Hello users of Hexbear, there have been many changes and some drama the past few months.
The recent changes we've been making have been an attempt to create a more safe and welcoming environment for many demographics that have been overlooked in the past.
For any of our comrades that have been unintentionally hurt in this process, we apologise and hope to find a solution that accommodates as many people as possible while still meeting the needs of the marginalised groups who need a space like this the most.
The intent of this post is to provide a space for all users to air grievances with regard to the site. As well as provide suggestions for specific things that could be changed to address your grievance. Comments insulting the mod team or those without a specific means to address your problem may be removed. No commenter will be sitebanned, unless it clearly breaks the code of conduct.
I already regret posting this but fuck it
Overall I think you're really underestimating how many ways there are to dismiss marginalised peoples forcefull corrections, as well as the intensity of peoples' self-righteousness. For marginalised people to be "forcefully pointing what is wrong and not inviting a response" isn't any less tiring for them, not to mention that they have been doing that already, this whole time. It doesn't stop responses of denial ("well I was just saying for me personally", "I'm just talking about my own experience"), it doesn't stop minimising and it doesn't stop the lurkers who also don't want to examine their shit from upvoting the responses that barely make sense, but ostensibly disprove the marginalised person's point, since it's easier to maintain the dissonance than it is to do any self reflection. After all "it's just a shitposting site, what did you expect"
Some of the most irony poisoned users are also the same ones that don't believe anyone's word on anything because they could be an imagined wrecker or cop lying about their marginalisation just to stir shit up and disrupt their based posting with "identity politics that are just meant to divide us!"
Others are just too privileged and comfortable to truly give a shit and unpack the harm they might be unintentionally perpetuating, because "I didn't mean it! Therefore I'm still a Good Person™, therefore how dare anyone be mean to such a Good Person™ like me!?! Clearly they're engaging in bad faith and I shouldn't listen to them."
The way I see it, a marginalised person can rightly only go through that so many times before coming to conclusions about whose feelings matter more on this site and fucking off, as many have.
I'm literally only asking for the first engagement to not be a rant or attack. Per the end of my comment.
Please feel free to respond to any push back however you wish
Ok so then you're in a full on disagreement about your existence. Shit is tiring (like we keep saying) and many people choose to bounce instead of waiting for the settler leftists to find it in themselves to be better on racism or fatphobia.
That's a moderation issue. You'll notice I am also talking about mod behavior.
I don't know what this means. If you are suggesting that I, as person with a serious disability, am in the wrong for not immediately attacking people who use ableist language or say ableist things on this site, I strongly disagree.
No, I'm not critiquing your behaviour! Just struggling to make the connection of how your suggestion about mod behaviour improves the situation for marginalised comrades I guess? Since like you say, most of the time we will already begin the engagement respectfully if we do at all
This is a low-key indictment of mods who like to argue more than they like to actually clean up. Generally, when a regular user gets into an argument, it just keeps to the thread and (hopefully) a mod comes in and deletes comments and bans users as necessary, so that doesn't bother me. When mods argue with users or each other, either on alts or on main, it spills over into the rest of the website. Now everyone is arguing in every thread and the wreckers come out in force. The site turns into Reddit and I leave for a few days.
When this happens, mods in the fight or not, a lot of the time it's because there was an attack on someone's pride. This is usually caused not by the call out itself but by the way its handled. There is a fine line, admittedly, between asking for effective communication and tone policing, but I think the key is to treat everyone like a friend, a comrade, and telling them they fucked up like you would a friend. I had to lay it down for some drama a week or two ago because no one was getting through to the OP that said person was being an jackass. It spilled into the megathread which is where I saw it. I even got sassy with my response too, but that didn't matter, what mattered was explaining bad behavior in an effective manner.
Mods genuinely don't ban enough or go hard enough on reactionary takes IMO. The fact we've had so many arguments over bare minimum ally stuff like "not judging fat people on sight" is proof. Plus how moderators always both-sides everything with kiddy gloves and apologize profusely when the majority of users disagree with them. Like, excuse me? We're just letting bad stuff be here because lots of people are mad when we try to get rid of it?
In that sense I agree with you, because if moderators were properly shutting this stuff down instead of trying to play nice with people saying dog-whistle reactionary opinions (of which "the site isn't serious" posting I think has become one), we wouldn't have these arguments anymore.
A lot of users are from the US and are white straight men. There is no reason to cater to them, their opinions and with them a lot of the "majority opinions" of the site are worthless because they haven't done an ounce of self reflection yet.