LogInDiscord mods. Discord mods never change.
Unfortunately, sometimes Discord moderators on official servers for large companies aren't too different from their more casual counterparts, exhibiting the same superiority complex and ban-happy attitude that regular users find repulsive and seemingly forgetting that they represent entities much larger than they are. This was the case with one moderator on Unity's official Discord server, who recently faced a wave of criticism from users unhappy with their dictatorial behavior.
So, it goes a little something like this: a Discord user named Armon asked a question about coroutines in their Unity code in the Official Unity Discord's "code-beginner" channel, usually a perfectly appropriate place for such inquiries. Instead of providing a straightforward answer, the moderator, Fogsight – the main character of this drama – repeatedly referred Armon to official documentation, which, as you might expect, didn't help the beginner developer much.
Here's where it gets interesting. Sometime later, another user, Halfspacer, joined the discussion with a thorough response on what coroutines are and how they work, which, as seen from Armon's "OMG, thanks a lot bro" reaction, clearly solved their issue.
Instead of thanking Halfspacer for their input or quietly leaving the conversation, Fogsight just couldn't resist getting involved, deleting the helpful user's reply and accusing them of generating it with a ChatGPT-style LLM. When Halfspacer clarified that the reply wasn't AI-generated and was written by hand, the mod threatened to ban the user, who, in their own words, has "a decade of experience in Unity and C#" and put "time and effort into contributing to helping someone new to Unity".
If you think that the debacle ended there, you would be mistaken. Needless to say, Fogsight's ban threat didn't sit well with the community, which quickly showcased its dissatisfaction with the mod via emojis. One user, named bendgk, added the letters "F", "O", and "G" as emojis to the message in question for it to read "ban fog," which, let's be honest, is pretty funny given the situation.
Fogsight, however, wasn't able to take a joke and simply banned bendgk for "spam" because the user had been inactive for seven months, which, apparently, was enough for the mod to label them a "troll" and "spammer":
Fogsight then doubled down on their actions, removing multiple "F, O, G" reactions and allegedly banning at least three other users, including one OmegaFoamy, who called out the mod's unprofessional behavior, something Fogsight saw as "trolling" and acted accordingly:
So far, users have contacted Unity's support team, urging them to lift the bans and investigate Fogsight's behavior. They've also created multiple Reddit threads in hopes that Unity team members will notice and take action against the mod's "dictator-like actions."
Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb, a former Xbox Podcast host who became a part of Unity's Community department earlier this year, has already commented in one of the threads, confirming that Unity Technologies is well aware of the issue and, presumably, will resolve it in the near future, hopefully by revoking the moderator rights of Fogsight.
You can check out the Reddit threads here, here, and here to stay updated on the debacle's future developments. Don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our new Discord server, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, TikTok, and Threads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.