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?
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
Upbears have always been visible to admins. Don't upvote shitty things. Also please ban people who don't upvote my posts.
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.
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.
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 up vote by accident while scrolling constantly cause I'm left handed and they're placed around where I rest my thumb.
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.
It is kinda odd for me to quite call it ableism, but it falls into a similar category regarding making things with biased utility
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.
It is kinda odd for me to quite call it ableism
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.
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
you're fine lol this is goofy as hell. mods deciding by fiat that upbear = endorsement i don't really agree with, seems like a matter that warrants more discussion. agree with everything Frank said in the thread as usual.
OP didn't do anything wrong, and the somebody needs to be seriously reassessing some mods on this site who are making it actively hostile for autistic and other ND people
Selfcrit isn't supposed to beating yourself up with shame. There's no reason for users to expect bans for upbears or even consider than anyone pays attention to upbears. It's a hold-over from reddit and it never meant endorsement of an idea even on reddit. Mods are responsible for removing inappropriate, reactionary, or otherwise unwanted posts. The moderator in this case behaved in an inappropriate and unwarranted manner issuing a punishment for something that is not against any stated rules or moderation guidelines, on the basis of a personal interpretation of another users context-free action. Their duty is to remove posts that violate moderation standards, not... whatever this is. I can't figure out what comm this was posted in but I'm not aware of any comm that has posted rules regulated upbears.
From Chapo's Code of Conduct
Remarks that violate the Chapo standards of conduct, including hateful, hurtful, oppressive, or exclusionary remarks, are not allowed. (Cursing is allowed, but never in a hateful manner.)
Remarks that moderators find inappropriate, whether listed in the code of conduct or not, are also not allowed.
Moderators will first respond to such remarks with a warning, at the same time the offending content will likely be removed whenever possible.
If the warning is unheeded, the user may be "temp banned,” i.e., kicked out of the community involved to cool off.
If the user comes back and continues to make trouble, they will be banned, i.e., indefinitely excluded.
Moderators may choose at their discretion to un-ban the user if it was a first offense and they offer the offended party a genuine apology.
If a moderator bans someone and you think it was unjustified, please take it up with that moderator, or with a different moderator, in private. Complaints about bans in-comm are not allowed. For sitewide decisions, posts may be made on !userunion.
Moderators are held to a higher standard than other community members. If a moderator creates an inappropriate situation, they should expect less leeway than others. Egregious violations of our code of conduct or terms of service may result in an immediate ban.
There are several things that need to be addressed here;
1.) No where in the code of conduct are upbears mentioned. If they're regulated in whatever comm this comment was made in, fine, but I'm not aware of any comms where that is the case.
2.) The Moderator who issued these bans directly violated the code of conduct by issuing a ban without a warning. Setting aside that upbears are not regulated and an upbear is not a comment or endorsement, the Moderator who issued this ban was in violation of the code of conduct we nominally all agree to uphold.
3.) "Moderators are held to a higher standard than other community members. If a moderator creates an inappropriate situation, they should expect less leeway than others."
The moderator who issued these unwarranted bans in violation of the code of conduct has created significant distress for other community members. They abused their mod powers in ways that were hurtful to others. This is not a dispute over the appropriateness of comment moderation or bans based on comments, but rather arbitrary bans for an activity that, per site guidelines and comm rules, is not subject to moderation in this fashion. This is absolutely inappropriate conduct and merits... something I have no idea what internal discipline measures the mod team has, if any.
I use the bear button as a "I read this message" button and upvote almost everything unless it's extremely obvious fashposting. It's muscle memory, I don't think about it or do it consciously. I'd rather the button be removed than have to do a close read of every post.
The mod should be in here self-criting for this behavior, not you.
This is inappropriate mod overreach.
@CARCOSA@hexbear.net @Alaskaball@hexbear.net @Lyudmila@hexbear.net and any other currently active admins;
Y'all gotta get eyes on this. Arbitrary moderation actions like this are very damaging to community trust. Many of us are barely holding on here, being denounced as a fascist by a mod issuing bans in a manner that violates the code of conduct and does not reflect site rules, comm rules, or site culture is hurtful.
So I'll speak for myself, on my behalf and no one elses, and say I agree. I'd say the Admin Role's ability to access more data than what was previously available to the Moderator Role, including the ability to see upvotes to comments and posts, add site taglines, approve new user accounts, etc., places into the hands of any new admin an unprecedented level control over the website. It places upon such people new levels of demand for self-restraint, mindfulness, and self-awareness. Such responsibility behooves those of us that have been entrusted with such tools to move slowly with a level of independent deliberation and consideration that can't be influenced by the raucous demands of individuals nor being swept away by feverous mob mentality.
I personally think this was an overstep as well. I'm sorry this happened.
It's a hold-over from reddit and it never meant endorsement of an idea even on reddit.
No, people said that upvotes weren't endorsement and constantly circlejerked about how Reddiquette (
) says you only downvote things that don't contribute to discussion. How they were used in practice and are used here as well is as an agree/disagree button. When something gets upbears here, I assume that people agree with it. And I don't upvote shitty things because I don't want others to think that people agree with them.- Show
This is how I use the site. Basically anything that doesn't merit
or 
has an upvote because I don't really assign any weight or meaning to them. If anything it's a marker of engagement, showing that people have actually read the comment. Another factor for me is the long running "all posting is good posting" bit.I also use it in an assistive capacity to keep track of what I have and haven't viewed. It makes the site much easier to parse.
If there's serious concern over this then we should have a community discussion about how we use upbears and how they should be used going forward. To the best of my knowledge there has never been such a discussion and I assume everyone is using them in their own way according to their personal needs.
The thought that someone would just go through upvoting every comment they see (more or less) is wild to me. Yeah, I can see why you would be concerned about bans for upvotes.
Based on the comments on this thread, seems like there are two possible solutions:
One, make all upvotes public. This allows users who upvoted something to be called out, grilled and a chance to explain themselves. Also helps avoid misunderstanding/accidental clicks. Users who have been complained by enough people can then be subjected to a struggle session (in a special comm, enacted as they were performed during Mao’s era where the person who possesses a deviation of thought is questioned by the masses until they break down in tears and ask for apology).
Two, remove all upvotes. Return to old style forum. Duel it out in endless chains of comments. Make your opinions known, without the luxury of hiding behind upvotes. Be a true poster. Be brave and subject your beliefs and opinions to the judgement of your peers. Stand your ground. Argue until your opponents cry for forgiveness. A true testing ground to your conviction - are you even a real Marxist if you are not prepared to be firm with your conviction to Marxist ideas?
The mod in question behaved in an inappropriate fashion that violates the code of conduct and does not reflect site norms, culture, or traditions. The mod is in the wrong and has abused their powers. The solution with lies with the mod themselves, not with the community or any of the banned individuals.
Forums also added like "Xyz found this post helpful" or "Liked this post" but it lists who it is that clicked the button and has no impact on the ordering of the comments.
Second makes more sense, the first requires the Internet forum hexbear.net to fulfill the role of a militant cadre organization
I like the second option. We removed downvotes, remove upvotes, too.
i would like for everyone to read the actual post here:
Show
personally i do not believe that we should work with fascists to build communism and that's a dangerous idea to support
I honestly didn't realize that universally 1 upbear = 1 agreement
Yeah same, but I can see how someone marginalized can see a largely upvoted post on here and translate that into being site wide agreement.
I am off the opinion that both can be correct and that we need to have a frank discussion about upvotes
typically you would assume that people would use the button to push a comment up in support though
For me if it's in the wild i probably agreed with it if i hit the button but if it's in my notifications i upvote every one to mark it as read
that makes sense. realistically only one person would have had that notification though
True, I was more trying to exemplify that everyone probably has a slightly different method by which they use the upvote.
I think the effect it has on anyone who sees it is nor important than some clerical use case, for the record
Good to know that mods can see our upvotes, not sure why I'm surprised to learn this. I recognize the utility in keeping transphobes purged and off the site, and that is valuable.
Maybe there should be a separate "have read"/"have not read" button so "upvote-when-read" users like myself don't have to worry about some anonymous moderator deciding we're reactionary for hitting the bear button. (EDIT: On the other hand, I intentionally don't upvote comments that I think are bigoted or getting something important incorrect, so I'm not saying it's black and white, either)
Seems like context and intent should be taken into account, why couldn't the mod DM for clarification? if you're already reviewing our upvotes then maybe try to figure out why the upvote rather than just firing off the ban. I know people are gonna be like, Oh it's just the internet, quit being such a terminally online leftist, but that's not really fair, is it? First off, it's unpleasant and actually kind of nasty to be hit with a ban from a site you like, and if you're moderating this forum then you should remember there's a human being on the other side of the screen. Second, if mods are trying to regulate people rather than discussions, then at a certain point you start to feel like you're being condescended to and treated like a child. No one wants that, so other than purging nazis, what's the point in pushing users off the site? You want it to be the fun shitposting site where everything is fun and chill but you just get to arbitrarily do unpleasant things to people you've probably never met? Who's the terminally online one now?
I also recognize that saying "mods should DM users before banning over upvotes" is asking for more free labor from volunteer mods, so idk if I've got a solution. Everyone makes mistakes, I guess.
I think mods and admins probably need to step back from the site sometimes. Like you said, it's a shitposting site. You're a janitor on a shitposting site. Get over the power trip.
But on the other hand, mods and admins offer free labor to keep the site cleanish. It's a difficult balance to strike. You don't ever want a marginalized person feeling threatened or unsafe on the site, either.
Still not as online as whoever decided to ban her in the first place.
oh they're central to it being the most online leftist post ever
don't you worry
Absolutely not. The only time votes have ever even contributed to permabans happened in the site's past was during the Transphobe Purge, when upbears and downbears were used to help identify users with a consistent pattern of transphobia.
Users did not then, did not here, and (as long as I have any say in it) will not ever receive a permanent ban based purely on up/down voting.
Thanks for clarifying this because I'm sure a lot of users still operate under the old reddit model of content that engages with the OP and adds to the discussion gets an upvote.
I have some concerns over the concept that a comment advocating for a red-brown alliance is adding to the discussion. When posts and comments on the site aren't racist, misogynistic, chauvinistic, or fascist apologia, the Reddit model you mentioned doesn't result in any major problems. As we're working to clean up these issues that were previously under-managed, we're going to continue run into some bumps along the way. We're going to have to both change some site rules and some of the ways we interact with the site.
I get that people are resistant to change, and it'll be frustrating to have to make changes. But I'm confident that all of us are in agreement that it's worth it to make some changes and go through that frustration in order to to build Hexbear into a safer and more comfortable space that is more welcoming and approachable to marginalized users.
I caught a ban for that, too.
I didn't agree with much of the comment, and very little of what Amber said on the podcast. I think I just thought it was useful conversation, but it was a pretty mindless upvote.
Not that big of a deal to me, guess I'll just be more careful with upvotes.
I believe they were 20 hour bans for hexbear users, and 3 day bans for non hexbear
I thought it was pretty normal for people to use upvotes as a way of marking a post as read
I know there was the thing where users were consistently down voting trans users but is this not the first instance of upvote based bans?
Did i miss a thread?
I feel like everything the mods do is just chasing the high of the trans purge.
Not my place to question the moderation of the site. Just noticing it feels different lately
If the mods are now supposed to be above criticism, we have a problem.
Not what I'm saying. I mean i don't feel like this website should cater to me
And all I'm saying is that you should be allowed to voice your concerns.
Everyone is allowed to voice their concerns. Mods and admins are surely not above criticism. That doesn't mean that everyone is required to share their concerns, nor are they required to feel that their concerns are the most important.
If others wish to center the concerns of others first, and especially if they wish to center the concerns of marginalized communities over their own, they are also allowed to do this.
Nope, there have been bans based on upvotes since federation but only with upvotes to transphobic comments
Wait, I could get banned over blindly upvoting others' posts... welp, mods
but both left hands
