Post was removed on this instance only - is there an appeal process?
I created this post on my local server, calling for what I thought was reasonable action against a self-proclaimed threat to Canada.
Someone in the community disagreed (fine), and reported the post on their hosting instance (lemmy.world), which led to an immediate deletion of the post (on that single instance only).
Think is, I really don't feel that it was warranted - and neither do most of the community members over on lemmy.ca.
I realize that instances are autonomous, but is there an appeal process to potentially have this reinstated?
It was obviously an admin, because there are no lemmy.world mods in that community.
"kinda see why" shouldn't be enough of a reason for an admin to interfere with a community. If that's happening, it should be for clear rule violations that can cause legal issues or bring harm to someone.
On the one hand, CBSA and CSIS are both charged with keeping undesirable people out of the country - and someone who stands so strongly against the values that Canada has embraced in law and policy is an exact definition of undesirable to Canada, in my mind.
I didn't call for brigading (essentially spamming), I called on people who felt the same to let the enforcement agencies know how they felt.
But far more importantly, an admin (not even a mod) on lemmy.world made a judgement call about my post and decided to remove it because of their opinion - NOT because it violated that instance's rules or any laws that I'm aware of.
Because of an admin's personal judgement, people on lemmy.world now have a different view of !alberta@lemmy.ca than the actual tone and content on the hosting instance. This puts the admin in the role of moral gatekeeper, which seems like an extremely bad precedent to set.
If all instances were equal, this would hurt lemmy.world far more than it would hurt any others including lemmy.ca; but all instances are NOT equal, and lemmy.world maintains the majority of all users worldwide.
The deeper I look into this, the more I think that this type of behaviour is profoundly harmful to the entire Lemmy community.
As far as it being "just one admins opinion", I really doubt that. There are back channels for communication at the mod level and at the admin level and I see requests for comments all the time.
In fact, I had one of my own where a user flooded a channel with 19 posts at once, so I went to the other mods going "You know, TECHNICALLY, we don't have a rule against this, what does everybody think?"
We, collectively, decided, yeah, on that channel? 10 posts a day is fine. We didn't want a single voice guiding submissions.
OTOH, we didn't retroactively REMOVE anything, it was just posted as a note "going forward..."
But anyway, the point is there are layers of communication between mods and admins you aren't aware of.
As an admin of lemmy.ca I'm also curious what justified removal of this post from your instance, when the community is not hosted or moderated by anyone from lemmy.world.
It makes me deeply uncomfortable to think that outside users are seeing a view of our communities that has been filtered or modified, without having any way to know it is happening.
Edit: I've spun out this thread for further discussion, as I think this is an important topic - https://lemmy.ca/post/12845463
Arent federated comments and posts from you instance hosted on each server you federated with? Admins of each individual server have the right to moderate content seen by their users. If they couldn't remove individual comments or posts, then the only other option they would have if your users are breaking another server's rules would be to defederate.
In this particular case, I feel like the removal was unjustified.
Yes, but we have a post that is political in nature being removed by admins of the largest instance. If this was child porn I wouldn't be concerned, but this is on a post that I don't think even violates lemmy.world rules.
I don't think instance admins should be actioning reports, unless they are in clear violation of instance rules. Reports should be left to the mods of that community. By actioning on reports like this lemmy.world is effectively acting as a censor, and as the largest instance they control what most lemmy users see. That makes me uncomfortable.
This has been an interesting bit of discussion, to say the least. Different instances with different local rules are going to lead to problems like this situation more and more, as lemmy grows in popularity. It's inevitable, and we're all going to have to sort it out as the platform matures.
However the more I think about it, the more concerned I am that removing individual posts (or even comments) on a federated instance has the potential to misrepresent communities, through the filter of each instance's mod/admin biases.
Perhaps a pointer saying "this post was removed on lemmy,world for violating rule (x), and can be viewed on its original instance " would be appropriate. Or alternatively, blocking entire communities with a comparable stub: "lemmy.world has chosen not to federate ."
Of course in my examples I'm picking on lemmy.world because that's where this is happening, but the problem and possible solutions are true for all instances.
reason: Deceptive content. Calling to abuse government system.
I'm not sure I can link to where that is mentioned, but you can see where I saw this by clicking on "Modlog" in the footer, changing the "action" to "Removing Posts", and then just hitting the "next" button at the bottom until you see it. Right now it says the mod action was taken 2 days ago and I found it on page 3. But of course, as more actions are taken and more time goes by, both the page and "days ago" will change.