I was part of the group that got banned yesterday, and I need to apologize to you all.
I have seen people mention previously that sometimes mods take upvotes for agreement, but I haven't trained myself to stop the reddit habit of voting on "food for thought" things, useful-addition-to-the-conversation-but-not-my-pov posts, and placemarkers in active threads, and there aren't downvotes here to easily mark the shitty stuff I want to come back to and learn from. I should always be opening things in new tabs instead.
I foolishly upvoted this comment as a "food for thought" comment and planned to come back to the thread yesterday evening to find it and read the responses and learn from them. instead my upvote counted as agreement and got me banned, which I know is my fault for not adapting to site culture and not foreseeing how that would be interpreted.
I totally understand, feel like the worst kind of fool, and spent my ban time thinking about what a piece of shit I am. far worse than that is the thought that any of you might think I agree with that comment, so I am posting here to apologize profusely and publicly for my upvote. I'm really, truly, terribly sorry, and idk what to do to about it except fuck off and try not to be such a fuckhead in the future.
explanation (not excuse) for those who care to understand why
I live in Ohio, which is immersed in the kind of chud culture that comment was talking about – I see my formerly borderline leftist little brother slipping into it, and it kills me. it's a point of view I remember seeing a lot when I was in DSA and not liking then, but I lack the information and wisdom to effectively articulate my problems with it. I very much want to understand what to do about it and how to talk about this stuff with people who believe it, but I get why it was offensive and shitty to mark it for myself in a way that would default mean "this is good" to others instead of pushing back on it at all or just opening it in a new tab to look at later. I'm very sorry about doing that.
I didn't open it in a new tab because I'm pushing triple digits of tabs open and knew it would be easy to find later because the Amber bot was inflating the comment activity. I keep forgetting to be judicious with my upvotes because I'm AuDHD and unlearning a decade of reddit habits is hard.
you didn't know that was why I upvoted it, it just looked to you like a bunch of your alleged comrades liked that post, and I was one of them. I hope you can forgive me, but I understand if it made you think differently about me. I get it, and I'm just really, really sorry.
as soon as I figured out that I was banned and why, I sent a version of this via DM from my old account to an em_poc user who is very near and dear to my heart, but I don't feel right only apologizing to one person when so many of you could have been hurt by my upvote, hence this post. I'm sorry that my apology to the rest of you wasn't that immediate, but I was worried that posting it from my old account would be seen as ban evasion and make my contrition seem insincere.
I appreciate very much the kindness and compassion so many of you have shown me, and it is devastating to know that I have repaid it in this way.
I'm very, very, very sorry.
please heap your scorn and excoriation here.
To be clear, I didn't ban anyone. My job on the site is primarily to act as a liaison between the users and the moderation staff. This definitely puts me in a weird place, in terms of seeing and sympathizing with the frustration on both sides of these issues. I continue to appreciate the understanding, and the
One one hand, users just want to be left to use the site however they want without fear of reprisal. On the other, the mods and admins want to be able to handle problematic posts, behaviors, and users without it invariably resulting in a struggle session.
Lemmy has really basic moderation tools. Frustratingly basic, to be honest. When it comes to managing comments and users, we only have essentially just two moderation actions that we can do or un-do:
That's it. I really wish Lemmy had some more tools that were a little bit less disruptive, but as it stands, a one day temp-ban is the lowest level of mod action possible for users. While ideally, reaching out to every user individually via DMs to start a conversation would have been a more ideal method for handling a concern like this, (at least the most ideal method out of the very limited available ones) it's understandably not always seen as a viable option, due to the time, complexity, and even the potential for those conversations to lead to further disagreement. The one-day ban was chosen as it was seen by mods as a sufficiently severe warning to not only the commenter who was permabanned but also to the temporarily timed out users.
oops
I honestly want to delete my account, delete this site from my Internet history on every device, and do my best to forget about it
I didn't mean to do this and I feel like even more of a piece of shit for kicking off something
I just wanted to apologize for my behavior 😭
It's 100% the mod teams fault and not yours.
We have had several examples this month alone of the mods doing some weird overstep and it causing site drama.
Your post is the focal point of the discussion, but if you hadn't done it it would probably be somewhere else.
They banned around 16 people, of which maybe 14 were hexbears? I assume one of them would have said something if dustbunnies had not. I was considering it, even though I wasnt involved, but decided against it as I haven't been participating on this site for very long.
I wanted to, but I have stirred up so much shit lately that I didn't want to take a front seat to this one.
my autistic brain genuinely didn't expect this and I regret it more than I can say
I needed to apologize, but I didn't want my apology to do this, I just wanted it to go out to the people who night have been hurt and let them know how sorry I was
if I had had any idea this was going to be the result, I wouldn't have posted, I would have just spent time DM'ing every em_poc and traaaaaaaans poster individually to apologize
Don't feel bad. These things need to happen every once in a while. It's a genuinely good thing we're having this conversation. I am sorry that you're uncomfortable and wish it could've been me to take the heat though.
this is very kind of you to say ❤️ I absolutely don't wish it upon you, but I appreciate very much your willingness to take it on
you and tomboymoder have gone above and beyond as comrades in this thread, and I hope that I'm not the only person to see and appreciate it.
I used to be like you a long time ago. But a series of events in my life have led me to incessantly put myself in the firing line for other people. Trust me when I say that I get where you're coming from and how uncomfortable you are. If I could've taken the bullet for you, I would've.
Please don't delete, you seem nice and I liked reading your posts
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ this is very kind of you to say, thank you
I can't speak for anyone else, but I accept your apology and I still want you around.
Sorry that the latest struggle session (why are there so many of there lately? I've only had an account for less than a month and I already saw 3 of them) is happening in your comments...
Yeah don’t worry about it, your apology and explanation was more than enough. I don’t think anybody holds it against you.
Wait there aren't 30 minute mutes or anything? That's annoying
I KNOW! It's so bad. It's the smallest thing you can do as a mod, but users will experience something that may be either really disruptive to them if they're a really active or consistent user, or potentially not even noticed if they're not someone who checks the site that regularly. They might never even find out that they had received the ban.