Alright, since walls of text are in fashion:
@Nym, Explosive Zombie, and myself have just been permanently banned from d-pad.
Why? Because they saw us posting in here, in this very thread. Lol.
Not even 24 hours had passed since we posted in here and they banned us. They've been wanting to ban us (Nym and myself specifically) for months, simply because we questioned their moderation. We were never rude about it. We broke NO rules. We simply disagreed with some decisions. But that's how it goes over there. If you question or disagree with the moderation they say you are causing drama, put you post approval, and junior your account so you can't access half the website. You are shadowbanned. To anyone with any sense, this is clearly childish, so we decided to simply stop posting. That's it. We parted ways. No private PMs. No behind the scenes drama. We just left.
So now they couldn't ban us. They had no legitimate excuse to do so. And if they just banned us without a valid explanation or a reason they might be asked questions by other members. Now of course this isn't a good look for the mod team, is it? Can't have people asking questions now, can we? The no.1 concern of the mod team over there is their perception. They are paranoid AF about it. They want to appear as if they are a group of based gigachad men, super chilled and relaxed, where almost anything goes and there is almost no moderation action ever taken, but the truth is the mod team there is very trigger happy with the edit and delete buttons. A few examples of how they try to control perception:
- They want to keep their bans page as low as possible. So they avoid bans at all costs and instead just shadowban you.
- The ban page itself is hidden away behind several layers of forum settings/preferences pages. Most people don't even know it exists.
- When they ban a user, their name is not crossed out, and their tag remains as "Member", so you can never tell who's banned unless you dig.
This is why they use Post Approval. It's effectively a ban, but without looking like they banned anyone. Then all they have to do is not approve any posts by that person. It's the perfect tool for a mod. There is zero visibility and zero accountability. It can be abused, and no one would ever know.
Now of course they would never admit to any of this. But here's the funny thing: Their members are viewing this very thread here on Icon. Naturally the mods are too. So once they saw us posting in here they pretty quickly realised that we can finally speak up and expose the truth. So what did they do? The very next day, as if in some sort of panic, they've gone and finally banned us and written up the following deceitful explanation to feed to their community:
Now since 90% of all this is bullshit, I'd like to take this opportunity to point out some of the most egregious lies for those members at dpad who are reading my post.
Lies. 100% fabrication. The 1 time they "extended an olive branch" was after they had permanently banned me for, again, questioning a mod action. They invited me to a private discord chat, where they proceeded to avoid answering me why I was actually banned and what rule I broke. Then without explanation, as they love to do, they unbanned me and expected me to just pretend it never happened.
From that point I pretty much just stopped posting, except for one joke thread that I made, and they put me on post approval, then juniored my account. And now today, they've banned me. That's it. No other "olive branches", no "created issues" or "drama".
I just addressed this above. How exactly does one cause drama by simply ceasing to post?
100% lies. And an easy one to prove. When they put us on post approval we lost the ability to send PMs.
Now we could continue already existing conversations, but none of us
ever PM'd anybody asking them to break any rules or recruiting them (lol, recruit to what exactly? Our non-existent rival forum?)
I couldn't even PM the mods, again because of the shadowban. Recently I reached out to them by making an unapproved post asking them to PM me to talk. I was nothing but polite and professional to them. I dare them to share the conversation with their community.
Again. Shadownbanned? How did we do any of this shit exactly?
More lies. They NEVER explained why we were banned or shadowbanned. This was a large part of why I, in particular, stopped posting. As for "crying foul", this is simply how they respond when you ask a question.
Now you might wonder, why did we feel the need to question the moderation so much for it to be a problem? Well let me elaborate on it a little. Musky_Cheese here very clearly points out the major problem they have over there with their moderation tactics. Complete lack of clarity and transparency.
The poor simpleton here has highlighted the problem with their moderation style, and he can't even see it.
No notice given, no warning, no alert, no PM, nothing. They just changed it and move on.
And he actually doesn't see the problem with this.
If that's how they deal with posts, how is someone ever supposed to know they did something wrong to avoid repeat offences if they don't even notice it?
This is why we asked questions. Because this method of moderating makes no sense. Questioning moderation is the ONLY rule we ever broke. And still to this day it remains unwritten, yet heavily enforced with shadowbans.
Lie no 1: It wasn't for a month, it was for several months.
Lie no 2: They NEVER explained this to us. They just put us on mod approval without notice. There are several other members who they've done this to as well, and some are currently on mod approval. They were never given an explanation. Even when I reached out to them, as I mentioned above, they gave me no such condition. Instead they simply said "Just post". Again, I dare them to share that conversation. They won't. And if they do, they would modify it. That's what they do. They edit everything.
That about covers the more important stuff. Anyone on dpad who's reading this, this is all the truth. The mods will obviously claim it isn't. It doesn't matter. The fact is we moved on from dpad a long time ago, and now we are just sitting back laughing as members slowly start to realise what's going (usually when the shadowban comes for them) and they stop posting or leave.
The next thing they'll do is ban any sort of discussion of previously banned members, so enjoy this post while you can and talk about us all you want while you still can.
And finally to the dpad mods reading this I only have one thing to say to you:
<keep the posts clean> This vid is unnecessary.
Falcs edit: Mods removed my video here. That's fine. (Thank you for the clarity. Isn't hard, is it?)