I was part of the group that got banned yesterday, and I need to apologize to you all.
I have seen people mention previously that sometimes mods take upvotes for agreement, but I haven't trained myself to stop the reddit habit of voting on "food for thought" things, useful-addition-to-the-conversation-but-not-my-pov posts, and placemarkers in active threads, and there aren't downvotes here to easily mark the shitty stuff I want to come back to and learn from. I should always be opening things in new tabs instead.
I foolishly upvoted this comment as a "food for thought" comment and planned to come back to the thread yesterday evening to find it and read the responses and learn from them. instead my upvote counted as agreement and got me banned, which I know is my fault for not adapting to site culture and not foreseeing how that would be interpreted.
I totally understand, feel like the worst kind of fool, and spent my ban time thinking about what a piece of shit I am. far worse than that is the thought that any of you might think I agree with that comment, so I am posting here to apologize profusely and publicly for my upvote. I'm really, truly, terribly sorry, and idk what to do to about it except fuck off and try not to be such a fuckhead in the future.
explanation (not excuse) for those who care to understand why
I live in Ohio, which is immersed in the kind of chud culture that comment was talking about – I see my formerly borderline leftist little brother slipping into it, and it kills me. it's a point of view I remember seeing a lot when I was in DSA and not liking then, but I lack the information and wisdom to effectively articulate my problems with it. I very much want to understand what to do about it and how to talk about this stuff with people who believe it, but I get why it was offensive and shitty to mark it for myself in a way that would default mean "this is good" to others instead of pushing back on it at all or just opening it in a new tab to look at later. I'm very sorry about doing that.
I didn't open it in a new tab because I'm pushing triple digits of tabs open and knew it would be easy to find later because the Amber bot was inflating the comment activity. I keep forgetting to be judicious with my upvotes because I'm AuDHD and unlearning a decade of reddit habits is hard.
you didn't know that was why I upvoted it, it just looked to you like a bunch of your alleged comrades liked that post, and I was one of them. I hope you can forgive me, but I understand if it made you think differently about me. I get it, and I'm just really, really sorry.
as soon as I figured out that I was banned and why, I sent a version of this via DM from my old account to an em_poc user who is very near and dear to my heart, but I don't feel right only apologizing to one person when so many of you could have been hurt by my upvote, hence this post. I'm sorry that my apology to the rest of you wasn't that immediate, but I was worried that posting it from my old account would be seen as ban evasion and make my contrition seem insincere.
I appreciate very much the kindness and compassion so many of you have shown me, and it is devastating to know that I have repaid it in this way.
I'm very, very, very sorry.
please heap your scorn and excoriation here.
Just want to clarify a few things here.
Nobody will receive a permanent site ban for their upbears. We will not be arbitrarily permabanning users for the odd misclick on a bad post. We will not permaban people for just upbearing every comment to get them out of the way. (This does feel like a strange workflow to me, but more power to you, haha. Every change breaks someone's workflow, even Hexbear isn't immune.)
A number of users received temporary, 1-day bans based on upvoting a specific post by an off-site federated reactionary which praised a certain former podcaster suggesting not just educating and rehabilitating those with imperfect and reactionary politics, but coalition-building with out-and-out fascists. You can read it here.
Having a stack of upbears sitting on a bigoted, reactionary, or otherwise harmful post isn't as harmless as it might seem, especially if the post and the upbears are visible for hours. To many of your comrades, your upbears will be read as support or agreement with the sentiment of the post. To some degree it is a form of support, even if it was not your intention to agree with the post. If you see a harmful post and click the upbear button to "mark it as seen" and move on instead of reporting the comment, is that not an acknowledgement that you have seen the post and did not find it objectionable or unacceptable?
Then it is the duty and responsibility of the moderators to remove that post.
No, it is not. Users are not the moderation staff and cannot evaluate every comment that is made. They did not volunteer to read and critically evaluate every post for reactionary content or content that violates the comm rules and site guidelines. That is the role moderators volunteered for. Upbears are not an endorsement, but rather a means of manipulating the visibility of a post. If that, I honestly don't even know what they do under the current site software, if anything. Users should not be policed on the basis of whether they failed to report a post that was later deemed to be in violation of site rules and guidelines.
This completely inverts the moderator/user roles. It puts an entirely unfair and unreasonable burden on users not simply to consider the contents of their own posts, but also to evaluate each post they encounter and, presumably, to report it or face retribution from moderators if that moderator deems the post to be inappropriate and by extension the user worthy of punishment for failing to denounce it.
This is completely untenable for Hexbear or really any other forum. The chilling effect this imposes on users is enormous,. This site cannot be used if every up-bear or a failure to report a post a mod deems to need removal is to be punished with a ban.
Please seriously take a step back and think about how issuing punishments for upbears on posts that were later deemed to be inappropriate drastically changes the the way users would have to engage with the site. That kind of self-surveillance under the threat of arbitrary, unpredictable, and uncodified punishment is not healthy for the community.
GOOD post
upvoting this comment at my own peril
How does having a policy against upbearing outright reactionary posts any different, in reality, to having a policy against just normal statements of agreement with bigotry? It has been repeated multiple times here that many people, including marginalized comrades, view upbears as agreement and can feel genuinely afraid or hurt if they see an outright bigoted post (for instance, saying their rights are less important than the cause of patsoc communism or whatever). The argument you make here against acting on upbears is fundamentally just a
argument disguised by the Redditism and liberal concept of consensus as a neutral act. You can argue it's based on whether or not something is a valuable contribution to the discussion, but that's the same argument with an extra step of centrism thrown in. How is viewing a reactionary post as contributing to a conversation even remotely a neutral viewpoint? It isn't, it's fundamentally a promotion of it's belief.
At some point you have to accept that giving points that directly boost a comment's relevancy and popularity is a direct material boon to what it's saying, only able to be differentiated from repeating it yourself by the amount of effort involved (which is, granted, likely a significant factor in why so many otherwise levelheaded and correct people can end up giving internet points to things they'd otherwise have to actually consider to reproduce and therefore disagree with).
Comrade @dustbunnies certainly should not feel shame over this and there should be a much more generous "punishment curve", with an understanding that everyone can misread and misunderstand comments and statements all the time and upbear things they wouldn't otherwise. But the usage of upbears should absolutely be acceptable in moderation practice when done in this ramping-up way (warnings/questions for clarification and then ramping up if it starts seeming like purposely reactionary agreement and not just accidents or misinterpretations). And I do not fault you or her for viewing upbearing as a more neutral or indifferent thing, despite the effect it has on post and comment algorithms and appearance of credibility. Many of us come from Reddit and the norms there are understandably deeply ingrained. So we need to be patient with our selves. But part of that also involves not blaming ourselves or becoming defensive when others point out we make a mistake.
While it would be sad, the ease of misinterpretation and the load of responsibility and possible abuse on the moderator side combined with the issues with leaving it unchecked means that removing upbears is the only reasonable option I can see being a proper compromise, here. It isn't reasonable to give users this much arbitrary influence over the impact of comments and posts without having to actually make arguments in favor or against.
I have disabled seeing upbears for a while now and it has been an extreme improvement. While I understand many have a habit of upbearing and enjoy the dopamine-rush, the immense relief caused by the lack of stress more than makes up for it in my opinion, and either way I don't think social media dopamine is worth the possibility of conflicts happening like this thread itself.
I do not wish to discuss this with you. Please disengage.
Couldn't have put it better.
You shouldn't be banning, even temporarily, for a single upbear.
If a user consistently upvotes horrid shit, then yeah sure, banning based on that could be a good idea, but just one is absurd. This makes the site incredibly hostile to nd users, non-native english speakers, or literally anyone who accidentally presses the button sometimes (literally everyone)
Trying to dress this up as protecting other users is deflection at best, and using marginalised groups as a cudgel against other marginalised groups at worst
To be clear, I didn't ban anyone. My job on the site is primarily to act as a liaison between the users and the moderation staff. This definitely puts me in a weird place, in terms of seeing and sympathizing with the frustration on both sides of these issues. I continue to appreciate the understanding, and the
One one hand, users just want to be left to use the site however they want without fear of reprisal. On the other, the mods and admins want to be able to handle problematic posts, behaviors, and users without it invariably resulting in a struggle session.
Lemmy has really basic moderation tools. Frustratingly basic, to be honest. When it comes to managing comments and users, we only have essentially just two moderation actions that we can do or un-do:
That's it. I really wish Lemmy had some more tools that were a little bit less disruptive, but as it stands, a one day temp-ban is the lowest level of mod action possible for users. While ideally, reaching out to every user individually via DMs to start a conversation would have been a more ideal method for handling a concern like this, (at least the most ideal method out of the very limited available ones) it's understandably not always seen as a viable option, due to the time, complexity, and even the potential for those conversations to lead to further disagreement. The one-day ban was chosen as it was seen by mods as a sufficiently severe warning to not only the commenter who was permabanned but also to the temporarily timed out users.
oops
I honestly want to delete my account, delete this site from my Internet history on every device, and do my best to forget about it
I didn't mean to do this and I feel like even more of a piece of shit for kicking off something
I just wanted to apologize for my behavior 😭
It's 100% the mod teams fault and not yours.
We have had several examples this month alone of the mods doing some weird overstep and it causing site drama.
Your post is the focal point of the discussion, but if you hadn't done it it would probably be somewhere else.
They banned around 16 people, of which maybe 14 were hexbears? I assume one of them would have said something if dustbunnies had not. I was considering it, even though I wasnt involved, but decided against it as I haven't been participating on this site for very long.
I wanted to, but I have stirred up so much shit lately that I didn't want to take a front seat to this one.
my autistic brain genuinely didn't expect this and I regret it more than I can say
I needed to apologize, but I didn't want my apology to do this, I just wanted it to go out to the people who night have been hurt and let them know how sorry I was
if I had had any idea this was going to be the result, I wouldn't have posted, I would have just spent time DM'ing every em_poc and traaaaaaaans poster individually to apologize
Don't feel bad. These things need to happen every once in a while. It's a genuinely good thing we're having this conversation. I am sorry that you're uncomfortable and wish it could've been me to take the heat though.
this is very kind of you to say ❤️ I absolutely don't wish it upon you, but I appreciate very much your willingness to take it on
you and tomboymoder have gone above and beyond as comrades in this thread, and I hope that I'm not the only person to see and appreciate it.
I used to be like you a long time ago. But a series of events in my life have led me to incessantly put myself in the firing line for other people. Trust me when I say that I get where you're coming from and how uncomfortable you are. If I could've taken the bullet for you, I would've.
Please don't delete, you seem nice and I liked reading your posts
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ this is very kind of you to say, thank you
I can't speak for anyone else, but I accept your apology and I still want you around.
Sorry that the latest struggle session (why are there so many of there lately? I've only had an account for less than a month and I already saw 3 of them) is happening in your comments...
Yeah don’t worry about it, your apology and explanation was more than enough. I don’t think anybody holds it against you.
Wait there aren't 30 minute mutes or anything? That's annoying
I KNOW! It's so bad. It's the smallest thing you can do as a mod, but users will experience something that may be either really disruptive to them if they're a really active or consistent user, or potentially not even noticed if they're not someone who checks the site that regularly. They might never even find out that they had received the ban.
I am very, truly, deeply, sincerely sorry
I did not mean to kick off another struggle session, I just meant to apologize
I am so sorry about the work I've created for you. I know you are a good person and you're doing your best and I feel genuinely terrible about this.
maybe I should delete this post?? idk, I just don't want to be part of the focus of this. I understand there is a conversation here that needs having, but also I wasn't trying to start that, I understand how terrible it would feel to see a hurtful post heavily upvoted and that the people who upvoted it deserve punishment, and I wanted to apologize for being one of those shitty up voters.
Hey, you shouldn't feel bad. People are going to start conflict over shit no matter what, and obviously this was something people were already stewing over so it was probably inevitable. And probably healthy for it to be talked about now instead of later.
And also, I think your phrasing raises a big concern I have. Moderation actions shouldn't default to being punishments. The treatment of them like that is one of the numerous things about sites like this in general that really makes it stressful to use as someone with RSD. It makes absolutely no sense to me that the norm is to see users breaking rules as innately deserving of purposely being inflicted with suffering, when they can always be genuine mistakes or happen for any number of reasons.
If anything should come from this discussion, it should be how hostile Reddit type websites are for neurodivergent users. Upbears and/or upvotes are genuinely part of this and the inciting incident of this struggle session is one example why. Everyone makes mistakes, and a button designed specifically to increase the influence of a comment with literally no checks or confirmations to prevent mistakes is a horrible idea because of that. It is absolutely true that anyone shoved in front of a Reddit type site is going to upvote any number of terrible things, because it's literally designed to encourage maximum engagement.
Not to mention how the feeling of seeing a comment with tens or even hundreds of times your own's upvote/upbear count can perfectly represent the feeling of a room angry at you for screwing up and committing some sort of social faux pas without knowing what it is! I do not understand why neurodivergent comrades do not bring this up more. The experience of upbears is just, intrinsically uncomfortable outside of the sparks of dopamine you can get from it. It makes the site more fun 20% of the time but the other 80% it perfectly replicates the feelings of group bullying and disgust that permeated many of our lives.
exactly! it still allows the exact same kind of dynamics to develop that the removal of downvotes was meant to prevent. Instead of downvoting trans people, shitty users can just purposely upbear everyone else except trans people. And so on
make the upvotes public then
It's discouraging when a person asks a genuine question and it's 'under'voted and the reply is upvoted more highly, like it's an implicit message saying that you are less valued for asking questions and wanting to learn. It's worse on r*ddit but the same thing happens here. It's one of the reasons I got into the 'upvote first read second' habit to because I'm like i feel sorry for people whose comments/posts are seemingly overlooked. I'm unlearning that habit now though
I feel very much deserving of punishment and suffering, especially considering this point of view
It's not my place to judge or comment on what seems to be genuine anger from someone who has every right to feel that way. But I really, really don't think their comments apply to you as much as you think they do. It's hard to emphasize how immensely important intersectionality is, and while it's within every right for someone to refuse to organize or even have solidarity with a privileged group they feel has hurt them (and objectively has on a collective scale), even with such a large one, that does not give them the right to pass moral judgement on random individuals they don't know and especially not you specifically. It's not your fault such strong systems of racism exist and so many white Americans, even marginalized ones, continue to perpetuate them. It's too big to be your fault. You are not ontologically evil and it is physically impossible for you to be, and if I can say so myself, you seem perfectly innocent if not outright virtuous. You shouldn't feel bad, and you don't deserve to be punished.
Hey, I know this wasn't intended. Please don't feel bad about this.
I feel bad, so I've made a seperate post for it
Shouldn't the first moderation response then be to remove the offending material and maybe optionally offer an reply in official capacity? There has been no explanation that upbears are monitored nor that they are worthy of moderation action.
I sometimes upbear comments from people having a discussion on a post, especially outsiders, who have bad takes but are engaging in good faith as a little way to indicate that I am sending dopamine along as a gesture of good faith and to encourage them to stick around and maybe learn.
Maybe that's irresponsible or something, I see them as a tool in my conversations.
I do this exact thing. I want to see hexbear grow and will sometimes upvote a baby leftist with a bad take if they indicate a willingness to learn. Just like you said, I want to encourage them, and signal with a little hint that even if they're getting rightly excoriated for something, that their willingness to stick around and talk about it (without the typical liberal bad faith bullshit) and learn will be rewarded here. I realize it would be best for me to comment and express this exactly, but for one it's not always appropriate to do so given the context, and for another it's simply not always practical for me to type out a reply, depending on where I'm at and what I'm doing while browsing the site. I want these baby leftists who are steeped in inescapable propaganda to stick around and get dewormed, (rather than get turned off by a dog pile, even if it was justified, and go do the easier thing of hanging out on fucking .world where their brainworms will only multiply). I want this for their sake and for the sake of the site via community growth.
But now I feel like I could be punished for that, or even if not punished, that some mods will be looking at my upbears and thinking to themselves that I'm a shitty person. That I harbor reactionary beliefs that I don't actually believe because I upbeared a comment that contained a reactionary sentiment. Maybe that shouldn't matter to me, but it does. I'm extremely sensitive to that sort of disapproval. It's already why I don't comment a lot more to be honest. I can't not think about it, be effected by it, and it simply makes me not want to upbear which also sucks because that's mostly how I engage here.
There are also many times when I read a comment and I'm enthusiastically nodding along for 90% of it, but then run into something I strongly disagree with. But because the rest of it was good, I'll still give it an upbear especially if the user seems to be speaking in good faith (which I may or may not have accurately judged!) Once again, ideally I would respond and call out that one thing I disagreed with, but like I said, it's just not practical for me to respond most of the time. Now I'm going to have an internal debate every time that happens about whether I should upbear it or not, who will think ill of me if I do, and that will inevitably make me feel shitty and worry, even if needlessly so, and in turn, I will feel turned off to wanting to engage with the site.
Maybe I'm just too neurotic about this sort of thing and that's on no one but me. But I can't help it. This little episode has had (or will have) a profound chilling effect on how much I want to upbear which in turn has a chilling effect on how much I want to engage at all.
I up vote by accident while scrolling constantly cause I'm left handed and they're placed around where I rest my thumb.
We've found the one true leftist
Same. Most mobile website UIs are designed for right handed users in ways that cause problems, especially unwanted clicks, for left handed users. So, in addition to everything else, there is an ability issue in judging upbears as any kind of statement of support or endorsement.
Especially prior to having it expressed in the rules anywhere. It is kinda odd for me to quite call it ableism, but it falls into a similar category regarding making things with biased utility. We do our prep list at work on a dry erase board, which means I get to erase as I write! I'm happy with just not having updates or downvotes cause it means more of those sweet sweet comments. Maybe keep em for Posts for sorting reasons but for comments, I've never seen the point. I remain firm in my stance we should just be an olden time bulletin board forum with signatures and avatars. The kind of community we've got going here is more similar and I think would work way better. The reddit style feed is for stuff with several thousand people online and posting at once, we aren't quite active enough for that. We're very active but not doomscroll friendly levels of active, which is good, but the format should reflect that.
I think it's perfectly alright to call it out as this. It wasn't that long ago that left handed people were discriminated against. My mother is left handed and would get caned at school for using her left hand. She had to teach herself to write.
Sure, it's not common now, but these things have long reaching effects
Same with my grandmother she had being left handed beaten out of her too. There's also the 10 year shorter average life expectancy because of industrial accidents caused by heavy machinery designed for right handed people. I guess I did short sell.it.
Removed by mod
Problems caused by difference of ability can be subtle until they're very suddenly not. Being left handed causes a wide variety of difficulties that are usually mild, but they're constant. I suffered a considerable amount of trouble and some distress in school because left handed scissors were not provided and I was unable to cut paper for projects using the right handed scissors. As you've mentioned; being left handed when writing in a language that is written from left to write means your writing in ink, marker, or lead is going to become smeared. It was, again, a constant problem that caused me a great deal of grief before computers became small enough to carry everywhere. And, as we're currently discussing, I have constant, usually minor, issues with software that was written for right handed people in ways that make it easy to misclick, or even difficult to access UI and controls, while operating it with my left hand. Hell, I have trouble with my headset because the microphone boom is on the left side of the headset to benefit right handed users.
I didn't realize how bad a problem it was until I bought my kid (then a kindergartner) some left-handed scissors because he needed them, and then tried to use them myself
jfc
using wrong-handed tools is awful
my respect and empathy for left-handers went up dramatically after that incident. you all are playing on much worse field.
It's a great example of a the social model of disability and "difference of ability". There's nothing inherently disabling about left handedness, it only becomes a challenge within the context of our culture of tools and machines. It's honestly helped me build compassion and understanding for other differences of ability, especially ones that aren't highly visible or considered "valid" by society at large. If I have these quirky or unexpected problems, I can relate that to how other people encounter "normal" situations in different ways from how I do.
One place where it does offer a distinct edge-case advantage; Sword fighting! When two right handed people face each other their swords are diagonal relative to each other and all training and defense is based on that. Since there are so many more right handed people than left handed people they get very little practice attacking and defending a left handed fighter. Meanwhile, the left handed fighter gets a great deal of practice against right handed fighters. In that one very very specific scenario right handedness becomes a disadvantage due to the left handed fighter's relatively greater experience!
Oh damn, another oddity is skateboarding, I'm left footed but regular which makes my tech game and switch/nollie stuff easier and I can't actually think of a downside there. It's just peculiar.
Never got the issue with scissors, if one hole was bigger than the other I'd just flip them over. Working in kitchens people who'd try to train me on knife stuff early on would get frustrated because they don't really understand that mirroring what someone else is doing isn't that simple, I'm amazing with knives now but I just had to figure out my own way. Playing drums for me is really weird cause hand wise I generally play right handed style but am somewhat ambidextrous, I can switch my snare and cymbal hand mid beat even and stay on time, but I vastly prefer my left foot for a kick pedal if using a single pedal, I can do double kick and I can do kick with my left foot but single kick right foot is no good and I have to re-arrange the kit very strangely where I'm sitting way over to one side, it works but playing a show with one kit that everyone shares can be a thing. Also as a work thing doing line cooking people will naturally go to your leftt side in tight quarters and I have to remind them that's elbow bumpin time. For a while we oddly had a left hand majority kitchen so we got to feel the power for once. It's 10% of the population and industrial accidents lead to a 10 year lower average life span for lefties. My grandma was forced via corporal punishment to be right handed and she was born in 42. So yeah it's not nothing
oh my god is ableism to tell you to read before upvoting
are yall the kind of leftists to say 'being told to read theory is classist'
Also
but both left hands
then unclick, or just dont worry about it since you can say its an accident if the statement you upvoted is shitty and most of your doesn't reflect support of the said shitty opinions.
Upbears have always been visible to admins. Don't upvote shitty things. Also please ban people who don't upvote my posts.
lmao