Hi all,
Throughout the last few days there has been an uptick in arguments and turbulence throughout our site. This comes right at a time where we are onboarding new communities that are in danger of being banned by Reddit.
During this, we've seen that it would be beneficial to provide more clear communication around our decisions and stances on current issues. This post will be divided into two topics that have both come up: 1. BIPOC Comrades and Intersectionality and 2. Veganism
BIPOC Comrades and Intersectionality
We have an ongoing commitment to intersectionality. This will always be a continual process as we identify new opportunities for learning and process improvement.
Based on community feedback around BIPOC representation on the sitemod team, we have added two new sitemods who will bring additional BIPOC perspectives to the sitemod team.
While we had BIPOC comrades on the sitemod team previously, they made the understandable choice to not state this identifying information publicly and we support them in their decision. We will continue to increase BIPOC representation on the sitemod team over the coming weeks.
There have been concerns of implicit support of racism amongst the mod team. We hope that looking through the modlog will prove otherwise. Although we can't get to rule breaking comments or posts immediately, we will never tolerate racism on our site, we're sorry about this and wish we could do more. We encourage everyone to continue reporting rule-breaking comments and posts so that they are more visible to moderators.
To reiterate, any posts or comments that are exclusionary to our BIPOC comrades are against our Code Of Conduct and will be removed. Individuals should especially not appropriate comparisons that aren't from their culture. Do not use appropriative comparisons like:
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Do not use appropriative comparisons like chattel slavery or the holocaust if they are not from your culture.
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Implying indigenous people are barbaric/mentions of "assimilation" or "evolving" their culture. These phrases are outright xenophobic and have a long history as a dog-whistle for settler-colonialism. They are not allowed.
Our moderator team is made up of volunteers and works to remove reported content that violates our CoC as quickly as possible, but we are unfortunately not able to remove objectionable content instantaneously. Objectionable content remaining up following a report does not mean the moderation team endorses that content. We are continually working to build up the moderation team and number of volunteers.
Veganism
Hexbear is a platform for all leftist communities. As a part of this, we're partnering with a number of vegan communities on reddit who are migrating over to the site. The mods of these communities are intersectional and have a number of BIPOC comrades on their teams including indigenous comrades and we're excited to work with them.
For those unfamiliar with the concept, veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to eliminate as far as is possible and practicable all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals. Veganism is about absolute liberation of our exploited and commodified animal comrades. Veganism is not a diet, although not eating meat and animal products is a common extension of this philosophy.
We encourage vegans to post throughout the site. Our sitemod team is a mixture of vegans and non-vegans, as are the mods of the !food comm. The mods of that comm made the policy change of requiring pictures of meat to be marked nsfw following feedback from multiple comrades who were uncomfortable seeing meat pics. After examining feedback on this issue, the sitemod team has made the decision to support the !food mods agency as moderators.
The "NSFW" tag is very much a "catch all" at this point, although more specific content tags are planned for the future. We encourage all comrades passionate about helping us develop this feature to check out !hexbear@hexbear.net for how to get started with contributing.
Vegans are allowed to advocate for veganism, especially in their own comm. This doesn't constitute sectarianism, classism, racism, etc. and will not be actioned against as long as it does not break the site's code of conduct or a comm's rules.
As with any comm, individual posts and comments will need to be moderated. The diverse team of vegan mods already has experience navigating this from running large subreddits and will respond as these issues are reported. Bad faith generalizations of all vegans will not be tolerated, nor the delegitimization of trauma expressed by our vegan comrades.
In Conclusion
We appreciate the passion our community has for empowerment and intersectionality. As a team, we hope to consistently embody the communal standards we outline in our code of conduct. We feel these changes uphold our goals of intersectionality and left unity and will drive the site forward as a general, inclusive leftist space.
Thank you and viva la hexbear.
I'm really sad to see so many names I've known for months expressing their dismay at this response. I am also very disappointed in the events of the last week. This has not been an easy site to remain active on, but I've kept at it because I felt a sense of community forged in the opportunity of a new home online, built by the users and without the baggage of a hostile platform (and in the solidarity of singing l'internationale in a distorted mess several times a day.)
This is ugly. Even in our previous struggles I haven't seen the kind of vitriolic language at such a persistent level as I have in the last week. Absolutely none of this is working to advance the cause of leftism - and it sure as fuck isn't advancing the cause of creating a friendly and constructive space for ourselves and future comrades.
I have avoided taking too strong of a position on this, but seeing so many people I've come to know over the past few months leave, become disillusioned, or be banned while new users who are, as a whole, clearly single-minded and intransigent in their views are allowed to come here and act in an immediately and persistently hostile manner is very disheartening.
If the operators of this site want to build a functioning, pluralistic community, let alone something that can contribute towards the existentially imperative project of communism (imagine, a pipeline! What fancy!), this kind of division enabled by handling more "morally pure" interests, who have not demonstrated their commitment to the broader project, with kid gloves cannot be permitted.
I love my comrades and, as always, am willing to meet reconciliation with anyone, but this state cannot continue. If being a bloodmouth is cause for excommunication and pariahship, your movement will fail.
Yes, thank you.
:100-com:
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If they're all as awful as the ones who've been starting shit for the last week, then holy shit I hope none of the mods think it's 'well worth it'. This has been serious wrecker shit.
Yeah, that's 100% sign to abandon ship.
It's cool the infrastructure of this website was built up, just to hand it over to a circlejerk subreddit.
Yeah for real. Sitemods need to either mass purge vegan reactionaries, or lose a bunch of their old users and give up on this place being the inclusive leftist project it was building up to be.
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No one had trouble existing alongside vegan comrades on this site, c/vegan has been around quite a while and there was never an issue before. The issue is not vegan comrades, it's vcj people being wreckers.
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I promise you it isn't helping convert anyone
Maybe read the room and wait more than a day after joining the site to start proselytizing you fucking weirdo lol
-Soulja
The shit that happened here over the past week didn't help anything. Not animal liberation or any other kind of liberation. I think the intent was right. I fucking hate Reddit. I want leftist exile communities to be able to hit the ground running. I don't like the idea that some silicon valley fuckstick in jeans and a blazer can just point their finger and zap communities off the internet (like our own, that's how this website began after all). I also like Vegans. I think Veganism is ultimately correct and is vital part of the anti-capitalist struggle. As an anti-capitalist website, we can't possibly have too many Vegans.
But while I think the intent was good, I think there have been some serious oversights in how this went down. We're a maybe 10,000 person community with multiple philosophical tendencies, spiritual backgrounds, ethnic backgrounds. A true rainbow coalition. The way that has worked is by treating each other with good faith and respect. By trying to synthesize our experiences and insights. By being willing to learn from each other. Not by sectarianism, elitism, preaching, or generally treating the whole site as if you're dunking on a bunch of retrograde assholes without ever going back to read the replies like Reddit.
Attempting to pipeline a community of ultras 8 times our size into the site without any serious plans for onboarding or political education was a mistake. I'm not the kind of person who thinks every minute administrative decision needs to be referred to committee, but this is the kind of thing people really need to have the time to digest and form a consensus on.
I think it would have been better if we could facilitate them in setting up their own instance or something. There is no way you can grow a community that quickly without the culture being completely obliterated. Reddit itself poisons the brain, and if we replace 90% of this site with Reddit in the span of a week, we'll only create another Reddit. We barely missed this same disaster when the r/WSB GME thing was in full swing and we suddenly had tons of people posting meme stocks and essentially promoting gambling.
Bullying people into fucking actual real life tears and breakdowns isn't fucking converting, its just going "The beatings will stop if you just go vegan" and hope people either just leave your community or bow down to emotional abuse cause they care about the community too much to leave.
Buddy, we have been existing alongside vegan comrades, for months. There was never a serious problem before, despite posts like this one being posted. And yes, you'll notice that @WoofWoof91, the vegan comrade who posted that thread, is in here advocating for a purge. Which, I think, is rather telling.
I'm not existing alongside racists, I don't give a shit what you eat.
You can be vegan and be antiracist.
And I’m not existing alongside ableist and disableist people. I absolutely do give a shit about what massively problematic behaviours. Two can play this game. Your post is entirely bad faith.
I don't think their post was in bad faith. Everyone here understands that veganism and anti-racism are compatible. We also don't tolerate ableism. What do you think was ableist?
They aren't comrades of mine
I've always said that pushing veganism as a core part of socialist/communist movement would destroy it. I don't know if data exists, but the stereotype of vegans are comfortable white urban professionals with college degrees or students. Well, if this site gets overrun with these vegans, it's better to see a left project destroy itself on an internet message board, instead of in the real world.