This one requires a bit of background.:
Hexbears keep opening the_dunk_tank posts about our mods and our instance in violation of their own comm rules. That compels me to go in them and try to correct the bad faith disinformation being peddled about us.
In one such thread one commenter made a reply to me ending it with “disengage”, which was a clear indication they didn’t want to engage in discussion any more, which I respected.
Note that there’s no indication of how disengagement works in any sidebars. And even their own Code of Conduct, merely states:
So it appeared to me this is how it works.
Later in the thread, someone kept making bad faith replies and at some point I thought, “I’ll just use this handy disengage rule to avoid being further provoked”. So I did, at which point I was gleefully and summarily banned by @blashork@hexbear.net with the following comment, to which I couldn’t respond anymore of course.
Now I knew already that plenty of hexbears had a grudge against me for rejecting “left unity”, so they were just looking for an excuse to get rid of me, they finally found enough of a plausible gotcha and all they could think of for the reason was “liberal”. Note that the first person “abusing the disengage rule” was never banned or affected in any way.
Ultimately this led me to being banned from hexbear itself, but that’s a post for another day.
So what do you think? Am I "liberal "enough to deserve a ban for “abusing” an unwritten disengage rule. Power trippin’ mod or nah?
Turns out tankies are shitty people; who knew?!
Just joined today. Almost joined hexbear because it was the first lefty instance I saw. I’m so happy I saw the piracy community on here and came here instead only to then realize there were fellow anarchists here.
Welcome
- Avoiding discourse through name calling.
- Anyone who doesn’t think the exact same as me is the enemy.
- Closing down the doors to not let the light in.
Little good comes out of militant instances, stewing in their own hatred.
Real shame, society and forms of improving it are all worth exploring.
Shitty instance? I came to this instance because it’s not been shitty.
I’m not sure a pirate can truly be liberal, there’s nothing more liberal than copyright. It sounds to me like the mod is having a bad day and needs to relax a little but seems to be power tripping to me.
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Everything you just said about me was quoted completely out of context, but of course it would be. At least this time you can’t go and remove my comments when I explain my position.
Context One of our users had been reported by a hexbear user for “homophobia” for what seemed to me at the time, a pretty innocuous statement. Here’s what OP had written:
I mean, not to directly play devil’s advocate but I heard plenty of the ‘that’s so gay’ stuff in high school and even then it was commonly understood to mean silly and stupid (ethics of this not discussed here). If you were actually gay no one gave a shit. Are you 100% sure it’s your sexuality they were talking about? Or is that something you assumed because you were self-conscious of it? I am not advocating for either way or saying it wasn’t done in hate, I just want to make sure you’re not putting yourself through undue hardship. [OG post by a dbzer0 user that was reported for homophobia]
Having reviewed the comment thread after a report of homophobia, my stated position was as follows:
It seems to be, as a gay person myself, that this is a perfectly reasonable take and not homophobic at all. He points out the common use of the word ‘gay’ in a common usage in high school. He doesn’t try to justify it ethically, just observes that it occurs, and asks if perhaps the common use of ‘gay’ as a general pejorative may have been the case here, instead of a direct comment on a person’s sexual orientation. So, it seems to me that the one example you provided is by no means a clear example of anything, except perhaps of hexbear users immediately making bad faith assumptions about users not from their instance. […]
I’ll point out here that I at no point argued that it was ok to use the term “gay” as a pejorative, and neither did the user who was reported as being homophobic. It seemed to me the user was simply pointing out that the term is unfortunately in common use as a pejorative, especially in a high school situation, and is often applied to people anyone and everyone, regardless of whether they are gay or not. And looking at their post history, there was absolutely no indication they were homophobic in previous comments, and in fact it indicated the complete opposite. Where the evidence points to a bad-faith interpretation of a user’s comments (as in this example) then we will generally give the user the benefit of the doubt. Again, I don’t apologize for that approach. Serious accusations require substantive evidence, and I found no substance to this report.
In this particular example, the hexbear user chose to “disengage” from the conversation (a classic hit and run job), and so my comment was removed by a hexbear mod, removing any context from the discussion. So, I’m now apparently considered by some hexbear users to be “a homophic mod, hiding behind being gay”, in large part because any contextual information was immediately removed, and I was almost immediately perma-banned (subsequently changed to a temp-ban).
And ever since, I’m branded as homophobic gay man by hexbear trolls everywhere, because haters gotta hate I guess?
Edit: had extended quotes too far
edit 2 Also this moderator is a mod of our trans community, something reserved for trans users. So yes you are targeting a marginalized person, the same person that you have harassed in direct messages. This combined with a history of not dealing with homophobia/transphobia in the past. I think there is a clear pattern that comes from the top in this instance, which is truly disheartening.
Just because someone is marginalized doesn’t make them immune to criticism nor does it mean that any criticism of them is oppressing their identify. This is ironic in the same thread when you then proceed to accuse one of our mods of the hiding behind their identify.
I also know how haphazardly hexbears accuse others of bigotry when they aren’t cowered. Much like you threw your trans identities as a shield against criticism for power tripping and hypocrisy and then strongly implied we’re transphobes due to the that or when’s you accused the trans admin of blahaj of harboring transphobes and chasers.
We’ve already went through your arguments against unruffled and we already explain how you stretch what they said to arrive at these accusations. But I’m not going to rehash every grudge you have against our instance because you’re salty for one post criticizing one mod.
It is telling that you have no arguments to make against what I posted (hypocrisy and powers abuse) in the except to try keep trying to stretch reality so that we’re seen as bigots.
Its amusing you bring up “protections”, meanwhile you’ve got mods who circumvent the word of their admins. Maybe if you don’t want your instance dragged through the mud, you should clean up your leadership?
I will say, the admin I dealt with there was reasonable. They at least took the time to understand what I was saying, while the rest of the instance intentionally misread my comment as pedophilic. Hell, one user (out of at least twenty) even called out the fact that the vast majority were intentionally misreading the comment. And when that admin decided “okay, look, just apologize for the misunderstanding and drop it” and I did?… the mod who originally banned me from one community “stepped in for admins” and banned me from the entire instance.
That’s some great protections.
I didn’t abuse anything. As my screenshot show, your mod publicly posted and announced she was the one that took the mod action!
I also didn’t make this community for this ban (it’s been months), but rather it was triggered by the other ban I received which you can also find posted. I just felt this sort of thing also belonged here.
I also noticed you didn’t address any of your own mods behaviour even though they’re clearly in the wrong. You’re more incensed about us shining light on her power tripping than the act itself.
Also I don’t follow hexbear norms about “Moderator harassment”. I don’t consider speaking truth to hierarchical power to be abuse. And yes, that means that people are free to make posts about our own mod actions in his instance. We stand behind everything we do but also acknowledge we can do mistakes like humans.
I’ve told you before that your own dunk tank members routinely violates it’s own rules. You misunderstand if you think I’m upset that you dunk on mods, specifically. I only call out hypocrisy. You can keep telling me that oh eventually you handle the reports of your own member breaking your rules and the aggrieved party jumps through your hoops (if they even can) but if you have a community that considers its own rules as something to ignore when funny, then I would shut it down as unsalvageable.
Likewise it’s disgusting to equivocate criticizing mod actions as “bullying marginalized people off the platform”. Nothing I said had anything to do with anything other than one’s mod status and the fact that someone is marginalized doesn’t exclude them for being criticized for hypocrisy.
I won’t allow this community to end up like the dunk tank where people do bad faith interpretations in order to pile on. We have very clear rules of what and what form criticism takes and it’s also focused on keeping the hierarchical power in check, including mine.
And if I find that the community members routinely bend the rules to the breaking point, and we can’t handle it with mod actions , I’ll shut it down myself.
