I think a little clarification is needed. No. I don't actually think everyone there is insane. I don't care about the bans so stop trying to use that. HB enthusiasts coming here and trying to call me out achieves nothing besides proving my point
Edit: Feel free to keep trying to brigade me. It's not going to scare me to take this down
If you've heard of Chapo Trap House that's them. If not, most of those kids/idiots/trolls are the type of terminally online fake leftists that give other leftist a bad image in general. They were so ridiculous Reddit got tired of their shit and banned them a couple years back.
Yeah they immediately took over Conspiracy and consolidated the hold on Conservative. Made me really sad as conspiracy used to have some incredible rabbit hole posts. Then one day it was just TD all over again.
The days of mild and fun conspiracy theories are over. The entire community has been fully consumed with qanon/maga/antisemitism insanity. Their minds are irrevocably broken.
It's a shame. I grew up on xfiles and loved all the lore around the culture.
The_Donald was dead amd had migrated to a non-reddit forum a month before the ban. It was typical "both sides" bullshit from a dude who always uses the kiddy gloves with fascists while throwing the book at any leftists
There actually isn't any such logic presented for the decision. Mostly just allusions to celebrating violence, the only examples of which were the anti-slavery posts I referenced.
Maybe because you didn't observe it happening. Reddit admins were busy as hell cleaning the place up. All kinds of rightwing subs like some of the incel gathering spots. Some for straight up Nazis like frenworld or whatever it was where they were using honk honk as code for heil Hitler. When the admins made site changes due to complaints about right wing subs, Chapo made the list because they engaged in similar activities with the main complaint being brigading other subs. Their mods refused to change to meet the new rules. The admins eventually removed some of the mods. They still refused to change afterward. Which eventually got them shut down.
I did, actually. I made some of the John Brown posts lol.
Reddit admins were busy as hell cleaning the place up. All kinds of rightwing subs like some of the incel gathering spots. Some for straight up Nazis like frenworld or whatever it was where they were using honk honk as code for heil Hitler. When the admins made site changes due to complaints about right wing subs, Chapo made the list because they engaged in similar activities with the main complaint being brigading other subs.
Brigading is not an activity similar to supporting incels or Nazis.
I remember the subreddit mods sharing their attempts to communicate with admins on this, offering to make whatever changes would be needed, and getting stonewalled. The subreddit itself adopted a no-brigading policy and included it with an pinned automod comment on every post.
But this is neither here nor there because the ban announcement said nothing about brigading. Instead, they said it was about content violating their new anti-hate policy and a vague statement about mods not "reining" in users. Prior communications and the timeline suggested the only content violations were anti-slavery posts.
Their mods refused to change to meet the new rules.
How so?
The admins eventually removed some of the mods.
Which ones and why?
They still refused to change afterward
Such as?
The reality is that most of this was actually opaque.
evidence? I see people say this but from what I remember the mod team was repeatedly stonewalled by the admins, or at least that was their claims, and I don't think the admins ever disputed that
Hardly, the mods kept refusing to do anything about the brigading of other subs. To the point the admins stepped in and removed a couple of them. Then afterward the sub decided they'd rather go private than comply. At this point most of back and forth is wiped out because the sub is locked. But there was far more going on for a while than their claim that one post shut them down immediately. They had already been in trouble for a couple months.
I wasn't clear enough, what I meant wasn't that the admins literally never said anything to the mods, I meant they made it relatively unclear what exactly they needed to do to stop getting warnings and eventually getting banned. no conversation, just relatively vague commands from down high also, as you can see in the SRD thread it was never made clear if they were removed for anything besides the john brown posting. However, even this is more clear communication than I remembered so I'll admit fault on that at least.
The second aspect of this is that chapo is becoming so large that it is capable of effectively "brigading" threads without any direct co-ordination on the subreddit. By this I'm referring to stuff like the police dog situation, in which any meaningfully upvoted thread on /r/aww and other "cute" subreddits gets a shitload of "40%", "ACAB", and other anti-cop rhetoric. While screenshots of this often get posted to /r/chapotraphouse, the vast majority of the time this is AFTER the thread has already been "brigaded" by chapo users scrolling through /r/all or the specific "cute" subreddits. This behavior is not against the TOS, but it is incredibly annoying to /r/aww mods and therefore concerning to the admins, because the "cute" subreddits are the easiest to manage and please, and more importantly, the most advertiser friendly. When chapo users fuck that up, there's a problem.
Yes. They moved here. Have done the same things. Pissed many people off. Thankfully this time they can be easily contained due to how Lemmy works. They could just grow up and not be an embarrassment to the left. But that's apparently too big an ask.
this is very strange reasoning to me, posting on a post you see scrolling through all is now bad because... other hexbears already got there first and you dont want to be annoying? what the hell?
When the sub was put on probation, the post Reddit cited was justifying violence against slave owners. As far as I can tell, you just made up that they threatened Reddit admins.
There were other things that went down to get them on probation. I can tell you're gladly defending them though. Which is ridiculous so have a nice day.
Huffman has been a frequent attendee at Burning Man, the annual, clothing-optional festival in the Nevada desert, where artists mingle with moguls. He fell in love with one of its core principles, “radical self-reliance,” which he takes to mean “happy to help others, but not wanting to require others.” (Among survivalists, or “preppers,” as some call themselves, FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, stands for “Foolishly Expecting Meaningful Aid.”) Huffman has calculated that, in the event of a disaster, he would seek out some form of community: “Being around other people is a good thing. I also have this somewhat egotistical view that I’m a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comes to shove.”
Spez pretty openly fantasizes about owwning slaves
No, The Donald was encouraging political violence and was becoming a legal liability for Reddit to continue hosting. But they needed to ban a major left wing subreddit at the same time to do a "both sides bad" thing and preempt the fascist talking points about social media having a liberal bias.
Seeing the ban coming, they financed and suffered alpha and beta of the Lemmy platform we all enjoy. Then, they chose to become the most GLBTQ+ friendly destination on the internet.
As it's always been, they cope with the horrible events with satirical, sarcastic humor. And, in the middle of that will be a well-reasoned, nuanced, and quite serious post.
But, perhaps the part I like most is the struggle sessions. The entire community will heavily focus on a current topic, then hash it out with good faith discussion.
Their shit isn't convenient or comfortable. It's not easy to understand. And, I fucking love them for it.
edit: Lazy coders need choose a randomized target value and timing or be a moderator to avoid detection by the user. Perceiving is easy when your code is trash. Ask for help from an industrial engineer.
Honestly what is with the comrade/them shit they do about? I thought it was ironic like they were making fun of neopronouns or they were the 4chan people who popularised them in the first place
There's much to learn from Stalin. But, advocating his authoritarian means is a bannable offense there just as they are in any meritable leftist forum. They tolerate a minority of revolutionaries ideologically leading the lumpen as it's a historically very well-supoorted position. But, that doesn't extend to physical force as that's also a historically very well supported position.
It's much easier, convenient, and comfortable to demonized them than understand them. They even provided proactive assistance when many were deciding if they should defederate. They voted internally for defederation to defend their community from the medicrity of the masses.
If not enjoying the image posts of young Stalin as some sort of brilliant maverick is mediocrity, well, so be it. They are clowns, and their beliefs structure is just like trump claiming he "loves the gays"
Young Stalin is where the good stuff is. It's his implementation of those idealistic principles that's unethical.
The rest of what you've said is strawman. Most important is the implying that they're all of one mind. Diversity of ideology is perhaps their greatest strength.
As it's always been, they cope with the horrible events with satirical, sarcastic humor. And, in the middle of that will be a well-reasoned, nuanced, and quite serious post.
Oh yes, they are so funny, misunderstood, thoughtful and nuanced thinkers.
F them and f you for defending them.
This ~1800 comment thread about whether lemm.ee should defederate with them is all you need for some eye opening, in case anyone needs that.
The comrade in it actually suggests that there is a time and place for such rhetoric, it is just not right here, right now. you have to think politically and wait for your moment!
All kulaks were assigned to one of three categories:[4]
Those to be shot or imprisoned as decided by the local secret political police.
Those to be sent to Siberia, the North, the Urals, or Kazakhstan, after confiscation of their property.
Those to be evicted from their houses and used in labour colonies within their own districts.
By most people's reckoning in most of planet earth they stole the lawfully earned property of kulaks and either murdered them or otherwise destroyed their lives. Treating them worse than most developed nations treat burglars and thieves.
If someone shot your grandpa and your uncle, send half your people to Siberia to die out there, and sent the other half to prison locally of course you would flee with whatever you could carry and of course you would at that point be an enemy of the regime that destroyed your life.
So if the original commenter’s great grandparents were kulaks who “suffered at the hands of the soviet union,” they deserved it.
I don't understand your justification for what is ultimately pretty horrific treatment foisted on people ultimately just participating lawfully in society up until that point.
America didn't go from legally sanctioning a behavior to murdering the people today who were behaving lawfully yesterday even if they were immoral fucks. If you don't understand that then you don't understand how normal societies run.
I acknowledge that. But what "struggle" means is not an unimportant detail. And I disagree with the Stalinist approach viscerally, and it isn't in accordance with leftist values by any stretch of the imagination.
You don't get to call directing state power against the petite bourgeoisie a brutal police regime when your government is supporting the most brutal dictatorships in Africa, whose violence is directed at the working class.
Yeah I get to do that, because that's what happened factually, sorry. No amount of whataboutism will change that. I don't care about Western imperialists, fuck them too.
The vital context is wielding state power against internal threats. Which literally every state must do to continue to exist. It's not whataboutism to point out that the state you currently live in is currently doing far worse, for far worse reasons in a context where your criticism can only be used for anticommunism.
Would you say it's constructive for an Israeli to be critical of gay rights in Palestine? Of course not, because divorced of context, it only carries water for imperialism
The problem is the violence of the totalitarian regimes you defend harms innocents too, which is why serious communists shouldn't advocate for that kind of power abuse any more than they should advocate for Western imperialism. It's not that hard.
Nobody is advocating power abuse. One of the books I try to get people to read, Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia contextualizes the scale of and how such abuses occurred in a much more useful criticism than "communism bad Stalin evil, that's why you can't ever do anything about rightists organizing against the state".
A good accompaniment to illustrate what it looks like and what the consequences are when the left fails to take appropriate action once in power is The Jakarta Method
That's precisely the extent of my criticism. Understanding stalinism instead of just demonizing it is a good thing, if only to avoid repeating the same mistakes. But the end doesn't justify the means. Apologism is not OK.
It's OK to take a stance against power abuses, and vital to denounce them if you consider yourself a leftist.
Yes, please read what the .ee admin says about where the bigoted users originate and the actions of the hexbear mods in response. It certainly speaks for itself.
But, perhaps the part I like most is the struggle sessions. The entire community will heavily focus on a current topic, then hash it out with good faith discussion.
I've never seen this - not just from that instance, but literally anywhere on the internet, even back in the forum or bb days. But I've been looking for something like that for years, and I'd be interested. Do you know of any specific examples of this happening?
The best example I've experienced online is hexbear's process to derive forum ruleset with respect to their minority of GLBTQ+. The consensus was that many understood and that those that did not would follow in faith, assuming that they would soon understand. The second best online example was the GME subreddits' cultural response to initial scaling. The consensus was that each should individually choose and the collective's purpose was to educate, this strengthening individual wisdom.
But, my guidance would be to first pursue such things in real life. A leftist's best work is almost always grassroots local.
Pronouns End result: Transphobes outed themselves and were purged)
Veganism End result: Vegans who couldn't stop stoking the fire and anti-vegans who wouldn't stop trolling or using indigenous people as a shield were purged, CWs were required for meat, vegans generally chilled out
Stacking rocks End result: White guys using indigenous tribes they aren't a part of as a shield were heavily mocked)
Outdoor Cats End result: outdoor cats bad
AES countries End result: For each country, there are/have been significant issues, but nearly every western criticism is worthless for understanding them due to being false or lacking the historical context.
i don't think they really helped with the financing of lemmy, although their coders did/do make many valuable contributions to lemmy's code base. out of curiosity, do you have an account on another instance? I'm surprised to see a sympathetic comment like this from an account on an instance that has them defederated
All the computational resources the users tested the code base on must’ve been free.
fair enough I just think of direct monetary donations or something when I see financing like that but looking at like that isn't incorrect
Identity politics from .ml?
I mean kinda? I normally expect people who hold sympathies towards hexbear to use an account on like lemm.ee so they don't have to use more than one account to browse everything they want to see
when I see financing like that but looking at like that isn't incorrect
None of the devs got paid. There are no other expenses.
I normally expect people who hold sympathies towards hexbear to use an account on like lemm.ee so they don't have to use more than one account to browse everything they want to see
You expect the convenient implementation of MLK's white moderate. But, my content should give no indication of that stereotype.
I'll answer your previous question: I've personal accounts on world, ee, ml, and hexbear. The fediverse doesn't limit viewing content from multiple accounts concurrently. One must only choose an account to post. The only obstacle to such a tool is a means to avoid burdening the fediverse with duplicate responses to content requests. We solved that problem in a few hours.
If you want actual insight communicated properly then you should ask in the correct venue. For example, I'd have no issue explaining in nuance on hexbear because the majority has a strong understanding or conversion of theory to praxis. I'm not even needed. Others would adequately explain on my behalf.
I think my comments have been too ambiguous then, I didn't mean for anything I've said to come across as hostile in any way, I apologize. I'm a lemmygrad user, made this account because I browse through .ml at work and been meaning to make one so i can comment while there.
Based on this interaction I've realized my perception of lemmygrad is hypocritical: My experience indicates that our shallow, automated and wide scope language analysis likely isn't human truth. I've decided to spend more time there.
Thank you for risking good faith engagement when it's not popular or politic. Iron sharpens iron.
That's the whole point of an echo chamber yes. You can say whatever you want without being challenged by other viewpoints and make anything seem plausible.
but they are linking a lot of outside sources. That's what I mean by "backing their claims up", studies about covid, about the ukraine war, about Israel, it's not just someone making a claim and then everyone is nodding along.
What I am saying is they were able to completely upend the way I see the world and you just can't do that by claiming thengs and linking to some other claims you make.
You seem to have lost the thread of this conversation, but this is how it started. Hexbear admins and mods definitely control who is allowed to post in Chapo Trap House, and related communities such as the_dunk_tank, even from instances other than Hexbear.net.
Wait, like the drug dealer? but seriously, "they have moderation, so you don't have to read or engage with facts, since they have a viewpoint" isn't the dunk you think it is.
I was on lemm.ee when I got radicalized, all my life Ive been exposed to people claiming all sorts of things. I was a pro-NATO pro-Ukraine anti-ussr anti-china average reddit lib that they were able to convince otherwise.
It's surprisingly easy to backup horrible ideas, but that shouldn't be your only concern. You also need to think about the morals and what happened last time it was tried.
The ends do not justify the means. The means are the ends.
As it's always been, they cope with the horrible events with satirical, sarcastic humor. And, in the middle of that will be a well-reasoned, nuanced, and quite serious post.
Hello, low effort neolib troll. Thanks for the opportunity to continue to speak truth.
There's a cultural similarity to what 4-chan was prior to the LOIC. But, they're definitely not tankies. Sincere expressions of authoritarian means are soundly defeated and usually result in permabans. The principle and practice is consistent for MAGA, neolibs, and other authoritarians.
I call BS. My post history has mostly been shitting on LLMs lately, mainly for the consequences they have on the environment, which I think is mostly a left-wing concern.
Making shit up, how nice 🤭
Edit you haven't read much, I suppose because My 5th-ish last post was arguing against the liberal appeal to civility, which is definitely not a "neolib" talking point 🤷♀️