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.
the original chapo was absolutely not this toxic lol jesus christ
if the admins have indeed decided to push away their actual active users in exchange for a bunch of reddit vegan shitheads then alright i'll fuck off, it's their site
Agree 100% comrade.
What the fuck is even happening, it's like those of us who've been here from the start don't matter anymore.
They haven’t even decided that. They want to have ethical vegans and non-vegan leftists on this site. You are judging veganism by its followers and not by the actual doctrine. Absolutely criticise the means of vegans if they are bad - but also engage with the doctrine and the arguments being put forth.
almost every discussion related to veganism on this site was fine until the VCJ shitheads showed up
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Yet you only acknowledge one set of bad faith actors in the vcj-group. Very curious.
The bad faith people are not just vegan, lol.
my point is that the discussion usually wasn't in bad faith until vcj posters started stirring shit up. you can't start an argument in bad faith and expect a good faith response
I think you absolutely can. If someone is bad faith, just smash that report button. Get the mods to ban them. Don’t lower your standards to a bad faith actor’s level.
This is entirely about the users who are being toxic. Veganism is a valid doctrine that has a lot of value to contribute to left.
I am consistently seeing in the struggle sessions people calling out bad faith ‘vegans’ and not bad faith omnis. So many character assassinations of vegans. My first day on this site I was accused of racist, classist, ableist behaviours (despite veganism being a radical anti-ableist philosophy!)
Nigh any criticism of a non-vegan leftist is being met with a wall of “I don’t give a shit!” or “you colonialist scum!” There are bad faith actors on both sides of the vegan/non-vegan divide, absolutely. We can all do with gaining an extra nuanced perspective.
There has been a very large amount of actual racism and denial of the racism by vegan users. If you did not do this I am sorry this has happened to you, but you are very eager to apologize for it.
I will say: thank you for the apology. I am also sorry if I appear to be apologist for racist behaviour. I am ashamed if I am making excuses for someone. I’ll always try to do better.
I just want people to work with the mods to solve this. Not just polarise this further by becoming bad faith in the process of engaging with troll behaviour.
I hope this mess doesn’t continue to polarise itself, for everyone. The idea of this site as a pipeline for leftwing ideas is beautiful.
This goal is what has kept me to the site. I learned most of my english from the reddit left, and I can not help but want to be a part of the growth.
I want to hear from vegan comrades. I want a pipeline to reach them as well. For that to happen respect is necessary. We had it and I know it can be had if there is will. I would march 25000 li to see it happen, but it will require explicit work.
I am not eager to apologise it. If I haven’t seen it - I cannot call it out. I trust your word that it exists though. I am certain lots of horrible racist shit has happened this past week, and it is truly disgusting.
What I am not happy about however - is that the mod team is trying to address the matter. And many users cannot interpret them charitably. They already expect the mods to not act on racist behaviours, and not do better, when it seems like there was faith in them before. And I don’t also expect the disgusting vitriol I got from several users directed towards vegans that inflamed everyone which many of the casual older users of this site are not acknowledging.
How many posts have I seen about people calling out horrible behaviour in vegans - but then have an almost complete silence on the bad behaviour of non-vegans? Do you see how this paints my perspective of these people? It makes it seem like this place will never be friendly towards vegan leftists outside of c/vegan.
Or what about the consistent assumptions that all the vegans here are white? Where’s the god damn nuanced discussion!?
Here's some nuanced discussion. You VCJ assholes came and shitted up the site. You're not comrades; you don't believe that non-vegans can be leftists. You should leave