A recent post collected some comments by moderator Yobuckstopshere which were reported for being Covid misinformation. Further, comments calling out the misinformation were being removed.
This was reported to me, and after a short examination, I engaged the lemmy.world site admins who took the following actions:
Yobuckstopshere was removed as moderator from both Politics and World News. The comments were removed, and they were banned for 3 days.
This is tough for me since I value their contributions to Lemmy, and why I had to recuse myself beyond getting the Admins involved, but if it were anyone else, the comments would have been removed and the user banned, and so here we are.
Similarly, I don’t like exposing behind the scenes drama so to speak, but I also believe in transparency in moderation action. It’s why I reply to posts and comments before I remove them citing exactly why they are being removed. I feel everyone deserves to know why action is being taken.
Unlike reddit, there is a process for removing moderators who appear to have been acting in bad faith. Your first line of defense is other moderators, but we are also in regular contact with the lemmy.world admins whose decision is final.
He’s posted a bunch of stuff there I’ve noticed. That’s a big interesting difference from the forums of old and Reddit, there’s no ability to actually control this site wide when it’s a bunch of sites strung together.
No, but there is transparency. On Reddit, you knew it was going on, but unless you had extended mod or admin powers, you could never prove it, and the admins didn’t usually want to stop it.
Here, you may not be able to stop it, but it’s easily proven by anyone, mod or not, willing to deep dive into the modlog. AND the admins act, even if instance by instance. So refreshing.