These were the complaints I heard about mods before the API debacle. After all the mods quit or got their 3rd party tools nuked, it was all complaints about repost bots not being removed. I've never been a mod, but you couldn't pay me enough to babysit thousands of angry dorks, much less get me to do it for free.
I used to be a mod on /r/soccer, and there were strict rules around duplicates, and on keeping things related to football news and OC. It's the most popular sport in the world, and when you've got enough subscribers to fill multiple stadiums, just "posting anything football" doesn't scale. You also end up with a huge amount of content about the most popular teams, and when there's a long-tail of fans from other leagues/countries you isolate a lot of people.
I can happily say that in the time I was a mod there were no questionable decisions. The mods went out of their way to verify decisions, discuss them with others, and reverse any bans if the user acknowledged that they'd broken rules. What the mods got in return was:
Probably 5-10 death threats a day. No hyperbole.
A handful of script kiddies that tried to spam the sub with offensive content, CP, and stuff that obviously breaks the rules.
One stalking attempt on a mod that resulted in the police getting involved, a potential arrest, and a kid getting kicked out of school.
Several people getting pissy, starting their own subs, and then realising that keeping things on topic and stopping people posting "Paul Pogba skills compilation 2015-2020 Despacito Remix" several times a day is quite tricky...
Funny enough, pretty much every decision was made by reports. Four reports triggered a message in modmail, and we just followed what users had reported..
Sorry but I'm on the mod's side here. Some content doesn't belong on some communities. Most people upvote from their front page without even checking what community you posted to. If you allow things based on popularity, every community devolves into deep-fried shitposts
This also applies to Tankie instances like .ml. If you're critical of them in entirely different instances. Last straw for me was getting a comment removed for "bigotry" when I responded that I still visit r/rimworld on a thread asking how things are since the reddit migration. Nothing in my post was bigotted in any way, so I assume one of the mods sifted through my comment history and saw I had recently mocked Tankies in a different thread entirely
It's getting worse lately with the tankies here. Seems like hexbear and lemmygrad are spilling over, not a surprise shortly before the election but I'm worried people will leave because of it.
Please don't call them "the far left". They're just pretending, in reality they're authoritarians defending Russia, China and Iran, while shitting on the West at every opportunity.
Pretty much the only subs that had mods that got them assigned where the main default ones, but that was at the beginning and pretty much all those big sub mods just wanted the power and literally would do anything they could to get in with other big subs as mods even if they didn't contribute.
It's a little better, because admins are free to differ. Only aggressively boring instances like Lemmy.world have a general "never be mean for any reason!!!" policy, and then cannot figure out why so many people talk about trolls. They specifically forbade it! Some communities elsewhere still foolishly demand "civility" through enforced politeness, as if that's how good faith works, but at least they're less robotic. I never want to suffer another community where hearing "clearly your arguments mean you just don't like it" is tolerated but responding "fuck off if you're gonna make shit up" is not.
But yeah, the mod of ShitJustWork's inevitable conservative circlejerk is a coward and a liar who couldn't handle detailed impersonal criticism of an article they posted. I waited out a ban for "strawmanning" that article... then came back and pointed out how every single complaint was objectively correct, undeniably relevant, and pretty fucking bigoted. But the real issue was always questioning their authoritah. Same as it ever was, for conservatives.
Also one silly community about humorous Spotify playlists was apparently shocked and offended that anyone would joke about them.
Mods should never use their privileges in discussions where they are involved (obviously they should not be the only mod on a channel either).
I have been on both sides, mod and victim of mod abuse. Mistakes happen. It is a delicate balance on both sides of keeping constructive and not trying to „be right“ by any means.
The most absurd situation is when you have to block a mod because they’re actually the head troll and also an admin of an instance. Its both hilarious and sad.
I think a hardcoded function to file complaints against mods with the other mods and/or the admins and optionally, a way to elect mods and unelect them would be great.
Despite the comments here, lemmy is actually better at this because of federation.
If your post gets deleted by some salty mod, you can just hop over to the next instance and post the same thing and everyone on the original instance who has federation on will see it.
Or in the case that there's a mod catfight, then you just have two instances where everyone crossposts anyway.
It happens on Lemmy, as well. I have seen posts removed according to a "rule x", where "rule x" when the post didn't go anywhere near "rule x". I just left the community, even if those posts weren't mine.
When the billionaire sister of Elaine Chao (wife of Moscow Mitch and nepotism hire in the Trump administration) drowned in a Tesla, I got banned for 3 days for "celebrating her death" even though I did no such thing:
Why do you think so? I didn't break any rules and it's not like any of the people who know that billionaire leech on society (but I repeat myself) are going to go on Lemmy to see my joke 🤷
First of all, I didn't wish ill on anyone. I made a joke about it being unfair to connect an innocent non public person to Moscow Mitch, then pretended TP concede the point because of her billionaire status.
Secondly, being a billionaire isn't just "wealthy". It's a grotesque level of wealth hoarding that's impossible to achieve without abusing and/or severely depriving people who have done you no harm. THAT'S "plain cringe".
Pictured: what most people would consider a significant amount of money, what most people would consider a large enough net "worth" to be wealthy and a ridiculous dragon's hoard, respectively:
i remember posting in /r/boneappletea a screenshot where a well known brand made a mistake, they deleted it because it was against a rule saying there should be no identifying informations, like people could raid poor multi million brand or something, also the sub was notorious for posting speech to text errors without batting an eye
on the other hand i've been banned on lemmy twice, fist time was because my rather sexist comment, but second time was because i said something about Uighurs genocide in China, (guess what instance was that?) also both bans were issued without any warning, completely against their CoC
Somebody posted a picture of a Harry Potter book burning in what I believe was a bird bath.
I commented that it was ironic that two groups so diametrically opposed as those that don't like shitty TERFs, and crazy Fundamentalists that not only believe magic is real, but also Sinful, would protest the books in that way for such completely different reasons.
The person posting said something about "hurr durr mah both sides," some people corrected them that I wasn't saying they were the same, just that it was bizarre that they agree on something at all, much less that... and then the mod removed my comment (I believe the same that wrote the comment responding to mine).
So... sometimes mods here can show poor reading comprehension and remove things for no reason as well.
The Nazis always chose the biggest losers of a neighbourhood to act as „block wardens“, I.e. snitches who’d report to them what the neighbours were talking about…
