The problem with FlyingSquid was that he would sometimes get upset arguing with people about politics, and there was a really loud contingent that was convinced that was the worst thing in the world and he was a power tripper who was going to break lemmy.world, and get all histrionic about it and make these weird accusations that never seemed to pan out to anything more than “he got in an argument.”
The issue, to me, with lemmy.world is that there’s a contingent of mods that like to make explicit safe spaces for propaganda (UniversalMonk), or just make baffling decisions that all of the users hate (UniversalMonk). The ones who are making most of the really terrible decisions aren’t really well-known names like FlyingSquid or JordanLund or anything, they’re just kind of behind the scenes poking at mod controls instead of commenting. I don’t really know what they’re up to now, but before the election they were spending significant effort actively making big communities on lemmy.world worse (like letting UniversalMonk bait people into arguments and then banning people he got in arguments with).
To me it’s very notable that FlyingSquid actually did (in addition to whatever misdemeanors he committed) actually spend time trying to eliminate propaganda and dickheadedness from the communities he moderated, and I think it’s interesting the overlap between that and the loud contingent of users demanding at all times that he be removed at all costs. A lot of the time if you look at one of his embittered arguments that’s being used as evidence that he was the worst person in the world, he is arguing with someone who is being transphobic or conservative or otherwise just kind of a dickhead, and for some reason he would decide that the right reaction is to get in a heated argument with them. But it wasn’t like someone would come in “I like raccoons” and he would say “WELL I LIKE LLAMAS SO FUCK YOU (BAN),” it was usually something pretty significant. Anyway, that loud contingent of users did have some success in creating a narrative that “I heard FlyingSquid is power tripping / terrible person / he’s a big problem,” which to me is sad.
I don’t really trust the lemmy.world admin team, but I think most of the complaint about lemmy.world is that their big communities’ moderation is on average very very bad. That doesn’t really apply to small communities that are run by people passionate about the content that’s in them.
That’s my 2 cents on it.
Yes but that was (a) a very occasional outcome, like every few months in a career filled with pointless arguing (b) not the end of the world.
I’m much more irritated for example with the mods who decided UniversalMonk was a force for good in the universe, who must be protected at all costs, than I am with FlyingSquid for occasionally having a heated argument with some transphobic person and eventually threatening to ban them. Neither one is really ideal but I just don’t get what the constant hue and cry about FlyingSquid as the problem with lemmy.world moderation was. Maybe his habit of getting in big arguments (which, again, isn’t really ideal) sort of painted a target on his back when other people who were just quietly doing awful moderation behind the scenes stayed out of people’s awareness.