Hello World,
as some of you might be aware, there have been various accusations against one of our former community team members, Jordan Lund.
We have removed Jordan as a member of our community team a week ago, on 23rd of September, due to various behavior that we do not consider acceptable for a member of our team. We haven't posted about this earlier, as we're still in the progress of reviewing and making decisions, and we originally expected to be able to conclude this earlier, within a time frame where we could have presented the final outcome in the first post.
During his time with Lemmy.World, Jordan has been helping out our team with various admin-level tasks, as well as moderating a few large communities, including !news@lemmy.world, !world@lemmy.world and !politics@lemmy.world. As far as we can tell, most of his actions, including moderation actions, were in alignment with both our instance rules and also rules and spirit of the affected communities.
Unfortunately, this does not apply to all his actions. We have identified multiple cases of conduct that do not align with what we expect from members of our team. We currently do not have any explicit rules or code of conduct for our community team or other team members like instance admins on top of our ToS/bylaws, as we expected to have a common understanding of acceptable behavior. In the past we already had discussions with Jordan about some of this behavior and we believed that to be enough at that time. Going forward, we will be working on a code of conduct applicable to all members of our team, including community team and anyone above.
Being a member of our community team provides additional privileges for selected members, such as the ability to appoint community moderators, update our community spotlight or even banning users. In Jordan's case this included permissions to appoint community moderators and ban users from the instance.
As of today, we are not aware of misuse of these additional privileges. Once we have reviewed other actions taken by Jordan we will also review these types of actions taken by Jordan in the recent past. If you believe that you or someone else was incorrectly banned from Lemmy.World, you're welcome to appeal your ban by reaching out to our team. As we currently have some technical issues with our ticket system, I recommend sending an email to report at lemmy dot world for the time being, visting our Matrix room #general:lemmy.world or reaching out to @MrKaplan@lemmy.world directly, also possible via Matrix at @mrkaplan:lemmy.world.
Following our instance rules, we have a few cases in which we may remove community moderators from their communities:
- Grossly committing a violation of the Terms of Service
- Acting repeatedly against the local community rules
- Extended periods of inactivity, as evident by lack of public interaction and/or failure to respond to reports
We are still discussing whether we consider his behavior a "gross violation of our ToS", as there are definitely some arguments to be made in favor of that. This includes for example using incorrect gendered pronouns, which we will update in our ToS in the coming days to make it more clear to everyone that this will not be tolerated. Due to his previous and current position we are still discussing what our final resolution to this issue will be as far as instance rules are concerned. Whether or not a person is trolling does not justify using incorrect pronouns for them. We have also informed Jordan that we expect his behavior in this regard to change immediately.
We're currently also in conversations with other moderators of communities moderated by Jordan to review their position on his behavior within their communities and whether they believe that his actions in those communities were appropriate and in line with the community rules. As a reminder, the order of community moderators in the sidebar has direct impact on the moderator hierarchy, where a moderator listed earlier is able to remove any moderators later in the list. This means even if an action might not (yet) be taken by instance admins, other community moderators may be able to remove moderators if they're no longer desired to be part of the team. Especially community rules about civility and respectful conduct do not appear to have been followed in a number of cases, and we are reviewing with the community moderators whether this is in line with other content they would usually moderate/not moderate.
It should also be noted that not all things reported to us are actually or clearly violating our rules, even if we may not agree with them. For example, we currently do not have rules about moderators removing other people's arguments, especially as "misinformation", to strengthen their own misguided arguments, and then continue to accuse the other side of misinformation later on. We do expect our team members to not use positions of power to "win arguments" or falsely accuse others of misinformation, when this isn't actually the case. Therefore, while this example is not something we tolerate for members of our team, having this happen on community level (by a person who isn't also holding a role above community mod at that time) is currently not something we are enforcing.
Once we have worked out a CoC for members of our team, we will post about this separately and also gather community feedback on whether you believe that enforcement of that (or parts of it, or more things) should also include moderators of Lemmy.World communities.
Additionally, we will also be looking at expanding our community team a bit in the near future, as we have both lost some people over time and recently also Jordan. We will also be posting about this separately, currently expected to be in a few weeks, with a description of expectations and responsibilities.
We will also be updating this post over the coming days until we have finished our review and actions.
Update 2025-10-06 01:27 UTC:
After reviewing various comments and actions by Jordan, he has received a warning, especially relating to following our rules at https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/#1-attacks-on-people-or-groups. Going forward, if we see additional violations of our rules, especially when it comes to attacking others, we will consider additional consequences in the form of a temporary or permanent ban. If you still see Jordan's behaving in ways violating our ToS, please report this directly to us, e.g. through a pm to @lwreport@lemmy.world. We always review messages received by this account in our team.
In line with our current rules about potentially removing community moderators, we have reviewed the communities Jordan is currently a moderator in:
- !politics@lemmy.world: This community has active moderators above Jordan Lund, such as @aidan@lemmy.world.
- !news@lemmy.world This community has active moderators above Jordan Lund, such as @JonsJava@lemmy.world.
- !world@lemmy.world: We have moved Jordan from being top moderator to being bottom moderator. New top moderator is @Tenthrow@lemmy.world.
- !business@lemmy.world: No other active mods
- !comicbooks@lemmy.world: No other active mods
- !portland_oregon@lemmy.world: No other active mods
- !thepoliceproblem@lemmy.world: We have moved Jordan from being top moderator to being bottom moderator. New (active) top moderator is @JonsJava@lemmy.world.
- !hottubs@lemmy.world: No other active mods
- !keeptrack@lemmy.world: No other active mods
Any community moderator above Jordan will be able to remove him from his moderator position, should they decide that he is not a good fit for the community. It is up to those community moderators whether they want to keep him on the team.
We generally intend to limit our involvement in community moderation to enforcement of instance rules. Without disallowing other community mods to add Jordan back as a moderator, there would also not be much impact of removing him entirely, as they could just add him back right away. If you do not agree with the rules in a community or the way it is moderated, it's always possible to look for alternative communities with different rules, different mods, or creating your own community.
Having said this, we're still working on our team CoC, and will be gathering community feedback in a standalone post to determine whether we should enforce additional standards for community moderators.
Our review of Jordan's delegated admin actions (instance bans) are still pending. Unless we find evidence of this having been abused, we we do not currently expect additional consequences to arise from this.
Alright so I looked at those Terms of Service.
1.1 - Attacks on People? Check. He's repeatedly gone out of his way to harass people as demonstrated both via his modlog and the litany of comments he's left on YPTB
1.2 - Discrimination of Minorities? Check as demonstrated by the fact that he's been banned from the entirety of blahaj for transphobic behavior.
3 - System Disruption? Arguable considering he's permanently ruined any credibility that /c/News and /c/World had and has driven so many users to actively avoid lemmy.world at all possible costs. Myself included now.
8 - Misinformation? Check. Removing someones post for a lack of understanding is one thing but you said that you (Admins) talked to Jordan about his behavior on the Canadian thing. Meaning that you knew it was wrong and had told him it was wrong. He repeatedly and continually doubles down on that specific thing. That is misinformation. Misinformation that is then being enforced with the abilities of a moderator. Which also then slides into 1.1 - Attacks on People as he's actively lying and punishing a dude when he did nothing wrong.
At this stage there are no valid arguments to be made against it. The evidence is overwhelming and has been piling up for months and months and months and months and months.
This is a complete no brainer. You have admins of other trusted instances refusing to have anything to do with him. You've got whole swaths of users that are outright boycotting Lemmy.world as a whole and I'm not talking about my random dumb ass. I mean for literal years I've been asked why I set up on Lemmy.world. This entire experience has not done anything to sway anyones fears but has done a lot to reconfirm them.
Edit: It's been 5 days. No update to this post. Yeah... something is definitely gonna happen alright.
Oh hey, they just put out an update.
we tried, deal with it isn't what I was expecting. But guess it was a variation of we're just going to let it blow over
Yeah I saw it when it was edited in. Sat here for 2 hours trying to think of a response and I came up with one alright.
You ripped them a new one for the 4th time, I'm impressed.
I didn't rip anyone anything. I'm just fucking disappointed.
You're better with your words at this entire... Thing than I am. I would classify tearing their entire lack of action piece by piece a new one.
Maybe I'm just tired of .world allowing trolls as active users and mods, but God I hate that instance. I'd rather not use Lemmy than make an account there.
They're just ignoring it because they want us to forgive their constant mistakes. Just like how someday they'll explain why they wanted lemmy.world to host conspiracy theory content.
any day now something will happen according to them. https://lemmy.world/comment/19706101
Of course seeing as the only lw higher up who had commented there before behaved exactly like JL expections are 0
Any day now he'll face consequences after months of issues... Any day now...
Well he's modding today and acting exactly the same so at least this brings up the issues with lw to other users when they ask for reasons to avoid it
@goferking0 @eugenevdebs
@Stamets
@lwadmin
Interesting thread...
Wondering if this or similar issue has something/anything to do with my bad experience/perception of Lemmy [.world in particular] and why I was put off and no longer participate... π€·ββοΈπ€·ββοΈ
Mod(s) actions were a significant factor for me...
π€π€π€
Incidentally, tiny data point - I'm fairly active here and this is the first I've heard of any of this. And in general the only times I've seen him has been what seemd like good mod behavior.
Not saying any of this didnt happen, he shouldn't be removed, etc. Just that it definitely hasn't been obvious to everyone.
No but it was obvious to the admins. That's the important thing here. This information has been kicked back to the top for a while now. I made a post pointing out a ton of things he did. Dudes list of crimes is so long I left a ton out of that post.
And you didn't even cover the stuff from months ago, just in the last few weeks.
The admin team is just covering for Jordan, like they're all on the same team of silencing dissent and need to cover their fall guy.
It's one of those things where it was more evident when interactions happened in a space he didn't moderate or where couldn't get things removed.
Pattern is usually:
It's still amazing but unsurprising they only commented to link here.
https://lemmy.world/post/35918814
This entire post here is just an announcement to say they removed him from a position people didn't think was still a thing or didn't know about, then PR to give them an out if nothing happens.
Even in this post they get an out from their users saying it's fine because they didn't see it or ignore the comm completely cause they think it's just a hate place.
As a reminder, I'll donate to .world's servers if they remove him as a mod before the end of September 2025, UTC.
How many rules does he need to break as a mod before they do something?
what did you expect the us government shut down yesterday /s
Sorry I'm a casual user, I know a little about this person, but do you mind clarifying the Canadian thing?
So in Canada we use different political terms than the Americans do. One of these is usage of the word 'Government'. In the US, Government applies to the whole general moving structure of the United States. In Canada the word Government applies to the ruling party specifically in much the same way that Americans use the word 'Administration'. Jordan was not aware of this.
A user commented that a particular person was not a Member of Government, referring to the fact that they were not in the party that currently forms the Government of Canada. Jordan Lund removed this as 'Misinformation', claiming that the particular person was an elected member of parliament so calling them not a member of government was flat out misinformation. Important point to note is this was on the World News community. An American with incomplete information about something removed a comment under the guise of misinformation that was about another country. Personally? This is kind of annoying. But it dropped into rage inducing territory when he repeatedly doubled down.
The comment removed:
Even through context alone it should have been made clear how the word government was being used but Jordan was either incapable of grasping that or refused to. He was called out on it and doubled down on his stance. Multiple users educated him on the subject but he refused to engage with anything that proved him wrong (this is a continuous problem of his). Months later he said the same thing again. Again, multiple users proved him wrong. Once again, he refused to engage.
A couple of weeks ago, I made a rather large post that detailed numerous things that he has done. Like a ton. In the comments, someone brought up the Canadian thing again to an admin of LW named MrKaplan. Kaplan said
3 hours later, Jordan again doubled down.
Small sidebar but the Wikipedia page for the Government of Canada says this:
In that moment Jordan proved one of two things. Either that the admins had never actually talked about the issue to him or (more likely) that he did not believe that he did anything wrong so he ignored anything that was told to him.
He does not accept differing information than that of what he believes, he moderates through an American lens and refuses to take the differences of other countries into account and he repeatedly doubles down on an inaccurate retelling of events as well as an inaccurate definition of the term Government inside of Canada. Doubling down even when an admin publicly says he's wrong.
This single event alone proves that he is incapable of impartial moderation of /c/World and needs to be immediately removed. Months of this going on and months of this insisting he's correct while admins publicly say he isn't. It was this specific inaction by the Admins of Lemmy.world that caused me to move off of the instance. I couldn't tolerate them willfully accepting American misinformation about Canadian politics being pushed on a WorldNews community. This entire release saying that they're going to look into things and then decide is, frankly, a joke. He was publicly contradicting something the Admins privately told him and doing the thing they told him not to. They have the ammo they need to from just this one moment stretched over the course of months.
He won't listen to them and follow the basic rules they laid out yet they will not remove him while he actively violates the TOS of Lemmy.world. At that point there is no justification for the inaction of Admins. Absolutely none. I grant time needed to review, sure, but it's been essentially 2 weeks since I made that post public in which they said they were already reviewing his behavior for days. Half of a month is not needed for this decision and I can't stomach this any longer.
Those write ups are really top notch
I wanted to be a journalist as a kid and then wanted to be a news anchor. Might explain a whole lot about my voice and writing style now, huh? lol
But thank you <3
That might explain it indeed!
You're welcome π
Thank you so very much for the detailed write up, I appreciate the time you put into this!
Hey, you asked <3