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.

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]
    ·
    23 hours ago

    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.

    Then it is the duty and responsibility of the moderators to remove that 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?

    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.

    • SocialistDovahkiin [she/her]
      ·
      20 hours ago

      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 freeze-peach 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.