So, I saw a report from one of my users. They reported:
https://ponder.cat/post/1594852/1813842
For the reason:
Unreasonable fighting with everyone in every simple post
I think that’s ridiculous, so I talked with them about it. Posting private communications is frowned upon I guess, but long story short, they weren’t receptive. I’ve decided to ban the account.
IMO the general culture on Lemmy is that users are entitled to their free account and everyone needs to be careful and circumspect about limiting that entitlement in any way, but I don’t see it that way. I don’t think it’s a requirement for me to provide hosting space for anyone who wants to use my stuff as a jumping-off point for abuse of Lemmy’s systems, and isn’t apologetic or receptive when I talk with them about not doing that. The fact that it’s in service of harassing FlyingSquid in particular is just icing on the cake, since my perception is that people like to harass him apparently for no legitimate reason at all (with this as an example).
AITA?
As that user said, they’re not deliberately attempting to block evade. Just a side effect of making a new account
I’ve seen them posting in communities and instances they have previously been banned from. If they made an attempt to avoid it that would be one thing but they don’t.
I’m almost certain they are ban evading with their alts.
If you have, then DM admins directly about that. They probably mod those communities as well, so reports never reach the admins
But if I am posting to my own community that I have NOT been blocked from, and on an instance I have NOT been blocked from, how would that be ban evasion?
I posted some timestamps of them switching to an alt I don’t have blocked, specifically so they can comment on my posts and I will see it. Happy to send the logs in question if anyone wants to see without digging through their own database.
Name one. Provide examples. Lots of admins talk to each other. So let’s see some proof of what you have seen.
The vast, vast majority of my posting is to my own communities. But I’m totally fine with you showing some screen shots of where you have seen me posting to places I am banned from with–time stamps to show that they were posted AFTER any ban. PhiliptheBucket seems to have every timestamp of everything I am posting and even he is not accusing me of what you just have.
So give me an example of where you have seen me posting to a banned instance and/or community AFTER I was banned.
But you just said you’ve seen me posting in communities and on instances I’ve been banned from. Now you are saying “almost certain.”
So which is it? Did you see me like you said above or are you “almost certain?”
And if you are so sure of it it, did you report those to the admin? And do you have examples? Let’s have a look.
I keep the same fucking username. So it would be pretty hard for me to post in communities that I’m banned from. Seems like the mods could spot it right away.
If wanted to ban evade, wouldn’t it be easier to just come up with a random name and then post wherever I wanted?
And again, guys. I am NOT the subject of OP’s original post. This is all off-topic. This thread is not about me. Let it go!
You were caught here in the act posting to communities on an instance you were banned from.
Nope. Read the entire thing. That’s a robotic ban that the the mod, auk, admitted was a ban that I would know nothing about. In fact, after reviewing, auk said: As I said under the other post, I do believe this evasion was entirely unintentional, for the reasons you outlined.
And later the mod, auk, said of my participation: I’m not planning to set the bot up to notify dozens of users about their bans in a community they have never posted in and don’t care about. Notice it says “never posted in and don’t care about.”
And the admin of that instance and other instances agreed that I couldn’t have known about the ban because it was robotic. Other users also agreed look at the subs modlog, users who HAVE NEVER POSTED THERE GET BANNED without their knowing: https://sh.itjust.works/post/27848698
Which is why I didn’t get banned from that instance after admin review. Funny how you left out those details. Screenshot proof of convo:
Also caught cloning other users…
Wasn’t “caught” doing anything. I haven’t closed other users. Do you have proof of this?
I use my own name across several instances. I haven’t cloned or copied anyone.
What?
Still waiting on proof that I cloned or copied anyone’s username. You brought up, so show us the proof.
This is a community about proof of accusations. So show us.
Woah glad you caught that, just gave a ping to sopuli.xyz’s admins on the page hopefully they’ll respond soon and deal with that.
Already done, and I asked them to removed accounts that were cloned/parodying me as well. I wasn’t the one who cloned anyone or anything.
Please provide proof to me, this audience, and the admins if you have any proof.
He has a few other alts as well, but it’s not exactly my day job to keep detailed notes. However, I am sick of his shit and that dude is a fucking cockroach.
TBH, I don’t think it’s really against any rules to dup a username across instances as SMCF is actually on .world. However, this is being done with malice and should be addressed. UM must have been holding a grudge from when he was banned from .world.
As in alt names or instances? Because i have no alt names. If you don’t have proof, then don’t falsely accuse.
Please show us the proof.
Then why bring it up?
You have no proof of this. Please show posts where I have malice.
No, YOU have been holding a grudge from that. Let it go. It was before the election. I didn’t vote for Harris. And she lost. But her loss wasn’t my fault. Get over it.
I told you to quit mumbling. I can’t hear a word you are saying.
Honestly, I think the issue is that it really is a job, and there isn’t anyone who’s really well-positioned to take charge of it.
Any system which allows easy, anonymous account creation is going to be subject to some level of abuse. Any system which does that, and also is distributed among multiple instances with admins who don’t always see eye-to-eye on things, is going to be absolutely helpless in the face of even a very rudimentary attempt at abuse, and anyone who wants to will be able to run rings around the admins and just kind of run around doing whatever they want. Telling people “just block the obnoxious people on whatever new accounts they make when they get banned” obviously isn’t the answer, but it’s what people fall back on because it is the only thing that can be relied upon to work.
I think Bluesky’s idea of federating out block lists (basically, as I understand it) is probably the most straightforward non-awful way. You don’t want to make every new user encounter every obnoxious person and learn, one by one, who they are and that they need to block them. That way lies madness.
I’m fine with that. In fact, I’d love you all to just block me rather than create new thread all the time trying to ban me from the fediverse–simply because you don’t like news articles that I post. lol
Please, please, please work on that.
As I have always said, block me and ignore me. But banning is just silencing disagreeing opinions.
I have a right to say what I want. You have the right to ignore me. But I am allowed to be here.
Shared block lists could be implemented into the clients as well, but it would take a bit to keep those from getting abused and wouldn’t scale over time too well.
But yeah, this is a major issue with Lemmy and is probably the major reason I don’t think this platform can scale up to Reddit size. Once trolls take over, everyone will leave.
Yeah I agree, having multiple accounts with the same username is okay when your intention isn’t to cause malice. When one is doing it to impersonate/namesquat or just to troll and ban evade then it’s a problem. It’s part of why I have as many as I do. It makes it extremely difficult for people to impersonate me, except on the handful of excommunicated instances I never signed up to but those will be very clearly recognized as impersonation.
Ok, then why bring all the stuff up? And I’m not even the subject of this thread.
Which I have never done.
So you are jumping on this bandwagon attacking me, and you have multiple freakin usernames on multiple instances? Say wat bro?! You were just pointing out how terrible i was for being multiple instances!
What in the actual fuck are you talking about? The user is deliberately block evading. Its so bad, I am going to start publishing a daily UM blocklist for people.
How am I block evading? It’s not up to me to check on who has blocked me and who hasn’t.
Just ignore and or block me and move on. I’m not sure why you all are so obsessed with me.
Just ignore me! And if you don’t want to interact with me, then don’t comment about me or reply to me. And tada! Problem solved.
What difference does it make what my name is? If I were to actually ban evade, and used a different screen name, the comment I made would still be the same.
That user posted to this community asking for opinions. I gave mine as it fits into this community’s rules. I didn’t even check the name of the poster.
I read the OP. I replied per the sub rules. That’s it. Move on, guys.
It’s just Lemmy. I promise the world isn’t going to end because of any of my posts. Most people outside a few raging posters don’t even know who I am. As has been shown in the threads where you all try to ban me and users say, “I’ve never heard of Universal Monk until now.”
The OP just posted an entire essay in this very thread about me using server times, SQL queries, and other statistics, and his theory about my motivations. I don’t even know what any of that means. I definitely don’t think of you guys that much. He says he blocks me, but he keeps a dictionary of statistics on me? Seriously? Go outside, guys.
If you all want people to stop talking about me, then you all should stop talking about me. Easy.
You guys drive the mods crazy yelling about me. Just ignore me when you see my comments. It ain’t that hard!
All these comments about me are about to be removed anyway because they are off-topic, plus I’m not even the subject of the original post for the thread!
I won’t consider you talking with me about this in this thread to be block evasion, FWIW. We’re talking, since you switched to an alt to start an interaction with me, and it’s not really offensive for me to continue this conversation. We might as well. I probably won’t answer a reply, but here’s my take:
This is a really key point.
The internet (and phone system before that) has developed a norm that if someone doesn’t want to hear from you, that’s their right. Over the phone it can actually be illegal. The reasons should be pretty self-explanatory, but it’s basically just anyone’s right to decide that someone’s being obnoxious and they don’t want to hear anything else from that person. Violating that decision is symbolic, on both sides: Some people will get bent out of shape by someone sending even a single ping if they don’t want to hear it, because they tried to set a boundary and it got stomped on. And some people will take a kind of pleasure in violating someone else’s attempts not to hear from them, even if the context is something totally meaningless. You can see kids do this kind of thing with their siblings sometimes when someone sets a boundary. The core issue that gives it power is that factor of consent, or violation of consent.
The internet has decided that communicating with someone who’s checked the box that they don’t want to hear from you is crossing a line. The content or context doesn’t mean anything. That’s why the block function blocks DMs, and posts, and comments. And actually, the same type of person who thinks it’s fun to make comments to someone who doesn’t want to hear them, often will also think it’s fun to make perfectly innocuous comments so they can then claim they’re being abused if the person doesn’t want to hear the innocuous comments, and is making a big deal out of nothing. Again, you can see kids do this sometimes to each other’s boundaries.
It’s not hard to understand. Two separate times, once right after I mentioned you in a comment, you switched from the alt you usually use to one you rarely use, that I don’t have blocked, and then instantly commented on one of my posts. And then feigned perfect ignorance and claimed not to have even noticed that it was me who made the post.
I posted some of the details, just for verifiability by anyone who’s in an admin role, but that’s what happened. Pretty straightforward. You are communicating to me on purpose, dodging around my blocking of you, and then lying about why and how you did it.
I would hope this isn’t true. There’s a reason why we want the pattern of little tiny lights on the screen to look one way and not another way. At the end of the day, it’s all just pixels, but it makes a difference whether what’s on the screen in the words shaped by the pixels is kindness or maliciousness, truth or falsehood, stuff we want or stuff we don’t want. You’re saying you have the right to shape the pixels on my screen, and trying to paint it like I’m making a problem if I inform people that you’re breaking the rules to get them to shape the way you want them, instead of it being the way the network is normally set up to operate, keeping things in a more voluntary pixel-shape instead of an involuntary one.
Harassment is pixels, personal insults are pixels, misinformation is pixels. Your messages are pixels. I would prefer not to have them arranged for me on my screen. Please stop doing creative things to continue sending them to me.
I actually don’t think this message is going to do much, either for your behavior or for the admins’ reactions. Actually I think sending you a thought-through message may just sort of egg you on in terms of giving you attention which is going to lead to further interactions. It’s usually my habit for how to try to first approach problems, though, is just explaining them clearly and addressing what’s going on with them, or answering what people have to say about them.
I don’t want this to hurt your feelings, but I actually don’t care about you enough to harass you. My reply in this thread wasn’t harassment by any sense of the word. I didn’t even know it was you.
You are a prolific poster. One glance at your profile shows how much you are all over Lemmy. So yeah, our paths are gonna cross.
I have never called you names. I have never sent you harassing DM’s. We’ve only talked in public forums. And even then, we haven’t actually interacted that much.
Think of it like this. Let’s say your goal was achieved and I was banned from across the fediverse.
Do you think that would make me disappear? No, I’d just create a new name, and come back. (Which by the way, would officially be the definition of ban-evasion, unlike your definition.)
But you wouldn’t know it was me.
So an example from that scenario: Let’s say I pick a news name of BobSmithy. I see this post. And I reply with. “PTB in my opinion. It seems banning someone for one post is a bit extreme.Totally your call, but that’s how I see it when other mods do actions similar as to yours.”
Ok, you’d read it, shrug, move on. Not that big of a deal.
That’s the exact fucking thing I posted. But you saw it was from the big bad evil “UNIVERSAL MONK!!!” and you lost your shit.
You gotta stop thinking about me so much. It’s making you crazy. You’re talking about yesteryear of dial phones, and philosophy of pixels and search query and wanting to make long legal history notes of how what I am doing is targeting you.
Look how many posts I make. How many have been about you or to you? Maybe 5 or 6? And you think that’s targeting you?
Also, just so you know, if you all wouldn’t have fought soooo fucking hard to get me banned on .world, we wouldn’t have this problem. Because I’d still be on one instance. One block and you’d never hear from me.
But you and a few others decided to get soo vocal and scream to the moderators that now I never know when I’ll get banned, so I have to spread my name out. Which is what the point of the fediverse is.
I posted a reply to a PUBLIC POST that you made to this community. And the reply wasn’t personal. And it followed the rules of this community.
Not only that, but you listed with glee that I was banned for lemm.ee. And you’ve listed all my other bannings. But I have no idea if you have been banned from any instance. Cuz i don’t look you up. And I don’t care.
But you certainly look me up. And post stats.
Think about that: I don’t know about your post times, or servers, what comments have been removed or where you have been banned from.
Because I don’t stalk you. Yet you know all that info, and post it. And this isn’t your first time posting my stats.
Think about that, friend.
I’m not leaving Lemmy. If banned under this name, I would come back under something else. (Before you all message the poor mods, don’t convict me of thoughtcrimes before they happen.)
So for your mental health, just ignore me, don’t react to me, or comment about me. It’s not healthy to obsess so much.
I have no ill will toward you. I will try to not reply to you unless you ask me to. But dude, you post more than I do, you’re in almost all the communities I’m in.
I’ll just drop one of your other accounts here: https://sopuli.xyz/post/22490143
(There isn’t any point in reading your stupid rants and crying.)
Not me. Not my account. Not even my username. I’ve reported you for falsely stating that this is me.
Do you have any proof at all that that is me? I don’t even know why you would think it was me.
Please provide proof, because I, and the admin, would love to see it. You keep bringing that up as me and I have already said it was me.
And it looks like that user was banned anyway.
It’s your MO.
It’s not, though. Please provide proof or stop falsely accusing.
Quit mumbling.
That’s actually not true. People overuse the word “gaslighting,” but this is actually a perfect example of the original meaning of the term.
This is the second time recently he’s “accidentally” posted on something I wrote, and both times, he switched away from one of his commonly-used alts, to a different one that I didn’t have blocked, right before posting. I can, if you want me to, send you the output of this from my system:
Huge SQL query
WITH target_people AS ( SELECT id, actor_id FROM person WHERE name LIKE '%UniversalMonk%' ) SELECT action_time as timestamp, actor_id, item_id, score, creator_actor_id, CASE WHEN score IS NULL AND content IS NOT NULL THEN CASE WHEN length(content) > 20 THEN substr(content, 1, 20) || '...' ELSE content END ELSE NULL END as content FROM ( -- Comments SELECT c.published as action_time, p.actor_id, c.id as item_id, NULL::smallint as score, creator.actor_id as creator_actor_id, c.content FROM comment c JOIN target_people p ON c.creator_id = p.id LEFT JOIN person creator ON c.creator_id = creator.id WHERE NOT c.deleted AND NOT c.removed UNION ALL -- Posts SELECT p.published as action_time, person.actor_id, p.id as item_id, NULL::smallint as score, NULL as creator_actor_id, NULL as content FROM post p JOIN target_people person ON p.creator_id = person.id WHERE NOT p.deleted AND NOT p.removed UNION ALL -- Comment votes SELECT cl.published as action_time, p.actor_id, cl.comment_id as item_id, cl.score, creator.actor_id as creator_actor_id, c.content FROM comment_like cl JOIN target_people p ON cl.person_id = p.id LEFT JOIN comment c ON cl.comment_id = c.id LEFT JOIN person creator ON c.creator_id = creator.id WHERE NOT c.deleted AND NOT c.removed ) combined_actions ORDER BY action_time DESC;So what it shows this time, is UniversalMonk using his sh.itjust.works account and lemmy.dbzer0.com account and nothing else for a few days, including most recently at Feb 12 at 23:27, and then at 23:36, switching to his r.nf account, which I haven’t blocked and which he doesn’t use much, and the first thing he did with it was comment on a post of mine.
The previous time was actually even a little more egregious. He was using his other accounts (including his lemm.ee one, before that one was banned), then at Feb 4 at 21:04 I made a comment in some thread mentioning the existence of a new alt of his, and he switched from other actions on his mainly-used accounts (most recently at 21:38) and then at 21:39 from his vegantheoryclub.org account, his first action on that account was to post this:
https://vegantheoryclub.org/comment/1670126
Then, when I semi-politely told him that he was evading the block (since it was pretty obvious to me that something along the lines of the above had happened, although I didn’t verify it at the time) and asked him not to, he played the exact same game of pretending he had just innocently stumbled across a post of mine and wanted to say something about it, and it was totally unreasonable for me to ask him not to.
There’s a reason he switches to an account I haven’t blocked right before leaving these comments. And yes, I know it sounds semi-psychotic that I went digging around in the database to verify that he is gaslighting you when he feigns total shock and surprise that he had left a comment under a post by me, pretending it was total coincidence. This is why he keeps getting banned on different instances: His behavior is really very strange, dishonest, and malicious in a kind of unique way.
Anyway, yes he was block evading on purpose to minorly irritate me. I’m happy to DM you proof excerpts or similar. I know it sounds kind of petty for me to go to this extent, but the other way to look at it is, this is the extent that someone has to go to if they want to not be communicated at by UnviersalMonk. He has a history of targeted harassment of users in the past (which is what got him banned from lemmy.world), and for me he seems to have chosen this kind of “gaslighting and hoping I’ll complain about it, so he can feign innocence and write a big italicized innocent message” approach.
Nice details