I cannot repost what Flying Squid was posting here, because it involved highly disturbing and dangerous content, including:
Content Warning
Graphic content, harassment, self-harm, and suicidal ideation, which I reported immediately.
While this behavior is shocking, it’s not completely out of left field, as members of this community and platform will already be familiar with their behavior. Flying Squid has long been regarded as one of the least productive and most problematic mods on all of Lemmy, often picking fights and abusing their mod privileges. I view this change as a positive step for Squid, .world, and Lemmy as a whole.
Both of them are fucking insane. To devote this much energy to weirdos on the internet is deranged. They both need to devote their energy to better things, as evidenced by the fact that I had to press “show context” on their comment thread so many times I lost patience. I thought everyone on Lemmy was better than this. I dont care what the original cause of the disagreement was at this rate because EVERY step of the way, one of them couldve turned on do not disturb or gone to an alt account or SOMETHING. If either of you are seeing this, you can do better. Flying Squid specifically? Threatening suicide is the number one way to look immature (of every kind), especially over a stranger on the internet. Do. Better.
Edit: If someone could give a kind description of what the drama was even all about, I’d appreciate it. I can’t bear to dig through either of their histories.
And the sick thing is we have been CALLING THIS GUY OUT FOREVER. The .world admins are ABSOLUTELY partially at fault for this for letting this user have the power they have had for so fucking long. Sorry for shouting I’m upsetti. 🙃
+1 to your edit though. The content was so vile and triggering, I was not up to the task. So, fair warning to anyone who wants to further investigate a case where every party is so obviously in the wrong. Tread carefully.
The mods aren’t the only ones at fault either. He got so much support for this insanity. Call out his BS? Get asked for evidence. Provide text book evidence and it isn’t enough. Be clearly in the right from a PTB and downvoted 10:1. The one time he’s not technically being a PTB, but rather exhibiting symptoms of manic-depression, and people defend him saying ‘this post isn’t appropriate’ when the history makes it absolutely so. All you upvoting MFs in the past have been cheering a clearly insane person, so maybe do a personal inventory of what seems rational to you and double check reality eh?
I’d be cheering for his removal except he’s still mod of a few communities I’d like to participate in. L.W admins need to delete all his content and ban the IP address. I for one can’t wait to never see that name on Lemmy ever again and I know I’m not alone.
I’m not a fan of his moderation style, but isn’t the last paragraph a bit much?
It’d only be enforcing what probably is going to happen voluntarily anyways. My guess is it will be months before he uses the account again because he’ll want the drama of ‘did he do it?’ to play out.
If I thought it wasn’t too much I wouldn’t have said it, and you saying it is literally supports the first paragraph (edit: which makes it a hilarious joke if that was your intention). He shouldn’t be on Lemmy. The damage he’s done over time is incalculable and what good would come of letting him back on? Besides it’s not like even that could stop him anyways.
What the fuck? What is this comment?
I definitely think, at this point, that there is a little cabal of people who are devoted to harassing FlyingSquid, not just about his moderation but on a personal level, and they aren’t stopping even when it sounds like he is clearly mentally struggling right now. That’s fucked up. Don’t do that.
You said “call out his BS, get asked for evidence, show evidence, it isn’t enough” along with a lot of personal attacks towards FlyingSquid. What is your evidence of him being a PTB? Literally the only thing I have seen after asking this question a few times is that he sometimes argues with people, and a few months ago made a mistake on a report and didn’t realize that multiple copies of the same message were all different reports about duplicated spam content, IDK, some weird honest-mistake situation like that. And he’s rude to people sometimes. Nothing about banning people unnecessarily, or setting arbitrary rules for content removal, or anything like that, which is normally what I think of as PTB. Not “arguing.”
What is your evidence for him being a PTB? I promise, it’ll be “enough,” I’ll take it seriously if there is any.
Definitely. I haven’t seen evidence (though I might be wrong) that it’s any more than one user with a bunch of discuss.online alts. One of their alts DMd me immediately after Squid’s removal saying “you’re welcome” as though I am thankful for harassment just because I don’t like the guy. Honestly I hope this user doing the harassment gets IP banned. Imagine taking pride in provoking someone’s mental health. Freakish.
Thanks for pointing this out
Update: some pointed pointed about the ban from this user 5 months ago: https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&actionType=ModBanFromCommunity&userId=580006
I don’t have much more context unfortunately
What, return2ozma, the precursor to UniversalMonk? That’s the PTB is that FlyingSquid banned him?
He’s calmed down recently, but he used to be pretty spammy and unapologetic about it. He was finally banned “officially” because he basically said that he was seeking out specifically anti-Biden stuff and posting a steady stream of it to make sure that side of the story got some heavy airtime on Lemmy, as if there was a shortage of it. I’m not convinced that that should be the final straw in terms of handing someone a ban, but there was broad agreement from the mod team that he should be banned.
It also, as far as I can tell, wasn’t FlyingSquid that banned him. Unless it was from an alt used for admin, or something?
https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&actionType=ModBanFromCommunity&modId=477305&userId=580006
Edit: Update: Here’s all the actions that FS took against return2ozma. Looks pretty legit to me.
https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&modId=477305&userId=580006
TIL, then I’m surprised he didn’t get banned earlier.
Wait, aren’t bans impossible to trace to the mod who did them? I remember this being something to avoid mod harassment
For what it’s worth, I just had a look at !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com and couldn’t find any documented example of actual power tripping naming him. Maybe the posts about him didn’t use his nickname. Maybe there was nothing about him in the first place. Definitely not a clear case.
Edit: https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&actionType=ModBanFromCommunity&userId=580006, see other comment
I’ve directly asked a few different people who claimed he was a PTB what it was that he did, and it’s always some kind of bizarrely hyped-up misdemeanor. Every time. Not even “he banned this person who arguably wasn’t actually a troll, but it’s a gray area” but literally like “he sent this person a rude comment while they were in an argument OH THE HUMANITY.” It’s actually always the same two or three examples from four to six months ago. And they’re always incredibly vocal and emotional about how terrible he is.
I’m not trying to get involved in lemmy.world moderator drama. I haven’t even looked into this latest thing with him posting self-harm things. But I’ve formed a much more firm opinion, just as of today, that there is some kind of organized effort to drum him out of being a moderator, which seems to be succeeding.
To be fair, even if there’s no evidence of actual power tripping (e.g. banning users without reasons), the way he interacts with users is still not ideal as a moderator.
Using an alt to moderate would already help in that regard, as he wouldn’t be able to threaten “I’ll ban you” in the middle of an argument
Recent example: https://lemmy.world/comment/14488436
In this case the user indeed seems to be trolling, but just banning them without further comment would probably more effective than commenting like he did, which can contribute to the PTB reputation
https://biglemmowski.win/post/3776122/6537167
I already talked about that one, and found your explanation for why that was a horrible thing for him to say pretty unconvincing, but sure, I’ll look into it more. Who was he talking to? Where was this so I can see the comments context? I already gave my reaction but maybe if I looked at the full context, I would feel differently, and it’s so old a comment that it’s not on my instance and obviously I’m not going to look through 4+ months of comments to find it and see the context for myself.
Lemmy’s search is quite good: https://lemmy.world/comment/11470634
I agree he shouldn’t be moderating any community. But IP banning him from the whole site seems too much.
I’m fine with looking at this stuff. It seems FS is having a mental health episode, and this is the result. It’s not drama.
FS does have BPD if i recall. I’m no professional on BPD, but this might be related.
I honestly feel bad for him, i never hated him but it must be tiring for an entire community to hate you, while you’re already depressed; and then shit like this happens.
I hope he’s okay.
Only if you take it seriously. I’ve had entire threads/posts started just to try to get the fediverse to ban me. But sounds like Squid was taking it way too seriously. He needs help. I personally laugh it off–but then plenty accuse me of being mentally ill. So ya can never really tell.
https://sh.itjust.works/post/31017252
BPD as in bipolar or borderline
Removed by mod