Harsh? Yes.

Necessary? Often.

Now why would an account created 1 hour ago be asking something like this?

Having moderated a number of online spaces over the years, sort of. It’s usually the harshest thing a moderator can do, but it does not have very much real world impact on most people. In many parts of the internet, it isn’t even very effective at keeping the same person from coming back with another account, which isn’t a big deal if they don’t come back with the same behavior.

I’m not particularly shy about reaching for the permanent ban if it seems like someone is being an asshole on purpose. I’m not getting paid for it, and I do not have much patience for dealing with people who don’t want to be respectful toward their fellow humans. There’s usually a way to appeal if it’s a misunderstanding. That’s especially true in systems like Lemmy and unlike traditional web forums where one account and UI provides access to many communities, leading to drive-by comments.

I’m also fond of somewhat ambiguous rules like “be excellent to each other” or “don’t be an asshole”. Without that, if a community gets active enough, someone will show up, act like an asshole, and argue about the rules when they get banned.

No

I don’t know. Bannings become a silly concept when there are moderators who’re as fragile as sugar glass. It almost blurs the line between “Is this breaking any rules” or “Is this just simply hurting my feelings”.

Reddit is filled to the brim with moderators that just ban under arbitrary reasons. Lemmy is unfortunately becoming up there.

No. But I think that it’s often poorly used.

Most users are reasonable and should be treated as such by default; a simple warning goes a long way. Sometimes an overall good user is being really shitty so you ban them for, like, a week? Just to let them chill their head.

Permaban is for the exceptions. It’s for users who cannot be reasoned with, will likely behave in a shitty way in the future, and have a negative impact on the community.

imo, permaban should be reserved for bots and spam accounts. and people committing crimes using the platform.
everyone else max 30 days, but no limits how many times you can get banned if you keep repeating the bad behaviour

In my approach to it, I’d argue something like this. A misdeed done by a human does not have any infinite qualities because we’re not capable of that, so what am I supposed to feel if I issue a ban that does? Unless a ban occurs according to conditions which exist on behalf of someone higher than me, I never “permaban” anyone from anywhere without intention of unbanning them under certain conditions. No clockwork runs on “unconditional” aspects.

On Lemmy? No. Banning is almost pointless here since it would be very hard to track a user across multiple instances.