Mod Abuse / Online Stalking & Harassment (Albert Chessa)
Attention r/mastodonband community and the broader moderation team:
It is necessary to bring a serious breach of moderation ethics and community trust to your immediate attention. Our newest moderator, AlbertCWChessa, has engaged in a documented pattern of administrative overreach, censorship, and targeted online stalking.
Recently, I publicly called out his highly erratic posting behavior, his utilization of follow/unfollow schemes, and his concerning habit of tracking and surveilling the accounts of individuals who are legitimately associated with the band.
Rather than addressing these valid community concerns with transparency, he abused his new moderation privileges to quietly delete my public comments. Following this act of censorship, he circumvented public accountability entirely by sending me an unsolicited private message in an attempt to conduct back-channel damage control.
In this direct message, he explicitly confesses to the exact behaviors he attempted to erase from the public forum:
• Abuse of Moderation Tools:
He openly admits to deleting my public criticism to avoid "airing personal stuff in public". Silencing users to protect a moderator's personal reputation is a direct violation of basic moderation standards.
• A Documented History of Exploitation:
He admits that he "went too far" in the past with his podcast self-promotion, specifically acknowledging his controversial history with the Oddworld community.
• Artificial Metric Manipulation:
He explicitly confirms his use of the follow/unfollow tactic, admitting he did it out of a "stupid" desire to artificially ensure he had "more followers than following".
Parachuting into a niche subreddit, deleting critical feedback to sanitize your own public image, and then privately messaging the very users whose accounts you have been stalking is completely unacceptable behavior for anyone—let alone a community moderator.
To Albert directly: I do not know you, nor do I know where you came from. However, I strongly advise you to immediately cease your surveillance and stalking of individuals who are legitimately embedded with and associated with this band. Utilizing a moderator position to facilitate parasocial tracking is a massive liability, and continuing this behavior will inevitably backfire on you with severe professional and communal consequences.
Accountability is not optional, and the censorship of this community to protect a moderator's fragile ego will not be tolerated.
EDIT
Save a few clicks and use this form to have him removed:
https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=19300233728916
His Instagram handles:
@mastodonnet
@albertcwchessa
@thetopicnet
@resonantartist
@thequantumyth
@miscellabra
@episteppe