It's no surprise that a website that is based on the same general structure as Reddit perpetuates Reddit-like behavior. An anonymous webforum with no vetting process is full of constant brigading and astroturfing? And people with bad takes?
For what it's worth, I don't have any real complaints with the actions taken by the moderator and admin teams so far; but I also don't fully understand what can be done. This site is full of reddit-bros, because most of us are from the CTH subreddit. We have reddit-brain. We mindlessly voice our opinion on whatever topic is shoved in front of us with no regard for the relative weight our opinion should hold, because that is the mentality instilled by a Reddit-like, karma-based webforum. It doesn't matter if a poster is an actual activist, or a long-time active member of the community. All voices are equal, even if they shouldn't be.
Frankly, I'm just unsure what you (and others) expect out of the moderator team and userbase that would make the site more approachable to trans users. The guy Cass was arguing with? They took appropriate action and served a temp-ban. People bitched, likely because they assumed the ban was permanent - there isn't any kind of visual indication as to whether a ban is temporary or permanent short of looking at the modlog, which none of these split-second-attention-spam upvoters are going to do. And people - like me - look at a user being banned for an admittedly bad take, and a common attitude ("I don't know who you are" is the appropriate response to someone claiming expertise on an anonymous forum, though the vulgarity is what pushed it to be a temp-bannable offense in my mind), and I wonder, "What bad take will get me banned?". To dive into the specific issue: while transphobia is often more covert than the blatant and easy-to-spot transphobia we can all spot and agree is ban-worthy, at some point there's going to be a lot of people who are just gullible and unknowingly repeating dogwhistles, and it's better to deal with those people through discussion and downvotes rather than permanent bans. And if you do permanently ban those people, frankly, it's completely justified when people complain that the mods are overstepping their bounds, going from cracking down on rules-breaking behavior to serving bans for bad takes. This isn't happening yet, as far as I can see - but it seems like some people are calling for it to.
I don't know how to feel about it all, really. It feels like this site really rapidly tumbled into the death spiral of endless drama about bans and mods that happens on every forum at some point. You see enough of that and you start to develop pretty strong opinions about internet janitors. Looking at the mod log, it seems like people are getting banned and unbanned by different mods/admins in the span of hours and no one knows what the hell is going on.
But then it's like, does that even apply here? Am I just dropping stupid reactionary takes about a problem I don't understand correctly? Then the appropriate response seems like not participating in struggle sessions whatsoever and watching the website die, just to not contribute to whatever the problem is. It's a bad feeling.
But even with a permanent ban all someone is loosing is there name. Everyone is acting like it's some serious thing when really it's just a mild inconvenience as long as you don't get mad about it.
If you're gonna make the argument that bans are inconsequential because it's just a name, then I would say the same argument applies to getting downvoted, but apparently that's serious enough to cause a full on shitstorm on here
I want to be clear, bans for transphobia and seriously shitty, continously hostile posters are definitely a Cool and Good Thing, but like, there's a fucking line here that I think is getting real close to being crossed.
Seeing people like Bread in Baltimore catching a ban, or Gkailatsomething a while back just seems wrong to me, and pretty far away from the ethos of the old sub. For the record, I even vehemently disagreed with those guys on occasion, being an anarchist at heart, but I always found the things they'd post to be informative and something that could give me a different perspective on things. They were definitely not "wreckers" imo.
Maybe that's been the plan all along for this site, to foster a totally different culture, but if so that wasn't really communicated well when this site was launched I don't think.
I dunno, I just feel like something is changing here, and not necessarily entirely for the better. Maybe that change will drive me away, maybe I'll just go back to pretty much never saying anything. It's entirely possible my surface level distaste for all this shit is just my knee jerk dislike of authority, I know that attitude is borderline instinctual for me, and perhaps I need to self reflect on that and just shut up for a while.
Sorry to drop a fuckin essay on you lol, this has just been kinda bubbling around in my head and i guess now is when i decided to vent, i still love all you fuckers :af-heart: :heart-sickle: :trans-heart:
I'm not sure if it's just a temp ban, so it might not be a super big deal, but I suppose it all depends on if he decides to come back after it expires or if that was enough to make him just say fuck it and bail
I hope not, I liked his posts even though he loved to call out anarkiddies like me lol
Personally my biggest hope for this site is that it can be a place where leftists who don't feel safe on places like reddit can chill and be themselves. If the userbase is small or people who aren't necessarily trying to stir shit get pushed out because they prevent that from happening then so be it. That's the only true value I think this site can have.
And if that's the intended direction, then that's totally fine! I just can't help but think of what the old sub was so good at, which was being an effective lib-to-leftist pipeline. Hell, it always amazes me to hear of how many people came to the sub at first as some flavor of reactionary chud, but wound up becoming a better person in that environment.
Becoming an ever more exclusive club of people who only ever agree with each other is not a great way to keep doing that imo. Again, straight up shitty people should get the metaphorical (and not so metaphorical) Wall. Bans on sight for terfs is great. But the whole "debatebro" rule business, and to a lesser extent the downvote banwave (which had a bunch of false positives, rip in pepperoni AStonedApe) is not a great way forward I don't think.
But if that's the direction we're going, then so be it I guess.
The reason why the sub was able to be a pipeline was because it was on reddit, being one degree of separation from millions of people can't be replicated on an independent platform imo. And I really just have no sympathy for people who got caught up in a ban wave mistakenly and had a reaction other than mild annoyance. like what? your good name (which is hopefully completely untraceable to you irl) has been tarnished?
I mean, I thought we were doing recruitment drives for here? I know I've been DMing people on reddit who I've seen posting good takes, and a few have messaged me back saying they liked it here and signed up, even. Also wasn't there a thing with the watermarking memes to post on other sites that I'm remembering, or did that fizzle out? Not to mention the potential recruitment when federation comes.
And yeah, the whole "tarnishing of their name" is literally what AStonedApe said they felt had happened to them, they explicitly said that after they were publicly named & shamed in the transphobe downvote banwave that their friendships with specific other posters on here was harmed by that. And so what if people get attached to a username? I feel like it's kinda dismissive to sneer at that idea given that it's been recently decided that downvotes are problematic.
Getting banned and losing a username that maybe you've used for years across different sites (leaving aside the fact that that may be dumb from an opsec standpoint) is a much bigger deal than internet points that literally don't even do anything on this site, hell your personal total isn't even displayed anywhere for a basic user to see!
But anyway, I don't want to keep banging on about this with you, I'll just disengage and say that you do have some good points about the importance of fostering a welcoming space for marginalized people on here, I am totally for that. It's possible I'm just being a bit reactionary about all this and need to self crit. My own personal anxiety issues are already yelling at me in my head to just stfu and go back to lurking anyway, so I suppose that's what I'll do. Hope you don't have any hard feelings, and have a good night.
It's fine dude, I appreciate the conversation! I don't think you have said anything reactionary I think there is just a divide in what we think this website is for.
If all a ban means is losing a name, then what's the fucking point in the first place?
If we're going to be discussing bans we have to treat them as if they actually do what they say on the tin, even if they don't. Especially when you consider that (rightfully) the moderators are much more ban-happy towards very-new accounts. If they're also banning original accounts like it's a symbolic act that means nothing for petty bullshit reasons, you're reducing good-faith, long-term posters to the same treatment as alt-spammers.
It's no surprise that a website that is based on the same general structure as Reddit perpetuates Reddit-like behavior. An anonymous webforum with no vetting process is full of constant brigading and astroturfing? And people with bad takes?
For what it's worth, I don't have any real complaints with the actions taken by the moderator and admin teams so far; but I also don't fully understand what can be done. This site is full of reddit-bros, because most of us are from the CTH subreddit. We have reddit-brain. We mindlessly voice our opinion on whatever topic is shoved in front of us with no regard for the relative weight our opinion should hold, because that is the mentality instilled by a Reddit-like, karma-based webforum. It doesn't matter if a poster is an actual activist, or a long-time active member of the community. All voices are equal, even if they shouldn't be.
Frankly, I'm just unsure what you (and others) expect out of the moderator team and userbase that would make the site more approachable to trans users. The guy Cass was arguing with? They took appropriate action and served a temp-ban. People bitched, likely because they assumed the ban was permanent - there isn't any kind of visual indication as to whether a ban is temporary or permanent short of looking at the modlog, which none of these split-second-attention-spam upvoters are going to do. And people - like me - look at a user being banned for an admittedly bad take, and a common attitude ("I don't know who you are" is the appropriate response to someone claiming expertise on an anonymous forum, though the vulgarity is what pushed it to be a temp-bannable offense in my mind), and I wonder, "What bad take will get me banned?". To dive into the specific issue: while transphobia is often more covert than the blatant and easy-to-spot transphobia we can all spot and agree is ban-worthy, at some point there's going to be a lot of people who are just gullible and unknowingly repeating dogwhistles, and it's better to deal with those people through discussion and downvotes rather than permanent bans. And if you do permanently ban those people, frankly, it's completely justified when people complain that the mods are overstepping their bounds, going from cracking down on rules-breaking behavior to serving bans for bad takes. This isn't happening yet, as far as I can see - but it seems like some people are calling for it to.
I don't know how to feel about it all, really. It feels like this site really rapidly tumbled into the death spiral of endless drama about bans and mods that happens on every forum at some point. You see enough of that and you start to develop pretty strong opinions about internet janitors. Looking at the mod log, it seems like people are getting banned and unbanned by different mods/admins in the span of hours and no one knows what the hell is going on.
But then it's like, does that even apply here? Am I just dropping stupid reactionary takes about a problem I don't understand correctly? Then the appropriate response seems like not participating in struggle sessions whatsoever and watching the website die, just to not contribute to whatever the problem is. It's a bad feeling.
But even with a permanent ban all someone is loosing is there name. Everyone is acting like it's some serious thing when really it's just a mild inconvenience as long as you don't get mad about it.
If you're gonna make the argument that bans are inconsequential because it's just a name, then I would say the same argument applies to getting downvoted, but apparently that's serious enough to cause a full on shitstorm on here
I want to be clear, bans for transphobia and seriously shitty, continously hostile posters are definitely a Cool and Good Thing, but like, there's a fucking line here that I think is getting real close to being crossed.
Seeing people like Bread in Baltimore catching a ban, or Gkailatsomething a while back just seems wrong to me, and pretty far away from the ethos of the old sub. For the record, I even vehemently disagreed with those guys on occasion, being an anarchist at heart, but I always found the things they'd post to be informative and something that could give me a different perspective on things. They were definitely not "wreckers" imo.
Maybe that's been the plan all along for this site, to foster a totally different culture, but if so that wasn't really communicated well when this site was launched I don't think.
I dunno, I just feel like something is changing here, and not necessarily entirely for the better. Maybe that change will drive me away, maybe I'll just go back to pretty much never saying anything. It's entirely possible my surface level distaste for all this shit is just my knee jerk dislike of authority, I know that attitude is borderline instinctual for me, and perhaps I need to self reflect on that and just shut up for a while.
Sorry to drop a fuckin essay on you lol, this has just been kinda bubbling around in my head and i guess now is when i decided to vent, i still love all you fuckers :af-heart: :heart-sickle: :trans-heart:
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I'm not sure if it's just a temp ban, so it might not be a super big deal, but I suppose it all depends on if he decides to come back after it expires or if that was enough to make him just say fuck it and bail
I hope not, I liked his posts even though he loved to call out anarkiddies like me lol
deleted by creator
Personally my biggest hope for this site is that it can be a place where leftists who don't feel safe on places like reddit can chill and be themselves. If the userbase is small or people who aren't necessarily trying to stir shit get pushed out because they prevent that from happening then so be it. That's the only true value I think this site can have.
And if that's the intended direction, then that's totally fine! I just can't help but think of what the old sub was so good at, which was being an effective lib-to-leftist pipeline. Hell, it always amazes me to hear of how many people came to the sub at first as some flavor of reactionary chud, but wound up becoming a better person in that environment.
Becoming an ever more exclusive club of people who only ever agree with each other is not a great way to keep doing that imo. Again, straight up shitty people should get the metaphorical (and not so metaphorical) Wall. Bans on sight for terfs is great. But the whole "debatebro" rule business, and to a lesser extent the downvote banwave (which had a bunch of false positives, rip in pepperoni AStonedApe) is not a great way forward I don't think.
But if that's the direction we're going, then so be it I guess.
The reason why the sub was able to be a pipeline was because it was on reddit, being one degree of separation from millions of people can't be replicated on an independent platform imo. And I really just have no sympathy for people who got caught up in a ban wave mistakenly and had a reaction other than mild annoyance. like what? your good name (which is hopefully completely untraceable to you irl) has been tarnished?
I mean, I thought we were doing recruitment drives for here? I know I've been DMing people on reddit who I've seen posting good takes, and a few have messaged me back saying they liked it here and signed up, even. Also wasn't there a thing with the watermarking memes to post on other sites that I'm remembering, or did that fizzle out? Not to mention the potential recruitment when federation comes.
And yeah, the whole "tarnishing of their name" is literally what AStonedApe said they felt had happened to them, they explicitly said that after they were publicly named & shamed in the transphobe downvote banwave that their friendships with specific other posters on here was harmed by that. And so what if people get attached to a username? I feel like it's kinda dismissive to sneer at that idea given that it's been recently decided that downvotes are problematic.
Getting banned and losing a username that maybe you've used for years across different sites (leaving aside the fact that that may be dumb from an opsec standpoint) is a much bigger deal than internet points that literally don't even do anything on this site, hell your personal total isn't even displayed anywhere for a basic user to see!
But anyway, I don't want to keep banging on about this with you, I'll just disengage and say that you do have some good points about the importance of fostering a welcoming space for marginalized people on here, I am totally for that. It's possible I'm just being a bit reactionary about all this and need to self crit. My own personal anxiety issues are already yelling at me in my head to just stfu and go back to lurking anyway, so I suppose that's what I'll do. Hope you don't have any hard feelings, and have a good night.
It's fine dude, I appreciate the conversation! I don't think you have said anything reactionary I think there is just a divide in what we think this website is for.
If all a ban means is losing a name, then what's the fucking point in the first place?
If we're going to be discussing bans we have to treat them as if they actually do what they say on the tin, even if they don't. Especially when you consider that (rightfully) the moderators are much more ban-happy towards very-new accounts. If they're also banning original accounts like it's a symbolic act that means nothing for petty bullshit reasons, you're reducing good-faith, long-term posters to the same treatment as alt-spammers.
When I click on a Twitter link and it opens in browser instead of the Twitter app and I’m not logged in I usually give up on liking or replying.
Don’t underestimate the power of minor inconvenience.