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:
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Do not use appropriative comparisons like chattel slavery or the holocaust if they are not from your culture.
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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.
Please crack down on VCJ refugees being toxic outside of their own comm. You say in this post that vegans will be allowed to criticize non-vegans, and that’s fine, but toxicity is not. If you foster a space where calling comrades “bloodmouth murderers and r*pists” is considered cool and good, the hostility of the past few days won’t be going away.
i just dont understand what the point of this was. inviting /r/vegan over would be fine, but why invite a community that’s out and proud of being toxic and shitty to people? like geez, who’d have thought that a subreddit known for shitting up other subreddits would immediately start shitting up this site once invited.
now the actual users of this site all feel pissed off and alienated, mods and admins exhausted to the point where like 3 are quitting and all we got out of it is a bunch of mean reddit weirdos
maybe in the future you could actually ask the fucking community what they think of inviting in new people, instead of making the decision for us and scolding us like usual
The mods pretty clearly wanted to flush out the Chapo culture and I guess thought VCJ was the way to do it.
A lot of them weren’t around on Reddit enough to realize that chapo was huge because it was literally the only left sub that was both entry level and not alienating to the general public (or at least significantly less alienating than the rest of that transphobic, misogynistic and racist hellhole, I know the old sub wasn’t perfect).
The more context the more mind blowing it is the mods just completely let the dynamic of this place shift within days without any heads up or anything to the regular users… I’ve seen a lot of online communities fall apart but Jesus Christ that is some impressively poor moderation. Went from a chill place to Reddit on steroids in less than a week. Might have to just fully abandon ship on this place, this just proves AMAB stands the test of time. Handing the site over to a fucking Reddit circlejerk sub lmao
-Soulja
We were providing a community that shares similar ideological aspects a lifeboat community, there are a few others as well. This one rather than getting it’s own comm decided to merge with !vegan@hexbear.net The mods of that comm and the mods for the lifeboat comm both wanted to do this.
I personally think that we should be raising up the community moderators in their cultivation of community. There are mod drives so that those who are passionate about their community can moderate it.
so why didn’t you ask the community? why does the admin team keep making massive decisions that everyone disagrees with and then scolding us after the inevitable backlash? it’s actually infuriating
Ask which community? !vegan@hexbear.net chose to merge with the vcj lifeboat
We were providing a community that shares similar ideological aspects a lifeboat community, there are a few others as well. This one rather than getting it’s own comm decided to merge with !vegan@hexbear.net The mods of that comm and the mods for the lifeboat comm both wanted to do this.
And that was a massive fail. Are you going to admit that?
the original chapo was absolutely not this toxic lol jesus christ
if the admins have indeed decided to push away their actual active users in exchange for a bunch of reddit vegan shitheads then alright i’ll fuck off, it’s their site
They haven’t even decided that. They want to have ethical vegans and non-vegan leftists on this site. You are judging veganism by its followers and not by the actual doctrine. Absolutely criticise the means of vegans if they are bad - but also engage with the doctrine and the arguments being put forth.
So claiming that non-vegans are not leftists/reactionaries/liberals is somehow not secretarianism?
Can I say, “All anarchists are liberals?” Is that cool now?
These people literally do not believe that they are my comrade, yet I am expected to believe that they are?
veganism isnt a sect in the same way anarchism is so no pls dont say anarchists are liberals lol
Claiming that non-vegans aren’t leftists is decidedly un-dialectical, detached from material reality, and reactionary.
Users who do this should be warned once then banned if they continue.
its not reactionary its just wrong. we dont ban people for being wrong (unless they are /u/adamsandler) or being annoying
i mean its not a political ideology
i agree that saying nonvegans are liberals is really really annoying tho
Vegans are allowed to criticize people for not being vegan
Cool can’t wait to have to leave the site cause of comrades starting shit that makes my eating disorder super fucky.
Sure you can say that vEgAnIsM iS NoT a DiEt line as much as you want but that’s literally the only aspect of it that ever gets brought up outside of the vegan comm, and giving people free license to bully comrades about it site-wide has pretty clear implications for comrades with eating disorders.
Edit in case it wasn’t clear: This is a horrible fucking policy and should be removed, especially considering the behavior of the VCJ mods and posters at large.
Yeah I do not bring it up a lot, but veganism can be very difficult for ED survivors. It is so often a way to continue restricting, to evolve into Orthorexia, or to otherwise have an obsession with food. I’m sorry if this discourse has triggered you at all. Stay safe as you can be, feel free to reach out if you need anything
:heart-sickle:
I can link this comment to them later and see if they believe anything should be clarified or adjusted. There is a lot occurring right now in the modchat right now, and bringing it up at the moment may not get it any true attention.
Thanks :heart-sickle:
Can you bring this up to the mod team at large? It’s a really harmful rule and I’m super worried about the ramifications of it, especially considering how hostile things have been since VCJ posters started getting onboarded
Yes, sorry just commented this below too: I can link this comment to them later and see if they believe anything should be clarified or adjusted. There is a lot occurring right now in the modchat right now, and bringing it up at the moment may not get it any true attention.
Solidarity from another person with an eating disorder, the discourse ™️ on this can be terrible for us.
:heart-sickle:
Oy. I think about veganism the way I think about Food Not Bombs.
Maybe you’re vegan because you feel like it’s compatible with your values as a socialist. Cool. But you would have a hard time arguing that veganism actually contributes to socialism. It would have to be a really tortured argument.
Likewise, I participate in Food Not Bombs because it appeals to my socialist sensibilities, not because I think giving away some food is actually building socialism. With this in mind, if someone isn’t participating in Food Not Bombs I don’t consider them anti-socialist.
Anyway, to get to my point, I thought the site was supposed to be about communism. Veganism is cool, but it’s not communism. Why are we creating rules to specifically empower a group of folks that aren’t even marginalized?
