"Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and uproot from our land but from our minds as well." - Frantz Fanon
Hello users of Hexbear, the intent of this announcement is two-fold the first is that we would like to do another community moderator drive, if you have a community idea or want to help an existing one then please send an application either through hexbear or matrix direct message.
The call for new mods is crucial to our efforts to reduce racism and misogyny on the site, we need users to report and enough mods to be able to quickly act on the reports throughout the day and night. Also, CW or content warnings are essential to the safe browsing of Hexbear.
In addition, comments or posts removed for racist or misogyny will also be accompanied by escalating temporary bans. Upvotes will not be the single reason for a ban, however they may be used in conjunction with other posts/comments/upvotes. Consider this post the warning, however, mods are encouraged to reach out to hexbear users before a long duration ban.
The second is to increase transparency with regard to the site while not repeating the mistakes of previous attempts that were ultimately counterproductive, in part due to wreckers.
Previous attempts to increase site transparency and user participation were targeted by wreckers through increasing the intensity and frequency of struggle session drama.
Using matrix's increased level of user permissions as an anti-wrecking measure while having an increased barrier to sending messages with a clear process to gaining the ability to send messages, we hope to mitigate wrecking attempts.
Leading to the creation of the Hexbear Proposals chapo.chat matrix room.
This will be a place for site proposals and discussion before implementation on the site.
Every proposal will also be mirrored into a pinned post on the hexbear community. Any other ideas for helping to integrate the two spaces are welcome to be commented here or messaged to me directly.
Within Hexbear Proposals you can see the history of all site proposals and react to them, indicating a vote for or against a proposal.
Sending messages will be restricted to verified and active hexbear accounts older than 1 month with their matrix id in their hexbear user profile.
All top level messages within the channel must be a Proposals (idea for changing the site), Feedback (regarding non-technical aspects of the site, for technical please use https://hexbear.net/c/feedback), or Appeals (regarding admin/moderator actions).
Discussion regarding these will be within nested threads under the post.
To gain matrix verification, all you need to do is navigate to my hexbear userprofile and click the send a secure private message including your hexbear username.
In closing, I want to state that this site would not exist without the volunteer labor of the moderators, who I am deeply grateful for.
I would also like to take this moment to remind people that lemmy direct messages are not encrypted, and finally please use this post to discuss these changes, share community ideas, or express interest in moderation.
Application
What is your Hexbear username?
Do you have any preferred pronouns?
What are your thoughts on capitalism?
What are your thoughts on imperialism?
What are your thoughts on trans rights?
What are your thoughts on racial justice?
What do think about current and previous protests around the world?
What are your thoughts on Veganism and Animal Liberation?
Do you have any experience with other leftist online communities?
What did those experiences teach you?
What is your approach to moderation, and how do you work with teams?
How do you deal with online drama and people who try to start things for the sake of it?
What current comms would you be interested in moderating?
Do you have any ideas for community engagement?
What is your general time availability? (Time zone, amounts, common browsing times, etc)
Element information
Element is a messaging app that lets you talk to people over the Matrix
protocol.
To get started, check out this link, where you can choose to either download Element for your platform or, if on a computer, open it in a browser.
The instructions that follow are for the desktop application and the web application, but the process is similar on all apps:
Press "Create Account"
We host our own Matrix server, so if you want you can change matrix.org to chapo.chat.
This is completely optional; users who sign up with a matrix.org username can still talk to people with chapo.chat username.
(Note: It is chapo.chat, not hexbear.net. Also, registrations aren't always open on chapo.chat; if they're not, just create an account on matrix.org)
Fill in a username and password
Hit register, and you're done!
If marginalized comrades continue to speak about aspects of this site that make them uncomfortable, then we have more brainworms to remove and work to be done. I don't expect that process to ever fully end, either, until Imperialism, colonialism, and Capitalism have been abolished worldwide. That's all I really have to say about this subject, and all I will say.
I always minimize or hide my marginalized identities out of a desire to not speak over other (and often more) marginalized people. But I'll give my 2¢ now. This is honestly the first struggle session I've actually felt strongly on.
Idk if it's exactly an ADHD and anxiety thing, but just knowing the fact that people are actively looking at users voting behaviors is extremely unsettling. I definitely upbear shit I didn't read absentmindedly.
Like taking a piss while someone is watching, I know I'm only doing normal people behavior, but the mere knowledge of active observation makes the whole thing uncomfortable.
I only feel comfortable posting here because I am more confident that my data is not going to be misused and abused.
Like obviously I understand admins can view whatever they want, but the fact that it is actively done for something as trivial as moderation decisions makes this place feel less welcoming. I come here for the liberating sense of comraderie that I feel being able to speak my mind as a communist with likeminded folks without fear of reprisal or backlash and without the companies who mine my data for profit narcing to the NSA.
Frankly the whole carcosa self flaggelation for renaming a comm poorly was so unnecessary, but this I feel is a betrayal of trust. Trust they rightfully deserve, mind you. (Plz don't try to resign again btw)
It is only active in the sense of a moderator removing a reported post or comment, noticing it has a notable amount of upvotes and asking us for a vote audit. It isn't frequent and so names that appear often stick in our minds, prompting us to further look at a mod-log and post/comment history.
There isn't a continuous bot that checks it or even a place where upvote patterns are logged. It is more so, "hm this is the third reactionary post user x has upvoted, lets see what the modlog is like oh wow a bunch of removed comments too it's time for user x to go."
The upvote data is not hidden by lemmy, and is accessible with the API. Part of the reason we did not federate with mbin/kbin is because of this as well as mod-log deanonymization
That's reassuring, but the post itself wasn't even particularly aggregious. It was typical white western "leftist" bullshit for sure (which definitely warrants removal), but that hardly warrants investing votes on it besides wanting to know which are your users are privileged gringos. Idk I'm of the opinion it's better to let people vote on posts without action, but be extremely aggressive with the content moderation itself.
Given that lemmy (like reddit before it) doesn't have UI to view the upvoters, I would have the expectation that they are not looked at, and view circumvention of that as a violation of privacy. Like if someone was watching me when I was not suspecting.
I would certainly hope so! I figured as much.
If that's the case, why not just use the comments as grounds on their own?
This is only from the perspective of federated servers, right? Like for the data to end up on a federated server one of their users would have to have viewed the post. Also what data is available with these requests? I'm more concerned about timestamps more than what exact posts or comments I've upvoted. Either way, definitely not a desirable behavior IMO. I'd much rather not federate upvotes besides raw server-wide tallies, but I understand why that might be a spam/trust concern.
What does mbin / kbin do?
As an addendum, this is the best moderated space on the internet I've ever seen. The mod and admin team does a stellar job in general. This is really the first time I've ever felt strongly about any sort of moderation policy. I know shit here has been hectic recently, but y'all should be proud of how well managed this place is.