this post was submitted on 01 May 2026
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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.

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[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (8 children)

We have dedicated anti ai trolls who go and get banned from dozen of genai comms, make alts then go and get banned again. We have serial harassers who make dozen of accounts and go and spew bigotry. Your methodology is so flawed, it's laughable. Did you even check the age of the accounts being banned?The amount of comments? The amount of downvotes? Cross-reference with other instance bans? Check if their own instance banned them? Did you have any amount of rigor before throwing out your half-assed conclusions?

There's lies, damn lies, and statistics...

[–] rimu@piefed.social 26 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Average age of accounts being banned, grouped by instance:

image

SELECT
    i.domain AS instance,
    AVG(EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM (NOW() - u.created)) / (60*60*24)) AS avg_account_age_days
FROM mod_log ml
INNER JOIN "user" u ON ml.target_user_id = u.id
INNER JOIN instance i ON u.instance_id = i.id
WHERE ml.action = 'ban_user'
AND i.domain IN ('lemmy.ml', 'lemmy.dbzer0.com', 'lemmy.world', 'piefed.social',
        'lemmy.blahaj.zone', 'pawb.social', 'lemmy.ca', 'sh.itjust.works',
        'lemmy.zip', 'feddit.org', 'programming.dev', 'discuss.tchncs.de',
        'sopuli.xyz', 'lemmy.today', 'slrpnk.net', 'beehaw.org', 'jlai.lu')
GROUP BY i.domain
ORDER BY avg_account_age_days DESC;

lemmy.dbzer0.com is towards the young side but not really out of the ordinary. It's the instances like lemmy.today, lemmy.zip and piefed.social that are unusual.

[–] rimu@piefed.social 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Average number of downvotes (lower attitude is a higher ratio of downvotes to upvotes. Always 1 on instances with no downvotes) when banned:

img

dbzer0 has 0.68 which is the same as lemmy.world or lemmy.ca.

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Does this take into account the account age when they got banned? You can clearly see that older instances are on the higher level. Mate really, this shit ain't easy, and jumping to publish with flawed methodology like this just comes off as a hit piece

[–] Goferking0@ttrpg.network 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It really just looks like pulling all account ages not the ones getting banned. Which makes perfect sense when trying to make other instances look worse to discredit one's.

[–] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Nah, WHERE ml.action = 'ban_user' but that isn’t showing the age as of the ban, but the age as of now.

[–] Goferking0@ttrpg.network 3 points 1 week ago

that isn’t showing the age as of the ban

Exactly

[–] Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

We have dedicated anti ai trolls

What even is an "anti ai troll"? Is Big John Connor paying people to go to your instance and downvote AI posts? Or is it just a made up buzzword you use to legitimise banning people for downvoting stuff they don't like?

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Na, there is one dude who runs a bunch of AI comms and if you ever downvote a post they will ban you from 5 or 6 communities you have never interacted with.

They did a post a whole ago bragging about how to make a successful AI community he bans everyone who downvotes them, and even went and banned people from their communities who downvotes that post in an entirely unrelated community.

[–] will_steal_your_username@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

mystic mushroom is not a dude! Ze uses ze/zir pronouns

[–] mathemachristian@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Ze and draconicNEO are also victims of trolls making large numbers of alt accounts impersonating them or harassing them that need to get banned as well

[–] snooggums@piefed.world 2 points 1 week ago

I figured they meant Jet, who had an automated script that would ban from a bunch of communities if you down voted a single post in any of them and didn't comment.

lmao at these attempts at manufacturing consent. L.w desperate to push for a narrative that would just let them defederate already

[–] Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It's also at least partially explained by the fact we frequently take ban actions for reports of transphobia, or of zionism, for example. Whereas that only sometimes happens on the bigger instances who tend to draw their lines in different places, to put it delicately.

[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 1 week ago (2 children)

"But it's anti free speech to let people spew hate speech! You're just ban happy!"

[–] Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 1 week ago (2 children)

They forget we are federated with hexbear too. That probably accounts for quite a few of them! lmao

[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 week ago

They forget about it until it becomes convenient for them.

[–] Fu@hostux.social 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

@eugenevdebs the freedom of association includes the freedom to not associate.

[–] Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It doesn't give one person license to make that decision for thousands of users, in a paternalistic way. Ask the damn users. Otherwise it's nothing but admins treating their instances like personal fiefdoms.

[–] Fu@hostux.social 1 points 1 week ago

@Flatworm7591 this is one advantage decentralized platforms/protocols like NOSTR have over polycentric platforms/protocols like Lemmy/ActivityPub

[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

as devil's advocate i don't think account karma should be a factor. downvotes would only be an extension of how exclusionary the instance is. dbzer0's moderation is quite democratic, after all

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Yeah, It's a weak point anyway. While the graphs aren't detailed research, there's also no reason to believe dbzer0's perspective on the same network includes 8 times as many new users as LW for some reason. Or all the users in their communities have 8x worse karma for some external reasons. So we probably need further research.

[–] snooggums@piefed.world 9 points 1 week ago (2 children)

We have dedicated anti ai trolls who go and get banned from dozen of genai comms

This is skewed by the mods who just ban people from their dozens of AI slop communities for a couple downvotes for stuff that came through the All feed.

[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This is skewed by the mods who just ban people from their dozens of AI slop communities for a couple downvotes for stuff that came through the All feed.

You don't see it unless you go to db0 or look for it.

You can also block communities if you don't like them.

[–] snooggums@piefed.world 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Or you use New or Scaled and All, which a lot more people do than the mods think.

[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Then just block them if you hate the communities? You don't have to downvote everything in there.

[–] snooggums@piefed.world 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)
[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Then just block them if you hate the communities?

You're not even banned from there, which suggests this is an alt. But you are banned for transphobia. https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/modlog?userId=22428510

[–] snooggums@piefed.world 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Someone downvoting a couple of things in the All feed becsuse that is how many feeds work to filter to what you like Is a reasonable reaction even if it doesn't work that way here.

Why are you so upset about a couple of downvotes?

[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago

Why are you offended about communities you don't like?

[–] TanteRegenbogen@feddit.org 2 points 1 week ago

cough mushroom cough

[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Did you even check the age of the accounts being banned?The amount of comments? The amount of downvotes? Cross-reference with other instance bans? Check if their own instance banned them? Did you have any amount of rigor before throwing out your half-assed conclusions?

The answer is to all is no. Why bother doing research when you can make shit up and doctor photos!

Can't wait until Rimu claims Db0 had to be defed for not tolerating racism and bigotry with slander.

[–] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

𝕿𝖔 𝖇𝖊 𝕱𝖆𝖎𝖗, it’s not doctored photos. It’s bad selects with cherry picked results.

[–] ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago

The doctored photos thing is so last week.

[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Oh feddit, with .world and Rimu supported an edited screenshot. Rimu still hasn't apologized for spreading it.

[–] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Oooh, we talking about a different but related situation. Makes sense.

[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago

Sorry for the confusion!

[–] frog_reborn@mstdn.social 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

@db0 @rimu

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

How is asking a question "telling lies"? He was explicitly being open ended about it and didn't draw any actual conclusions. So you treating it as an attack seems like more of a you thing?

[–] mathemachristian@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's a loaded question. It already has made assumptions about them being "prolific banners", without investigating what the bans actually are. It's like asking "what about fr0g@mstdn.social makes them downvote everything they see?", not that I know that you are, does that make sense?

[–] frog_reborn@mstdn.social -1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

@mathemachristian

Not really? If it were factually true that I downvote everything (as it seems factually true that dbzero bans a lot) it's reasonable to ask what's going on there.

I do agree the post is slightly loaded, but the initial "Which instances have the most ban-happy moderators?" is probably the better demonstration of that (and slightly defused by ending with a imo more reasonable open-ended question)

[–] mathemachristian@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It doesn't seem to be a neutral observation and curious inquiry when viewed from the perspective that lemmy.world threatened to defederate dbzer0 just last week https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/a4b437ae-f00b-454e-bfd2-fcee5dd152e7.webp

Like if I called for your banning last week and now I'm posting stats about your voting behavior painting a certain light that you are much more likely to downvote than others. And then just kind of go, "whats up with that?"