Quadruple moderation is killing Lemmy. It’s a gift to Reddit
There’s a rule about online communities I want people here to understand: the 90-9-1 rule.
Roughly 90% lurk, 9% comment, and 1% create.
When I first got to Lemmy, I had trouble finding enough content I was interested in even commenting on. So I figured: why complain about the lack of content when I can start posting it myself?
That’s why I post so much.
If people don’t post, most Lemmy communities simply don’t have enough creators to sustain themselves. You need posts before lurkers can lurk, commenters can comment, and some of those people eventually become creators themselves.
I’m not posting just to flood Lemmy. I’m trying to help solve one of Lemmy’s biggest problems: not enough content creators.
And frankly, doing that has been a nightmare.
Lemmy has a quadruple-moderation problem
Every active content creator has to survive four layers:
- Community moderators can remove your posts or ban you from the community.
- Your home-instance admins can ban your entire account.
- Receiving-instance admins can block/ban you for everyone on their instance, even though you don’t belong to it.
- Public moderation history means those decisions follow you. One moderator’s decision can influence another and snowball into more moderation.
For prolific content creators, that’s brutal.
I’ve had multiple accounts banned over one or two posts that somebody didn’t like. Months of posting, comments, engagement and contributions can effectively disappear from a community because of a couple of moderation decisions.
And the more you contribute, the worse the odds become. If you make hundreds or thousands of posts, eventually you’re going to post something that one moderator somewhere doesn’t like.
You don’t need one moderation team to tolerate you. You need multiple independent moderators and admins, across multiple servers, to remain aligned indefinitely.
There’s almost no cost to deleting a creator
This is another major difference from Reddit.
There is generally no financial investment in a Lemmy community’s content. A volunteer moderator can ban someone who contributed months of posts and comments and lose all of that person’s future contributions without losing revenue, salary or investment.
The creator paid the cost in time.
The community loses the content.
The users lose something to read and discuss.
And the moderator who pushed the button may personally lose essentially nothing.
So who benefits from making prolific content creation this difficult?
Because it certainly isn’t Lemmy.
And this creates an enormous attack surface
I genuinely have trouble believing that everyone complaining about prolific posters simply doesn’t understand this dynamic. At some point I have to question whether some of it is deliberate.
If I were Reddit and wanted to undermine a federated competitor, this is exactly where I’d attack it: its content creators.
You don’t need to hack Lemmy. You don’t need to DDoS instances. You don’t need to take anything offline.
Lemmy already provides the mechanism.
Report prolific contributors. Call their posting “spam.” accuse them of being bots. Point moderators toward their public moderation histories. Get one account banned somewhere, then let that decision influence moderators elsewhere.
Eventually the creator gets tired of fighting and leaves.
I’m not claiming I have proof Reddit is doing this. I’m saying Lemmy’s architecture makes this kind of subversion ridiculously easy, and Reddit would be an obvious beneficiary.
Reddit doesn’t have this same federated quadruple-jeopardy problem. You’re primarily dealing with the moderation of the subreddit you’re contributing to.
Lemmy desperately needs more people creating content, yet its moderation structure makes life progressively harder for the people who create the most of it.
At some point we should be asking:
Who actually benefits from that?
We all left reddit. Reddit is still there. If we want Reddit, REDDIT IS STILL FUCKING THERE. This is the most blatant cargo cultism I have every seen. All you are doing is burying the actual signal that you have so much contempt for under a barrage of noise that you aren’t even fucking curating. You are providing NEGATIVE SERVICE and then you have the gall to bitch when people call you on it.
How have you gotten your personal worth tangled up in all this bullshit? Does this make you feel good about yourself? Because it fucking shouldn’t.
Honestly, this is such a Lemmy comment.
And highlights one of the problems here , toxicity.
Instead of engaging the poster at the problem, you just attack them personally. For some reason, this sort of behavior seems to be amplified here, moreso than Reddit.
OP has been getting called out for this from the start and it wasn’t always aggressive. Instead of adjusting to that feedback (if they even saw it - not like they were active in the comments), they doubled down and added more subreddits to the bot.
Then they made this unhinged whine basically saying “Stop complaining, you morons obviously don’t realize how great I am or what’s best for you”
Yeah…I get why they made it personal
0% of that comment was an attack on the person
You’re making this way more personal than it needs to be.
I don’t want Reddit. I want some of the content and discussion density Reddit has, without Reddit’s platform, moderation, and corporate control. Those are not the same thing.
And yes, I am curating it. There are age limits, score thresholds, duplicate checks, community rules, and filtering before anything gets posted. You can dislike the result, but calling it an unfiltered barrage doesn’t make that true.
If you think the volume is too high, that’s a fair criticism. If you think certain posts are low quality, downvote them, block me, or argue for rate limits.
But jumping from “I don’t like these reposts” to attacking my personal worth is exactly the kind of hostility that makes this place harder to grow.
edit: I am reposting from reddit - there is no rules against that. its actually great thing for majority of lemmy users!
As a member of the admin channels, this seems to be the most loathed part about your account. Reddit is a hatred echo chamber for the fediverse, second only to AI. While you view it as a positive element, nearly everyone else here left reddit and take offense to it’s posts following them. They view your participation to be bot-like behavior and that’s why you’re seeing so much pushback to your accounts in particular. I can promise you that a normal user that isn’t aggregating reddit content for the fediverse is not sharing your moderation and banning experience.
For a normal user, the gauntlet is much different. At least on the .zip domains, our policy is to not interfere with reports that don’t have a user or community that belongs to our instance unless it’s something requiring fast action like csam or doxxing, etc. We leave the rest to the mods and admins that the community belongs to.
Your account doesn’t offend me and I appreciate your participation but I will say that I’ve blocked you on my browsing account since I browse New/All and I don’t enjoy seeing what amounts to an overwhelming feed of reddit posts.
TL;DR: You’re using the fediverse in way that the majority of the platform feels it wasn’t designed for so you’re going to continue seeing the same retaliatory behaviors for as long as you continue to participate in that manner.
I appreciate the explanation, and honestly this “we dont want to be reddit” idea was brought up several times.
But I think there’s a fundamental disagreement here: not everyone shares your idea of what Lemmy should be. The existing 35k-ish MAU shouldn’t get to permanently define what Lemmy is allowed to become.
If the current philosophy were working, we’d see it in the results. Instead, Lemmy’s active user base has largely stagnated, and enormous numbers of communities are empty or get a couple of posts a week. Whatever we’re doing now isn’t producing meaningful growth.
And “we left Reddit” doesn’t necessarily mean “we never want to see anything that appeared on Reddit.” I left Reddit too. I wanted an alternative platform, not an alternative universe where interesting links, memes, news and discussions become contaminated because somebody also posted them on Reddit.
If my volume overwhelms New/All, that’s completely fair criticism. That’s something we can solve with posting limits, better filtering, community subscriptions, blocks, or better tooling.
But “the existing users don’t like this, therefore this isn’t what the Fediverse is for” becomes circular. The people who don’t like the existing culture may simply leave, so naturally the remaining population increasingly reflects that culture.
I’m trying a different approach because I want Lemmy to actually grow beyond its current niche. If most communities are empty and the active-user count isn’t meaningfully growing, I don’t think we should treat the status quo as proof that we’ve already figured out what users want.
And now you’re subjecting us to AI slop comments? Fuck all the way out of here with that shit. Use your own goddamn brain.
argue the points if you can.
When you make a point, I will. I’m not going to respond to slop.
I sign off on everything that was said.
But I think there’s a fundamental disagreement here: not everyone shares your idea of what Lemmy should be. The existing 35k-ish MAU shouldn’t get to permanently define what Lemmy is allowed to become.
I completely agree with you but until the community as a whole swings more toward wanting to feel like a Reddit part deux but without the algorithms, you’re going continue seeing this pushback and fighting an uphill battle. I wasn’t condoning the way your accounts are being treated. Lemmy and Piefed have a fairly robust blocking and filtering system. Your aggregation doesn’t affect my use of the platform at all because I’m able to hide it and I feel that’s enough protection, I don’t want to see your accounts reprimanded for behaving in a way that’s not breaking any rules that I can find.ike I said, I’m glad you’re here, regardless of whether I benefit from your posts or not. We need the variety to protect from these polarizing extremist mentalities towards behavior that doesn’t really effect us personally at all.
That being said, I am ok with stagnant growth metrics but I do understand that many users are not ok with that and desire for it’s popularity to explode. If it were ever to become as popular as reddit, I’m sure I would be looking for the next niche platform because I know in my heart that you can’t see that kind of popularity without the negative aspects that come along with it.
I’m able to hide it and I feel that’s enough protection.
“Why should I change it? He’s the one that sucks.”
New users shouldn’t have to start their experience by blocking a bunch of accounts.
They don’t. As I said, I browse New/All and it’s a niche platform. I’ve been a new user, and as very few people browse the way I do, for the most common method of browsing, simply creating your sub list and blocking a very few accounts that don’t align with your desirable feed is more than enough effort to keep from seeing anything you don’t want to.
TL;DR: Spammer is mad anti-spam measures are working.
let’s post moar \o/
Seems you post a lot of duplicates. No wonder your posts get deleted if you keep spamming exactly the same post multiple times??? And then you violate community rules… After that you seem to be doing ban-evasion… I mean… Seems to me like Lemmy is working exactly as intended?! This isn’t a place to dump random spam posts? You gotta learn what this place is about. If you want to redecorate our place and make it about something else, you’re going to face some backlash.
When I started using federated social media I had to block a lot of people* who just mindlessly churned out posts with links to often dubious news articles etc. It became much better after that.
And often they see themselves as knights in shining armor that “help the fediverse lift off”.
It’s just another version of the terminally online forum regular.
* judging by the usernames, often the same person using accounts on different instances
- Public moderation history means those decisions follow you. One moderator’s decision can influence another and snowball into more moderation.
This has got to be the first time I’ve seen the modlog listed as a negative aspect of lemmy?
Strictly speaking, it’s not the first time. We’ve had issues with the specific way the modlog works, before. But usually that’s edge-cases. Not someone questioning transparency and accountability be part of the platform in itself…
OMG - the modlog functionality is severely lacking.
But it’s infinitely better than reddit’s modlog.
if there is no independent dispute process, and no accountability and removal process for abusive moderators - modlog should not be public in my opinion. Just too easy to exploit and influence
That’s a known issue. There might be some improvements for you with the upcoming version 1.0. I’m not sure if that’s gradual improvement or more fundamental changes… But many parts of the moderation system aren’t perfect and everyone is aware of its limitations. I think you’re invited to help out if you can contribute code, come up with a specification that works smoothly in real-life (including edge-cases), become a mod and do a better job at it than the current ones, or anything like that.
The modlog itself isn’t the problem. A public modlog combined with effectively no simple straightforward appeals process is the problem.
A moderator can ban you, put a reason in the public record, and there is no built-in independent process to challenge it, present evidence, or have the decision reviewed. That entry can then be seen by the next moderator, who may treat the previous ban as evidence that you’re a problem.
So the reality is pretty brutal:
Ban → public record → no meaningful appeal → next moderator sees the ban → increased chance of another ban.
Transparency is good. An irreversible public accusation with no real mechanism to dispute it is not.
I think modlogs should not be accessible to public unless there is a simple dispute process and accountability for abusive moderators also baked in. some jury, something
Nobody. Unless you had the capability/knowledge/will to maintain your own instance, which makes your content and yourself unbreakable.
im considering that. but I think it would be the fifth jeopardy. they can complain to get your instance defederated
So what? It still exists on the web. People can visit you, enjoy your content. Make a stand.
Did you know all creator posts are wiped out from lemmy after account banned?
I’m dubious of that, because I’ve often seen posts with a red [banned from community] tag right beside the user, which often made me scratch my head - how/why is that post there if the user is banned?
Another thing to keep in mind, we don’t need to be reddit in terms of content volume. Yeah, a lot of us expect that, but it’s better for us, as humans in the long term, to be slower here
community ban dont remove conent.
instance ban in addition - removes all content. I’ve had thousnds of posts wiped out that way.Its optional, you can ban and remove, or just ban. Up to the admin.
I’ve always wondered, because sometimes it looked like that, despite being banned, a certain account still made new posts to the community they were banned from
Ok but… You’re not creating. You’re flooding Lemmy with garbage from reddit. None of what you post is your creation. And it’s all low quality reddit crap. In !workreform@lemmy.world, for example, it was a fairly slow community, which is fine. Then you started flooding it with low-effort memes, drowning out the useful posts. This will kill a community. “Then post the content you want to see”, you’ll say. But there’s no point when for every one useful post there are thirty trash memes pushing it down.
Your actions are actively harmful to Lemmy.
I post into workreform - because I support that community and its message an find those memes very very relevant.
its not crap. all that stuff then reaching frontpage on lemmy is quite telling. those posts reach 1k upvotes as well. This is a proof those posts are well received.@frontg - you have 4 Posts in a year. you are the reason that people like me have to create more content the way I do it. if you would to contribute more I wouldnt have to.
@frontg - you have 4 Posts in a year. you are the reason that people like me have to create more content the way I do it.
OK, that takes the cake. Fuck your hubris.
Upvotes are not a measure of value. That thought process is how you get reddit and Facebook.
Again, you aren’t creating. You’re slopping reddit’s garbage over to Lemmy and suffocating its communities.
That thought process is how you get reddit and Facebook
but many people want that. Thats what I want - independent uncensorable reddit.
the fact that lemmy is not growing is confirming that current lemmy content approach is not working . proof is in the puddingYou WANT to turn lemmy into reddit? Fuck, now I’ve heard it all. Every comment you make just makes it worse. Everyone here is trying to get away from reddit. Christ.
You WANT to turn lemmy into reddit? Fuck, now I’ve heard it all. Every comment you make just makes it worse. Everyone here is trying to get away from reddit. Christ.
me too - I hate reddit, been banned so many times. doesnt mean that we should not be able to share content from other networks. we should do it until lemmy can craete own organic content.
your response is just pure naivity and ignores hard lemmy MAU numbers
Consent should matter though?
Also, a poster of OC is a “content creator”, but just offering links isn’t really “creating” anything really, just spreading it around?
Kudos for trying to help. If you listen first before speaking then you may find your messages received better.
If you start your own instance, then no mods or admins can stop you from posting whatever you want. Even CSAM.
Though consent really should matter, and others could defederate from your instance if they wanted.
Mods are never going to change. Think what you could do differently to enjoy your time here better, and encourage people to like your posts more. e.g. label your account as a bot, and/or make a separate alt account for your human interactions, to allow people to recognize (and even block) based on the bot label if they want to? A bot that is properly labeled is no issue at all, it’s the lack of transparency that gets people upset when it seems one way and then they get disappointed at finding that it is something else. If you are empathetic to others’ sensitivities then obviously you would be better received? It’s more work for you, but far less than the cumulative efforts of all people who end up having to catch you individually.
You have a right to speak, but nobody owes you a platform, nor should others be forced to listen. The consent of the governed should matter! And it will, one way or another.
Good post. Very true.
The answer is for new instances with set moderation rules promised to be equally enforced, with a set of appeals ending in a jury trial of members of that instance for a moderation decision.
The current feudal nature of lemmy makes it just as policed as reddit, just instead of protecting the rich oligarchs it’s often bad faith arguments trying to misunderstand on purpose to get someone banned. Or just for going against majority opinion. In a couple cases because world news related instances hire zionist moderators.
Idk man. I mostly like what you repost from Reddit, but saying all this is absolutely making the situation worse.
I want combined thing - take everythign good reddit has, but also produce own original content (which btw own content could be garbage too).
I too wish Reddit would federate, but that’s not happening, and forcibly doing it yourself doesn’t really seem to be accomplishing your goals.
oh I have ideas ;)
- It’s the fediverse, not Lemmy.
- It’s decentralised. What you describe as “quadruple” is just the way this works
- I don’t like posts starting with “I want people here to understand”
- 90%, 9% and 1% are very very rough estimates
- Not every post is a “creation”. I don’t like to be spammed with tons of links to news articles that OP probably didn’t even read.
And now I look at your username I think I see the problem.
FWIW, I don’t mind you doing that but I do mind you seeing yourself as a knight in shining armor for “helping” the fediverse lift off. And complaining about mods/admins who might see things more my way. - Comments are just as valid as posts
- Idgaf about reddit, and I don’t care about you creating a fedarated copy of it
edit: thanks for showing me that FF addon. That explains so much.
I’ve got my own gripes about Lemmy but moderation is not one of them.
Reddit has a massive problem with overzealous moderation and content being modded simply because one individual mod doesn’t like or disagrees with it. Haven’t noticed any of that on Lemmy.
And I disagree that moderation is preventing Lemmy from achieving critical mass. Its gotten this far with its mod system. It feels way better populated than even a year ago. It will never have the commercial reach Reddit has but I’ve no doubt it will continue to grow.
“It feels way better populated” isn’t the same thing as actually growing.
That’s the part I keep coming back to. Lemmy’s MAU has been hovering around the same relatively small level for months now. actually down from a year ago YOY. lemmy is contracting.
https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/stats
^ its an objective fact based on raw numbers lemmy so nicely provides. we are down 2k MAU year over year.The current stats literally track monthly active users, and we’re still talking about roughly tens of thousands of people, not sustained breakout growth.
And the wider Fediverse has the same retention problem: FediDB currently shows 14 million total accounts but only about 1.17 million monthly active users.
So maybe your personal moderation experience has been great. That’s completely valid. Mine hasn’t.
But “it got this far” isn’t evidence that the strategy is working. If the goal is critical mass, years of stagnation and mostly empty communities are evidence that something isn’t working.
I agree that stagnation is a problem, but you’re comparing Lemmy’s growth with that of multi-billion dollar platforms with ridiculous marketing budgets and fully staffed marketing teams. That’s unfair (and unrealistic) because Lemmy is a community project that has to grow on word-of-mouth alone. It will grow much slower and with periods of stagnation because that’s the nature of the beast. And if there’s stagnantion that’s our fault for not shouting loud enough.
Also, you’re taking your negative experience and trying to pin that to user growth. I can see your point but I disagree that moderation is a major factor.
But that’s exactly why I’m proposing a solution that doesn’t require a billion-dollar marketing budget.
Reddit is doing plenty of negative marketing for itself. People are already frustrated with the platform, moderation, API changes, ads, corporate decisions, etc. Lemmy doesn’t need to manufacture that dissatisfaction or outspend Reddit. The potential users are already looking for alternatives.
The problem is what happens when they arrive.
If they open Lemmy and find inactive communities and little content around their interests, word of mouth isn’t going to fix that. They leave.
I’m proposing a way to bootstrap those communities with relevant content, give people something to discuss, and hopefully turn some of those lurkers into commenters and eventually native posters.
Maybe moderation isn’t the main cause of stagnation. I’m open to that. But “we just need to shout louder” won’t help if people arrive and don’t find enough reason to stay.
Putting my thought on your original point at the top: “A plea to admins: protect your creators ban reddit agents instead”
All I can say is: Admins are already doing this to the best of their ability, for better or worse. Some admins moderate proportionally, some others don’t. It’s really a question of whether they appreciate your methods or not.
I also crosspost from Reddit, but specifically those that I would have posted/shared myself if I found it anywhere else.
A few other bots crosspost everything that goes in a subreddit in their own community. What do I see? Only the bots can post i.e. it’s a subreddit mirror. No one comments in it. In other words, it’s glorified spam that no one looks at. At best, it occupies space in lemmy instances. The reader is even required to go to Reddit to read the post itself. Knowing Lemmy, no one wants to bother doing that. Example: !pcmasterrace@zerobytes.monster. I see the new posts as a literal digital deluge that I can’t keep up with. I have better things to do.
I’m assuming here you want to populate Lemmy with a genuine desire to see it as a sustainable ecosystem. For general communities like the top communities you see in lemmy.world, the critical mass has already been reached. Force-increasing its monthly users will only do harm than good. Look up Eternal September to better understand where I’m coming from here.
What I suggest you can do is curate a small number of a subreddit’s best posts for the past 24 hours, copy its content, and crosspost them in an existing federated community. Consent from the community’s mods is important. Transparency (which includes posting as a bot account if this is automated) is also important. If your approach is unwanted by them, move on. That’s just how reality works. Also, respecting their decisions will do your reputation a favor and build trust in the long run.
