Yeah, I know they have been defederated to pieces, albeit not in as much detail as you provided, I was just trying to confirm that that was the reason, to better understand how federation works.
Our instance has lately been blocking some of their communities, too.
I don’t quite understand the vote results, especially in conjunction with the post content, I don’t see any ties, but I was most surprised by the fact that they voted to defederate from blahaj.zone? Isn’t hexbear rabidly pro-inclusion, in particular regarding trans people?
Hexbear has very tight moderation to make sure it’s a comfortable place for minorities and people who don’t like interacting with racism, misogyny, transphobia etc. I browse blahaj.zone occasionally and its moderation is just not good. The trans communities attract chasers which makes me not want to post there, and in 196 I regularly come across posts that are misogynistic or transphobic and have been up for days. I always report them and they often (not always) get deleted after like a day, which in my opinion is too late because the harm has been done (a 2 day old post should have been removed whenever a mod came across it).
On hexbear I’ve not seen posts that were so blatantly misogynistic or transphobic, and posts get removed much faster. This is why many trans people in our community don’t want to federate with blahaj.
Ada, an instance admin of Blahaj.Zone is extremely welcoming and inclusive - I have always actively looked forward to reading anything they say wherever/whenever I encounter such across the Fediverse, and have never been disappointed so far. They, like the instance overall, are the real deal(s).
Unfortunately, hexbear.net merely pretends to be thus, but like everything else they do it is a farce while their real goal is to be argumentative. They are actually quite open about this if you read past the initial prepared statements (or even read the official sidebar of the_dunk_tank) - on the instance they call it “dunking on” people, or “struggle sessions”, and no matter how many users, mods, and even admins/devs they turn away as a result (as that vote post mentions), they cannot seem to help themselves, even outside of their echo chambers where that is allowed & actively encouraged. Even/especially when their own admins beg & plead - and yes, also explicitly command - their userbase to FUCKING STOP… they will not. And so far I haven’t even mentioned the brigading… no matter how deeply I delve into this, there is always more.
Defederation is - and should be - always a last resort. That said, it is necessary sometimes, b/c as it has been said the only thing that can never be tolerated is intolerance - e.g. if cancer cells refuse to inhibit their own growth, then it must be cut out for the sake of the rest of the body to live. Also, as you see, it was actually hexbear.net that initiated the defederation from most of those places not the other way around - Lemmy.World did not wait to be offered the chance to be on the receiving end, but for programming.dev, Blahaj.Zone, and Lemm.ee (which was kicked off but later refederated, read also from hexbear) it was hexbear.net’s choice, and the reverse defederation was only in friendliness to avoid dangling one-sided conversations where users on their platforms could talk to those on hexbear but the latter would not even know that there was a message awaiting their receipt, and subsequent response - as you are asking about here but in reverse.
Startrek.website and mander.xyz tend to have their own focus and not attract all of this drama, hence why someone from hexbear.net can see the post and also comment on it, but users on e.g. lemmy.world, programming.dev, or lemmy.blahaj.zone would not see that comment. The hexbear user is thus shouting into the void, with respect to those instances, though not to ours who can see both.
The sad fact (imho) is that new visitors to the Fediverse will never have any of this explained to them - instead, they have to do something like personally make the mistake of replying to a post in ChapoTrapHouse, found by sorting your feed by All rather than Subscribed, and then after WEEKS and WEEKS and WEEKS of batshit insane responses that do not end despite zero response back from said user, they finally will know what to expect from hexbear.net: overall (as a pattern) they enjoy argumentation, do not constrain themselves to that process being logical or the statements to be factual, but they sure do enjoy the “dunking on” process, so long as it is delivered from them to others, though obviously not in return. And from the other side, users of hexbear.net will notice how very few people “react” to their posts made in those communities they can see outside of their instance - essentially for them the Fediverse contains fewer users, from their perspective. And then from our side, we see the drama between their sides, more so than even they do themselves.
When I first joined the Fediverse, back when Reddit 3rd party apps got nuked, I joined lemmy.world. While I didn’t see Hexbear post, comments, etc., but I did see plenty of comments of people mentioning them and warning about them. So by the time I switched to startrek.website (don’t remember why I decided to leave l.w, must have been due to some defederations) and finally encountered the mythical beast, I was already thoroughly prepared for it. So I would say, in general, newbies shouldn’t be entirely shocked to encounter a tankie, as they are mentioned a lot.
And tbh, I prefer to stay federated with Hexbear, because among all the mindless circlejerk propaganda they will sometimes point out a fair criticism about the western culture/politics that I haven’t considered. In addition, as a half Ukrainian who was living in Kyiv at the time of invasion, I prefer to know what kind of ideas and misinformation is being circulated on the other side.
Hexbear wouldn’t even be that bad if they just stopped pretending that only western empires are evil, and stopped bootlicking the leaders of the pseudo-communist countries. A LOT more people would agree with them if they were only anti-western, instead of also being pro-dictators. But then they wouldn’t be tankies, I suppose.
Btw, Hexbear reminds me a lot of r/GamingCircleJerk. They also have a semi-noble cause, but express it in such a way that rubs EVERYONE the wrong way, not just the “Capital-G Gamers” who they are rightfully mocking. Because of that, r/GCJ has caused several site-wide dramas and inconvenienced people. They both also operate in this constant state of maximum sarcasm, so you can never tell if they are saying is a hyperbole or they are being serious but insane.
Regarding Blahaj.zone, I haven’t interacted much with them, but I one day discovered that I’m banned from their c/196 because “Transphobe”. It wasn’t even due to an interaction with that community directly. In a completely different instance, I think it was lemmy.world, I commented with a question about why a user’s comment was called being transphobic. I then got mocked and eventually banned. So Idk if it was mod of that specific community or whole instance. I seem to be able to interact with Blahaj post from other communities though.
And thank you for these massive posts. You seem to be a proper Lemmy historian, might need to remember your username for future potential inquiries.
I think that - like porn, receiving catcalls as you walk down the street, and spam marketing solicitations - being able to interact with people who ignore consent should be opt-IN, rather than have to be opt-OUT. I see that you have a valid reason for wanting to hear what they have to say… but for myself I almost left the Fediverse upon stumbling into ChapoTrapHouse, and again another similar incident in lemmygrad.ml. Whereas now, I have blocked both of those plus also Lemmy.ml, and I kid you not, >99% of the toxicity is instantly gone from my feed. The latter also blocks some innocent people too, who may try to discourse with me and not realize that I will not receive a “notification” about it, but I have made my peace with that, since on the whole I do not want to make time for that shit in my life.
On Reddit I used to pride myself that I had never blocked anyone - and as a mod it wouldn’t have helped anyway - but now I value my time and sanity more I guess:-). Seriously, it takes a mental toll: it makes you more defensive, more cagey, less likely to speak for fear of being misunderstood and pounced upon, and when you do speak your own answers become more snarky, in closer alignment with even if nowhere near the extreme that theirs does. I felt it was affecting my communication at my irl job, and was ready to leave social media altogether even before Rexodus happened, and I found here. Fortunately Kbin.social showed me a friendlier side of the Fediverse, before it went defunct and I saw the rest. Now, literally every single person that I tell about Lemmy irl gives me dirty looks the next time we talk, citing the high volume of extremist content here, calling for literal and bloody violence. Forcing new users to be exposed to this content as being opt-out rather than opt-in is going to SEVERELY hinder the survivability of Lemmy, much less growth.
Plus, as you’ve seen, it leads to things like those communities being banned outright, even from instances such as this one that haven’t gone the full defederation route. It would be SO MUCH friendlier to simply “label” the content… but that would take extra work effort from the developers, plus who would write up those labels (I think it should be the very communities themselves - but they haven’t taken such an initiative so far, e.g. in their sidebar areas, or even to follow the rules that their very own admins commanded them to do) and anyway here we are, so we work with the tools we have. Which are at least better than they used to be, and improving all the time:-). One down-side is that every instance that gets defederated leads to another one receiving a bunch of new alts so it merely shifts the line. Right now that is lemmy.ml, but with so many people blocking them these days it will soon shift to midwest.social, and then from there… As I guess you know, these are people who refuse to follow the rules - even their own - yet demand to be HEARD, the consent of those who do not want to listen be damned.
Blaze knows like 1000x more than me - e.g. they introduced me to that [email protected] community, and afterwards we both keep telling anyone who will listen about it:-). Speaking of, they will tell you the same: check out lemm.ee as a server that basically does not defederate from anyone. I checked their modlog and don’t see any communities removed from hexbear.net, and both https://lemm.ee/c/[email protected] and https://lemm.ee/c/[email protected] work. If you want something that sits solidly on neutral ground to survey all around you, that one is the hot pick right now. Though it is far from the only one - e.g. another is https://reddthat.com, still another is lemmy.zip, and there’s others too. All of those have even remained federated with lemmygrad.ml, as well as hexbear.net. Ofc you can always go visit hexbear.net itself too - either with an alt or if you don’t want to vote or talk, without an account. There are many paths available to you:-). Ironically lemmy.ml itself would not be ideal, b/c it has defederated from lemmygrad.ml (I don’t know why:-).
196 sounds like a simple misunderstanding, though exactly what we are talking about here: they had a golden opportunity to listen patiently, assess where you were coming from with your question, and if you were “wrong” then to educate you about the situation - to all of which you (as I would in your place) extremely likely would have said THANK YOU, whether they managed to cause you to change your mind or not, for e.g. spending the time and engaging in that proper, civil conversation. Fwiw, I’ve never heard Ada (the admin) fly off the handle like that, and conversely have talked about being the way I described above instead. So I’m sure it was just a power-tripping mod of that single community - yes we have those here too, that was not merely a thing of our shared Reddit past:-P. I too get weird vibes from it and it is the only - and first - community that I always banned whenever I made a new account somewhere on the Fediverse. I hope that did not sour your experience with the rest of that instance… but if so, it is their loss. Though like my own bad experiences with ChapoTrapHouse and lemmygrad.ml, it is good that both of us did not simply abandon the entire concept of the Fediverse, b/c there really are good people here, even though there’s also a lot of noise and children’s chatter about as well.
Anyway I am glad that you managed to solve this mystery - of hexbear.net not being defederated, but those certain communities residing on it having been removed - that was indeed seemed quite strange to me!:-)
I did not think it was even possible to block specific communities from an instance. I thought what Farid might be referring to is a change where some communities are allowed to be set to “local-only”, so that only those with an account specifically from that instance can make posts there. Then again, https://hexbear.net/c/chapotraphouse says that its Visibility is set to “Public” (even though I thought they said that they looked forward to changing it - did that never happen?).
Various methods of linking that I’ve tried - explained in this guide post (btw @[email protected] that is a neat community to subscribe to!:-) - such as https://startrek.website/c/[email protected] does not work for me, and the bang syntax never auto-completes it? Even this kind of searching https://startrek.website/search?q=!chapotraphouse&type=Communities&listingType=All&page=1&sort=TopAll for the community name does not work either (despite ChapoTrapHouse specifically saying that it should in its sidebar), nor clicking Communities, select All rather than Local, and type e.g. “chapo”. So it is not merely that nobody has subscribed yet - this instance seems somehow to really not be aware of that community?
Perhaps this is a (new?) style of “partial defederation”, where not the users but the communities on an instance are excluded. But that cannot be right either, b/c e.g. https://startrek.website/c/[email protected] works (it has no visible posts, though that is normal behavior whenever nobody has ever subscribed to it before from a particular instance, in this case star trek, but if one of us subscribed then roughly a day later the posts should be there - for comparison, https://startrek.website/c/[email protected] also works and shows the posts). Though neither https://startrek.website/c/[email protected] nor https://startrek.website/c/[email protected] work. So some communities on hexbear.net seem to be selectively excluded from federation on startrek.website.
To be clear I am not complaining - this is actually a helpful protection against users going into those unawares, as in: if they refuse to mark their communities as local then they should not be surprised when others make that choice for them - though I am curious.:-)
Oh that’s fascinating. Again I did not even know that was possible - it looks like someone, but a mod, NOT an admin? - removed it a month ago, then 13 days ago unremoved it and then removed it again. These must be some new features involving the mod user tools from 0.19.5, bc I thought that previously that was not possible.
Also, the mod log may not be telling the full truth there - bc who would such a “mod” be, like how could there be a mod of Chapotraphouse of hexbear.net from startrek.website? - it does seem rather something that only an admin should be able to do. The totalitarian Lemmy.ml devs routinely hide stuff from the modlog though so it makes sense that this too is merely what it says but not what happened.
It looks like you’d have to talk to the Star Trek admins to find out more.
Yeah, I know they have been defederated to pieces, albeit not in as much detail as you provided, I was just trying to confirm that that was the reason, to better understand how federation works. Our instance has lately been blocking some of their communities, too.
I don’t quite understand the vote results, especially in conjunction with the post content, I don’t see any ties, but I was most surprised by the fact that they voted to defederate from blahaj.zone? Isn’t hexbear rabidly pro-inclusion, in particular regarding trans people?
Hexbear has very tight moderation to make sure it’s a comfortable place for minorities and people who don’t like interacting with racism, misogyny, transphobia etc. I browse blahaj.zone occasionally and its moderation is just not good. The trans communities attract chasers which makes me not want to post there, and in 196 I regularly come across posts that are misogynistic or transphobic and have been up for days. I always report them and they often (not always) get deleted after like a day, which in my opinion is too late because the harm has been done (a 2 day old post should have been removed whenever a mod came across it).
On hexbear I’ve not seen posts that were so blatantly misogynistic or transphobic, and posts get removed much faster. This is why many trans people in our community don’t want to federate with blahaj.
A summary of what happened between Blahaj.Zone and Hexbear.Net
Ada, an instance admin of Blahaj.Zone is extremely welcoming and inclusive - I have always actively looked forward to reading anything they say wherever/whenever I encounter such across the Fediverse, and have never been disappointed so far. They, like the instance overall, are the real deal(s).
Unfortunately, hexbear.net merely pretends to be thus, but like everything else they do it is a farce while their real goal is to be argumentative. They are actually quite open about this if you read past the initial prepared statements (or even read the official sidebar of the_dunk_tank) - on the instance they call it “dunking on” people, or “struggle sessions”, and no matter how many users, mods, and even admins/devs they turn away as a result (as that vote post mentions), they cannot seem to help themselves, even outside of their echo chambers where that is allowed & actively encouraged. Even/especially when their own admins beg & plead - and yes, also explicitly command - their userbase to FUCKING STOP… they will not. And so far I haven’t even mentioned the brigading… no matter how deeply I delve into this, there is always more.
Defederation is - and should be - always a last resort. That said, it is necessary sometimes, b/c as it has been said the only thing that can never be tolerated is intolerance - e.g. if cancer cells refuse to inhibit their own growth, then it must be cut out for the sake of the rest of the body to live. Also, as you see, it was actually hexbear.net that initiated the defederation from most of those places not the other way around - Lemmy.World did not wait to be offered the chance to be on the receiving end, but for programming.dev, Blahaj.Zone, and Lemm.ee (which was kicked off but later refederated, read also from hexbear) it was hexbear.net’s choice, and the reverse defederation was only in friendliness to avoid dangling one-sided conversations where users on their platforms could talk to those on hexbear but the latter would not even know that there was a message awaiting their receipt, and subsequent response - as you are asking about here but in reverse.
Startrek.website and mander.xyz tend to have their own focus and not attract all of this drama, hence why someone from hexbear.net can see the post and also comment on it, but users on e.g. lemmy.world, programming.dev, or lemmy.blahaj.zone would not see that comment. The hexbear user is thus shouting into the void, with respect to those instances, though not to ours who can see both.
The sad fact (imho) is that new visitors to the Fediverse will never have any of this explained to them - instead, they have to do something like personally make the mistake of replying to a post in ChapoTrapHouse, found by sorting your feed by All rather than Subscribed, and then after WEEKS and WEEKS and WEEKS of batshit insane responses that do not end despite zero response back from said user, they finally will know what to expect from hexbear.net: overall (as a pattern) they enjoy argumentation, do not constrain themselves to that process being logical or the statements to be factual, but they sure do enjoy the “dunking on” process, so long as it is delivered from them to others, though obviously not in return. And from the other side, users of hexbear.net will notice how very few people “react” to their posts made in those communities they can see outside of their instance - essentially for them the Fediverse contains fewer users, from their perspective. And then from our side, we see the drama between their sides, more so than even they do themselves.
When I first joined the Fediverse, back when Reddit 3rd party apps got nuked, I joined lemmy.world. While I didn’t see Hexbear post, comments, etc., but I did see plenty of comments of people mentioning them and warning about them. So by the time I switched to startrek.website (don’t remember why I decided to leave l.w, must have been due to some defederations) and finally encountered the mythical beast, I was already thoroughly prepared for it. So I would say, in general, newbies shouldn’t be entirely shocked to encounter a tankie, as they are mentioned a lot.
And tbh, I prefer to stay federated with Hexbear, because among all the mindless circlejerk propaganda they will sometimes point out a fair criticism about the western culture/politics that I haven’t considered. In addition, as a half Ukrainian who was living in Kyiv at the time of invasion, I prefer to know what kind of ideas and misinformation is being circulated on the other side.
Hexbear wouldn’t even be that bad if they just stopped pretending that only western empires are evil, and stopped bootlicking the leaders of the pseudo-communist countries. A LOT more people would agree with them if they were only anti-western, instead of also being pro-dictators. But then they wouldn’t be tankies, I suppose.
Btw, Hexbear reminds me a lot of r/GamingCircleJerk. They also have a semi-noble cause, but express it in such a way that rubs EVERYONE the wrong way, not just the “Capital-G Gamers” who they are rightfully mocking. Because of that, r/GCJ has caused several site-wide dramas and inconvenienced people. They both also operate in this constant state of maximum sarcasm, so you can never tell if they are saying is a hyperbole or they are being serious but insane.
Regarding Blahaj.zone, I haven’t interacted much with them, but I one day discovered that I’m banned from their c/196 because “Transphobe”. It wasn’t even due to an interaction with that community directly. In a completely different instance, I think it was lemmy.world, I commented with a question about why a user’s comment was called being transphobic. I then got mocked and eventually banned. So Idk if it was mod of that specific community or whole instance. I seem to be able to interact with Blahaj post from other communities though.
And thank you for these massive posts. You seem to be a proper Lemmy historian, might need to remember your username for future potential inquiries.
I think that - like porn, receiving catcalls as you walk down the street, and
spammarketing solicitations - being able to interact with people who ignore consent should be opt-IN, rather than have to be opt-OUT. I see that you have a valid reason for wanting to hear what they have to say… but for myself I almost left the Fediverse upon stumbling into ChapoTrapHouse, and again another similar incident in lemmygrad.ml. Whereas now, I have blocked both of those plus also Lemmy.ml, and I kid you not, >99% of the toxicity is instantly gone from my feed. The latter also blocks some innocent people too, who may try to discourse with me and not realize that I will not receive a “notification” about it, but I have made my peace with that, since on the whole I do not want to make time for that shit in my life.On Reddit I used to pride myself that I had never blocked anyone - and as a mod it wouldn’t have helped anyway - but now I value my time and sanity more I guess:-). Seriously, it takes a mental toll: it makes you more defensive, more cagey, less likely to speak for fear of being misunderstood and pounced upon, and when you do speak your own answers become more snarky, in closer alignment with even if nowhere near the extreme that theirs does. I felt it was affecting my communication at my irl job, and was ready to leave social media altogether even before Rexodus happened, and I found here. Fortunately Kbin.social showed me a friendlier side of the Fediverse, before it went defunct and I saw the rest. Now, literally every single person that I tell about Lemmy irl gives me dirty looks the next time we talk, citing the high volume of extremist content here, calling for literal and bloody violence. Forcing new users to be exposed to this content as being opt-out rather than opt-in is going to SEVERELY hinder the survivability of Lemmy, much less growth.
Plus, as you’ve seen, it leads to things like those communities being banned outright, even from instances such as this one that haven’t gone the full defederation route. It would be SO MUCH friendlier to simply “label” the content… but that would take extra work effort from the developers, plus who would write up those labels (I think it should be the very communities themselves - but they haven’t taken such an initiative so far, e.g. in their sidebar areas, or even to follow the rules that their very own admins commanded them to do) and anyway here we are, so we work with the tools we have. Which are at least better than they used to be, and improving all the time:-). One down-side is that every instance that gets defederated leads to another one receiving a bunch of new alts so it merely shifts the line. Right now that is lemmy.ml, but with so many people blocking them these days it will soon shift to midwest.social, and then from there… As I guess you know, these are people who refuse to follow the rules - even their own - yet demand to be HEARD, the consent of those who do not want to listen be damned.
Blaze knows like 1000x more than me - e.g. they introduced me to that [email protected] community, and afterwards we both keep telling anyone who will listen about it:-). Speaking of, they will tell you the same: check out lemm.ee as a server that basically does not defederate from anyone. I checked their modlog and don’t see any communities removed from hexbear.net, and both https://lemm.ee/c/[email protected] and https://lemm.ee/c/[email protected] work. If you want something that sits solidly on neutral ground to survey all around you, that one is the hot pick right now. Though it is far from the only one - e.g. another is https://reddthat.com, still another is lemmy.zip, and there’s others too. All of those have even remained federated with lemmygrad.ml, as well as hexbear.net. Ofc you can always go visit hexbear.net itself too - either with an alt or if you don’t want to vote or talk, without an account. There are many paths available to you:-). Ironically lemmy.ml itself would not be ideal, b/c it has defederated from lemmygrad.ml (I don’t know why:-).
196 sounds like a simple misunderstanding, though exactly what we are talking about here: they had a golden opportunity to listen patiently, assess where you were coming from with your question, and if you were “wrong” then to educate you about the situation - to all of which you (as I would in your place) extremely likely would have said THANK YOU, whether they managed to cause you to change your mind or not, for e.g. spending the time and engaging in that proper, civil conversation. Fwiw, I’ve never heard Ada (the admin) fly off the handle like that, and conversely have talked about being the way I described above instead. So I’m sure it was just a power-tripping mod of that single community - yes we have those here too, that was not merely a thing of our shared Reddit past:-P. I too get weird vibes from it and it is the only - and first - community that I always banned whenever I made a new account somewhere on the Fediverse. I hope that did not sour your experience with the rest of that instance… but if so, it is their loss. Though like my own bad experiences with ChapoTrapHouse and lemmygrad.ml, it is good that both of us did not simply abandon the entire concept of the Fediverse, b/c there really are good people here, even though there’s also a lot of noise and children’s chatter about as well.
Anyway I am glad that you managed to solve this mystery - of hexbear.net not being defederated, but those certain communities residing on it having been removed - that was indeed seemed quite strange to me!:-)
@[email protected] Do you know why people on startrek.website cannot see certain communities on e.g. hexbear.net?
I did not think it was even possible to block specific communities from an instance. I thought what Farid might be referring to is a change where some communities are allowed to be set to “local-only”, so that only those with an account specifically from that instance can make posts there. Then again, https://hexbear.net/c/chapotraphouse says that its Visibility is set to “Public” (even though I thought they said that they looked forward to changing it - did that never happen?).
Various methods of linking that I’ve tried - explained in this guide post (btw @[email protected] that is a neat community to subscribe to!:-) - such as https://startrek.website/c/[email protected] does not work for me, and the bang syntax never auto-completes it? Even this kind of searching https://startrek.website/search?q=!chapotraphouse&type=Communities&listingType=All&page=1&sort=TopAll for the community name does not work either (despite ChapoTrapHouse specifically saying that it should in its sidebar), nor clicking Communities, select All rather than Local, and type e.g. “chapo”. So it is not merely that nobody has subscribed yet - this instance seems somehow to really not be aware of that community?
Perhaps this is a (new?) style of “partial defederation”, where not the users but the communities on an instance are excluded. But that cannot be right either, b/c e.g. https://startrek.website/c/[email protected] works (it has no visible posts, though that is normal behavior whenever nobody has ever subscribed to it before from a particular instance, in this case star trek, but if one of us subscribed then roughly a day later the posts should be there - for comparison, https://startrek.website/c/[email protected] also works and shows the posts). Though neither https://startrek.website/c/[email protected] nor https://startrek.website/c/[email protected] work. So some communities on hexbear.net seem to be selectively excluded from federation on startrek.website.
To be clear I am not complaining - this is actually a helpful protection against users going into those unawares, as in: if they refuse to mark their communities as local then they should not be surprised when others make that choice for them - though I am curious.:-)
The communities you specified have been blocked on our instance. That’s what I was talking about, they are listed in the modlog as “Removed”:
Oh that’s fascinating. Again I did not even know that was possible - it looks like someone, but a mod, NOT an admin? - removed it a month ago, then 13 days ago unremoved it and then removed it again. These must be some new features involving the mod user tools from 0.19.5, bc I thought that previously that was not possible.
Also, the mod log may not be telling the full truth there - bc who would such a “mod” be, like how could there be a mod of Chapotraphouse of hexbear.net from startrek.website? - it does seem rather something that only an admin should be able to do. The totalitarian Lemmy.ml devs routinely hide stuff from the modlog though so it makes sense that this too is merely what it says but not what happened.
It looks like you’d have to talk to the Star Trek admins to find out more.
The main page sidebar says they are at a Mastodon instance though.