Does it go to the mods of the community that the comment is in? Does it go to the admins of the instance that community is in? The admins of the instance I’m logged into? All of the above?
the mods of the community that the comment is in
This, unless this has changed.
So how can we report to the admin of our instance another "problematic instance?
You can’t. You should reach out to the mods/admins on the other instance.
You can compare it with e-mail.
When you get an angry mail from company B while you work at company A, there’s not much somebody at company A can do about it, except blocking the mails from company B.If it’s a very problematic instance the admins can choose to block federation between their instance and the other instance.
send a message to the admin(s)
Admins will also see the reports, not only the community mods. In fact even admins from other instances will see them, which sometimes is a bit confusing.
Reports seem to go to the mods of the community.
The admins can see it all afaik (within their own instance), but usually its the mods acting on stuff (within a community), and the admin only steps in if the community mod/mods is/are dropping the ball.
Okay, that makes sense the more I think about it. That’s what mods are for, ultimately.
As far as I know they go to the moderators of the community that the post was in. Admins have some level of oversight but for the most part individual communities moderate themselves.
For example, if your account lives on lemmy.ml, but you’re browsing content from gaming@beehaw.org, when you report a comment it will go to the moderators of gaming@beehaw.org to take action. Admins who oversee all of beehaw.org can see a log of moderator actions across the whole instance, but for the most part they don’t participate in moderation except in very small communities.
It’s also important to remember that some communities were stood up very quickly and in some cases the people who started them and are the only mod might have stepped away and are no longer checking on reports. In this case it would be good to reach out to a site admin to take action and appoint a new mod of the community.
Hopefully that makes sense!