[jart]

It's because I'm an insomniac. When normies are sleeping, I'm running around setting up franchises. One of my other sock puppet accounts that got banned by Lobsters is Paul Kulchenko, who isn't actually the genius who built ZeroBrane Studio https://studio.zerobrane.com/, but is just me pretending to be a Windows developer when I can't fall asleep. Lobsters also banned Hikaru Ikuta (woodrush), who isn't actually a PhD at the University of Tokyo who discovered the lambda calculus expression for LISP https://woodrush.github.io/blog/lambdalisp.html, he's clearly just another one of my sockpuppet accounts I created due to being an insomniac. Those are the sorts of stories we've been sharing with the Lobsters community, and we'd been received very positively until now. I'm disheartened by how the recent unexpected actions of this rogue moderator will impact the wonderful community that had been nothing but kind to us.

[distcs]

This is a terrible misrepresentation of the mod logs. Your comment seems to be creating a strawman. All the accounts you wrote in your comment were not banned for being sockpuppets. They were banned for spamming (whatever that means). Totally different things.

Nobody said they were sockpuppets. Only you are saying that in an attempt to create a strawman and mislead unsuspecting readers. We are not idiots.

The two accounts that were banned for sock-puppeteering were 'i2' and 'thatworkshop'. And you have conveniently omitted these two accounts from your comment. What do you have to say about them? You invited them. And they were sock-puppetting? How do you explain that?

[jart]

i2 got banned from my community a long time ago so it doesn't surprise me that Lobsters would ban him too. I usually err on the side of trusting people, and sometimes that turns out to be a mistake. I take appropriate action when I need to. If anything I'm surprised it took Lobsters this long. Lobsters gave me no ability to rescind invites, so they shouldn't have held me and my friends responsible for what he did. Frankly I don't even know what that is. Lobsters also made no attempt to contact me or offer feedback. The mass ban came as a total surprise. I have no idea what I did and I wasn't granted any opportunity to make them happy.

[distcs]

I'm no fan of Lobsters. So I've no skin in the game. But it is one thing to say that those people you wrote about in your comment were banned for spamming and it is a totally different thing to say that they were banned for sockpuppetting (when they were not). The former is correct representation of what's there in the mod logs. The latter is a blatant misrepresentation of the mod logs. This misrepresentation is misleading to unsuspecting readers.

After seeing such wilful blatant misrepresentation, forgive me if I'm having difficulty just taking your word for it.

[BitterAmethyst]

Given things she's said in the past it's probably best if you take her word on very little.

https://valleywag.gawker.com/why-does-google-employ-a-pro-sl... https://www.dailydot.com/debug/occupy-wall-street-supports-g...

[supriyo-biswas]

I’m left speechless after reading the first article, as well as seeing the misrepresentation of the comment thread (she was replying to me, not blueflow…)

I must say, I respect her a good deal less than I used to.

[blueflow]

Don't fall for hit pieces abusing sarcastic pieces of text. Anyone could write a hit piece about you.

[IAmNotACellist]

See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=36766152

[paulclinger]

> But it is one thing to say that those people you wrote about in your comment were banned for spamming and it is a totally different thing to say that they were banned for sockpuppetting (when they were not).

How can I be legitimately banned for spamming when I made zero comments or posts? I rarely post or comment, so did not get a chance, but I was glad to join the community.

[distcs]

I don't know the specifics but looks very much like collateral damage. Sorry if that's the case. Looks like her whole invite tree became suspect and the mod removed her whole invite tree. Not justifying what they did but seems like a mistake. Talking to the mod should resolve it.

[jart]

How do we do that? Lobsters has no contact information I could find. I'm happy to change my invite habits so there's a higher bar going forward.

[jart]

Perhaps your feedback would be better directed to blueflow, because I was responding to their personal take?

[blueflow]

If you get banned due to another user spamming, you are assumed to be a sockpuppet, even if the moderation log doesn't explicitly say it.

[pushcx]

This is not the case. (For context, I am the admin responsible for the bans.) I left a longer comment in response to the original misunderstanding to explain what happened here.

[distcs]

Anyone trying to find where the longer comment is, it's here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36735833