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.

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

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:

• remove a post/comment
• temporarily ban an account from a comm/site for an integer number of days, or permanently.

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.

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.

upvoting this comment at my own peril

Show

Couldn't have put it better.

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.

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.