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:

  1. Do not use appropriative comparisons like chattel slavery or the holocaust if they are not from your culture.

  2. 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.

    • QuillQuote [they/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      and some folks "yeah sure if I post meat I can take a microsecond to spoiler it for ya just in case, couldn't be easier!"

      And other folks said "that's dumb, you're not traumatized by that, that's not trauma, I know, I'm the trauma understander"

      • witch_bitch [she/her]
        ·
        4 years ago

        I'll say it. I don't believe the people who say they are traumatized by food with meat. They are full of shit.

        • QuillQuote [they/them]
          ·
          4 years ago

          The trauma legitimizer has logged on. everyone line up to see if your personal traumas are real or not

          what the hell, you don't get to define others' trauma. Full stop. fuck outta here with that garbage :what-the-hell:

          edit: just realized you have a day old account 🙄

                • QuillQuote [they/them]
                  ·
                  4 years ago

                  if it was something that mattered I'd be with you, but it's literally clicking a spoiler as a gesture of good faith, what, you scared they'll make posts mocking us for falling for their epic ruse if that's what it is?

                  What happened to the spirit of giving to comrades in need knowing full well that they might be a grifting chud? That was actual material loss to people if it happened, and we did it anyway, because that's what was right.

                  I don't care if it's someone fucking with me, I'll do the small things I can that don't harm myself or others

                  means-testing empathy ass bullshit around here and I'm sick of it

                    • QuillQuote [they/them]
                      ·
                      4 years ago

                      Oh grow up lmao, that's such a weak response. If you want to make petty arbitrary decisions based on your mood and how well you like the genre of person you're talking to, by all means go ahead but don't pretend it's anything else

                      It's like when libs celebrated the texas snowstorm cause it hurt people they don't like

          • TankieTanuki [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            IMO this is just like when we had the SA accusation against one of our admins. We have to take these things seriously while also not being complete pushovers to bad faith wreckers.

        • Abraxiel
          ·
          4 years ago

          I agree. I also don't really have a problem with nsfwing meatposting; it's just a little insulting to have that be one of the only takeaways from all of this while not addressing the underlying issue of an influx of hostile and combative users.

          *and yeah, like someone might genuinely feel bad when they see meat, so it's fine to make things easier for them with a minor change in norms. But I really think that the source of pressure for this change wasn't that.

          • QuillQuote [they/them]
            ·
            4 years ago

            while not addressing the underlying issue of an influx of hostile and combative users.

            I've spent most of my day on this as well, I was supposed to be logging off and taking a break from it :agony-soviet:

            But yeah, important reminder that this is utterly basic shit and it's absurd to waste air on it right now with other more important things to focus on, I just couldn't let someone dismiss trauma like that and not have it challenged

            • Abraxiel
              ·
              4 years ago

              I truly admire your commitment to upholding good community practices and maintaining social cohesion without sacrificing the wellbeing of marginalized people.

              • QuillQuote [they/them]
                ·
                4 years ago

                thanks comrade :comfy:

                If we dont fight for that, this place will end up just like every other site on the internet, dominated by the hegemonic group and drowning out all other voices

            • skeletorsass [she/her]
              ·
              4 years ago

              o7 I do not accept it when it is done on complaints about racism, we do not accept it for this either

              • disco [any]
                ·
                4 years ago

                Are you seriously equating the trauma that a vegan feels at the sight of a ham sandwich to the trauma felt by victims of racism?

                :agony-immense:

                • skeletorsass [she/her]
                  ·
                  4 years ago

                  Not in the slightest. I have experienced a great deal of racism in my life and it is debilitating for me.

                  But if someone says they are uncomfortable with something I want to respect them. Users have fought me when I have complained about racism, and I would not wish that on anyone who experience a sincere discomfort or trauma. If it matters so much to them to ask I will respect it because I do not want to be questioned either.

                • QuillQuote [they/them]
                  ·
                  4 years ago

                  since when do we advocate for oppression Olympics? We don't we don't play the comparison game, it's not helpful.

                  • disco [any]
                    ·
                    4 years ago

                    It’s not playing “oppression olympics” to point out that those things are in no way comparable.

                    • QuillQuote [they/them]
                      ·
                      4 years ago

                      Trauma isn't some universal size or severity, there are small traumas and big traumas, some that that build up over time, or because of specific circumstances you couldn't possibly know about someone, or because of one truly horrific moment, or a lifetime of oppression.

                      It is not for you to decide what the cutoff point is, and it's not helpful to anyone to try.

    • garbage [none/use name,he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      go through the fucking food comm and try to find thumbs of meat. you'll find like one over the course of the last two/three months.

      mandating that the tag is there requires miniscule amount of change, people weren't doing it anyway, except for like two fucking posts, over the course of 60 days. the people handwringing about the rule are just kinda douchebags.

      to clarify: if you're that upset that it's a rule that once a month someone has to censor their thumbnail as to not trigger people, you are a douchebag.