Might be a bad idea for me to go into this while having ptsd issues, especially when I'm probably about to do a long ass sleep, but yolo.
Basic synopsis on my feelings here:
-
tl;dr: I used to believe we should be federated, but after 3ish years of interacting with lemmygrad on various accounts, I have noticed that lemmygrad is not a place that is safe for transgender people at large. The reason for this is principally their debatelord culture and refusing to comprehend that debating a point against a minority's lived experience, then demanding civility when that minority gets angry, is the same shit liberals do.
-
I noticed instances of reactionary content, such as here and/or comments are not removed or users banned. Lemmygrad seems to prefer to debate reactionaries, and obviously subjecting minority groups to reactionary content for personal fun is callous at best, and reactionary at worst. Its important to make it so that there are designated areas for dunking on reactionary content, as well as nsfw and content tags to avoid it. Otherwise, reactionary comments should be removed and visible in a mod log.
-
I discussed in this post why it is important to remove downvotes to protect trans people. After I noticed people were creating evasive comments to debate me, I pretty much told them to fuck off. This resulted in a ban from their admins and they continued to defend their policy. This reminds me a lot of the struggle sessions we used to have about adding pronouns to the site or removing downvotes. People would be evasive in this same way to give the benefit of the doubt then demand civility when people get angry. Those people are not allies and should be purged.
-
The admins seem to have a principle misunderstanding of why minorities don't want to see any form of harassment or discrimination directed at them and how that is perpetuated across social media sites. They seem to legitimately believe that keeping downvotes means that they will be able to stave off reactionary content or is somehow a valuable tool in responding to reactionary content, when in reality they should be removing and banning reactionary content.
-
Certain users were very keen on civility bullshit, particularly @simply_surprise@lemmygrad.ml, @muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml (an admin), @davel@lemmygrad.ml. This is honestly the most disgusting behavior I've seen on lemmygrad, and the fact that the admins doubled down on it is fucked.
I can see staying federated to a bunch of very small instances, especially queer focused and hobby instances, but I'm pretty soured on the fediverse at this point.
I'm extremely disappointed in what I've seen of the lemmygrad mod team. Why are they making me into a splitter over such a basic issue of avoiding the harassment of trans people at a systemic level, bastards 
I am willing to retract this if the admins of lemmygrad self crit and apologize for temp bans or otherwise of my accounts on civility reasons and make it clear that debating the lived experience of anyone of a minority group is unacceptable going forward. There are positive and proactive ways of discussing someone's lived experience without going into debate territory and trying to find a technicality in lived experiences to support an opinion you already hold. I maintain that removing downvotes is a boon to trans users, if you can come up with something better than that and implement it, I am all ears.
How so? If we can instantly tell who are the reactionaries that downvote trans contents, or that users from fash instances are the ones that upvote anti-semitic comments, that would absolutely solve the problem of moderating reactionary content on this site.
We literally have a 200+ comment struggle session just the other day about why there are people anti-semitic comments are allowed to stay up and even have people upvoting them. A public record of up/downvotes instantly solves that problem.
And once again, I will say this: if you are too ashamed to have your up/downvotes be known as a matter of public record, then you should think twice about why you feel so uncomfortable showing your support/opposition of certain opinions publicly in the first place.
Remember our goals here are to make Hexbear a safe space for minorities who cannot find the same welcoming vibe elsewhere on the internet.
I'm not at all ashamed. I'll stand by anything I've upvoted. But it opens up a lot of oh this person downvotes/failed to upvote me complaining. Just a reminder people beef with each other all the time around here.
Also the admins can already see our voting record. It's not like it's secret. if we need to root out fash with them we can.
Just to clarify, I wasn’t talking about “you” in particular, but in general about some people who are too afraid to let people know about what sort of contents they up/downvoted. I apologize if I didn’t make that clear in my comment.
My problem is that the current arrangement unnecessarily burdens the mods. As I have mentioned in my previous comment, just the other day we had a struggle session with some people complaining about anti-semitic comments. It simply reflects that the deluge of comments in light of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had exceeded the capacity of the mods to perform their duty, and the result is that some reactionary contents escaped moderation. Again, as I have said, removing downvotes simply kicks the can down the road. It is undoubtedly a better way to run the site but it doesn’t get to the root of the problem. Democratizing the moderation process to involve the community is the only way we can truly purge reactionary sentiment on this site.
No worries comrade
excuse me if I interject please?
spoiler
I feel the removal of downvotes allows users to quickly discern who are the reactionaries. If you disagree, you have to do it with your name attached (public record), and you risk being reported. I feel it may actually assist moderation, but I have no Idea.
The issue is the downvotes are still a thing, people can still feel harassed by that. I can get behind public upvotes, though.