about in the past. I was given access to it when I was on Lemmy.world. The bot was created by KingOfFlorda to allow for users like myself and Jordan to be able to deal with CSAM and other extremely bad actors when the admins were not available. There is no reason to believe that Serinus does not have access to the bot. The bot in question allows a non-admin user to apply an instance level ban to someone.

It was with this bot that you were banned from the instance.

You were not banned from an Admin account, you were banned from the bot account.

@[email protected] and @[email protected] have now, in effect, made @[email protected] an admin by allowing him to repeatedly post positions on behalf of Lemmy.world with stuff such as this:

In conclusion, Lemmy.world can now no longer be trusted for any admin decision. They are not being transparent with their decisions or even who their admins and those who have admin abilities are. They are willing to give total control of the website to someone who has repeatedly lied, repeatedly silenced others for misinformation that have categorical proof and someone who has openly posted a mod level comment condoning the bullying of instances provided they are under a certain number of users. Lemmy.world admins are willing to give admin level control and abilities to a user but are unwilling to force him to take the accountability of an admin.

A defederation vote must be held immediately with the Flotilla. Lemmy.world has surpassed bad acting at this stage and have proven they have no active administration that can be trusted to follow their own Terms of Service.

Kaplan stated about Anarchist.nexus that there is “there is no sufficient moderation of violence on communities there”. Yet, Lemmy.world has no sufficient moderation of its admins or mods at all.

Funny thing is that I’ve talked to Ruud a bunch in the past and may have disagreed with him but respected him. But the dragging of the feet on Jordan and now this total lack of commenting on what is blatantly an abuse of power of their only active admin (outside of Kersploosh) is ridiculous.

At this stage, after multiple notifications to the LW Admin team both here on their own communities and in private messages to Kaplan from me, it’s clear that Serinus’ behavior is not only acceptable but actively condoned and approved. Which really stands out to me when he’s saying stuff like this:

Due to nothing happening with Serinus, there is no other way to take this other than the accepted position of the LW Administration team. Which means that the LW Admin team is not just approving of bullying instances based on usercount, but is now actively partaking in it. My question is where is the line?

How many users does it take for LW Admins to consider an instance valid?

That’s not even considering the fact that he removed comments for ‘misinformation’ that had screenshots to prove they were accurate. So not only are the LW admins condonining bullying of instances based off of usercount, but they’re now also partaking in misinformation and suppression of proof.

@[email protected] might be interested in knowing that, considering all his last comments are about donations.

Yeah that was Serinus. The fact that comment has been left up and he hasn’t been criticisized publicly for it is demonstration of how LW feels. Because its a small instance, it doesn’t matter. LW is just bullying instances smaller than them to control the field. The majority of the admin team of LW needs to be completely replaced or defederation is the only acceptable option now. If they’re going to threaten and bully, then everyone else needs to cut them off at the knees first to stop them from being able to do so.

“It’s only 165 users”

And that’s still 165 users that Lemmy.world was more than happy to defederate with to go after someone who isn’t even an admin anymore. Not only that, but going after them for what Kaplan admitted was a lack of evidence. Just a feeling.

Oh this is so fuckin cool. Thanks for the call out!

They didn’t delete it. It was posted above, and I copied it, just in case they deleted it. Although it’s depressingly telling that I felt the need to do that.

I already copied and stashed it after I made it anyway

Because they haven’t. They’re threatening to. I’d recommend clicking on that link to the announcement post and checking out the comments.

The tl;dr is that they had defederated from anarchist.nexus (the piefed version of dbzer0) and was threatening to defederate from dbzer0 despite never actually talking with anyone from either instance before beginning the defederation proceedings. After a day, Kaplan made the announcement post which has been getting overwhelmingly negative reactions to the decision on behalf of LW Admins. This led to Kaplan reversing the defederation for anarchist.nexus but, as the announcement post states, is still considering defederating from dbzer0 and if they do so will also defederate from anarchist.nexus again. They have literally no reason for this defederation at this stage.

Yeah, I highly recommend starting your switch to another instance immediately. There is a discussion happening behind the scenes for a number of other major instances to defederate from lemmy.world if LW does indeed go through with the defederation from dbzer0 because, at that point, Kaplan will have proven a few things.

1. That Kaplan/LW admins value individual users like themselves over the entirety of an instances users

2. That Kaplan/LW admins are not willing to engage in the same type of reporting behavior that they ask others to do

3. That Kaplan/LW admins will be taking nuclear options in order to bully smaller instances into bowing to what they want you to do

4. That Kaplan/LW admins will be policing what you think as they have literally zero evidence that there is any support for Luminous’ behavior and, in fact, has been pushback. It’s so ridiculous that Jordan Lund said this in their moderator chat for Lemmy.world. A chat that I just sit in and quietly drink my tea watching them lie boldfaced.