literally the same wreckers it always has been, rachel melina beluga and their army of alts - I know because they still harass me on accounts that have nothing to do with hexbear. same person who got beatnik and dabs. question is how do we actually work through the trust issues to figure out who is and isn't an alt. I have no idea, but good luck to anyone earnestly trying to make this a better place.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Thank you for unbanning me. I appreciate the apology in the post, and I am glad that the bioessentialism and transphobia were addressed.

But I think that there is far more to this that needs to be addressed by the mod team and admins. Because there is more to this situation than a simple miscommunication. Regardless of whether this was a prepared statement, preparation went into the post itself - comments were collated, opinions measured, policies outlined. The post itself dripped with condescension from the opening line. It made blanket statements about the cisheteronormativity of tank posters - invalidating and marginalizing unsuspecting trans users, such as myself. The fact that no one saw how this could be construed as bioessentiallism or transphobia is, frankly, a further indicator that serious self crit needs to happen with the mod team with respect to how they communicate their opinions to a userbase that has no access to the internal discussions happening within the mod team. It made blanket statements about dunking being the domain of white internet communists - invalidating and marginalizing certain POC users of the comm, who made comments to that effect. It made ableist, infantilizing comments regarding participation in dunking as being a form of self harm - invalidating and paternalizing the neurodivergent again such as myself. The name of the gossip comm was, as pointed out, deeply misogynist, and the justification for choosing that name was again invalidating and marginalizing for many users, not to mention condescending. I do not fault any of the mods for being unapologetic and staunch in their opinions. They do not owe apologies to irony poisoned, bigoted cishet white men, who have always been a problem for the chapoverse since the days of the sub, the discord, and the sites inception. Concessions should not be made for bigotry. But this shotgun blast of a post caught people who had absolutely no business being in the firing line of these changes. Not a single one of those statements should have made it into that post in the way they did. And when users such as myself and others expressed our issues with the post, we were met with silence, further condescension, and dismissal. We were told to stay quiet and that it was being looked into and to log off. We were told that we were drifting into the conspiratorial because god forbid a post seemingly dripping in disdain for and condescending to the userbase (beyond just cishet white men!) Is indicative of a culture of cliquish superiority among the mod base. That doesnt even touch on the harassment certain users have faced by alleged members of the mod team. Even the most staunch defender of trans rights this site has had, someone who I thought would do everything in her power to make sure that transphobic shit would absolutely not fly said nothing to assuage the genuine fears and concerns of nonbinary and trans users beyond an edit mentioning out of pocket shit being said. The focus was all on people getting their slop back. Then she started banning users, the first of which was someone who faced severe harassment by an anti-dunker who told them to off themselves among other vile comments. The ban messages, again, were condescending and infantilizing towards, and when i expressed my shock and utter disspointment I was hit with my own ban.

Every step along the way, every mod and admin action (except for carcosa stepping down, that should never have happened) every stupid bit in that thread, every flippant, callous, and dismissive comment, every shitty ban message, did nothing but the make the situation worse, make the mods seem as out of touch, patronizing, and uncaring as they were accused of being, and made marginalized users in the firing line feel incredibly unwelcome. I myself in the 4 years i have been here have never, ever felt more silenced, unwelcome, unheard, and frankly, betrayed on this site . because this didnt come from people i hated and didnt care for, shitass reddit admins, wreckers - it came from the comrades around me, from people i respected and trusted.

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).

I picked a hell of a time to log out for a couple days

🍿

Which sock puppet admin account will TC be using, I wonder

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.

Okay so when will the tanks be reopened?

Alright I think I'm caught up, whew, I hope everyone can take some time to step out for a bit and do something 'nice'

If ever you feel like hexbear is a waste of time, seeing people talk about banning themselves and giving up their mod rights reminds me that we really are an org lol

maybe we should have elections /s

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.

mods pretending to be transphobic making actual bigots out themselves and get banned

top tier trolling