Cross posted here as it was highlighted that the individual is a lead Lemmy developer, raising serious concerns about the direction of Lemmy, a leading Fediverse platform, and the impact on future user adoption.

Hi

There have been some rather concerning actions taken by an admin of the !privacy@lemmy.ml community, dessalines@lemmy.ml. Based on recent moderation decisions and a complete lack of communication, it seems like their account may have been compromised, or even more concerning if these actions are deliberate.

  1. Erroneous Rule 4 Enforcement, First Instance: a guide posted to !privacy@lemmy.ml, despite receiving many positive votes and comments, was removed under Rule 4:

If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered

However, this post was a guide and not a question, so Rule 4 does not apply. Attempts were made to reach out for clarification but there has been no response, despite their account showing recent activity.

  1. Erroneous Rule 4 Enforcement, Second Instance: an on-topic informational video also posted to !privacy@lemmy.ml, despite also receiving many positive votes, was again removed under Rule 4. This post was again not asking a question, so again Rule 4 does not apply. Again, no explanation has been given.

  2. User Bans in Completely Unrelated Communities: user bans of over a month have been applied for not only !privacy@lemmy.ml but several completely unrelated communities:

This is especially concerning given that the above posts have no relation to these communities, and no recent activity has been made in any of them, meaning none of their rules could have been broken. Moreover, a public track record of positive contributions across Lemmy has been established, with many positive votes and comments received over a sustained period. Given all of this, the bans appear to be highly disproportionate, only adding to the growing concerns around moderation practices.

  1. Repost with Disclaimer Removed: a repost of the guide, despite a disclaimer explaining the original removal appears to be in error and that attempts to contact the admin have failed, despite again receiving many positive votes and constructive comments, was once again removed. Again, no explanation has been given.

Given all of this, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that something is not right. Mistakes in moderation happen but the complete lack of communication, the disproportionate actions, and the ongoing bans from unrelated communities raise serious concerns. It seems as though the account is most likely compromised, or even more concerning if these actions are deliberate.

Has anyone else experienced similar issues with this admin, or does anyone have more insight into what might be happening?

TL;DR: Admin dessalines@lemmy.ml of !privacy@lemmy.ml appears to be making seriously concerning moderation decisions, including erroneous enforcement of Rule 4 in at least two separate instances, failing to respond to messages, and applying user bans in completely unrelated communities despite a long track record of positive contributions across Lemmy. This has led to speculation that their account is likely compromised, or even more concerning if these actions are deliberate.

Any thoughts or similar experiences would be appreciated.

Cross post with https://lemmy.world/post/43944126

  • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    This is literally how he always acts. There’s a reason that many instances do not federate with lemmy.ml, his instance.

    He’s incredibly pro communist, pro Russia, pro China, and will ban you for even mentioning that something could be foreign propaganda.

    At the end of the day, hopefully your instance builds their server code from source and inspects it to make sure there’s nothing nefarious. It would be nice to use a decentralized Reddit like platform not coded by him, but no one else has the time, resources, ability, and/or dedication, to step up.

    I would still rather use Lemmy over Reddit, though I did switch to donating to piefed, the Canadian instance runners, over donating to him.

    • toad@sh.itjust.worksBannedEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      My hometown have a few tower, but the most infamous is made in that ugly cheap brutalist style and is generally recognized as being an eyesore.

      But one day i was invited to somebody who lived in the tower. And I was blown away, but I realized that the main advantage of living in the tower was that when you’re in it, you don’t see the tower.

      My point is that on the so-called tankie instances, at least they’re not constantly whining about tankies.

      • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
        0·
        1 month ago

        Neither are they on the instances that defederate from them.

        It’s also not like it’s an ideological thing. The instances that get defederate from are just filled with obnoxious tankies.

    • Die4Ever@retrolemmy.comEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      It would be nice to use a decentralized Reddit like platform not coded by him, but no one else has the time, resources, ability, and/or dedication, to step up.

      piefed, the Canadian instance runners

      PieFed and Mbin don’t share any code with Lemmy at all, they’re in totally different programming languages

    • scytale@piefed.zipEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      It would be nice to use a decentralized Reddit like platform not coded by him, but no one else has the time, resources, ability, and/or dedication, to step up.

      You literally mentioned piefed in your next sentence.

      • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        Piefed is known to incorporate CCP-style shadow profile and similar measures, such as “Social Credit”, so it’d be hilarious to complain about l.ml’s alignment to then migrate to piefed of all places.

      • mrmaplebar@fedia.io
        0·
        2 months ago

        Mbin also exists…

        Also, to be fair, the software isn’t necessarily problematic like the moderation is. No point throwing the baby out with the bath water.

        • Zagorath@aussie.zoneEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          Worth noting that Lemmy receives at least some institutional funding for its development. And I believe some of that funding is contingent on hitting active user goals or similar metrics.

        • fonix232@fedia.io
          0·
          2 months ago

          Power tripping people rarely limit themselves to power trip on a single angle.

          And while Lemmy’s open source, it’s a big enough codebase for someone to add a bit of admin override that can go unnoticed for quite a while. Just remember what happened with xz.

          • mrmaplebar@fedia.io
            0·
            2 months ago

            Sure, but we allow people to power trip by giving them power in the first place. People choose to use Lemmy and participate in lemmy.ml, directly or indirectly; that gives the maintainers and admins power.

            Now, I don’t see eye to eye with the tankie crowd. That’s fine, whatever. But I can still appreciate the creation of Lemmy as an open software project.

            Ultimately FOSS gives us agency. I don’t feel that the creators of Lemmy have any power over me personally. They’re not very significant, but I do appreciate their project.

            • greybeard@feddit.onlineEnglish
              0·
              2 months ago

              I moved onto piefed when the lemmy instance I was on shut down, and I don’t regret it at all. It’s a solid choice and promotes options in the threadiverse.

      • Zangoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        Tbf Piefed also does have opinionated moderation literally hardcoded into the source code.

        It’s pretty easy to modify since it’s python and not rust, but still not great

          • Eldritch@piefed.worldEnglish
            0·
            2 months ago

            There are some disabled by default, filters built into piefed. That the main Dev uses on their instance. It’s not really even remotely the same thing or as controversial. But it’s the closest thing piefed has and gets brought up regularly because of it.

            • Zangoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
              0·
              2 months ago

              Honestly I would consider hardcoded shadowbanning just as bad.

              Just because I’m closer to agreeing with the PieFed dev’s opinions a little bit more doesn’t mean that I’d support shadow banning someone because the trivially-evaded checks caught a false positive in the crossfire. Piefed’s auto moderation/social scoring is pretty much textbook definition security-by-obscurity. The second anyone knows how it works, it’s useless. It will pretty much exclusively catch people who just wanted to post a harmless meme or something.

              At least (for now) Dessalines isn’t hardcoding his tankie beliefs into Lemmy’s source code.

                • Zangoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  0·
                  2 months ago

                  Thanks for clarifying, I guess I misremembered the shadowbanning part. I think I was mixing together the fact that reputation isn’t really transparent (users’ reputation can change by even attempting to upload an image that gets flagged, and the vague error means they’ll probably try multiple times without realizing they’re being moderated) and the fact the communities can autoban any user whose global reputation is low enough.

                  I still think the security-by-obscurity approach to moderation is inherently flawed though, and I hate to imagine how the dev approaches actual account security if that’s their approach to moderation.

          • Zangoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            2 months ago

            There were a few, not exaustive since it’s been a few months since I looked through the source code, some of this might have changed and there’s also a few other checks that I’m forgetting:

            • 4chan screenshots (specifically anything that OCR identified as having “Anonymous #(number)” in it) were banned. Honestly this one is fine as a toggle but I think for a while it was just on by default in the code
            • any community that had specific words in it were blocked at instance level. I think “meme” was there, a few swear words, and a few carryover reddit meme community names (196, I think nottheonion was also there, anything with “shitpost” in the name, etc.)
            • There’s a hidden karma/social credit score based on a user’s interactions and net total karma hidden from them that gets impacted by any moderation actions, including some of the automated hardcoded ones (e.g. even trying to upload an image that gets flagged by the hardcoded checks)
            • users with a low enough net score get shadow-banned without being informed
  • oce 🐆@jlai.luEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    You have been a user for 3 years at least, surely you have heard about the tankie situation on Lemmy? If you don’t share these views it’s better to ignore/block those three or four instances. It will make your Lemmy experience much more relaxing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie

      • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        Any community that talks about moderation issues. Preferably one that is closer to the users of lemmy.ml.

        This is not the place for this. It achieves nothing and gives newcomers the impression that this type of petty drama is an integral part of the Fediverse.

          • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
            0·
            2 months ago

            dessalines power tripped his own software.

            AFAIK, he does not have any power over the other instances and communities that are not hosted over on lemmy.ml?

            Uhhhh, are you aware how federated networks initialize?

            Not interested in being baited into a pointless discussion today, sorry.

            • _‌_反いじめ戦隊@ani.socialEnglish
              0·
              2 months ago

              he does not have any power

              He does: it’s called association by usage. Guns don’t kill people, but their usage is to. lemmy threads with other threadiverse software, but installing lemmy means supporting an authoritarian. Merchants of Death and all that.

              Not interested in being baited into a pointless discussion today, sorry.

              Then don’t bother commenting on what little history you know🙃

              • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
                0·
                2 months ago

                installing lemmy means supporting an authoritarian

                Non sequitur. The software is free to use, free to redistribute and does not come with any obligation to support the ideologies of the developers. If that was the case, everyone using Linux desktops should be associated with Richard Stallman (author of the GNU project), which is on record defending Epstein by arguing that minors can consent to sexual relationships in exchange with money.

                • _‌_反いじめ戦隊@ani.socialEnglish
                  0·
                  2 months ago

                  So, you’ve never dealt with association with killers before?

                  everyone using Linux desktops should be associated with Richard Stallman (author of the GNU project), which is on record defending Epstein by arguing that minors can consent to sexual relationships in exchange with money.

                  Funny you mention this. Why did Linus Torvalds then disassociated with Vladimir Putin’s genocide?

              • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
                0·
                2 months ago

                , but installing lemmy means supporting an authoritarian

                Have you ever transported yourself in a Ford, or derived, vehicle?

  • Areldyb@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    This is not evidence of account compromise, whatever you may think of dessalines’ moderation decisions.

  • realitaetsverlust@piefed.zipEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Lmao no. That guy is just a fucking nutjob. It’s nothing new really. The only thing compromised is his brain really.

  • fonix232@fedia.io
    0·
    2 months ago

    What I find quite ironic is that dessalines started Lemmy to get away from the perceived over-moderation of Reddit… only to do the exact same thing.