Hello,

Today the !covid@hexbear.net and !doomer@hexbear.net communities were created.

As of now they are not set to appear in the /all feed so in order to see posts here you have to subscribe.

They do appear in the /all feed and will require users not wanting to see these posts to ensure they subscribe to all communities they do want to see and then change their feed to subscribed only in their settings

Please post !covid@hexbear.net or !doomer@hexbear.net appropriate posts in their respective communities.

Going forward covid/doomer posts that are not in those communities may be crossposted there & removed.

Posts that are without a content warning and/or are titled in a sensational/excessive/clickbait way will be crossposted to one of these communities & removed from the community it was originally posted in, consider using the sourced article headline with a content warning to avoid having this occur.

I know this is an inconvenience and posts restricted to those communities may not get as much engagement but for now this change is intended to help.

If you see a post in another community that may be more appropriate for !covid@hexbear.net or !doomer@hexbear.net please report them.

This post intends to discuss this change so please comment any questions, comments, or concerns regarding this. Thank you

This change is a result of user concerns raised in: https://hexbear.net/post/166749
https://hexbear.net/post/166985

  • Anarchist [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I'm kind of confused about how this is supposed to work? This basically kills off half the dunk tank posts and a lot of posts in news/politics. Also affects science and sino.

    TDT especially helps to show when someone thinks a take is bad at a glance. Posting covid denialists without that context is not great.

    Where do things like memes or videos around these subjects go? What about posting or venting about getting covid or even having a bad day in megathreads?

    What qualifies as doomer content? We literally live in a hell world.

    I empathize with people who have anxiety around doomerism and covid, this shit is rough. I process my own stress around this through humor, shitposting, and talking politics. Making these communities opt-in defeats the purpose of the site for a lot of people and also effectively silences the topics on the site.

    One of Hexbear's strengths as a community is that we have a dark sense of humor. Being avoidant about material conditions and people's suffering on a socialist website feels pretty counter productive.

    Edit: I read the posts that asked for this and totally get trying to do something to address it. Maybe removing more sensationalist post titles and putting total doomer collapse / climate apocalypse shit in !doomer@hexbear.net?

    I really don't agree with filtering out any news that happens to involve covid. Quarantining stupid "we are all going to die" posts though makes sense. Socialists inherently need to have a kind of revolutionary optimism.