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Hey everyone, I've removed bans for everyone that did not request one in the previous admin thread. (I think. If you got banned and I didn't restore your account yet, let me know and I'll fix it.) Don't worry! We're not gonna just ban people for no reason.

In case anyone hasn't seen it yet, Alaskaball confirmed that Sangria was their admin alt. They were messing around with their admin tools on their own account and figured it would be seen as a funny bit, but without being informed of the bit many of the mods and admins were just as shocked, confused, and appalled as you were. I've talked to the other admins and mods, and we're all gonna take it easy on bits for a bit. (Pun intended. This is the last one, I promise.)

If you're afraid that there's been an infiltration of transphobic, egomaniacal wrecker mods who hate the users, I want to assure you that's absolutely not the case. The overwhelming majority of mods and admins on this site are trans. Our admins are all trusted, long-time users in good standing. We regularly browse, comment, and post on our main accounts. You post and chat with us daily as comrades, and we value all of you. You may not recognize the usernames on our admin accounts because we regularly swap the alts used for admin privileges. This is why you'll see really old or unused alt accounts as well as really new accounts on the admin team.

I've seen a lot of speculation down below, some entertaining, some upsetting. We absolutely do not accept transphobia or any form of bigotry on this site. Some of the statements provided by mods and admins have been seen as transphobic and bioessentialist. I want to offer some transparency, but also clarify that I can't get much more specific on this for personal security reasons.

During the earlier discussions on how we felt things could be improved with these communities, multiple trans mods and admins described their reasoning in favour of the change by expressing with a variety of wording that it's the [he/him] demographic in particular that has been the source of toxic and troubling behavior in the tanks. That the he/hims haven't been beating the accusations, so to speak. With that group being largely cishet white guys on this site, these two terms were assumed to roughly correlate. We weren't making prepared statements for release, the comments that got posted here were paraphrased and combined from more casual comments made by trans people, in the mod chat to mostly other trans people about some of the chauvinistic and ironically bigoted posting habits that they saw as alienating and unhealthy for the site, and what we could do to improve the situation. We genuinely didn't foresee the potential for a miscommunication of those statements as being bioessentialist, and want to extend our sincerest apologies for the misunderstanding.

Edit: Please feel welcome to post in c/gossip as you would have posted in the_dunk_tank, and in c/counterpropaganda as you would have posted in the_dredge_tank.

693 comments

  • I'm sorry, but if people are garnering resentment for "the [he/him] demographic" at the mod/admin level, that's a failure of having pronouns on this site, no one should be reading posts and judging them based off of the poster's pronouns unless they are engaging in misogyny or something else where pronouns would actually be a relevant factor, also you don't know whether these [he/him]s are cis or not, that is extremely reactionary for a leftist website

    With that group being largely cishet white guys

    How do you know this? There is not a cis box next to the pronouns, there is not a race box next to the pronouns, there is not a sexuality box next to the pronouns, people are just assuming this about other people who have not made this clear? That's kind of a fucked up thing to do, I'm not personally assuming whether any user is cisgender or not, or is white or not, or is hetero or not, based on how they post unless they explicitly mention it.

    If this was going on on a widespread level some serious self crit needs to be had.

    • Honestly, NGL, that does give me really weird bioessentialist and non-intersectional vibes, too.

      Despite this site having a large portion of trans users, I still am not wholeheartedly convinced that many users on this site, even some of whom are trans, have completely dealt away with their bioessentialist brainworms.

      These kinds of pronoun-based judgments can absolutely be reactionary, cisheteronormative, and harmful. This site as a whole actually needs to understand that complaining about cis men from a more systemic "I'm tired of male privilege making them act like dicks" perspective can easily diverge into statements that seem suspiciously and needlessly harmful to men of color and trans people (and that includes both transfem and transmasc people) if these bioessentialist, cisheteronormative, and reactionary brainworms are not properly dealt with.

      The fact that this site's userbase fails to realize this is a part of the reason why I feel uncomfortable as a POC, as it's just one of the site's more plainly obvious demonstrations of not really being considerate of intersectionality.

      • We genuinely didn't foresee the potential for a miscommunication of those statements as being bioessentialist

        Yeah I'm definitely more on the side of there being some bioessentialism brainworms at play, instead of it just being a "miscommunication"

    • iirc, on the site polls, the site was overwhelmingly white, and almost all of the he/hims who responded to polls were amab.

      • I really don't think that excuses anything personally, unless you know the specific user's sexuality, gender, race it is fundamentally reactionary to assume what they are

        At that point you are quite literally profiling people based on their pronouns

      • Pronouns aren't gender, nor should they tell you anything about somebody's sexuality.

      • I feel like the mod team probably has similar demographics to the rest of the site tbh

  • I still can't get past the fact that the admins lied to all of us about why they were doing the thing (which IMO was a BAD reason), then when they got caught there was zero contrition. Y'all are quick to apologize for the ban rampage and the chauvinistic brainworms, but this seems to be just slipping to the back of the conversation.

    The admins/mods demonstrated that they think this is their site, not the users. That was only reinforced by the gleeful cruelty and ambivalence of the ban waves. I for one spent yesterday afternoon reliving the intensity of anxiety I felt when I was in an abusive living situation, because I felt compelled to speak out despite people catching bans literally just for being upset left and right.

    None of the apologies coming from the people who did this are speaking to this, that I've seen. To me that means the status quo still stands. Decisions about the site are for making behind closed doors, a week before any of the users know about it, and can be lied about when the rollout happens. And by my measuring of the timeline, that's the point where the userbase went from sad to angry, so letting this fade into the background is just setting us up for another huge drama like this in the future.

  • Why wouldn't I be afraid that the admin team hasn't had some form of transphobia kicking around in it when I got banned shortly after I attempted to defend my trans comrades with the following text.

    The admin team needs combed through for transphobia immediately. Between the anonymous comment and this where an admin misgenders AlaskaBall, there's clearly an issue that needs addressed. If you folks want to continue being known as the transfriendly instance, it's time to act like it.

    I don't care how much of a funny bit you think any of this shit is, but you need to gauge when shit is starting to careen out of control. It is not fucking okay that you folks banned me for that. As a transwoman, getting banned for that comment is a huge red flag for me. I've been here for a long fucking time. What was done and continues to be done is not acceptable and is purely childish behavior on the part of the people that run this site. You folks seriously need to all do self crit or get the fuck out.

    I think the worst part about all of this is that the ban reason given made it seem like I asked for it, obfuscating and giving absolutely no real reason as to why I was banned. This is clearly because there was no reason and you folks just wanted me to shut up for whatever reason. Fucking figure out your shit admins.

  • I go for a run and TC69 deletes her account

    Anyway I'm back from the gulag. I've got thoughts, but I'm gonna chill out and not post for a little while - Trying to embrace @Awoo@hexbear.net thought - so it's only going to be a short novel of a post.
    Thanks for the support y'all, it's warmed my heart to see all the people who wrote about me getting banned. TBH I was being hostile, though I felt like my hostility was an appropriate response, and it was not like I came out swinging. It ramped up slowly as this situation became more... Situationy.
    I'm really happy to see the direction things are going right now. @Lyudmila@hexbear.net Is handling this how it should've been handled from the start. Truly doing a great job. 10/10

    I wanna say I don't think there's a shadowy mod cabal, that's not what I meant by "clique", but I guess it could be read in the commnist way.

    I didn't expect immediate action, I still don't.

    Renaming the comms for a joke was not okay. Renaming them because of racism was very okay.

    Just how we gotta be watchful for transphobia, we gotta be watchful for ableism. The infantilizing "you can't take care of yourself, I know best for you" attitude of a lot of people is ableist. Even when the sentiment is rational, speaking like that to other users is ableist and it creates an environment that is not welcoming for ND people. Extra sucky to tell someone who was a back- and knee injury that flares up and makes them literally unable to walk at times - that they should walk outside. This wasn't completely relevant this time (hence the run), but still, it has hurt to be told to do so before.

    Embrace Awoo thought.

    Main.

    ::: spoiler little bit of drama if you're a messy piggy
    I'd forgotten how bad TC60 was a community admin though lol. Thought she'd mellowed out This was just the VCJ all over again, really exemplary.
    Comes back
    Immediate strugglesession
    Carcosa steps down
    Vagueposts about misogyny in the modlog
    Bans all dissenters
    Condescends and infantilizes the userbase
    This will surely stop the conflict
    72T steps down
    Deletes her account
    Refuses to elaborate
    I know the strugglesesh isn't her fault, but it is very funny.
    :::

    Go kiss your dad on the mouth y'all <3

    edit: forgot to say that banning me was fair. Not for the post I got banned for, but for how I treated @blight@hexbear.net. I apologised later, but I was way too much. I do not think I was too much elsewhere, since I believe I gave back what was passed around. I do not respect Ben Shapiro and I do not respect people that behave like him. Also death to redditors.

  • Here a couple of thoughts.

    If you’re an admin posting, don’t do bits. Have an alt and preferably recognisable as such.

    Mod actions shouldn’t be anonymous. Own your shit.

    • Bits on admin/mod accounts have been banned and clearly stated as such. Sadly multiple mods were harassed for over a year before the actions were anonymous, including one that was doxxed, at the moment we are prioritizing their saftey but you are right some sort of oversight needs to happen. We will begin talking with people about what that should look like in the next few weeks.

      • i really appreciate the new stance on bits by admins and mods. my autism found it much more stressful than funny and i think most people felt the same.

        thank you

      • I don't think there's a good way out of that. Keeping the admins and mods safe is paramount. I mean, I was going to suggest just having a single admin account and you all just rotate who gets to use it, but that's no different than an anonymous action.

  • Oh hey, I'm unbanned. Neat. I don't know where it would be best to post this but my recent thoughts are as follows:

    After all this I feel conflicted on returning to any sort of activity or interaction with the site. I don't really feel that seen or welcome as a non-white, trans, nd person and it has nothing to do with the tanks. Despite being here since the beginning, I've never been a poster of any renown(?), and as of late I feel like celebrating posting clout and reputation has often taken a higher priority in hexbear's culture than being a safe place for discussion for people like me.

    The arrogant dismissal I and many others were recently confronted with is disgusting but, for me, unsurprising. I am disappointed but I expected something like this would reoccurr, as the phenomenon has been demonstrated many times since this site was chapo.chat.

    The recent "struggle session" concentrated a lot of the feelings I experienced as an auDHD person throughout my life. Facing broad assumptions about how I felt and having to argue against a person built in the shape of me. It was uncomfortably similar to the arguments I've had with family, authority, educators, that have stemmed from them assuming the worst possible intention and refusing to hear otherwise. It was and is emotionally exhausting and simply not worth it for what this site has provided.

    The worst was assumed of people because nobody in power bothered to ask or communicate, and when action was taken, founded on this blind assumption, not only were poc, trans, nd, people ignored but mocked, shamed, and banned.

    The aspersions cast on me and others like me, in contradiction to years of our demonstrated cameraderie, have been disheartening. Ultimately I don't think it matters much personally as I've never been a celebrity or poster of renown, just someone who enjoyed the occasional dunk, art post, commiseration on the state of the world.

    I don't have illusions of being some valued presence or improving the site culture or anything, and I don't mean all this to convey some high melodrama; for me it's just a dull grey disappointment.

    • Thank you for commenting, and I truly apologize that you were dismissed, ignored, mocked, shamed, and banned.

      Many mistakes were made from the discussion of the change, the communication of the change, and the followup response. I am saddened by the impact it has had on you and others who were unfairly judged as something you were not.

      The admin that banned you is no longer one and has deleted all her accounts, and we are in the process of changing our internal structure to have more transparency and ability for all users to participate in the proposals for site change.

      I know that it will take much more than these words to get back to any level of trust that may have existed before. Any other thoughts you may have on the matter or ideas on how we may move forward I am more than happy to listen.

    • GOOD post

    • Great post comrade <3

  • This is the first sensible post to come out of the admin team since the start of this insanity.

    Still a lot of room for improvement - not sure that “associating behavioural trends with pronoun tags” is a route we should ever go down, to be honest.

    But after the past few days of being entirely baffled by whatever the hell was going on with the rest of the admins, this is a step in the right direction.

    • not sure that “associating behavioural trends with pronoun tags” is a route we should ever go down,

      Iunno. Dudes do stay on hella bullshit; especially white dudes-- but it's so much of a worse look when a mod staff that's frankly always given some hWhite tendencies (no, I will not forget the 🦝 discourse and how I nearly had to fight that mod fight twice) starts hitting everyone, not just the white dudes with accusations of having "cishet white dude" mentalities over shit that rly doesn't matter that much. Reads as friendly fire but cranked up a couple magnitudes; y'all just spraying into a crowd with that.

      When I say 'white dudes/white gays are the weakest link' it always has something to do with formation-building, with interpersonal relations in organizations and the moments of action, et cetera.

      ...This is a shitposting forum; is shitposting suddenly the sole domain of cracker men? If so, we'd all have to leave except the he/hims.

  • this is not in response to you specifically @Lyudmila. I appreciate the work you and @CARCOSA are doing in this thread to sort things out. thank you.

    effortpost preface:

    I started writing this at 5am this morning after checking to see if I was banned (confused? keep reading!), seeing @Aradina had been unbanned, stumbling onto the horrifically sad comment that apparently @morte made from an alt after being banned, and crying my eyes out. I've been working on it (and crying! 😂😭) off and on all day, in between reading the comments here to catch up on What Happened.

    I have to get this out, and presumably we're supposed to keep all of this contained to these threads.

    admins, mods, fellow users – this is not an attempt to restart The Shit.

    I'm posting this to get it off my chest and hopefully get some clarification from some people on it, so I'm gonna leave it and close Hexbear and maybe see you tomorrow.

    ATTENTION, FELLOW HEXBEARS:

    telling me anytime after Friday to logout and let things blow over was ableist, actually.

    also, saying this is just a website is callous and fucked up.

    please allow me to elaborate. get your clicking fingers ready, because baby, I got links.

    I am autistic as fuck. I only just realized this last year, and got diagnosed last week.

    justice sensitivity is a well-known neurodivergent trait, and it has been a defining part of my character for my whole life. one of my earliest memories is getting whipped with a spatula for "talking back" because I questioned the justice of adult decisions, for responding to "life isn't fair" with "why aren't you trying to be? why don't you make it fair?"

    I have been repeatedly socially ostracized for sticking up for others or finding repugnant behavior intolerable. I lost my hometown friend group when I wouldn't attend functions to which they had invited the asshole who abused another person in the group.

    my husband and I lost his hometown friend group when nobody gave a shit about covid. they stopped inviting us to things because we were masking and distancing. I'd rather have no friends than friends like that.

    it's the biggest reason for having left most of the two-dozen jobs I mentioned – somebody outside the management clique is unjustly fired or otherwise punished, and I quit in solidarity with no backup plan. 🤦🤷

    it made me unwelcome in the glass program at art school because I reported the head instructor's abusive treatment of a fellow student to the program director.

    it's the reason I left Christianity as a teenager. the adults wouldn't stand up for anything. they didn't give a shit about "love your neighbor." they were too busy gossiping and backstabbing each other while jockeying for positions in the social and institutional hierarchy. there were people with country club memberships while some of the other members of the <100-member church didn't have enough to eat.

    it has made me the outsider in my conservative evangelical family. they thought it was super fun to get me all fired up about this stuff when I was younger, and then they'd make fun of me for caring until I cried and fled. they also hated that my best friend was a gay boy I met in band class. why should it matter that he was gay? didn't Jesus love everyone equally? I didn't understand. I still don't.

    it's what drove me from the Republican indoctrination of my childhood to the Democrats as a young adult. it's what made me ditch them over the way they treated Bernie. it's part of what drove me from DSA. it's what has driven me further and further left.

    it's why I would never have employees. it's why I pay for any little indie apps I use. it's why I left reddit during the API fiasco. it's what made me investigate Hexbear when you federated instead of just accepting the warnings about you as facts. it's what made me abandon my other fediverse accounts and live here on local on my previous account and this subsequent one. it's what made me start contributing to the Patreon the day I found out it existed.

    I'm not online all the time, so I know there are plenty of things I miss, but since I joined last summer, this place has been fair, it has been caring, and it has been wonderful to see so much good come of this place. people have been fed and sheltered because so many of us are willing to share what we have, even when it is very little. lots of very little bits of goodness added together can make something great.

    I'm 42, which makes me older than most users here; many of you are much closer in age to my 17yo son than to me. I don't bring it up because I think it makes me inherently wiser than any of you – far from it, I know I'm a dumbass, I have a lifetime of failure and fuckups to prove it. just because I've been fucking up longer doesn't mean I have learned more from my fuckups than any of you have from yours.

    I bring it up because I'm fucking tired, and life is hard, and I genuinely had very little hope for the future until I made a post begging for distraction from terrible thoughts, and so many of you came through for me. 😭 it still instantly makes me cry when I think of it.

    the months since then have been physically harder – I had to stop hrt for perimenopause due to life-threatening side effects, and I have been expecting to slide back into the abyss, but I hadn't yet. I really think the community of care I have found here is what was keeping it at bay. @morte's comment let me know I'm not the only person who feels that way about this place, and I don't want her to put herself out there alone.

    some of you have become very dear to my heart.

    a long-time user I have barely interacted with DM'd me yesterday offering help with getting my son T if Trump bans trans care.

    there are no words to adequately express my gratitude for that sliver of hope.

    Hexbear, I love you, but I care about things being "fair" or "just" more than anything else. I will stop caring about the way other people are treated when I stop breathing. you might as well tell me to stop getting rashes when I'm stressed.

    wanna see what it looked like after I saw that @REgon had been banned?? 😂🙃 ::: spoiler pic

    this might actually be the worst I've ever seen it. it was definitely the worst my husband has.

    🏆🥇

    :::

    you might as well tell me to quit loving my son or quit being 42. it is physically impossible. my parents couldn't beat it out of me.

    "don't take it too seriously, it's just online, it's just a website!" friend, right now I wish it were just a website, because I would say fuck this place and never look back. no mere website is worth the amount of anxiety and stress I've felt and tears I've cried in the last 24 hours.

    it's not just a website, it is a lifeline for my family and so many of my comrades. it has been a sanctuary for me, until this past weekend. really, until yesterday. "don't take that tiny sliver of hope too seriously"??

    if you think that, then buddy,

    with all my heart,

    with every fiber of my being,

    FUCK YOU.

    is that hostile? good. maybe if someone who is usually kind to everyone gets hostile, this stuff will fucking matter to you, too. I'm glad that some of you are socially privileged enough to have enough support to not care what happens to this place. I'm not.

    those of you who were applauding the behavior of TC69 and her Cool Kids Club this weekend should be deeply ashamed of yourselves.

    I know I'm ashamed of you. I finally understand why so many people warn about this place. You Eat Your Own.

    and for what??? what was the actual point of any of this? rename the comms plus change the comms equals change the site culture?

    was the culture genuinely that bad?? this is a real and sincere question, I'm autistic, I'm sure there are problems that I don't pick up on.

    most of the time irl, I don't realize a skillful bully is fucking with me until it's too late, so certainly I'm not gonna catch all the shittiness on here, where I don't have body language to help.

    (continues below)

  • All I'll say now is that this reminds me of the good ole days. Back when a struggle session was the main attraction of hexbear.

    I was told we had to ban the tanks because in part they serve only to create drama and attract users who like drama. Well I guess they were right. Good thing there's no drama now.

  • Our admins are all trusted, long-time users in good standing. We regularly browse, comment, and post on our main accounts. You post and chat with us daily as comrades, and we value all of you. You may not recognize the usernames on our admin accounts because we regularly swap the alts used for admin privileges. This is why you'll see really old or unused alt accounts as well as really new accounts on the admin team.

    This really makes it impossible to build trust in the admins. The admins are vetted by who, other admins? They might be "in good standing" but there are users in this site who are in good standing who I wouldn't want in charge.

    Take SalvadorWALL_E for example. This account was sitting dormant for 2 years, got promoted to admin in the middle of a heated struggle session, pissed some people off, then was purged. Was this an existing admin who wanted deflect heat? A trusted user who got promoted, immediately fucked up and got demoted? A trusted user who got promoted, immediately fucked up, and is going to continue being an admin on another account?

    I understand that it's for opsec and I'm not telling you to stop using alts, but I'm not giving the benefit of the doubt to accounts with little-to-no history.

    • There are two categories of Admins, those that have been Admins for over a year and those that are new.

      The new ones were nominated by members of our marginalized communities to help diversify the admin team.

      The specific admin you mentioned was an old old admin, that had left and then returned. At this moment the team is the same it has been the past 2 years with the addition of the aforementioned new additions.

      Going forward any admin that stepped down, and has been inactive for over a year will not be permitted to return, and that any new admins will be those nominated by users and then thouroughly vetted and onboarded to prevent this situation from reoccuring

      • Completely unrelated to the struggle session and more of a curiosity: how are admins vetted? Is it like a lets-meet-in-person thing or its digital equivalent? How do you know that you really know who is behind the handle?

  • I’m sorry, but as a mod on this site I feel like I have to say something that I don’t seem to see any other mods/admins saying:

    The mod/admin team are never going to remediate relations with the general site user base if this post is indeed how things will be working moving forward. There is no self-crit at all regarding the main thing people are upset about, which is NOT closing the tanks, but that mods/admins get to voice their opinion on this site and what it should look like/how it should be run via executive action that is not available to the average site user.

    I’m sorry to tell any of my fellow mods/admins this, but your experience as a mod/admin does not make your opinion inherently any more or less valuable in regards to what the site should look like than that of the average user. Yes, you may see more of what happens behind the scenes, lower quality/aggravating posts, etc. but that is something you took upon yourself as a gesture to the community you are a part of, not a leader of. Not thinking posts are high effort enough is your opinion. Thinking posts dunking on libs are boring is your opinion. Thinking Hexbear needs to change this way or that is your opinion. If you have a problem with things, you must act AS A MEMBER OF THE COMMUNITY and voice your opinion on necessary changes just like anybody else. You should not get to be a more privileged user than the average person here and go ahead and talk behind the scenes with other people who have the power to change the site and decide what needs to happen without user feedback. Mods/admins exist to enforce a site’s rules and act as maintainece, not to be a leading body of powerusers who determine what the site should look like and how it should be run. The reason there was so much pushback on these decisions is that they were never (and still haven’t been, for that matter) presented to the community as something to be discussed at all, and changes were made by executive decision.

    The only power the average user has to voice their opinion on how the site should look is via posting, and that is the only way mods/admins should get to voice theirs. Acting otherwise is a classic leftist org blunder that cultivates a massively toxic culture of powerplayers and in-groups at the levers of power that leads to growing tension and eventually fractures both within the in-groups and between the in-groups and user base at large.

    A whole host of other very important issues (notably transphobia, misogyny) have arisen as a result of the initial actions taken by the mod/admin team, and there is no reason they can’t/shouldn’t be addressed. That being said, the ignorance/arrogance of the mod/admin team of marching on forward after their wrongdoings have clearly been outlined is concerning and needs to be undone as soon as possible. The only thing worse than making a bad decision is committing to it once it’s well known that it went poorly.

    Undo the changes, bring them up with the community just like any average user would have to, gain valuable feedback from them, and take action from there. To genuinely save face + demonstrate that this site is for its user base at large and not just for a few elite users who want it to be their pet project, this the only way forward.

  • toxic and troubling behavior in the tanks

    Behavior such as?

    • It's, "the [he/him] demographic in particular that has been the source of toxic and troubling behavior." So, I'd like to know, too. Am I toxic? Am I being a piece of shit? What have I done wrong?!? I am autistic. Social norms are a fucking mystery to me.

      One of our big points of pride as an instance is that we don't have downvotes, because it fosters discussion. Where's the discussion? It's all happening behind closed doors, and nobody has been called out in public. Am I the baddie? Who are the toxic [he/him]'s? This is a tiny community—can we address that on an individual basis?

      • The thing that gets me is that the admins keep saying to check the modlogs for examples which makes absolutely no sense to me because those are things that are already being removed.

      • I think it will take time to gather examples and identify who might need to self-crit or take a ban.

        More importantly, though, we all need to be receptive to criticism without getting defensive. That is part of having a healthy culture on this site, where queer, POC, and femme users feel comfortable voicing criticisms when they see problematic behavior that those outside their group(s) may be blind to. All of us grew up in reactionary cultures. That doesn't vanish the moment we join a communist website. Building a better culture here is an ongoing process that will continue long after this struggle session ends. We need to know how to listen to each other and hold slow, patient, thoughtful dialog.

      • So, I'd like to know, too. Am I toxic? Am I being a piece of shit?

        On occasion yes. It's like 4AM and I have been drinking heavily this weekend and busy waiting for someone to fight me at the new dragonball game but I have most definitely seen some shitty comments from you.

      • I think moving forward it could be really helpful for there to be one-on-one conversations with people who fuck up, would be very useful for us ND folks for sure. And then maybe a self crit post after private discussion if warranted? Idk that might be way too much emotional labor for mods/admins but could be really good for the culture and good for the people who are saying problematic shit without realizing it

        Sending this to you bc the end of your post felt like it's calling for something like that

  • Are there any updates with regards to figuring out who spun up all the alt accounts and started harrassing users? That's what I care about most to be honest, I only had one comment on this entire issue before that happened.

    • They are here in the thread trying to start shit with me rn 🤷

    • Haven't figured it out but we're banning any that pop up. It's not the person that was accused previously as they haven't had internet access for a couple of days. I'm not going to doxx them, but several mods were able to confirm that they were and still are in a location with no internet access.

      • Thanks for the update.

        So I guess it just one of those things then, where whoever's behind this will likely get away with it because they used alt accounts that can't be traced back to them. Such is life sometimes...

  • just wanna put this here, it was a reply I made to Yukiko in another thread, I deleted it to not do struggle-posting in another thread:

    it is very ironic, I typed up a reply to your last post in that thread, saying that I was hesitant to criticize the situation or even report the post in question for misgendering, out of fear of catching a stray ban because of it. I didn't end up posting it because of that fear, and then you got banned. never felt that way on Hexbear before, of all places.

    it's very fucked, for the longest time I always felt Hexbear was a place where I could come and speak my mind with comrades who are all generally on the same page as me. conversations can happen, behavior and choices could be criticized, and we could all grow as a group. I honestly no longer feel that way. I appreciate everything the mods/admins do on a day to day basis, it's a thankless gig you volunteer for, and it's fucked what you have to deal with sometimes. but the behavior in that previous thread felt simply disgusting.

  • The will of the users seem to be to restore the dunk tank. Call it something else, sure, but realize that our reputation amongst other instances is not going to be restored just because you nuked it

    Similar to how Kamala campaigning with Dick Cheney still got her called a communist or whatever, other instances will continue to make up lies about Hexbear because that's what they do and they don't give a shit about what is actually posted here.

    edit: I am not cis and I am not het fwiw

    Edit2: this was misinfo on my part

    • There has never been any intention of changing our reputation with other instances by doing this.

      The tank comms won't exactly be getting restored, as the names have racist origins. Changing these names was a primary goal of the recent changes.

      I'm still working on getting everything together and name voting is ongoing. For now please feel welcome to use c/gossip as you would have used the dunk tank, and c/counterpropaganda as you would have used the dredge tank!

      • That is good! I might have read some FUD that someone posted about that then trying to stir up drama re: the instance stuff. I edited my comment & I appreciate the response.

  • I hope we can all agree that wherever we were at during this debacle, that we wish things had gone differently and never gotten this far

    • Yeah, I wish you stayed banned. Try doxxing me as a perfectly measured and reasonable response to this comment

      • What are you talking about with doxxing? Very normal response

        Edit: This is how an attempted call out post ends. Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

        LeylaLove, when you can't resist coming back to look at this argument that you started and then lost and then had to both block me and request a self-ban to get yourself out of, I just want to say

  • Here's my super serious thoughts and my attempt at effort posting. I have fibrofog pretty bad right now so apologies if I ramble or make shit points.

    I think one of the big lessons here is to avoid having power-users. The initial, relatively small, issue was quickly blasted out of proportion when it could have been stopped by a simple "We're sorry, while we didn't intend to say those things, our intent is irrelevant in the face of our actions. We'll work on it and get back to you." along with unlocking the comms and involving users more in the process if the issues with the comms are really so severe. I still think the tanks should be unlocked until a choice is made, as a show of good faith. It'll do a lot to assuage fears that they don't care, and show that the top down community defining isn't going to be how things are done in future.

    The second big lesson is that moderators and admins need to be vigilant of resentment toward users building up. I've been a moderator for a very active community before, and it sucks. You do see the worst of the community and that can lead to resentment and cliquishness. The other mods understand, the users don't. It makes it easy to mentally create an in group and out group, we're all humans, and the human brain sucks ass at most things. Perhaps moderators and admins should be strongly suggested to take time off and be a regular user on occasion to prevent this? Obviously there are privacy concerns, and the admins need to protect themselves from doxing, so I'm unsure how to implement this.

    I think that overall this might have been a good thing. It's clear to me that there were tensions bubbling below the surface just waiting for this to happen, and now that it has we can identify and rectify those tensions better. A learning experience is always a good thing, even if they rarely feel good in the moment. In fact, they usually feel absolutely terrible in the moment.

    AlaskaBall banning themself as a bit and then accidentally misgendering themself is funny in retrospect, but seemed to confirm the idea that there was a shadowy take-over of transphobic mods. Very poor timing as a thing to do, but great comedic timing. People are already looking back and laughing on it, so I don't think that'll be anything long term.

    The cult of personality being character assassinated is a good thing in terms of my anti-power-users stance, but a bad thing in that TC69 did stumble face first into this, and didn't instigate it(though she clearly made it worse). She obviously did some great things for the site before my time, and the outcome of her actions is part of what drew me here. It's a space that isn't shit, and she helped build that and should be recognized for that. She shouldn't have returned from such a long break and been given admin straight away. Admins should be people who are currently active in the community, not niche internet celebrities. The fact that she was given admin right away strongly supports the idea of adminship being a big club that you ain't in, which I'm sure the admins don't want.

    I'd say there's no hard feelings, but there are a few. I'm willing to try and work through them though. I can't speak for others who are less willing to, and I know I wasn't hurt as much as the others were. I'd have preferred an apology from her directly, but if deleting and purging her account was the choice she made, then I respect that and wish her well. But as said, I can't speak for others.

    As others have said, there's also the issue of assuming all he/hims are A: white, B: cis, C: het, D: men, and E: wrong for having those pronouns. This loops back to the resentment thing I mentioned earlier I think. Brainworms are part of the human condition in our world today, it's not your fault for having them, but you do need to put effort into removing them. This is a very hard process that feels shitty in the moment, because you have to catch yourself and stop yourself. Telling your own brain that it's wrong is difficult. Self improvement feels like shit a lot of the time.

    Large amounts of users also cited the demographic surveys that show Hexbear to be very white, and seemed to use that to excuse the assumptions, which was clearly quite hurtful to our POC comrades. I'm white, and thus not very qualified to talk on this issue, but I felt it was very worth noting that harm so that it isn't forgotten and can be worked on.

    From what I've seen, Lyudmila and CARCOSA have been handling the aftermath quite well I feel. Putting yourself as the face of an unpopular group is very difficult and I'm sorry for the stress you've likely felt.

    That's my wall of text. I hope we can all move forward together as better people, better comrades, and better posters to build a better community and world(eventually.)

  • If you can be banned for a bit, or for expressing reasonable dissent, why would we put effort into anything more than shitposting on this site?

    Likewise if decisions are made on a whim from the admin/mod team, it is reasonable for the users to feel and act like they are just along for the ride.

    • That was the result of someone who is no longer part of the admin team, and we have established clear boundaries regarding the use of siteban on hexbear users to prevent this from occurring again.

  • This is my thoughts that I have transpired:

    1. This drama has resolved two pressing contradictions: whether Hexbear should be a shit-posting site or a more serious and political site and whether Hexbear should be a space for dunks or a comfy space. From this point forward, Hexbear will be a shitposting site and Hexbear will be a space for dunks. You can't have pretensions about Hexbear being serious and have some incognito admin create an admin account and ban their mod account. This is shitposting territory. It's shitposting par excellence. And as for the contradiction between a space for dunks or a comfy space, the space for dunks has won out. The people want their dunk tank back and in a poor attempt to argue otherwise, the admins more or less misgendered and done the racial equivalent of misgendering many people. Is this not an admission that Hexbear is not going to be a comfy space but a space for dunks? The admins dunked on the users for being cringey cishet white dudes and the users dunked back at the admins for being wildly out of touch dipshits with their heads up their collective asses.
    2. The megathreadization of Hexbear will accelerate. Throughout this dumpster fire, I lurked at the various megathreads up (news, trans, disabled, em_poc, general) and the drama was almost completely absent. I feel very sorry for the trans users who have to put up with this shit because if they had just stayed at the trans mega, they wouldn't have seen any of this shit. Trans users who browse outside the trans mega got misgendered by the admins as cishet white dudes while trans users who stayed in the trans mega and mostly hang out at the trans matrix are blissfully unaware. What's going to happen to the behavior of trans people from this point forward? You can apply the same shit to all the megas. People are just going to migrate to the megas, and non-mega Hexbear will slide closer to closer to the character of the dunk tank. I suppose it's a bit of an open secret, but the various megas have been better than general Hexbear for a good while. Most seriousposting is done in the news and trans megas. Trans, em_poc, and disabled megas are good safe spaces. General Hexbear is just for cheap dunks where you'll occasionally catch strays, and if you don't have a thick enough skin, you'll eventually burn out. In this sense, the dunk tank perfectly encapsulates general Hexbear and to clamp on the dunk tank is to clamp on general Hexbear. The dunk tank is general Hexbear and general Hexbear is the dunk tank. Far from clamping down dunk tank culture, the poorly thought out actions of the admins have only accelerated the dunkification of Hexbear. Something something dialectics.
    3. Given that the completely deranged alts turn out to be done by Melina per the modlog, I don't see any possible justification for /c/fakenews, a comm that many people already dislike for various reasons, still existing. That comm is understood by this website's community to be the brainchild of Melina. The fact that one of the recent prolific posters turn out to be another one of fae's alts only reinforces this point, and I wouldn't be surprised if the mod team outside of Dirt_owl are alts as well. Here's my advice to the admins who have taken a tremendous hit in their credibility. You could start regaining that credibility by getting rid of /c/fakenews, a move that many people have been clamoring for months now. Melina wishing that aaaaaaadjsf would get murdered should be the time for fae's presence, including fae's comm, to be completely purged from Hexbear. Or is the shitposting nature of /c/fakenews a complete fit with Hexbear's shitposting culture, meaning that it will never be removed? This is in dispute. See further comment.

  • I love my niche communist internet forum that avoids the pitfalls of niche internet forums and communist organisations

  • I'll try to keep this short, I think the more I talk the less people like me, and the more I shut the fuck up and listen the more people like me. Funny how that works lol, I think I'm just an annoying asshole that people secretly hate but that's a separate issue. Trying to do some self-crit on how I interact with others, I've been likely making others uncomfortable IMO so I'm gonna shut the fuck up and listen more. Anyways...

    First of all, I love this site. I am new here, only half a year, but I truly love that I can shitpost with comrades without having liberals throw a fit. I love that I can dig into the News Mega and read good analysis from comrades like @Awoo@hexbear.net or @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net (please come back to admin!). I love that I can make an essay on some Fallout: New Vegas mod 3 people have played and have people take it seriously. I really love this site, and I think most of the users, mods, and admins do too. I want this comfort and safety to be felt by all users, not just me.

    Second, I hope the claims of chauvanism and misogyny are not shelved, but investigated openly. I think a lot of the pushback against this was a lack of evidence presented, and the struggle around this aspect could have been lessened with a few examples. If we want this to be a safe space for marginalized comrades, marginalized comrades should have their voices respected when it comes to how they experience the site. I think the fact that these claims were discussed behind closed doors compounded the problems, and garnered undue pusback. I understand why these conversations weren't held publicly either, out of preventing harrassment and for safety, which is why I think having prepared examples and evidence under CWs would help prevent pushback. The fact that several trans members have expressed issue with [he/hims] should be taken seriously. Edit 2: Speaking of, if I have contributed to this as a [he/him] user or as a white person in general, please let me know, even in DMs with an alt if you want to remain anonymous. I'll make a selfcrit post and do better, I promise, I'm stupid so please have patience, I want everyone to feel safe here like I do. It's not on others to correct behavior but just in case.

    Third, the user that keeps making accounts and attacking people needs to come forward and self-crit, or be removed. This is unacceptable. It's good that the transphobic statement was addressed, but as far as I know the harrassment is an open issue. Edit 1: Looks like this was resolved! Thanks!

    Fourth, the Admins. @CARCOSA@hexbear.net should not have been the shield taking the brunt of pushback, and should not step down. They were very level-headed. TransComrade69 should not have been handling everything alone either, which is how it appeared. Regardless of how ze was handling the situation, it was only magnified by having hir handle the sitiation seemingly alone. @Alaskaball@hexbear.net lol. Lmao, even. Honestly a good bit, but the timing could not have been better, or worse, I guess. Glad to see you stepping up to be an open face of the admin team, that should help repair user relations a bit. @Lyudmila@hexbear.net you're handling things very well, props!

    To cap this all off, this all spiraled out of control because people here clearly care a lot about the site, outside of a few rogue elements the overwhelming majority stood by our trans comrades even at risk of being banned. Not everyone behaved well, I won't pretend that, but I do think the vast majority of users here are kind, considerate, and willing to discuss the actions taken to fix the problems that started this debaucle.

    Love y'all, hope we can bounce back stronger as @Frank@hexbear.net said, and as @Awoo@hexbear.net said we may need to just slow our roll on posting a bit and not take every little thing as seriously as possible.

    Edit 3: tried and failed to keep it short, lol

    • On the third point, if you mean DebatebroX, I'm fairly certain we got that handled.

    • Second, I hope the claims of chauvanism and misogyny are not shelved, but investigated openly. I think a lot of the pushback against this was a lack of evidence presented, and the struggle around this aspect could have been lessened with a few examples. If we want this to be a safe space for marginalized comrades, marginalized comrades should have their voices respected when it comes to how they experience the site. I think the fact that these claims were discussed behind closed doors compounded the problems, and garnered undue pusback. The fact that several trans members have expressed issue with [he/hims] should be taken seriously. Edit 2: Speaking of, if I have contributed to this as a [he/him] user or as a white person in general, please let me know, even in DMs if you want to remain anonymous. I'll make a selfcrit post and do better, I promise, I'm stupid so please have patience, I want everyone to feel safe here like I do

      Same goes for me. I don't always have the best social judgment. If I'm inadvertently hurting people, I want to know so that I can stop and improve as a person.

    • Great post comrade

    • GOOD post

    • Good post!

      Our intention was and still is to reduce the aspects of the site that have kept other users, and minority users in particular, from feeling that same level of comfort and safety that we do.

      Eliminating bigotry is a tough and ongoing process. We can't just handle it by banning people indiscriminately, it's going to be a multi-faceted overhaul. I want to be transparent about this upfront, so I think it's important to clarify that there will be some changes to some communities and the COC related to this, but obviously I'll chat about it with all of you a little later. I think we all need a little bit of time to cool down given how fast and confusing the last few days have been.

      I genuinely care a lot about all of the posters here, and I want us to be a warmer, more comfortable, and more positive site. It's going to take all of us users pulling in the same direction to achieve this, and I'm looking forward to working together with all of you to improve things.

      • Sounds good to me! It's my hope that we can help make this a safer and more comfortable space for everyone, so it's good that this is being taken seriously. I agree that cooling down is probably for the best before moving again. Good luck, y'all have my support

  • I'd like to add that a thing creeping into a lot of these discussions is the survey. the survey is not a representitive of all users, it is a self selecting group of people who took one to give us a sample of the userbase that we have extrapolated. the survey itself says around 600 people responded. a look at the side bar will show you the number of users a day/week/month regularly exceeds this. people in that thread of the survey results were debating about how many trans men and cis women were even on here because the data does not tell them this, so they invented readings from it.

    furthermore, the survey does not say; are the 'he/him's cis, are the 'he/hims' white, are the 'he/hims' straight. you do not know who is behind the prounoun tag and username, do not invent a bogeyman out of users based on a survey. it is not empirical evidence. cis het jacketing he/hims is not useful, and can do a lot to hurt people in ways you do not know. I've seen this shit hurt trans men friends of mine so many times

  • While I shouldn't weigh in too much, especially post-hoc, I could've told you that having TC69 back as a mod or admin was a very bad idea.

    As important TC69 was (and from a legacy perspective is) to creating an aggressively positive trans culture, she, for better and worse, acts incredibly narcissistically when she is placed into positions of power, and more importantly, in my opinion, she is/was ideologically incoherent as moderator. You cannot simultaneously say 'its just a website' while also banning people for small indiscretions or personal beef. After all, 'it's just a website' why should the moderators care that much? She tends to take so much shit that goes on here personally and yet expects nobody else to.

    A poor decision unless you enjoy drama.

  • Something 72T mentioned in their selfcrit

    This was not just my own isolated belief - other moderators who pay closer attention to the broader site culture than I do (as I stay in the news mega 95% of the time) were adamant that these changes be made, as they have repeatedly said that comrades from certain minority groups have been turned off from joining or staying on the site due to the site culture.

    How exactly do we know this about the joining part? And how much of “site culture” is being misconstrued by liberals on other parts of lemmy? It’s no secret that other lemmy instances lie like anything else about here.

    • Yknow what deterred me from joining the first time?

      A tagline

      When you don't know how the site works, decide to check it out, and the first thing you see is a rabid liberal raging about how much they hate hexbear... well

      I probably thought the site got hacked or something

      • Then that's a far more pertinent thing to change than the TDT's.

        Should be an option that's visibility is off by default and can only be turned on in account settings.

      • As somebody who loves the taglines, this makes a lot of sense. It should be a toggle setting on accounts over a certain age maybe, that way you get a taste of the culture and intro to what some of them mean before you get met with some dumb liberal shit

    • the things that stop me telling people to come here are not the dunk tanks or that type of culture. this being such an insular place with an often defensive mindset does a lot more to removedoff new people who don't know the party line* yet does a lot more than 'they shit on random nazis'

      *I do not mean liberals and bigots, I mean leftists. ofc there's no place for scum here

      • Eliminating this unwelcoming insularity and hostility between users is a primary goal of the ongoing community changes we're working on here.

        I want this to be a welcoming place for leftists of all stripes to come shitpost, hang out, and feel safe in a like-minded community.

    • I can say for myself that i have friends who are trans, leftist and who i still wouldn't recommend the site to simply because the vibe doesn't fit them at all. I honestly don't know if i would join if i discovered Hexbear now and hadn't gotten used to our culture since the last days of r/chapotraphouse. In spite of the struggle session i'd still say we've gotten better on things like irony poisoning, edgyness, misanthropy and debate pervertry, but the place can still be pretty crass at times and we tend to be extremely hostile to people who aren't part of our niche culture. That's just not something everybody vibes with. And in spite of our anti-sectarian stance, this is largely an ML space that can be hard to navigate for Anarchists, DemSocs, classical Marxists and Trots. It's kinda grim at times and not a space that's very welcoming to a lot of the most caring and sweet socialists i know.

      I'm not saying that we should transform the site in a way that fixes these issues. I don't know if they even should be fixed, and i'm saying this as somebody who is herself firmly in the "Hexbear is a safer space" camp, who has blocked comms like the dunk tank and fakenews since forever, who largely stays out of struggle sessions and who only browses by local because i don't want to be part of dunkfests with the rest of the lemmyverse, or even interact with it in the first place. That's my stance, but i'm very aware that we have a sizeable userbase who sees all of these things very differently and is vehemently opposed to changing our site culture. And looking back at the last days, i think it's better when we find a synthesis here instead of forcing a transformation of the site.

  • Now that I've had time to eat ten dumplings I think the small domino is that the statement from the mods was perceived as (by me and others)inherently being a misgendering. The claim that the culture behind it was inherently white, cis, and het seems to echo common transphobic ideas of male socialization, which, given the sites demographics, very quickly resulted in punches being thrown.

    One of the middle dominos is the ban button, and the big one is Lemmygrad users looking over the fence with concern

  • I was at work yesterday so I couldn't have my eyes glued to this.

    Are the admins/mods still framing their the problem with the struggle session as just being about the banwaves?

    Has anything been said or done about the ACTUAL spark that began the drama? That is, has there been a discussion about the way decisions are made without user input (let alone democracy) for reasons that are then lied about?

    This will happen again unless the primary contradiction is resolved: is this website a social club for the mods in which we are simply extras, or is this our website as the users?

  • Suggestion for effortposting for the next little while:

    Sometimes when i'm upset or just need time to work out if what i'm saying is what i want to be saying i'll open a text document, write down what i want to say, save it, then come back to it a few days later once i've had time to sleep and process and then re-examine it. I find it can be helpful.

  • I have what is hopefully my last thought on this. I think there should be a steering committee of people on major website decisions and I think that group should included interested posters in good standing who apply, and not exclusively mods/admins. It could be a standing body or one convened specifically for major decisions. I think there are a lot of people who don't necessarily have the time or temperament to be mods but who could provide meaningful input and it would help break down the opposition between the mods (evil, cabal) and the posters (beautiful, pure, light itself).

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