Yesterday was intense for everyone. Some quick updates as of last night:
- A large amount of the sitemod team has stepped away from the project. Other comrades from the community have volunteered to pitch in and been modded.
- Some core devs also stepped away from the project. For the time being, you should not expect any further development of new features or bug fixes as we reassess our capacity.
- Main has been locked. No immediate plans to unlock.
- Registration is closed and will remain so for the time being.
We 100% understand and support everyone who left yesterday and are also looking forward to the next stage of Hexbear.
We're probably not going to be making any additional announcements or formal communication until after the weekend at the earliest. Thanks.
I hate to say it, but honestly I expected this to be a bit of a short lived project anyway. Once CTH was killed off suddenly, the ark discord had (relatively) few members, and then the amounts who migrated over here have been even less. And recruitment efforts are difficult. Not only is our niche rather small, and most of the people elsewhere already feel content with what they currently have, but we're a unique slice of the internet where a lot of us don't want to deal with the hostility and anger that has been coming out over the past week or so anymore. I don't want that Reddit tier anger here, if this place can't stay cozy then I'll just stick to small discords with friends like I did before.
Heck, I try not to even get too angry at the chuds coming here, I just sigh and go "ugh, guess it's another dude to report, please leave us alone" at this point thoughts cause I don't want to deal with the toxicity anymore. I've tried making nuanced critiques. I'm a vegan (as much as my unique circumstances allow at least), despite having my ancestors be hunters and my own grandpa having planned to take me hunting before he had died when I was young. I want to see it from all the perspectives and keep a calm discussion. And honestly I just don't know how half of these people (both vegan arguers and non vegan arguers) are functioning outside of their very insular spaces. It comes off like the types of people who get recorded in public and then trend of Tiktok or Twitter because they just can't stop screaming for one second, rather than engage in any sort of civil discourse.
I made a point before about how "I wouldn’t go around calling people in the global south barbaric and cannibals because some of them have issues with homophobia, would I?", and I stick by it. Cultural critique needs to be approached in a very mature manner if you don't want to come off as hostile and racist, and that includes things that you think are objectively wrong. Obviously every single one of us here is disgusted with the queerphobia that still exists around the globe, but none of us would ever go so far as to call people from south america or asia monsters for it.
I've preached before on other accounts about the importance of compassionate veganism and activism. Slowly introducing people into better lifestyles, teaching them and helping them improve instead of just throwing shade. Nutrition classes and help for those with eating disorders, providing healthy and moral food for the poor, overcoming the fear and hostility that has been planted into people in society about vegetables, and I feel like all of that work and discussion has just been shit on these past few days. From people going "I'll eat meat to spite those angry vegans", as if all of us here are the exact same way, or those same angry vegans going "But muh indigenous cultures" in a mocking tone, it feels like we've reverted to the arguments you'd see in a middle school, not someplace that's meant to be thoughtful and kind. Those are the types of anger and statements I expect from the_donald, not here.
IDK, maybe I'll stick around and comment here and there/read threads for news and memes, but things have gotten so hateful and childish that I can barely stand it as is.
Having been off for here for 6 days, I have been extremely surprised that the veganism debate wasn't immediately treated by the same rules as sectarianism*. That's been a pretty successful model for this site.
I remember before that we'd regularly have the anarkiddies/tankies threads that did nothing but drive people away. Once the rule was put in place, those tendency fights ended.
*Functionally on this site it's a political tendency, you're welcome to check out this sticky if you are unsure, even though there are arguments to be had about it being a philosophy/practice.
there is no assumption of good faith at all here
There's a good amount and the community does a solid job.
There are multiple private discords with the sole focus of destroying this site and that is an entire level of fucking loser I never expected to see continue this long after launch.
There are multiple private discords with the sole focus of destroying this site
Jesus fucking christ, why are people like this lmfao
I don't fucking know. If you hate what we're building, why wouldn't you just go do something else...
I like you, want to be a sitemod? You'll either help this get rebuilt or get to party in the ashes if that doesn't work out.
I'm already a mod of c/anarchism and I would really like to help. Y'all are the only community I really have. If you want to site mod me I'd be more than happy to volunteer. I don't WANT to be a mod especially after all the shit I've seen slung at them but I do want to ensure this place makes it through this shitstorm.
There are multiple private discords with the sole focus of destroying this site .
Can confirm these exist, they even have "sleeper accounts" which they created at site launch with the whole purpose of starting shit and inflaming every argument on here. I caught two of them yesterday. I don't understand what drives people to do shit like that, like ffs go outside for once.
It can be difficult to have good faith discussions when people internalize the "bullying works" meme a bit too closely.
Oh no this post showed up under my comments on https://hexbear.net/u/SerLava the database is creaking oh shit oh fuck come back devs
Now that you're a sitemod from this particular comment specifically, I sincerely hope you'll work to change the part of the PR post yesterday that excepted the vegan shit-stirring from rules governing sectarianism.
This site has long had a lingering uninterrogated colonial mindset across a good chunk of the userbase (myself included!) which has been brought up multiple times, so for the admin/dev team to respond in that both sidesy way yesterday to a specific, high profile instance of it was incredibly disheartening.
There was undoubtedly wrecking that took advantage of the original, legitimate concern, and the response from some to double down on the assimilation take just fed into that. But the response from the admin team stood in stark contrast to the way transphobes got the wall a few months ago.
people see someone who disagrees on a fairly complex issue and jump immediately to the worst fucking mindset possible in the person they’re debating with.
veganism is one of the various positions in which you will rarely see unity in any given left group that doesn’t organize around it. so literally the only way to address it is for both sides of the issue to decide either their comrades are still their comrades despite a differing position on it, or that the differences are irreconcilable in which case the other side needs to be fought at the expense of the community itself.
Yeah this sort of thing is really scary, and I know I've done it already myself a bit which I regret like implying they would throw slurs at me if I partaked in things like fishing/hunting that my grandpa and his community took part in, I realize that was unfair and rude of me to just assume. I still think it has a veneer of racism behind that but I was probably too hostile and assumptive about the level. At the end of the day, arguments around all these topics have been in leftist discourse since practically forever. And I'll also admit, I've probably upvoted a few rude comments in my haste that I shouldn't, which doesn't help cause it shows "support" for them that I shouldn't have done.
And besides, there have been vegan communists, they have been omni communists, there was probably a lot of communist thinkers who couldn't make up their mind too all throughout history. Accusations thrown around like "Vegans are actually neoliberals!" or "You can't be leftist without veganism" are just silly because of that. It's so unnecessarily aggressive.
Also uh, this is a problem throughout the whole internet but minorities can disagree with each other is a thing too. I posted before about how I don't want to talk over my indigenous comrades, but we do need to keep in mind that the term is broad and can refer to a lot of different cultures with different histories behind them. One culture might have a lot of emphasis on hunting and still actively teach their kids how to, while another might have veered away from that in the past few generations. One holocaust survivor might think eating animals is a fair comparison, while other survivors might find it disrespectful of the pain and suffering they went through. Someone who's ancestors were slaves might think that the comparison to slavery as unfair and rude, while another person with slave ancestors think it's an apt comparision. People can disagree about these things even in historically oppressed communities. But I do think, the only people who should really be speaking up about that are the ones who go through it. A holocaust survivor can call something similar to the holocaust, but you, someone born 50 years after, shouldn't be. You can point to the person who did say it, but that's really it. It's not your job to latch onto one oppressed person's words and use them to shove your own non experienced thoughts into a conversation.
feels like we’ve reverted to the arguments you’d see in a middle school, not someplace that’s meant to be thoughtful and kind
Agreed. It was a fucking mess.
I read the rest of your comment, I just don't have a lot bandwidth. Thanks for writing something long that wasn't the equivalent of hatemail.
I appreciate all the work that the admins here do, I know that moderating a community like this is difficult, especially one that has always been rather prone to splitting and tearing itself apart. I have a lot of issues with the way that moderation is done here sometimes (like how people have mentioned the mod log needs to be more detailed), but I'm also trying to fight back against the hostility that some of the users are bringing up with it. I critiqued that one dude who was like "Admins do better challenge" for being too passive aggressive, but at the end of the day I know I can't control anyone. It feels like a losing battle to try to keep civil discussions up.
I loved this site early on for having challenging discussions that made me double back and think "huh, maybe I was being shitty with those things". I'm trying to work on stuff like my internalized fatphobia, and calling things "dumb" or "stupid" as a go-to insult that I don't think I would have challenged myself on if people here weren't nice and kind over it and willing to have discussions. But that magic is fading, and I don't know if it will ever come back.
Site team really needs to compartmentalise community management and PR from development from moderation.
The combining of all areas creates a mentally draining and emotionally exhausting environment for the entire group. You need a very specific type of attitude to deal with it day in and day out. Those working development should be kept away from it. High turnover in team members having to handle that should also be expected.
Really think the team should consider instead structural changes in the organisation rather than complete abandonment. The problem isn't that we're dealing with anything unique, the problem isn't that the site is dealing with anything that any other site doesn't have to deal with, the problem is that organisation is a mess of people trying to keep up with absolutely everything every single team is doing instead of just focusing on their own thing.
It doesn't matter if there's a small drama outburst in one comm or another or whatever. They're small short lived events that get handled and the community moves on from them.
Too many team members are involved, too many are getting emotionally involved. Things should be handled by a much smaller number of people and those that are part of that should be the types of people who can take an emotional step back from events.
Agreed. Please DM me if you're willing to help organize this, we could very much use the help.
There are 74+ accounts in the modchat. It is a free for all.
Burn out keeping up with that incredibly online space is not at all surprising to me.
We have other working channels besides that, but I also agree additional organization is necessary.
I don't know. I think that a lot of burnout comes down to a need to DECREASE the amount of drama various key individuals have to be involved in.
In essence, the goal should be for decision makers and the incredibly important developers to be as separated from the emotional impact of decision making as humanly possible.
I'm sure there are various things that could improve the lives of users but the problem first and foremost seems to be that there's structural issues in the team that requires structural changes to address turnover problems with volunteers. The first and foremost issue there is to prioritise key team members and making sure turnover and burnout happens as little as possible with them. When they burnout things get really bad. That hurts the whole site, users included.
Emotional impact on key team members seems to be the most pressing issue at hand.
The other side of this is user expectations. The site hasn't got limitless resources and the team isn't paid to work on it fulltime despite the fact being that they clearly are working on it fulltime.
User expectations need to be readdressed, probably with some change to site branding, in order to adequately communicate to users that this is a project, that it is developing. Good but likely to have various flaws and kinks to work out through further work. Other major project have the sense to use the "beta" tag for this, Hexbear probably needs to consider something like that in order to manage/communicate that people set their expectations at the appropriate level.
Yes, admins I’m begging you, allow some back channel from union to admins for hasty/(presumed yeasty) bans/concerns, which is filtered through some judgement. Or to relay stuff back from mods to there. Right now it exists in hanging state, where people are lucky to receive some answers, so disappointment builds there without info (or get banned, which is bad)
Well, yes, I mean faster response from this inbetweeny relay. Last time drama happened admin posts in union have gone like a lead ballon, if I remember correctly. So now union just exists with occasional bans, but otherwise silent treatment
I just think a lot of the delay is consensus not being a monolith on the moderator’s end.
This.
Site team really needs to compartmentalise community management and PR from development from moderation.
The combining of all areas creates a mentally draining and emotionally exhausting environment for the entire group. You need a very specific type of attitude to deal with it day in and day out. Those working development should be kept away from it. High turnover in team members having to handle that should also be expected.
This definitely hits the nail on the head.
I come to this website (like the sub before it) to basically just shitpost, read shitposts, maybe occasionally learn something or teach some people something. I see an obvious drama thread that triggers the red flag in my head, maybe I'll read some of it out of Bile Fascination for shits and giggles and eye rolls, but I'll almost never engage with it. If I even click on it at all.
This is really the kind of attitude you have to have when approaching this bullshit on the internet. Yeah, I have some deeply held opinions on these topics, and frankly, they've so far mostly gone against the grain of the authorities/majority opinion here at least in broad strokes. But I also know just how fruitless and unnecessarily stressful and emotionally taxing it is to engage deeply with online arguments like these. After years of taking yelling at people on the internet way too fucking seriously, I know when to just keep my mouth shut and walk the fuck away. It's not that important.
When I was a terminally online lib in my early Reddit years, a frequent user of /r/SubredditDrama among others, going way way way too fucking deep into the anti-GamerGate rabbit hole, that level of time and emotional investment into petty online argumentation led me to a very dark place when Trump won in 2016. My response to that (aside from deep depression, identity crisis, and an escalation of my alcoholism) was to almost immediately cut myself off from all political and meta-internet communities, basically everything except sports. Eventually I suffered a second identity crisis and came out at the end as a communist, diving back into the online world as a result, but I knew then from experience how deeply toxic and self-harming it is to become addicted to meta-internet drama. It's equivalent to turning self-medication into self-harm.
Remain detached, at arms length, from this kind of shit. It's not worth it, and considering this community past and present already attracts emotionally unstable personalities becoming addicted to that is almost literally making suicide a self-fulfilling prophecy. Stepping back and bricking up a barrier of ironic detachment is, in this case, a lot healthier than binding yourself intimately to these topics.
is this site really going to fucking die over a veganism struggle sesh
It would be very sad for that to happen before we get federation, but at this rate, it probably will. :sadness:
Everyone will upvote the "solidarity" comment now, but boy was Dash treated like shit in their "I'm leaving" thread.
Enjoy your weekend. Seriously I really think a ton of users vastly underestimate the amount of effort that goes into running a website like this, for free of all things. I still remember when an admin DM'ed me to check if I was okay after I posted about being harassed by trolls and k*rries. We need to treat these people with the respect they deserve for doing such a thing, sacrificing their free time to ensure that the website is running smoothly. If we don't we're going to turn into r*ddit 2.0. Also please send my condolences and thanks to all the devs, mods and admins, I've tried to message them all (those that left) but I'm unsure if their accounts are still active. Some of the attitudes I've seen towards the developers and admins have been very sickening, expecting someone working on the website to bend to their every will and command and not being thankful or even displaying basic human kindness and decency towards them. People expecting the site to be renamed immediately (someone actually made a post that was very condescending like that), stuff like that. Again thanks for everything, I strongly believe that we can get through this.
:fidel-salute-big::fidel-salute: :kim-salute: :chavez-salute: :deng-salute: :sankara-salute: :maduro-salute: :rat-salute: o7
I 100% missed everything over the past few days and am kinda just sad and confused at this point. This is the third online community I participate in that has blown up in the past month, and it's just....sucky.
It absolutely sucks. To be fair, this is just the latest in a long series of blow ups that we're tired with.
Me. That's why I woke up after 8 months. Somebody had to fucking do it.
Good. Please don't worry about petulant children whining that their online day care has been run less smoothly than they demand. Take a deep breath and take your mind off of it for awhile. You've all deserved it
At the risk of being stupid and sticking my neck out here: I think the OP is being more than a little disingenuous.
Are there some users who might be acting a little overly dramatic right now? Yeah, it’s the internet, of course there are. But, I’d say that the vast majority of users are just frustrated with the trajectory that the site has been taking for the past couple months. I’m one of those users. Ever since the whole struggle session over the unilateral name change, I kinda got the bad feeling that things would only get worse from there...
I’ve been increasingly turned off by the some of the admins’ “I’ll do what I want” attitude and just skirting around valid criticisms/expressions of fatigue by just banning folks. I think it’s counterproductive to the goals that you guys are trying aim for, and I think there should be some self reflection on that point.
I understand you guys are volunteers, I get that you’re all grown ass adults who’re too old for this shit, but, as a long time subscriber to the old sub and a dude who’s been on the site since day one: the current approach straight up isn’t working. I hope the sites fortunes are able to do a complete 180 after the weekend is up.
I also don’t intend for this message to be snarky or combative, these are just my genuine feelings
Yup. Part of what we're evaluating is whether we as group of volunteers can provide the labor necessary for the site and its community. Administering a site this size is a lot more work than any of us realized at the beginning.
If we feel like the ask is too much, then we'll be stepping away. A number of people have already decided that.
We don't blame folks for communicating what they need and also if we can't / aren't willing to do that than we also have every right to discontinue investing our labor and time.
That's not intended as a spiteful statement, just more of a reiteration of the dynamic here. It goes both ways.
We'll try stuff out before pulling the plug entirely, but we have no interest in creating another 4chan by inaction.
Some of the stuff we try will likely be anarchic. There is a very big difference betweem anarchism and "no rules post pics of dead kids".
I realize you know that and am just clarifying.
the vast majority of users [...] the past couple months
I disagree with this, I don't remember seeing any significant discontent until the VCJ Event started a week ago.
As I alluded to before: while the fiasco was shorter, the controversy surrounding the website's name change was the first example of what I'm talking about (don't know if that happened months ago, my sense of time is never very good)
The mods know what you want. But they can't give it to you, because they don't have the resources. Writing the same "well I just think that we need to do more THIS and not THIS" is just sanctimonious. Everyone is doing it, everyone is more or less on the same page about what needs to be done. It's one thing to identify a problem, it's another thing to fix it. Let's save the criticism for another more constructive time, eh?
Writing the same “well I just think that we need to do more THIS and not THIS” is just sanctimonious. Everyone is doing it, everyone is more or less on the same page about what needs to be done. It’s one thing to identify a problem, it’s another thing to fix it. Let’s save the criticism for another more constructive time, eh?
With all fairness to you dude, your OP isn't exactly "constructive", now is it? You were just basically painting anybody who had a problem with the moderation of the site as "petulant children" and acting as if there was no valid criticisms to be had. If you aren't exactly saying that/didn't intent to, you should've added some nuance to your post.
Going: "You have no right to criticize anything unless you come up with an alternative vision" reeks of the same cop-out arguments chuds use when you criticize capitalism. It's not my god damn job to come up with a comprehensive blueprint on where to go from here. I don't know shit about coding, I don't know shit about moderating. If you wanna verify that fact yourself, you could look into my comment history and see the post I made unironically suggesting that the admins change the sitename in an effort to cut down on wreckers as if that would literally do anything. All I can do is give my opinion and hope for the best.
Attempting to ingratiate yourself by kissing ass or pretending like there's no problem at all isn't gonna help fix the site's culture as much as you probably think it is dude. I made my opinion as tamely and respectfully as possible, and I see no fault's with liberal's response, if that rubs you the wrong way then idk what to say to you.
People are worried about creating an attractive community for users. What about creating an attractive community for volunteer moderators, admins and devs? I'd say that's equally as important
I completely agree and that is the kind of community we need to build for those comrades.
I understand you guys are volunteers, I get that you’re all grown ass adults who’re too old for this shit, but, as a long time subscriber to the old sub and a dude who’s been on the site since day one: the current approach straight up isn’t working. I hope the sites fortunes are able to do a complete 180 after the weekend is up.
They're burnt the fuck out. I don't doubt that they'll come back sometime next week and productive discussions will be held over the future of the site.
This. Burn out at work we're all (unfortunately) used to, burn out for a passion project is something else entirely and soul sucking.
Take some time for yourself, I'm sure next week will be better. :Care-Comrade:
People just need to realize, there's not, and is never going to be a 100% perfect space for you in every way unless you're the one running it and you're the only one in it. You might get places that are close but there's always going to be shit going on that you disagree with, and you have to act like an adult and understand that. I don't come on Hexbear expecting everyone to have the same hobbies, the same outlook on life, the same morals on every facet of everything, I come on here because I'm looking for a place that's better than Reddit and the rest of the general internet.
If you can fucking coexist in real life, on Reddit, on Twitter, on Facebook in your college FB group, whatever else, then you can coexist here with that same understanding that people aren't always going to match your standards. If you want a catch-all leftist space, you're going to have to deal with the fact that some people are vegan, and some people aren't, because leftist communities and discussions have been this way for a long time.
I think if you came onto here expecting anything else but "Slightly better community and mods than most other social media" you were bound to be disappointed from the very start. This was never going to be a leftist utopia that perfectly matches my beliefs, and it's never gonna end up being one for any of the people reading this right now. That won't ever exist because dealing with people means dealing with differences.
Much love y’all. It confuses and discourages me sometimes, I came here to be fun and uplifting and critical with other lefties, and it feels like so much of what gets boosted is folks shitting on each other and freaking out. I wanna believe that all these struggle sessions etc are due to the toxicity of online social media environments or whatever, and if we all were together irl we’d not be at each other’s throats.
Just shut it down. There's never been good posts on here, every week this year there's been some new incredibly internal drama that no one who isn't horribly, horribly online could ever follow. Like I have some boring ass work from home job where I'm always looking for content to read, and I couldn't even follow any of it. Lockdown's ending soon-I say that as someone incredibly cynical to the whole thing but who investigates covid cases for a living. The numbers have plummeted, and at least in America everything's gonna be re-opened and safe as they were before by July. Don't waste time you could be spending returning to having a real life running this site.
who the fuck is on
chapo.chathexbear.net scareming for me to log offshow yourself cowatd i will never log off
there’s been some new incredibly internal drama that no one who isn’t horribly, horribly online could ever follow.
It's been fucking baffling to log on some mornings and see some of the shit. Who the fuck cares? Just post memes and entertaining things to make hell world suck less wtf.
Don’t waste time you could be spending returning to having a real life running this site.
Literally the head space most of us have. Quarantine projects we all learned a lot from. We haven't decided anything yet for sure. Gauging current willingness and energy to continue. We all have a lot of other shit to do that is less exhausting and honestly more rewarding.
100000000%. The last few times I've come here It's been some site wide meltdown that just doesn't fucking matter unless you are terminally online. Personally, and may come off as condescending, but I also find a lot of the ills of the site to be just like general internet grievances that are virtually unavoidable - this is the fucking internet. The baseline foundation of the internet is a racist, sexist, transphobic, and reactionary hell hole that is primarily comprised of young white men who are LARPing behind their computer screens with the goal to aggravate some person and/or community, even if they don't agree with what they're saying, just so they can feel alive for once in their godforsaken atomized and isolated lives.
This has always been the internet, this will always be the internet. Every time I access the internet, I expect it to be like this, no matter what community/site/forum I am on. You need to compartmentalize these things and not get emotionally invested in digital communities - it is literally unhealthy.
It's said so often but it couldn't be more true, for the love of god just go outside. Get offline. Feel the breeze on your face, the grass under your feet. Spark up a conversation with an elder at a park, read a book in the sun. Volunteer somewhere. Feed the homeless, dog rescue, shit I even gleaned oranges for a local farm. Anything. Connect with a family member. Find new music, watch new films with your friends. Pick up some trash in your community. Thrift for some old instruments and learn to play something. Limit your fucking internet time in general and fucking vastly limit your internet usage on sites like these.
Visit site, read good comments? Upvote. Read hateful comments? Well, that's the internet. Downvote or ignore and fucking leave. If you do anything other than this, and your involvement on the site isn't actually building/generating like real-life organization or action, you have a problem.
Love ya'll but this shouldn't be a thing.
This is a really cynical take of the internet. The internet is the way it is because of decisions made by people running sites, not some Malthusian human nature bullshit.
These behaviors can be influenced and changed by things like moderation and site features.
Do you know how different things would be if every social media site wasn't designed to make you scroll forever and see as many ads as possible? If everything wasn't determined by "tHe AlGoRiThM" to drive engagement?
We can change and fix these things. Hexbear/Lemmy's first mistake was trying to be like reddit instead of rethinking how users should interact entirely.
I agree that not being terminally online and going outside is extremely good, but the internet is a huge part of people's lives and dismissing it entirely is foolish and ignores many people's material realities.
We can change and fix these things. Hexbear/Lemmy’s first mistake was trying to be like reddit instead of rethinking how users should interact entirely.
We started with what we had and are iterating from there. We've already had a lot of success (pronoun tags and usage, removing downvotes). We'll see where things go, we're looking forward to it.
I hope the site lives and continues onward.
It would sadden me to see all the work that went into it go to waste and for everyone still here to be further scattered to the winds.
Can't stand reddit, got banned from Twitter for posting too hard at the @CIA account, and now Hexbear.
Well. I have an appointment next week to get the vaccine.
Thank you for the update, I hope everyone is able to have a nice weekend
