I did some analysis of the modlog and found this:

Ok, bigger instances ban more often. Not surprising, because they have more communities and more users and more trouble. But hang on, dbzer0 isn’t a very big instance. What happens if we do a ratio of bans vs number of users?

Ok, so lemmy.ml, dbzer0 and pawb are issue an outsized amount of bans for the number of users they have… But surely the number of communities the instance hosts is going to mean they have to ban more? Bans are used to moderate communities, not just to shield their user-base from the outside. Let’s look at the number of bans per community hosted:

Seems like dbzer0 really loves to ban. Even more than the marxists and the furries! What is it about dbzer0 that makes them such prolific banners?
Raw-ish numbers and calculations are in this spreadsheet if anyone wants to make their own charts.


Average age of accounts being banned, grouped by instance:
SELECT i.domain AS instance, AVG(EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM (NOW() - u.created)) / (60*60*24)) AS avg_account_age_days FROM mod_log ml INNER JOIN "user" u ON ml.target_user_id = u.id INNER JOIN instance i ON u.instance_id = i.id WHERE ml.action = 'ban_user' AND i.domain IN ('lemmy.ml', 'lemmy.dbzer0.com', 'lemmy.world', 'piefed.social', 'lemmy.blahaj.zone', 'pawb.social', 'lemmy.ca', 'sh.itjust.works', 'lemmy.zip', 'feddit.org', 'programming.dev', 'discuss.tchncs.de', 'sopuli.xyz', 'lemmy.today', 'slrpnk.net', 'beehaw.org', 'jlai.lu') GROUP BY i.domain ORDER BY avg_account_age_days DESC;lemmy.dbzer0.com is towards the young side but not really out of the ordinary. It’s the instances like lemmy.today, lemmy.zip and piefed.social that are unusual.
Average number of downvotes (lower attitude is a higher ratio of downvotes to upvotes. Always 1 on instances with no downvotes) when banned:
dbzer0 has 0.68 which is the same as lemmy.world or lemmy.ca.
Does this take into account the account age when they got banned? You can clearly see that older instances are on the higher level. Mate really, this shit ain’t easy, and jumping to publish with flawed methodology like this just comes off as a hit piece