that is exactly what I’m talking about.

I won’t go into too deep of detail, I’ve covered a lot of it here.

today, the goal of the mod is to prune and remove undesired content and users. this creates high overhead and operational costs. it also increases chances for corruption and community instability.

you have experienced some of this instability. a mod banned you and you had no recourse to correct the behavior. this can also be used by corrupt mods to silence the community at large. I believe there was a post about Reddit having 400 subs modded by the same 4 people or something like that.

the same flaw exists here as well.

I believe that the community should moderate itself. if the content or comment hits a downvote threshold it’s hidden/silenced. mods should only get involved as stewards of the community, ensuring that abuses of the system aren’t taking place and taking action against individuals that “game the system”. they could not, for example, take action unless the silenced user reports it as such. again, if you abuse the system you might be permanently silenced.

notice I keep saying silenced instead of blocked? that’s because we shouldn’t block their access to content or the community or even let them know nobody is seeing their content. in the case of malicious users/bots. the more time wasted on screaming into a void the less time wasted on corrupting another community. in-fact, I propose we allow these silenced users to interact with each other where they can continue to toxify and abuse each other in a spiraling chain of abuse that eventually results in their permanent silencing.

this should be a core tenant to an open forum. anyone can interact, but if the community at large has voted to silence you they shouldn’t need to listen to you.

IMO bans should only be used for the most heinous users. users that post illegal content that jeopardizes the community at large. further, those bans should be administered by the instance admin/owner.