Lemmy.ml and its moderation, am I getting something wrong?

Yesterday I was reading the post about the FUTO keyboard where there were a lot of messages deleted by moderators.
I've commented there

What the heck happened with all the messages deleted by moderator?

And it got deleted. Right now you can only see 4, but I've counted 19 messages moderated and the post has been locked. Why?
I've had a look ad the modlog and the messages don't seems to violate any policy (now they've removed them in the modlog too).

I'm pinging here lemmy.ml admin and the mods of the open source community where the post was posted so they can have their say about it and clarify the situation to me.
@kevincox@lemmy.ml @CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml @Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml @Cloak@lemmy.ml @davel@lemmy.ml @dessalines@lemmy.ml @nutomic@lemmy.ml @JoeBidet@lemmy.ml @cypherpunks@lemmy.ml

If I'm getting something wrong, please let me know, I'm here to discus and understand if I'm getting something wrong or if something went wrong in the moderation. Thanks!

Down here you can see the deleted comments.

P.s. I'm writing here because I think that this post on lemmy.ml wouldn't last long.

84 comments

That was me. I'm tired of FUTO fans derailing discussions about FLOSS with advocacy for their obviously-not-open-source software and insisting that it is open source.
Every time Futo comes up, someone will insist it is open source, others will correct them, and soon more than 50% of a thread that is supposed to be about open source is people arguing about them.
I'm pretty sure that Futo's (now recanted) position that they were open source (despite the term having a clear definition which is very internationally recognized and which Futo's license obviously does not meet) was an intentional marketing gimmick - "there is no such thing as bad publicity" and every time a bunch of people are arguing about them there is a chance they'll get more customers (some of whom might even believe it is open source).
I’ve counted 19 messages moderated
Probably more than that even; more than I want to count. The modlog is public.
and the post has been locked.
The What's the best open source keyboard for android? post where you commented has not been locked, but most of the futo-related comments in it are deleted. Note that while your comment was not advocating for futo per se, it was (successfully) encouraging others to continue the offtopic discussion. You could have answered your question by reading the modlog.
I did lock another post in the same community (the topic of which is, again, Open Source), which was What are your thoughts on FUTO? (and I left a comment there explaining why).
I generally try to assume good faith but I'm pretty sure some Futo proponents are actually just trolling at this point.
I hope this answers your questions.
- Yeah, Rossman getting in bed with people that are deliberately trying to dilute the meaning of open source really killed my opinion of him.
  
  Who are some of those people? I'm still trying to get my bearings about this entire thing, I never heard of it before yesterday.
- Thanks for the level-heades and reasonable explination. These actions make complete sense
- Holy shit. A .ml mod being reasonable and making mod decisions based on what'd best for the community instead of pure personal bias. Congratulations perhaps their is still hope for .ml to be redeemed and forgiven.
  
  What did we do
- Thank you for standing up for the free software definition. As someone who has been heavily critical of fauxpen source licenses including FUTO it's refreshing to see moderators taking a stance against it.
  The main concern I have with this attempt (by FUTO and other organizations trying to "fix" open source) is that watering down the open source and free software definitions causes damage to the community/movement. Whether the FUTO EULA or any other proprietary license is "good enough" for an individual user is not the question (and I have even seen people argue in favor of fully-proprietary blob software on the basis of being "privacy friendly"); real free software disadvantages rightsholders in favor of users and communities, which is important in case those rightsholders go defunct or rogue.
  I try to assume good faith as well but I am seriously considering the idea that FUTO is astroturfing free software spaces to promote its version of open source. Despite publicly backing down on their openwashing attempt Eron Wolf-in-sheeps-clothing seems very determined that open source is broken and needs fixing.
- Unrelated but you should post one more comment
  
  nice.
  (although that is just the subset of my posts and comments which are visible on your instance; on mine i have more than twice as many...)
- obviously-not-open-source
  Yes: futo keyboard license. And also a contradictory license with that definition of 'use'.
- I would submit that even if it is misinformation and people are climbing all over the comments claiming that FUTO is definitely open source, removing the comments to leave only the remnant of it that is "truth" is often not the best way to handle it. The majority of the removed comments didn't seem like they were saying that, some even specifically said that FUTO isn't open source but blah blah blah, but even if so, here's my feeling:
  The way the conversation looks right now is just confusing. There are people who have no idea about FUTO who have the feeling that they're just not allowed to talk about it, or to say true statements (for example, whatever you think of their license, they fund real open-source projects.) Because FUTO is officially "bad" and they might get banned or something for wanting to talk about it or ask questions. It actually doesn't look to me like people are coming in primarily to evangelize. But regardless of that, my personal feeling is, you have to let people talk.
  I feel like if there was a sticky comment from a mod / admin at the top of the comments, something like PSA: FUTO is not open source. The people that are claiming it is, are wrong, with respect to long-established definitions. (link) (link), then that would be fine. People can see the arguments, and presumably there's enough respect in place for the "leaders" of the community that they'll give a lot of weight to the sticky comment. But they still have the sense that they're allowed to talk about it and think about it on their own instead of being ordered to receive the correct interpretations from above, when they don't even have their bearings as far as what's even being talked about.
  I'm not secretive about my strong disagreements with a lot of lemmy.ml moderation philosophy. I'm just making an effort, here, to explain why I have such a strong disagreement in a productive fashion, instead of just hectoring or being combative about it.
  
  removing the comments to leave only the remnant of it that is “truth” is often not the best way to handle it
  i totally agree that it is often preferable to allow misinformed comments to remain so that they can be refuted.
  in the case of futo, though, i feel like there are often actually some bad-faith actors who just want to keep the discussion going, and will continue to repeat their misinformed arguments in the face of any and all evidence.
  and, in this particular case, it is even a thread in the Open Source community so any discussion of Futo is inherently offtopic. (and all of which is also effectively promotion for them; again see succès de scandale.)
  The way the conversation looks right now is just confusing
  the thread as it is now has lots of comments about open source keyboards, and a link to this thread for anyone who wants more information about all the deleted comments than they can find in the modlog. if you think it would be better if that thread was still mostly people arguing about Futo... well... i'm glad you're not a mod there.
- Every time Futo comes up, someone will insist it is open source, others will correct them, and soon more than 50% of a thread that is supposed to be about open source is people arguing about them.
  In the removed posts that you can see in the screenshots I don't see anything you say.
  Probably more than that even; more than I want to count. The modlog is public.
  When I wrote the post, there were no trace of those messages in the modlog (or I've missed them, I'm not that into Lemmy, I admit that)
  The What’s the best open source keyboard for android? post where you commented has not been locked
  My bad, I must have confused them, sorry.
  I generally try to assume good faith but I’m pretty sure some Futo proponents are actually just trolling at this point.
  As stated above, I don't see any trolling in the comments scrreenshotted (and deleted). But over that, I think that deleting those messages is censorship. I still believe in free speech and I can't see any hate or misinformation in those messages.
  Note that while your comment was not advocating for futo per se, it was (successfully) encouraging others to continue the offtopic discussion. You could have answered your question by reading the modlog.
  It was a chit chat, what's wrong with that? It feels like school were you had to just pay attention to what the professor was saying and woe betide anyone who turns their head.
  
  But over that, I think that deleting those messages is censorship. I still believe in free speech and I can’t see any hate or misinformation in those messages.
  I believe in free speech too, and I think moderated spaces for discussion help enable it. (Think about this...)
  Nobody claimed there was hate in any of messages in that thread; you observing that there wasn't is knocking down a straw man, and using the word censorship here is just hyperbole.
  There are however unambiguously factually incorrect assertions in some of the offtopic messages I removed from that thread.
- I think this would make sense in a Lemmy community that was OpenSourceInitiative who has a very specific set definition. But open source as a general idea is fairly open to interpretation. Some people think source-available is open source. I disagree, but that's just my personal opinion. Now if something was closed source, that's a very clear distinction.
  I've seen communities die out over mods enforcing their personal definitions. The Linux subreddit and Lemmy Linux community had issues with this a few years ago where the mod was deleting comments of people talking about what fell outside of their idea that Linux discussion should be FLOSS-only (people discussing closed source apps that ran on Linux, etc).
  I think deleting does more harm than good. It's better for people to discuss when things are a problem so they can understand them better. The Free Software Foundation is way more strict as to their licensing ideas, but even they still discuss and have a page full of alternative licenses where they discuss some are better than others (and even a bad open source license is better than a non-open source license). They don't ban the mention of conflicting ideas.
  Deleting just leaves people confused (and in my case I would have appreciated knowing the issue instead of just seeing a thread full of deleted comments and remaining ignorant). And it does a greater harm because people casually searching on search engines or whatever won't find any sort of discussion or push back.
  
  Open source has a definition that has been agreed for nearly two decades, some billionaire doesn't get to redefine it because of his personal feelings.
  The FSF has a list of licenses, but they specifically label the non-free ones and state they shouldn't be called free software.
- what nice bootlickers you have here lol no matter how many they are, it is still not enough to deny the truth
.ml has long been known to remove dissenting voices of any kind (Ironic because they always accuse .world and other instances like .ee of becoming echo chambers), especially voices that rightfully criticize their favored authoritarian governments such as China or Russia. Usually though those are removed under their catchall "RULE1 bigotry"
It's a little weird to remove software related comments for being off topic when they're clearly not, but this is a by-product of that moderation culture the Tankie Admins and Mods (Yes the main dev Nutomic (and transphobe, see stickied post in !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works ) and major mods like dess are full bore tankies) pushed.
Oh, and don't bother tagging any .ml users, .ml hates their rank-and-file members from seeing the dissent against .ml so has blocked !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works and I believe this comm as well on their instance. They'll also site-ban individuals that dare talk against them, even when that talk is exclusively on other instances.
PS, generally the people who say "They never have any issues" are Tankies themselves or at least align with that mindset enough that they can go for a while without a negative interaction.
- (Ironic because they always accuse .world and other instances like .ee of becoming echo chambers)
  I had someone from lemmy.ml tell me "I’m happy that you libs have your own instances!", and apparently mean it sincerely. In their mind, maybe, the 4,530 active users on lemmy.ml+lemmygrad+Hexbear are "Lemmy," and the 39,721 other users are on "their own instances."
  Not that being in the majority means you're right. But if you're in the minority, and you don't know it, that's often a warning sign.
- I didn't know, I'm mainly active on lemmy.world. How can that instance have so much traction?
  
  I believe it was the original instance, it’s maintained by the devs, and the description on join-Lemmy.org is extremely misleading and does not make its extremist politics clear at all.
  So it had a lot of momentum early on, and the largest coms for many topics were hosted there. However, they definitely seem to be declining in influence over time as many users have opted to avoid the instance altogether and seek alternative communities elsewhere. That’s what I would recommend doing.
  
  First movers advantage, .ml is the first and "flagship" instance, the rest of the Tankie Triad (Hexbear and grad) followed closely after, though .world has defed from those because they were not as subtle on their "viewpoints" as .ml tries to be to avoid getting defed'd from, so you probably haven't even heard of those.
  .ml also used to be the default instance on the join-lemmy website which is also run by Nutomic, but recently they changed the recommendation algo so that it would no longer recommend instances with >30% of the user base Lemmy-wide to include .ml and .world.
  The hope is that someday .world will finish what it started and defed from the last remaining on the Tankie Triad, but until then the best recommendation is just not interact with it at all. No posts or comments or upvotes. If you want to take a more active roll, if you do see an actual good post on a .ml comm, crosspost it to the nearest non-.ml comm
Well, your first mistake is posting something in .ml. Your second mistake is asking a question that the admins don’t want to answer.
There are seemingly no mods in .ml. It’s just two authoritarian admins that are butthurt about everything.
Futo is not open source but it is good and free option for people
I generally don't support comment removal but people arguing that it is open source is bad faith behavior so I won't shit on ML mods action here.
- Apropos of nothing, I take issue with calling stuff that isn't open source "free" (even little-f "free," let alone "Free Software"). Even if it costs $0 it isn't "free" if it costs you your freedom or privacy.
  
  Futo is 100% off line
lemmy.ml mods cannot be trusted to not censor people. Don't post there. Put them on your ban list so you don't see any of their stuff by mistake.
seems bizarre to me. I've had no issue on .ml. Is this an instance issue or a com issue?
- I’ve had no issue on .ml
  Wat
  Lemmy.ml is explicitly affirming of the idea that the moderators determine what is the "right" opinion and remove all the wrong opinions. Ask them about Tienanmen Square or the Uyghurs. It's a little unusual that it goes outside of the realm of geopolitics and into the realm of software projects, but it's completely in keeping with their overall philosophy about what the right way is to run an instance.
  The person who is removing posts is, I believe, not a moderator of that community, they're an admin. So complaining to the admins is unlikely to get you anywhere.
  "Don't go to lemmy.ml" is my advice. There are replacement communities for almost everything that's available there, for exactly this specific reason.
  
  Holy shit don't you have anything better to post about? You people are like broken records.
- Personally, I have never had any issues either, although I have seen many people who have. People looking for an international decentralized community will have no problem with .ml, as with all other existing instances. Those looking for a reddit clone will have their own good reasons to detest .ml.
- I don't know, it's the first time that I see such a behavior.
- You’ve never had an ML issue? I… don’t believe you. Even when you’re not talking politics, their constant attempt to ruin your mood is pretty annoying.
  Are any of them able to have a full conversation without making unfounded personal attacks? I’ve never had that experience.
  I’d probably be all-in for communism if it weren’t for them.
Rare ml w
- can you explain? appreciate the insight...
Did you check the Modlogs?
Mod locked the thread because FUTO isn't an open source org. They even pinned their comment stating as much. Fuck off
- Actually, that's not true, or not complete.
  The mod deleted a bunch of comments in a post about open source keyboards, because discussion of FUTO was offtopic, because it's not open source. So then there was a separate post about FUTO specifically, and a little bit of lively discussion about whether FUTO was the good guys or the bad guys, with the mod deleting comments drawn from a specific 50% of that division, and finally they said:
  I am locking this thread to avoid needing to remove misinformation and advocacy from Futo fans who think they should be allowed to redefine a term which there has been consensus about the definition of since before they were born.
  So, they were okay with discussion of FUTO, just not with people saying things they didn't agree with, and they considered it tedious to have to remove so many of the comments under the post leaving only the comments they (edit: ~~disagreed~~) agreed with. So they locked the post.
  
  Its their comm they can do what they want just as you can on yours. Why not just start another discussion on one of the many comms you moderate?
  You just like it when that happens so you can start flame war bullshit
I've commented there
What the heck happened with all the messages deleted by moderator?
And it got deleted.
Setting aside the .ml agenda-based moderation, I don't have a problem with your specified comment being removed. "Talking about moderation choices" in the post where comments were moderated is not relevant to the post (in this case, about Android keyboards), and can very easily be considered counterproductive.
- I agree with this. Discussion of moderation on a topic-based community (as opposed to a meta-community) is fully fine and fair to be removed as "off-topic" imo.
kevincox@lemmyml @CrypticCoffee@lemmyml @Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmyml @Cloak@lemmyml @davel@lemmyml @dessalines@lemmyml @nutomic@lemmyml @JoeBidet@lemmyml @cypherpunks@lemmyml
Yes, you are the most important person in the Lemmyverse and the removal of misposting of non-open source content to an open source community is the most important thing happening in the Lemmyvarse. So pinging all the admins and mods is perfectly reasonable behavior. Everyone should stop whatever they're doing and pay attention to you.
- To be accurate, mentioning accounts in the body doesn't ping people
  
  Don't mentions go to people's inboxes?
- Meh, it's no different than creating a report. I get an email for every report made on programming.dev, someone pinging the admins isn't/shouldn't be a big deal.
  
  When you make a report, the first mod who comes across it deals with it and clears it, and none of the other mods’ time is wasted on it.
  When you @ all the mods, all the mods are alerted and everyone's time is wasted, because you think you're the main character.

84 comments