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?

  • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
    41·
    12 hours ago

    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.

    • UniversalMonk@r.nfEnglish
      12·
      5 hours ago

      federating out block lists

      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.

      • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
        2·
        4 hours ago
        • Here’s me, at 9:04 on Feb 4, mentioning you: https://ponder.cat/post/1520414/1734558
        • Also there is you, at 9:10, replying to me (which I didn’t see because I have that alt blocked): https://ponder.cat/post/1520414/1734616
        • I’m not sure how much I can say without violating some kind of privacy line. But, at 9:38, you were interacting with my content from a little while before any of this had happened, from your sh.itjust.works account.
        • Then, at 9:39, you switched to your vegantheoryclub account and the first thing you did was comment under a post I’d made a couple of hours prior: https://ponder.cat/comment/1734903

        Not sure how much clearer I can make it. I would love to be able to block and move on, that’s what I did. You are committed to not respecting the block, taking actions from new alts which will send me notifications, and then lying in this strange fashion about it. I understand why you’re pretending that’s not what you did. But I’m happy to provide proof in the form of screenshots or anything else. Or, any admin can verify it.

        You are allowed to be here, sure. Everyone is. You’re not allowed to violate the rules of the space. And, when someone’s sufficiently unrepentant about not respecting the rules of the space, they lose their right to be here. Your commitment to going beyond “saying what you want” and instead, among other things, starting to harass and irritate other users deliberately when they exercise their right to say what they want, is exactly what keeps losing you accounts. That’s the system protecting itself.

        • UniversalMonk@r.nfEnglish
          11·
          4 hours ago

          I understand why you’re pretending that’s not what you did.

          I’m not pretending anything. Dude, I have no way of knowing of how you block me or don’t block me or what names you have blocked or what instances you have blocked.

          You have taken your “minor” annoyance and made it this huge thing like I am fucking stalking you which is false.

          You have all the fucking stats on me and where I post and how I post, then you can fucking see how little you and I actually interact.

          I alternate through my accounts on different instances regularly. Each instance has a different vibe. That’s the fucking fediverse. I’m sorry you don’t like that I can do that.

          So for the love of whatever gods you like, please come up with a #wildcard script that will just block every instance of my name. I have no reason to follow you. But you post a LOT. So our paths will cross.

          I have never harassed you. Stop saying that. Responding to a post that you made in a public forum is not harassing. You post in communities that i post it. That’s the fucking internet.

          IF I WANTED TO BLOCK/BAN EVADE, I WOULD COME UP WITH A DIFFERENT USERNAME TO DO IT! Which have not done.

          Which brings up another subject, so I have a request. Since you seem to know where and how I post and every fucking second of the day I am online, can you please please please, address all the people who say that I am multiple people, that I live in russia, that I post 24 hours a day, and can you inform Draconic [email protected] and [email protected] that I’m not the alts that they say I am? lol

          Motherfuck, you all have gone batshit crazy over my name. You all have spent more time talking about me than the 10 seconds it would have taken to just fucking block me.

          So use your little script program thingy, write some sort of wildcard name search script, put my name in it and boom! Every single instance of my username will be blocked even when I create a new one, and you can stop obsessing about me.

          I’m not leaving Lemmy. I have just as much right as you do to be here. Even if I am on a 100 instances. Write your little wildcard name blocker and be done with it.

          And again, I’m not the fucking point of your original post that this thread is about! This is all off-topic. lol

    • remotelove@lemmy.ca
      41·
      12 hours ago

      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.