I did some analysis of the modlog and found this:

V8lPrxY1qxcISLe.png

Ok, bigger instances ban more often. Not surprising, because they have more communities and more users and more trouble. But hang on, dbzer0 isn’t a very big instance. What happens if we do a ratio of bans vs number of users?

vyfUNYTrX9pHQeR.png

Ok, so lemmy.ml, dbzer0 and pawb are issue an outsized amount of bans for the number of users they have… But surely the number of communities the instance hosts is going to mean they have to ban more? Bans are used to moderate communities, not just to shield their user-base from the outside. Let’s look at the number of bans per community hosted:

Yrc7TofOr88SeGt.png

Seems like dbzer0 really loves to ban. Even more than the marxists and the furries! What is it about dbzer0 that makes them such prolific banners?

Raw-ish numbers and calculations are in this spreadsheet if anyone wants to make their own charts.

  • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
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    3 months ago

    the decision to graph per-community (i’ll call those "commag"s) doesn’t make sense to me. it seems to me like a bad approximation for lifetime total users that doesn’t control for either instance attitudes on commag creation or troll account registration (these usually don’t create communities). i’m unacquainted with pawb but i wouldn’t think they’re very ban-happy, and the fact that these graphs show them as twice as ban-happy per-community as, and a bit more ban happy than ml should tell you this isn’t very good methodology.

    it seems more like dbzer0 and pawb don’t create many communities (but don’t close stale ones either, unlike .world), which makes sense as the ones that do exist are quite focused and targetted to the instance userbase.

    • HubertManne@piefed.social
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      3 months ago

      I would not be surprised thought is pawb does not draw more intentional trolls. Its like the one out group that is kinda socially acceptable to make light of their thing.

      • Arthur Besse@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        I was surprised to find that dbzer0 has 290 communities.

        I guess they have 290 communities which are federated to the instance where you’re collecting these stats; according to dbzer0’s front page they actually have 332 communities. (Also your screenshot shows 1337 communities on lemmy.ml but we actually have 4.74K, and 3919 for .world which actually has 13.1K.)

        • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
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          3 months ago

          that’s how it is by default for some reason. i haven’t added to me dictionary either and that’s how it shows in libreoffice calc. it seems like it just doesn’t squiggly any “word” with numbers in it.

          flippant antagonism is the worst thing against discourse on the fediverse and we can do our part

      • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
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        3 months ago

        i don’t see how that has bearing on what i said lol. i argued about not creating many new communities and not closing inactive communities. the last new community i heard of were the two or three replacements for feddit, and just the 41st top community (41st since I estimate the photon pager has 40 items per page by default, and i clicked the top of page 2) has not have posts in over a month, let alone mod actions.

      • Grail@multiverse.soulism.net
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        3 months ago

        Yeah, without any evidence. All of the evidence that I’m a “troll” is pictures of Me saying people should vote against Trump.

        • MrNobody@quokk.au
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          3 months ago

          It’s not hard to find examples of you talking to yourself about yourself from your alt accounts/multiple personalities.

          • Grail@multiverse.soulism.net
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            3 months ago

            It shouldn’t be hard to find examples of My multiple personalities talking to each other on Discord, because it’s not a secret that I’m plural. I’ve even written articles about plurality on My blog. Here, I’ll show My system’s member list on pluralkit:

            image

            If you’re talking about the accusations that random Lemmy users are My multiple personalities, well either I’ve got a serious case of switch amnesia I don’t know about, which doesn’t make any sense because My system’s origin isn’t dissociative, or the accusations are a load of bull crap.

            • MrNobody@quokk.au
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              3 months ago

              This right here is you talking about yourself, your alt “Mechoselachia” has zero other posts in this thread and is replying to say that something you said in your Grail account was actually them talking.

              You also rant about how psychologists tried to help you but they were going to ‘remove’ your Sonic personality and you stopped getting professional help

              image

              This is you having more conversations with your alt accounts/multiple personalities.

              image

              Please stop your constant harassing of dbzer0 because they couldn’t stand your shit and get some help again.

  • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
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    3 months ago

    What happens if we do a ratio of bans vs number of users?

    We get a graph that compares two unrelated values?

    Unless this data is purely internal instance user bannings, ‘Per capita’ has no effective meaning. As the pawb.social case shows: it’s all one user with multiple communities who regularly bans waves of sockpuppet brigades. Even the people catching strays or otherwise goes to show it has nothing to do with ‘the furries’.

    Likewise I wager the SJW bans are effectively one community banning essentially one user who periodically spams accounts.

    What is it about dbzer0 that makes them such prolific banners?

    That whole painfully public fued against db0 over their stance on zionism may have something to do with it. Like the fake neo-nazi shit being spread against db0 that was just going on this week. It’s a wild question to have in light of all that, quite frankly.

  • OpenStars@piefed.social
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    3 months ago

    Wow this is really interesting.

    Actually this might be a great time to ask you for a feature request: lately I’ve been banned from SO MANY AI communities located on dbzer0, the trouble with that being that I’ve literally never heard of any of these, much less interacted with any of them, presumably even with a downvote.

    Is this “harassment” then, to be preemptively banned from something on some other server that I had no intention of ever going to? What if someone were to create 10 communities a day and ban someone from them all? I guess that one would get noticed and shut down, but I would not put it past an AI content generator to do just this sort of thing, if it were given the ability to do so.

    Anyway, perhaps those notifications could be silenced unless I’ve ever commented or at least voted in the community that I am being banned from? I don’t need to know or care about something that I have zero interest in - these unsolicited bans are spam.

    • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      You were targeted by draconic_neo and mystic mushroom.

      They have created a bunch of different communities across the fediverse so they can spam people’s modlogs with bullshit harassment.

      See my mod history, it’s exactly the same pattern.

      A huge amount of bans all within a few seconds of each other, all from communities modded by draconic_neo or mystic mushroom, if you examine the individual communities you find that they have no activity.

      They only exist to spam people’s mod log with nonsense because they can’t press the downvote button hard enough.

      • TanteRegenbogen@feddit.org
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        3 months ago

        I am also sure DraconicNEO has at least an alt that has been active in the days ghe main account showed no activity and when the main is active the alt is inactive and it is for multiple day long periods.

        Also the rhetoric and going overboard with personal attacks is the same too.

        But yeah, they can be very petty. They banned me from their dead communities once, then when beefing with me, they unbanned me from their communities only to ban me immediately again. Like what was the point?

        • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Like what was the point?

          They were bumping the bans to the top of your mod history so their nonsense is the first thing anyone reads.

      • OpenStars@piefed.social
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        3 months ago

        If a normal person were to call me a troll many times in a row, I would strongly consider blocking them. But I wonder if blocking these people would have any effect upon this spam?

        I also find it the height of irony that we are all told by dbzer0 admins that we should strive hard to understand, since those mods must surely have their reasons for doing what they did, whereas if e.g. Lemmy.World were to block calls for outright murder of themselves personally, then all of a sudden moderation should no longer be allowed to moderate that violent rhetoric spammed at them. One rule for thee while another, different rule for me…

        Also, I am somewhat anti-AI, but not to the extent of trolling anyone. Though do facts matter anymore - i.e. have these two mods been kicked off of dbzer0 for their false accusations, sent preemptively out to half the Threadiverse?

        • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          I also find it the height of irony that we are all told by dbzer0 admins that we should strive hard to understand, since those mods must surely have their reasons for doing what they did

          That would be a fair argument except for the fact that the ‘communities’ that they ‘moderate’ have zero actual activity. Some have posts by draconic, some have exactly zero posts (and the community is locked). They’re just squatting communities with popular Reddit counterparts.

          Though do facts matter anymore - i.e. have these two mods been kicked off of dbzer0 for their false accusations, sent preemptively out to half the Threadiverse?

          Their dbzer0 account is still active, with comments 3 days ago.

  • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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    3 months ago

    I’m not even a real instance anymore, how did I make the list 😆

    But also, you should see the local numbers haha

    lemmy=# select count(distinct other_person_id) from mod_ban where mod_person_id in (1, 2,288);
     count 
    -------
      9792
    (1 row)
    

    I wonder what happens when I hit 10,000?

    • slazer2au@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      You are there because when you ban someone on an instance level, you also ban them on a community level, which inflates your numbers.

      DB0 does the same thing.

      • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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        3 months ago

        I used to do that but once the backend added that feature I removed that step from the automod script. Basically it was to prevent the communities here from being unmoddable on remote instances.

      • Ada@piefed.blahaj.zone
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        3 months ago

        That’s just how lemmy works when you ban with content deletion. It needs to work that way so that the content removal for content posted to local communities federates correctly

  • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    I don’t really see a problem with an instance banning large numbers of users.

    The ability to make exclusive spaces is part of the fediverse’s design. Suppose a queer space kept getting flooded with homophobic users, or a Muslim space got a bunch of people shitting on their religion, or something like that. Naturally, such spaces would have a higher number of bans. That doesn’t necessarily show an “echo chamber” especially since users of such communities may be federated with other communities. People complain about censorship on .ml creating an “echo chamber” but half the time I’m arguing or discussing things on other turfs like .world.

    The idea that those sorts of enclaves or exclusive spaces shouldn’t exist, as is implied with the framing here, is to impose what us evil, dastardly “authoritarians” sometimes call “the tyranny of structurelessness.” No one would have a space to discuss things outside of the most prominent, hegemonic view, which would more easily sideline and overwhelm other perspectives.

    As an example, I once frequented an utter cesspool on Reddit called r/CapitalismVSocialism, which was created and promoted by An-caps and where that perspective was prominent (though not exclusive). I found it was virtually impossible to have a discussion with anyone about anything, because even if you weren’t talking to an An-cap, they were always there waiting to latch on to some turn of phrase and use it against you, and everyone was too preoccupied with countering their nonsense to reach any kind of high-level discussion. I eventually got fed up with that and found that my beliefs were more challenged by going to explicitly leftist spaces because we had shared assumptions and were speaking the same language, and didn’t feel the need to be as defensive. I was never going to be convinced of anything by the An-caps and all talking to them accomplished was pissing me off.

    The fediverse’s design is actually quite brilliant, because you can have a space to discuss things substantively among like-minded people while at the same time interacting with other groups.

  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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    3 months ago

    its so funny how people complained about blahaj, the trans instance yet they dont ban very high at all, i suspect its alot of transphobic comments being directed towards the instance that are getting people banned.

    • Salamence@mander.xyz
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      3 months ago

      if you look at the modlog of every “blahaj is an authoritarian instance” user you will find they either keep misgendering people, talked over trans people and refused to be corrected or did things like denouncing neopronouns everytime

      • BananaIsABerry@lemmy.zip
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        3 months ago

        I am banned from a bunch of blahaj because I said that they were as bad as ml once. Never made any transphobic comments (nor am I, for the record).

        I was not surprised to see them so high up.

        • Ada@piefed.blahaj.zone
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          3 months ago

          I am banned from a bunch of blahaj because I said that they were as bad as ml once.

          No, you were banned from blahaj because you were arguing that DEI is bad, and that there is no such thing as stolen land, because “everyone does it”

          • BananaIsABerry@lemmy.zip
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            3 months ago

            First off, that was months ago now. Why would you spend your time doing that?

            Second, that’s probably a terrible paraphrasing of what I actually said and without any of the context around it. I don’t think DEI is bad. I do think everyone should have equal opportunities regardless of gender, sexuality, and race.

            Finally, I truly do believe there’s no such thing as stolen land though, at least in the context of the discussion from what I recall. Your unnuanced summary, “because everyone does it” , has been shortened to further push your attempt at making me look bad.

            This is why I said blahaj is as bad as ml. Bandwagoning, echo chamber communities that don’t want to hear an opinion that isn’t fully in line with the Correct Opinion©™®. I don’t even think my opinions were that controversial.

      • Jorunn (she/her)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        3 months ago

        Yeah from memory most of our instance bans are gatekeeping and transphobia (and spam) which are the things we are the strictest on. We also notice that many transphobes are also bigoted or inflammatory in other ways as well, which makes sense as you wouldn’t notice someone with bigoted views unless they were very willing to voice those views.

  • PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 months ago

    “Hey everyone, look at my juvenile attempts at statistics! Look how obviously bad some people seem when I do a shit job at it while ALSO failing to apply any context of the domain being studied to my thoughts, let alone ‘calculations’ and conclusions!”

    This is a terrible metric from the fucking jump. And you did a shit job of it from there. Fuck you, truly.

    [Edit: love how ya closed with “so who’s weirder guyz, the marxists, the furries, or the db0s?!” Just painfully obvious how you started the whole shebang, you hate all of the groups lol]

  • Cataphract@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    I don’t know why but the way this post was written made me read it in Tim Pool’s voice. Guess I gotta lay off majority report videos for a while now. Glad to see push back and acknowledgement in the comments that this data is irrelevant. It’s neat, but way too many factors and stretching of meanings which makes this a worthless analysis (with a very blatant bias in the reporting).

  • realcaseyrollins@hilariouschaos.com
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    3 months ago

    Ah I remember dbzer0, he led a harassment campaign against a Lemmy instance I used to run because he didn’t like some news articles I was posting.

  • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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    3 months ago

    I feel like this makes sense for very politically focused spaces, especially for less “mainstream” ideas like db0’s anarchist communities, just cause not every community will allow arguments about their stance, and even ones that do will see more arguments turn into flame wars and incivility than communities for which there simply isnt as much for heated arguments to start over, especially when the arguments arent always something “new” to that space and might just be someone from outside noticing and saying “your ideology is bad because [insert reason that community has probably heard enough before to be tired of]”.

    Am a bit curious about why pawb is so high though, Ive not really noticed much of the hate that furries sometimes would get on other platforms (I guess it could be because theyre all banned but I doubt it, because that wouldnt hide it from communities outside of pawb). The instance administration has always felt rather reasonable whenever Ive seen like instance announcements or defederation decisions or such too, at least by my standards. Itd be interesting maybe to see what communities these bans tend to come from and what reasons are given, just looking through the modlog doesnt seem to help much there given that it doesnt seem to let one sort by instance.

      • Muad'dib@sopuli.xyz
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        3 months ago

        Draconic NEO mods a lot of dbzer0 and pawb.social communities, and every time he bans someone, he bans them on ALL of his communities. That’s the cause of the pawb.social data.

        And everyone who complains about him turns out to be a transphobe. Right after they make a yepowertrippinbastards post with a valid grievance, they suddenly pivot to making tons of alt accounts to harass him with transphobic hate speech for no reason. It’s super convenient for him that all his critics turn out to be transphobes. I guess he’s a good guy after all, since all of those random people with valid complaints turned out to be hateful lunatics.

            • Blaze@piefed.zip
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              3 months ago

              Wait a sec, isn’t Draconic victim of alt accounts harassment? Maybe I missed something

              • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                3 months ago

                They are. The person you’re replying to has wording that is implying these are sock puppets from draconic who uses them as a false flag attack

                • Blaze@piefed.zip
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                  3 months ago

                  Interesting, I read “they” in that comment as the harassers, not DN

                  Obviously the whole sentence changes depending on that