Ye Power Trippin' Bastards

1929 readers

19 users here now

This is a community in the spirit of "Am I The Asshole" where people can post their own bans from lemmy or reddit or whatever and get some feedback from others whether the ban was justified or not.

Sometimes one just wants to be able to challenge the arguments some mod made and this could be the place for that.

Posting Guidelines

All posts should follow this basic structure:

Which mods/admins were being Power Tripping Bastards?
What sanction did they impose (e.g. community ban, instance ban, removed comment)?
Provide a screenshot of the relevant modlog entry (don’t de-obfuscate mod names).
Provide a screenshot and explanation of the cause of the sanction (e.g. the post/comment that was removed, or got you banned).
Explain why you think its unfair and how you would like the situation to be remedied.

Rules

Post only about bans or other sanctions that you have received from a mod or admin.
Don’t use private communications to prove your point. We can’t verify them and they can be faked easily.
Don’t deobfuscate mod names from the modlog with admin powers.
Don’t harass mods or brigade comms. Don’t word your posts in a way that would trigger such harassment and brigades.
Do not downvote posts if you think they deserved it. Use the comment votes (see below) for that.
You can post about power trippin’ in any social media, not just lemmy. Feel free to post about reddit or a forum etc.
If you are the accused PTB, while you are welcome to respond, please do so within the relevant post.
Keep the comments in YPTB posts about the moderation action itself, not about the general topic in which the moderation took place.

Expect to receive feedback about your posts, they might even be negative.

Make sure you follow this instance's code of conduct. In other words we won't allow bellyaching about being sanctioned for hate speech or bigotry.

YPTB matrix channel: For real-time discussions about bastards or to appeal mod actions in YPTB itself.

Some acronyms you might see.

PTB - Power-Tripping Bastard: The commenter agrees with you this was a PTB mod.
YDI - You Deserved It: The commenter thinks you deserved that mod action.
YDM new - You Deserved More: The commenter thinks you got off too lightly.
BPR - Bait-Provoked Reaction: That mod probably overreacted in charged situation, or due to being baited.
CLM - Clueless Mod: The mod probably just doesn't understand how their software works.

Relevant comms

!fediverselore@lemmy.ca

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com

unruffled@anarchist.nexus

124

c/politics on lemmy.world Moderators dismiss Erin Reed, the most prominent trans rights journalist in the United States, as a random anonymous personal blogger. (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 days ago by WoodScientist@lemmy.world to c/yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com

92 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I made an admittedly editorialized post, but that is allowed. There is no rule against editorializing titles. The link was to this excellent story by Erin Reed:

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/iowa-dem-josh-turek-releases-anti

The story documents the efforts of Democrat-in-Name-Only Josh Turek to graft Republican anti-trans policies and bigotry into the Democratic party. The (supposed) automoderator flagged the post and removed it for being a "substack post." However, it was likely a manual removal as I would expect automoderator to work quickly, while this was up for hours.

The rule cited was:

"Social Media adjacent hosts like Substack are allowed, but ONLY if they tie back to a company/subsidiary. No personal or friend group blogs and no self-promotion. Articles should be worth reading."

This article clearly meets this requirement. Erin in the Morning is an entire journalistic operation with multiple employees. I'm sure they're incorporated in some form. Erin Reed is the most prominent trans rights journalist in the US, probably in the world. She's nationally famous, has won numerous national journalism awards, and has a Wikipedia page. She frequently appears on national media and speaks at events of all kinds. She is one of the most prominent transgender people in the United States.

But apparently if you're trans, to c/politics, regardless of what you accomplish, you can never be a real journalist, only a blogger. Real journalism is for cis people only.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] kip@piefed.zip 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

not familiar enough to judge whether 'blogger' is unfair but in any case she does appear to be a slopmonger as detailed here: https://theneedlenews.com/2026/09/erin-reeds-ai-journalism-career/

[–] TRAHR@quokk.au 7 points 1 day ago

The Needle isn’t a great source. And that article has been well known to be AI written.

From the trans discourse I see, everyone has called out The Needle for this attack. The owner has a personal issue with Erin, IIRC it was from being knocked back from an earlier offer to work with her.

[–] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

[Reed's] litany of errors in 2026 includes deadnaming and misgendering a competing trans journalist who broke a story for one of her competitors! This was seven months ago, and the deadname is still up as of writing.

This wasn’t just any story. It was Nate Zuke’s first article that we can find. Many of you have already read it: ‘She’d Never Changed Her Gender Marker. Kansas Invalidated Her License Anyway.’

It was excellent reporting; arguably one of the most important trans news stories written by a trans journalist this year.

And it was Erin Reed who deadnamed him to her audience of hundreds of thousands.

It is unclear how Erin Reed would have found Nate Zuke’s deadname without AI. As of Sep. 2026, we could find no bylines under his deadname, either at the outlet he published this story in, or anywhere else. We found nothing in his public presence that would connect him to his deadname. We also found no public presence under his deadname whatsoever.

Archived versions of Assigned Media’s coverage from the day it went live, as well as posts by other journalists tagging Nate Zuke who broke the story, show that this story was never published under any name other than ‘Nate Zuke’.

We checked across the internet, and used three different search engines. The only documented proof of the existence of anyone with that name is from public court records in a different state from where he is known to live, and where we have no reason to believe he has ever lived in.

One explanation is that this name was somewhere in the AI training database, and that it (accurately or not) attributed that name to Nate Zuke.

Another explanation is that an LLM hallucinated his gender, and made up a woman's name for him. This is a documented problem with some LLMs, with this error even appearing from cis people's names.

Either way, Reed published a trans man's deadname, real or imagined.

That's... Holy shit, ew.

Edit: Just want to say that I've been continuing to read this article on and off, and sections 6.1 to 6.4 are 100% evidence of extensive LLM usage, literally just copy–pasting in huge chunks of text. Even though EITM has only come to my attention recently, I'm really disappointed.