Have the discussion here and not in dustbunnies post.
death to upvotes
upbear to join the upbear abolition league
together we can make the site more fun to use and more relaxing!
if 30 or more users upbear, the upbear abolition league will receive a cool forum signature type banner to put at the end of each of their posts!!!
(this is not a bit btw, these events have confirmed my undying hatred for internet points)
letting people vote on quanta of conversation was a mistake. this is not a joke, i have come to understand over time that while abolition of the down vote was good, complete destruction of internet points is better. even though i like when i get a lot of them. they're still fucking bad for human brains.
Hexbear sortition posting. Only 100 accounts may post on a given day, sorted randomly.
Ooh and on other lemmies we're federated with, artificially give every post 10k upvotes so we're always at the top of threads
Bears That Want ▼ with ▲ ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ
Upbears make the site a more disagreeable place. Not only are they difficult to moderate without being punitive or harming user's experience (not to mention day), but they help replicate toxic modes of communication in real life, by facilitating the rapid spread of unspoken assumptions and prejudices. Make Hexbear an Up Bear by going Down with Upbears
I can't see upbear counts so I will make the signature regardless lol
I think they'll need to stay for the hot/top sorting function to work, but hiding the numbers would be v. good imo
I'll say it again here. Admins need to get their shit together and stop with the bullshit. I've caught strays on nonsense over the last couple weeks twice now and it's starting to piss me off. This is how you kill a website with nearly no growth.
If you want to see my full explanation of all this, just go into my post history and see what I said in the other thread.
hot take: upvoting fascist tailism is actually banworthy
admins not beating the arbitrary rulings on their fiefdom allegations
Agreed (even though I also think the reasoning and very temp-ban was not the worst). If they want to power trip they should be open and upfront about it (though then I imagine there might
will definitely beunderstandable splintering- well such is online comms as well as leftist spaces). It would be funny then at leastwhen one of my friends says something shitty that seems out of character, I talk to them about it. if admins can see who said what, then admins can talk to them about it. so yeah I do disagree with the immediate banning and not pulling well meaning comrades aside to go "hey, this comment you upvoted was kinda shitty. do you see why that is?". discuss things with comrades and help them improve
and even then I would do this with people who have a history of it. a one off can be a misclick, misreading, misunderstanding the words. I know my dyslexic ass has to reread posts sometimes because words just fall out of the sentence I read when I process them
True, this is a space for comrades/halfways decent people (by the standards of the broader internet, pretty much anyone here probably may as well may be saints, though the bar is in hell), immediate bans even as a temp measure suck. Knowing myself, if I caught any strays and took it personally (in the past I surely would've, dunno about/depends for nowadays) I would be frothing at the bit about it and it would be counterproductive.
And also, mood to the latter though don't think I'm dyslexic (probably just read or skim faster than I process, and also my memory can sometimes be that of a goldfish). Also because sometimes I'm just updooting all the comments if there aren't many lol
deeply grateful for your attempt to remove the struggle session from my replies ❤️😭
you are literally trying to fall on a sword for me here, and it is incredibly kind of you and so much more than I deserve
thank you for being such a gigantic sweetie pie. idk what I can ever do to repay your kindness, but please know that I will never forget this and never stop trying to make it up to you.
❤️ regardless – my gratitude is deep, and I will find a way to repay you
Maybe you could be repaid in drama? Not me though I'm chill (until otherwise)
I'm not wading into some 100+ comments thread, so I'll comment here instead:
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A lot of this is because we are on some shitty Reddit clone that doesn't have a read button. I pretty much just used the upvote button as a read button on Reddit. It's something that I had to unlearn on here.
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People are going to accidentally upvote stuff they shouldn't have upvoted, especially when they're on their phone. I know on Twitter, some people would just block you because you accidentally liked something they don't like. This is why I use an alt when browsing Hexbear on my phone. I don't want to be put in a situation where I get banned because my fingers accidentally upvoted something that I shouldn't have upvoted.
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I'm glad you're still around. I was worried the dunk tank drama had chased you off the site.
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Can't speak for anyone who might have taken it the wrong way (your upvotes, though who among us hasn't done similar once...?) but I have infinite love and respect for comrades who better themselves, let alone fess up publicly to it which must be a hell of a thing and I don't think anyone was even asking for.
Maybe some might not be cool with it (no one's spoken up as such yet I think?) but as a broader space and community in general I think this is an important and wonderful thing (where it can be afforded- and in the circumstances it certainly could be far, far more than afforded IMO). We all have to start somewhere (as someone who was raised pretty much a chud, who has fucked up really badly before and learnt better, etc etc...).
Big agree.
When something like that comment gets 17 upvotes, some people expect the mods to address it in a bigger way than simple removal.
I think messaging each user would’ve been ideal, but a 24 hour ban is a slap on the wrist and I don’t think anybody holds it against otherwise non-reactionary users.
For punishments to be just, they must be merited, consistently enforced, predictable, and proportionate.
Perhaps showing support, even accidentally, for reactionary views might merit punishment. However, this punishment is likely not consistently enforced, and the rule is not stated anywhere on the website.
Most importantly, any kind of ban for a single upbear from a user with no prior pattern of behaviour is entirely disproportionate to the wrongdoing. It blows my mind that anyone could consider it an appropriate response.
you ever notice the two wolves emojis are actually sized differently at the neck? You can't make a dogdog. Also we can't make catdog either. 
I know right! trying to make emoji abominations is a fun pastime but it's jarring when the alignments aren't close enough to sorta blend them together in the minds eye.
I don't want to keep drama going around for longer than necessary and would rather
but I'm afraid of stepping on toes by touching on a previously struggle session-ed topic I didn't know about. It would be nice to have maybe a one line briefing somewhere on these things if possible.
When I saw the bans I assumed at least some due diligence had been done to ensure it was a pattern of behaviour. I wasn't around then, but I know during transphobe purges people's voting patterns were used, and that went well. So I thought it'd be the same here. Patterns.
Banning for one upvote in one thread isnt a pattern and doesn't prove shit.
I didn't really read the original post. I skimmed before bed. I've seen people say it was unacceptable fash shit along the lines of "sacrifice minorities to please fascists this will end well." If people agree with that they should probably fuck off, and I wouldn't be against banning them. But an upvote doesn't always mean agreement. Not consistently enough to ban based on it anyway, the friendly fire rate would be very high.
If they banned based on having complete knowledge of the beliefs of users reading it, then it wouldn't be an issue for me. But the upvote button doesn't represent that.
Mods tempbanned a handful of people for upvoting a reactionary post basically.
A comment that basically said to create a populist movement you need to include fascists and all sorts of -ists got 17 upvotes and everyone who upvoted it got a 24 hour ban.
Ah, well that sounds good to me. We've got the best mods folks
Normally I wouldn't bother to get pushy about this, but if I'm doin' time I may as well do the crime:
I still haven't heard Amber make the kind of bad take that would justify the anger she generates.
shilling for right wingers while posing as a leftist should allow criticism
More serious, though, I kinda think this demonstrates how unhelpful "fascist" is as a political description in the 21st century. Like, what makes you something, what makes you a liberal or a socialist or a conservative or a fascist isn't just what you think or believe. It's how you act, what you do, that actually makes you something. So, if you look at most US americans... they aren't really anything more than Workers on the clock and Consumers off the clock. They believe and think all sorts of things (fully contradictory things, often enough), but until any of those thoughts or beliefs translate to real action, they may as well not exist.
But when we talk and type about these things, there's often a more relaxed threshold; "a communist believes in more bigger government", "a libertarian is someone who thinks you should be allowed to indentured servitude your offspring". (I think, for the english speaking world, it's partly do to an ingrained Protestant culture - what makes you a Christian isn't necessarily what you do or the community you keep, it's the personal thoughts and intentions you have that God is always keeping tally of.) If our criteria for "fascist" is simply "thinks/believes X, Y, and Z" then we're going to be including far more people in that category than if it were action-dependent, like "acts to harm marginalized communities".
It doesn't help that the word is being thrown about with a lot more abandon. Liberals will call anyone who votes for Trump fascist. And, like, sure, voting is an action (barely). But I don't really think my well meaning neighbors who are (rightly) frustrated with the state of things belong in the same political category as skinheads and klan members just because they voted for the funny orange man or repeat some vile talking points they got from cable television.
Mixed feelings on this, but when someone accepts racist arguments and repeats them uncritically…what are you supposed to call them?
For me, the association of MAGA with fascism has 2 key elements.
Fear of and blame on the “other”. Immigrants coming to take your jobs and commit crimes, and “queer commies” brainwashing your kids.
Return to a previous perceived greatness. Make America Great Again, it’s literally in the name.
Idk what to call MAGA except fascism. And people who support fascism are fascists.
Edit: Not to mention incorporating religion into government and control over people’s bodies, which are both things the Dems aren’t quite as fascy about.
Mixed feelings on this, but when someone accepts racist arguments and repeats them uncritically…what are you supposed to call them?
Well, prejudiced or racist always work.
Maybe I'm using the term wrong, but I always thought of fascism as specifically when a government (or group) carries out a campaign of suffering and death on a civilian population. So, when Trump talks about mass deportations, I'd consider that fascist (although I'm skeptical there's really the will, let alone the capacity, to actually attempt it). When he talks about Making America Great Again, that's just reactionary talk - it was better in the past, so we are re-enacting the past. Fascism often has reactionary elements, and reaction can be used to justify fascist actions, but they don't always show up together.
Locking this as it is becoming hostile.
We won't be issuing sitebans on a single upvote alone going forward, but it can and will be used with other upvotes/posts/comments.
A larger post will be coming shortly
