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To address your criticism of my script, a couple days ago one of the mods told me explicitly they were using it as evidence when talking to admins about the issue.

And they saw it was evidence of a bot account or a shared account specifically? The numbers did show the guy submitting duplicate posts and such - which lead jordanlund to apply a temporary ban under rule 3 of that magazine as per https://lemm.ee/post/45466523

And I also apologize if I somehow implied that the script was not useful or worth it. While cautioning how the data should be interpreted, I generally support such efforts. I have no issue with your script.

Why would I look into my database and provide you with additional numbers or provide you info on how you could accomplish this on your own, if I was against this effort, against your script, or opposing you?

Two days later, dude is banned. So yeah, the remaining tides turned.

I think it's more that additional context got revealed - as jordanlund pointed out, abusing DMs is a fast track to getting banned by the admins.

I think the script was a large part of it.

Agreed. Good data is important, and Lemmy in specific has a lack of good mod tools, so anything that can be done to address the gap is not only vitally important, but very necessary.

so the script I wrote for problem users like this will likely come in handy moving forward.

Absolutely.

I’m certain he’ll be back with alts,

On that note, I'd like to finish by explaining my own personal failings and why I might be a bit overly sensitive to someone getting banned without significant justification.

I first joined the fediverse after the API limits got announced on spez's site. But at the same time, my main account was permanently banned. Do you know why?

I sure don't. It came without warning and no one would response beyond the generic "look at our TOS to understand our rules"

I had alts that were unbanned so I could have continued, but I felt really unhappy with the lack of response. Ultimately I decided to delete all my alts and leave spez's site for good.

Later, their legal team did contact me, but even after that, no reason for the ban was ever given.

If a user is banned, they should be told why. And the rules should be made clear upfront before they join. I agree with the reasons why Monk was both temp and perma banned. These rules were clearly visible up front. But there was never an explicit rule that folks who post on /m/politics should only post Dem posts. That should be added to the rulebar of that magazine if that's going to be a rule going forward (and it's a rule I'd have no trouble complying with, just to be clear).

I just want what's fair.

I think it’s obvious I’ve thought a lot about this, if you have any context outside of these couple of comments here.

In fact, I could easily be missing additional context. I've always said I'm open to new evidence and changing my mind and opinion on that basis.

Which if you’ve been noticing this user at all, you would have a lot more context…

That's probably it. I haven't really put in the time and effort to follow this user around, see what he was posting in his own communities, etc.

Mods addressed it here, for example.

That I saw and responded to. For the record, I stated that

I agree with this.

That being the case, let's dig in to see where between the two of us, where we actually disagree.

In any case, the mods/admins finally decided that they agree with the extremely popular opinion you’re taking issue with.
Their stated reason is a little confusing, because they mention dms specifically.

I hope you can see the contradiction between your two statements. User was banned because of harassing DMs as per the modlog you referenced, https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&userId=9454261

I’ve been on the receiving end of that several times actually. Just a couple nights ago they were dming me

In fact this is an example of context that I can't see. For whatever reason that user didn't bother with me so I was unaware of this until folks starting mentioning it happening in the post reporting the first ban. I definitely agree that this is inappropriate and permaban worthy.

the extremely popular opinion you’re taking issue with.

Again, for the record, the opinion that I took issue with was that evidence showed this was a bot account or a shared account. I can't rule out that this is in fact the case, but I still don't see the evidence for it. Instead, it looks to me that this was a guy who got a permaban because he was too much of a jerk and couldn't be civil, leading him to eventually cross the line and break the TOS.

So I suspect after the influx of complaints they got, they almost had trouble even picking a specific explanation.

To me it seems the two bans were done by different folks (mods of a magazine vs admins of the instance) and had different reasons and evidence (temp ban in a magazine for duplicate post rule violation - for which your script, in identifying duplicates, would have been extremely helpful - vs permaban on the instance for violations in DMs - for which only the instance admins could confirm and verify).

I'll point out again, the explanation did not reference https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/#bot-usage-and-guidelines suggesting that the admins did not think the user was a bot account.

Also worth repeating: I don't disagree with either ban (though with the DMs I don't have the knowledge or context, but I'm good with trusting the instance admins of lemmy.world in this case). I just believe the reasoning is different.

The dude was 100% trying to piss people off and succeeded many, many, thousands of times.

That again dives into the context that I didn't have, like the DMs.

From what little I did see, I agreed with https://lemm.ee/post/45466523/15630878

Looking at some of their threads, the trolling type behavior seemed directed at users who were already fairly antagonistic to them to begin with, then it turned in to trolling back and forth all the way down.

Which doesn't justify it, but also explains why I've interacted a lot with that user and only once felt trolled. The user tried to be a mirror and reflect back what was given. Which is not appropriate social behaviour, but if we're banning a user for that reason, we should be open about it.

Also I agreed with https://lemm.ee/post/45466523/15631367

The only other “trolling” they did just seemed to be being anti-Democratic when a lot of people don’t like that
If this was /c/democrats, that could definitely be considered trolling, but /c/politics isn’t organized as a fan club.

Now, I don't mind if /m/politics becomes /c/democrats - I'm a lifelong democrat myself. But I also feel we should be open about these things. I shouldn't be banned from /m/conservatives because of a hidden rule that I wasn't not liberal enough in loving a universal basic income, for example.