After the recent struggle session which resulted in
CW: It’s pretty self indulgent considering the gravity of the actual situation.
I am left disquieted due to various people who represented zionists positions directly or held space for these. Particularly (but not only) those who are admins and mods. People who think the above image is a “holocaust flag”. And otherwise seem to have conjured a fictious form of anti semitism, just for deploying here.
Well OK maybe it is allowed to give people a week or a month to mull things over and reconsider their positions. But do we come back to it? Or should I just seethe with resentment, hold a grudge, and snipe about other things going forward?
On the other hand, the majority & plurality were on the correct side of things. So that’s good. I just… Idk I don’t expect hegemony but this is literally such a simple issue. I don’t know how anyone who feels different could feel comfortable on this site. it’s like learning mods/admins are triggered by a guillotine.
In some ways it could be “the fighting is so fierce because the stakes are so low”. (The stakes = emojis)
But on the other hand, the stakes are so huge and this is just the scale of fighting that’s near at hand.
Nobody ever accused me of being perfect and well behaved so maybe I’m just throwing stones from a glass house. I explicitly must consent to whatever critique in that regard.
I would like to suggest that on the new user signup page the question be changed to read
What are your views on GSM / LGBTQ rights, racial justice, animal liberation,
Although I have no idea what sort of answers people make to these. So maybe it’s stupid.
Fucking shit. People are fucking being fucking murdered right at this fucking moment.
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Why relitigate this struggle sesh?
While we’re at it, can we please not have anyone in a position of authority who would call it a “holocaust emoji”? Because that is some hardcore genocide apologist shit and it shouldn’t be welcome here.
bruh people can be wrong and I think that catastrophizing the issue like this is basically fed posting. It’s making mountains out of molehills type shit to dismantle spaces and up heave leadership.
Sure, people can be wrong. I’ve been wrong about plenty of things. But there’s a line between a moderately bad take and repeating genocide apologia and we should be able to hold people in a position of authority to that standard. I just don’t think it’s a lot to ask that people in a position of authority shouldn’t be people who are comfortable repeating Zionist apologia. Where would you draw the line? Because , to be clear, the mod in question compared burning the flag of a settler-colonial entity currently committing a genocide TO a historical genocide. That is just straight up genocide apologia.
also just a fair expectation to see this admin at minimum admit she was wrong for calling it a “holocaust emoji” / using zionists talking points. just been radio silence which says to me that there’s just annoyance that people are speaking up about it rather than any genuine self-crit.
I have contacted the admin to try and get a response on this matter, the stance that
is a “holocaust emoji” was 100% not the view of the mod/admin team
nah I buy the “glib moment i’m sorry” line, call me a sucker. An inflammatory poster came out swinging with a half dozen alts, as they have in the past, and first approaches proved unfruitful and unpopular. Our mods who, across the board in many other instances have done very well for us, don’t need to be witch hunted over the matter. It’s just pent up rage with nowhere productive to put it and I don’t think being wrong once means a total overhaul of the mod team. This just… isn’t that important. It really isn’t. Calling it genocide apologia is pretty extreme when it was pretty widely considered distasteful to consider burning the star of david when the rule was initially made. I remember opining on the thread saying I myself, as a jew, found it so. That’s changed in the intervening years for myself and many others, but the rules had not yet. Clearly this recent rile changed that rule. We’ve all updated our expectations and understand that going forward. That doesn’t mean we throw out the people who have put in the most time and effort to make this place a decent one. This isn’t the dumbest struggle session we’ve had, but it sure has legs and who knows maybe it’ll get there. Such fiery rhetoric over a change that has in fact been instituted seems to only invite further flames, not let the coals just go out as they should.
It’s incomprehensible how mods are super sensitive to nazi dogwhistles, but regarding outright zionist positions it takes site-wide outrage to ban someone.
It confirms the US/European chauvinist bias on the site where mods and users are way more forgiving to those users with zionists brainworms than to arab users who do not share our sensitivities to US/European style nazi dogwhistles.
I think that Zionists are bad and shouldn’t be aroundSince we’re going to re-litigate this whole thing again, just keep in mind of something. We have at least one person on this site who is being starved. They have had actual bombs from IDF dropped on their house and neighborhood. Everything normal, including being able to regularly post on this site, has been taken from them (someone posts on their behalf iirc).
No emoji is going to make them feel better. The fight for their life and the cause of their pain is far removed from whatever happened or will happen on this site.
No emoji is going to make them feel better.
True, but that’s not really the issue here, is it.
The issue is that certain people on this site put the feelings of genociders above the lives of the genocided.
And they deserve to be called out for that.
I believe the point of the person you are replying to is that this isn’t about “the lives of the genocided,” it’s about the feelings of a bunch of Hexbear users who generally aren’t being subjected to genocide, especially not that genocide (though we do have like 5 users who openly are, which isn’t nothing, but I can’t remember seeing any of them weigh in). The lives of the genocided are being given some degree of priority when we do things that actually help them, which an emoji never will.
I made my post about this subject a while ago and never really thought it was worth the fighting people engage in over it, I just continue to not like bad arguments. It’s not like the feelings of Hexbear users are worthless, so by all means keep the new emoji, just say that’s what it is.
Personally, I think it’s completely asinine when mods remove those Palestinian mutual aids because they posted in comms other than /c/mutual_aid or /c/chapotraphouse. Oh boo hoo, one of them posted their Gofundme in /c/science or /c/earth. They could spam the entire site with their Gofundmes and I wouldn’t give a fuck and neither should everyone else.
I was asked by a large amount of users to keep the mutual aid posts in the mutual aid community. I DMed every person that I removed the posts from apologizing and explaining.
The users said they have no ability to monetarily contribute and had blocked the mutual aid community.
If you and others think that the users should instead block the people asking for mutual aid and we let the mutual aid posts be put anywhere that is a change I can make
I didn’t know that was happening, I thought they were given exceptions.
That’s really unbelievably fucked up.
You could see the post if you go to the modlog and filter by Removing Posts: https://hexbear.net/modlog?page=1&actionType=ModRemovePost
Here’s one that got removed: https://hexbear.net/post/5808670
Good point and I agree 💯 on principle. Are you going to post this same comment on all the other threads burying those mutual aid requests? If not, why this thread in particular?
You didn’t have to go bump those threads, my point wasn’t that this thread is pushing more important threads down. One of my hopes was that someone would momentarily look outside of threads and posting all together. I guess I was hoping for a little too much.
We may not actually agree on principle but I will vote for you to be mod or admin if the time comes.
I unironically appreciate that you brought the attention back to the mutual aid threads (whether or not that was the specific intention), it’s actually messed up that we’re out here posting peepeepoopoo every day while our Palestinian friends are begging for us not to let them starve to death.
I appreciate the vote and have thought about giving it a shot after I graduate but I’m for real up to my neck in real life rn (turns out it’s not easy to find correct alternator parts!) and
arguing aboutfighting for better site culture is an enjoyable break in a way, believe it or not.
We need a good purge of the zionist mods/admins. We’re still infected.
Can you be more specific as this is quite vague at the moment
i think there used to be some legitimacy to worrying about burning the symbol of a minoritized group even in an appropriated context as
but the entity has so thoroughly delegitimized itself even in the eyes of liberals that the shield no longer functions.The initial argument was flawed as well. The genocide flag has been used before 7 october to raze villages, burn people’s homes and kill people’s children as a warning to leave and not come back. That flag has primarily stood for murder and genocide since the inception of the ‘zionist state’. Just because most USians and Europeans only found out about the genocidal nature of the zionist entity 2 years ago does not mean that they were right to connect that flag to Judaism.
While that initial argument may have been flawed, there are valid arguments to exclude the Star of David from the Israeli flag.
Such as the fact that Zionists have made it a point to connect their country to Judaism. That was the whole point to designing their flag that way to begin with. Anti-semitism and Zionism do go hand in hand, after all. It makes sense that they would force people into making this association.
Excluding the symbol from the flag and replacing it with something else can be seen as a rejection of Israel’s attempt to draw this connection.
It’s naive and US/Eurocentric to think that you can disconnect the star from the genocidal entity. The genocidal entity has used the star in particular to install fear and terror into Palestinian communities by marking homes with it before they were burned and the people in it killed.
Well, yeah. A largely secular settler-colonial project appropriating the star of David and placing it on their flag is deeply gross. But that is the flag of Israel, we don’t have the power to change it. That’s not how that works.
People call Israel “Isntreal” all the time. We don’t have the power to change Israel’s name, so should we stop calling it Isntreal and start respecting its identity as a country?
I’m not even against the new emoji. I’m just trying to make the point that there’s non-zionist perspectives to not use the Star of David by wording things in a different way. We shouldn’t just immediately call people zionists because they chose to word things poorly during a heated discussion.
That “poor wording” was literally putting burning the Israeli flag on the same level as genocide while Israel is carrying out an actual genocide. It’s not acceptable or defensible and yeah, if that’s the kind of slip you make while heated you don’t need any kind of authority.
Also, any other flag literally wouldn’t be the flag of Israel, so…
Yeah, but we passed that point about 78 years ago now. It’s one thing to be concerned about the impression of the wider public but anyone who worries that there’s something wrong with the act of burning the flag of the Zionist entity (as opposed to worrying about what it may do to their reputation with the general public) in the 21st century is misguided at best.
Yeah, I think that the arguments that were used in the recent struggle session were more outdated than intentionally spreading Zionist talking points.
We are going to let this post become the meta discussion post for this topic. Please do not make comments or posts discussing this elsewhere.
I am asking for specific actions to take and to please give us time to respond and to act as we have a mod team across diverse time zones.
Top level comments that are vague or hostile may be removed.
Suggestion: What if we move on from talking about emojis and have a more productive discussion about ways we could oppose Zionism that might have some kind of actual real world impact (however small)? Personally, I feel totally powerless to do anything to stop what’s happening right now. I’m guessing others feel the same, and maybe that explains some of the frustration going on. Maybe if it would help if we had better ways to direct that. I don’t know, just thought I’d throw that out there.
I think that is a great idea and agree with the explaination for the frustration, I think that we will lock this post and make a meta-post on the deeper issue mentioned here about the response and some of the problems with the mod/admin team during the week.
I think you should remove this comment and remake this intended meta post as a proper stickied post so there is actual proper visibility instead of being buried as a comment on a post that is reaching the end of its engagement.
And this needs to be remade during the weekday since weekends are less active.
Really? I thought it was the opposite, though maybe it’s a timezone related thing.
We discussed doing that but didn’t want it to seem like we were stifling the discussion so it could be done right but I’m happy to do so, including what AssortedBiscuits said about posting and pinning during the weekdays
Suggestion: ban everyone who upvoted the “holocaust emoji” comments made by prof owl or made similar.
We had committed in the past to not using upvotes as the sole metric to ban people. Should we move away from that commitment?
No, absolutely not. Having no real stake in this whole argument I do not want it to start catching strays from people who simply thought in the moment, “Hmmmm good point” and upvoted and moved on with their day. So silly to start axing people who aren’t instigating bullshit.
Personally as gross as I find it that anyone’s upvoting that kind of rhetoric I really don’t like seeing upvotes as part of any kind of mod action. It’s (1) easy to fatfinger an upvote and (2) a kind of overly close scrutiny that I’m not convinced is productive or even appropriate. It also feels like something that would be very, very easy to either selectively enforce, or to just apply haphazardly in a way that looks selective, because who is taking the time to make sure everyone who upvoted a shitty take is banned?
One important lesson in ethics is that while the most important thing is to behave ethically it is also extremely important that one’s behaviours appear ethical - ethical behaviour that looks unethical undermines trust just as much as actual unethical behaviour. It’s why transparency matters.
If nothing else, those who expressed such sentiments in a comment. It wasn’t just owl, yet owl is the only who has gotten a deserved consequence so far.
Furthermore, some people have been banned on mere suspicion using AI tools that indicate they may be an alt, it’s a laugh to claim any standard.
We didn’t use AI tools, I went and looked at hundreds of posts and comments individually to determine that Zposter has had around 15 alts over the years that have been used for upvote manipulation and sockpuppet comments/posting/DMs to further engage in bad faith with the site
I was going to type a genuine suggestion, comedically framed as being a “Down to the countryside” sort of labor program for PMC (Posting Managerial Class) parasites to develop the correct class character, but I’m not gonna leave it to anyone’s terrible reading comprehension to interpret correctly.
Since the common reaction to being caught enforcing a bad take is “mhmm, maybe, but who cares? there’s important stuff to be done” you should put them to work doing that important stuff. (punitively) make them do book reports, research, reflections on IRL organizing and maybe that can remind them the difference between cultivating cutesy posts on an account that makes you feel respected and important, and actually participating in the struggle for socialism.
I don’t understand what you are suggesting, is it that anyone that makes a mistake on a mod action needs to write a book report, research effort post, or something to that effect?
In my opinion those, like self-crit posts, should just be made on their own without having the punitive aspect attached to it, in addition a mod/admin posting about irl organizing is exposing them to the doxxing/death threats we received before.
no- well yes, but also anyone who doesn’t make mistakes should also write a book report. everyone writes a book report. or they write about something else, if they’re smart enough to do it without doxxing themselves.
I agree we could use more effort-posting, I have a lot of respect for the people leading and participating in the book clubs.
Feel like shit just want zposter back x
He has unbanned alts on lemmygrad but his hexbear alts used for sockpuppeting and vote manipulation will remain banned
The fact that this ban happens at this moment feels unfortunate to many of us. I don’t know the facts about Zposter’s alts and violation of rules by using them for such purposes, but it’s clear that the ban being done at this time isn’t for that reason and it feels very unfair to me.
I do not think it really matters.
That’s like, 80% of my take on this.
Some of the comments in that thread were incredibly distressing to read initially, but then seeing people double down was so awful. How do you watch a genocide go for two years and still say things like that?
it’s been 4 days and it still hurts, there’s a Z-shaped hole in my heart that drugs and alcohol just won’t fill
why does your heart have an asshole shaped hole in it?
Deeply unserious craKKKer website
Who would have thought they’d just try to move on from that horrendous mess and pretend like everythings fine like a bunch of liberals, the very thing they claim to despise? Oh wait, I did
At least most of the users here have taken the correct position. In all honesty, I think that most non-mod users have held this position for a while (at least as long as I have had an account) but have been afraid to advocate for their position due to moderation.
Yup, and people still trying to tell us it’s no big deal and to go outside. It’s tedious.
That “holocaust flag” thing is probably the worst take I’ve ever seen on here
Just absolute dogshit
After seeing this, I respect Frauddogg’s decision to delete void’s account out of shame instead of sweeping terrible takes under the rug
Frauddog used [null/void] if I remember correctly. I would have liked to watch frauddog get banned though!
Which one is that
Lyudmila https://hexbear.net/comment/6421651
@ProfessorOwl_PhD@hexbear.net 's take
One of the modsA user said that to someone in a different thread, and they were being called out on it in the flag discussion.A member of the mod team did call it the “holocaust emoji”
Correct yourself back, see my other comment
I really don’t want to jump in on this discussion, but ProfessorOwl has never been a mod.
Edit: I used the search function to make sure that no one else said “Holocaust flag”.
In the previous thread of hellinkilla on the struggle session thread, there was evidence that Lyudmila did indeed call it that.
Ah, my bad. I had attributed that to the wrong person. Thanks for catching that
In the previous thread of hellinkilla on the struggle session thread, there was evidence that Lyudmila did indeed call it that.
No worries, comrade
