To be clear, not talking about this community, obviously 😛.
What's the point of writing down rules, if mods just do what they want? But I suppose that's the risk you take when you call someone a liar in a small community; they might be a mod.
Edit: I'm not trying to say that mods suck, they perform a useful and often thankless job. Just that it can be difficult for small communities to get a healthy number of good mods, which can become a problem.
It happens on Lemmy all the time. I've been shadowbanned at least three times, all on the bigger instances.
I really, really suspect that the big Lemmy instances are being run by Reddit admins or spooks or some-such. They're moderating their instances in the exact same way Reddit did minus the profiteering. The censorship is the exact same.
Also, the fact that it's possible to shadowban people and the software itself doesn't circumvent that by auto-messaging you or putting a banner on the top of your screen when you are banned from an instance or community is reason #589238923 why Lemmy fucking sucks ass.
It's just the reality of online content moderation. The good mods/admins are people who are passionate about a topic and want to provide a space for discussion and community building. When it comes to the "power mods" or whatever, like those we saw on reddit who moderated 100+ subs, they're just in it to stroke their own egos.
Lol it literally just happened again now to another account. Site ban with no explanation. Clearly the way link aggregator sites are structured is just authoritarian and we need to create democratic social media.