Yesterday, an unexpected admin post was made announcing that hexbear would be shutting down and recreating two of their most popular communities (a): the_dunk_tank and dredge_tank. For those who are not aware, those two are some of the most notorious comms in the threadiverse which routinely cause inter-lemmy drama (disclaimer, the deteriorating relations between our instance and hexbear and my own ban from hexbear was ultimately triggered by various posts in the_dunk_tank)
The stated reason was to promote more thoughtful discussions and to prevent a white cishet mindset which was apparently promoted by the content in those comms, according to the mods and admins.
Within a day 1.3 thousand comments were made with hexbear regulars upset at this decision and discussing within.
However, before this announcement, the top admin of hexbear posted in the cross-lemmy admin matrix chat urging other admins to close down their “drama communities” as well.
Hexbears caught wind of this and quickly accused the admin of duplicity, and having other motives instead of their stated ones. The admin in question as defense admitted that it was their attempt to manipulate other lemmy instance admins and it backfired on them
After a whole day of this, the main admin decided to step away from hexbear (a) , followed by more resignations (a)
In the midst of this, people realize another old-mod had recently come back after a 3-year hiatus, and now people start suspecting some correlation. That mod makes a public post (a) before shortly after deleting their account.
There’s also smaller pieces of chaos ongoing, such as one admin, banning one of their alts “as a bit” using wording that they were not aware is misgendering (“fella”) which caused other hexbears to pile on. Eventually that was resolved, and admins are asked to tone down the “bit doing” during this heated period.
This “struggle session” is still ongoing, with people are asking the resigned mod to come back , and other admins unbanning accounts which were getting banned left and right(a) but it seems those popular comms still remain shut down.
WTF. @CARCOSA@hexbear.net is now suspecting me being behind some sockpuppets because they claim I leaked private messages
By which they mean the screenshot I crossposted in the OP above from their own comm’s public comments!. That screenshot was in turn from a discussion in a public matrix chat for lemmy admins.
I am willing to give people the benefit of a doubt, this is some really fucking manipulative behavior and it’s pissing me off!
I hope the instances burns. I’ll never forget Hexbear users threatening my life. Fuck. Them.
Maybe you should cool it with the kangaroo beastiality.
But yeah I remember them doing that shit and people like that have no place in the fediverse. We need to annoy sunaurus until he defeds from them.
We need to annoy sunaurus until he defeds from them.
Please do not do that. I pay monthly to be on lemm.ee precisely because lemm.ee doesn’t generally defederate from other instances. You may not like hexbear, but I appreciate seeing certain posts from there and learning about viewpoints that may challenge my own.
We need to annoy sunaurus until he defeds from them.
People like you should be banned.
I’ve been following the drama too. Total misstep from the hexbear admins/mods. I didn’t catch that TC69 deleted their account though, kind of a shame because they seemed to really stand up for trans people. I like hexbear, I agree with a lot of their points and like their community. I do not always agree with them, but I respect them in their fight and struggle. It’s one of the only places I felt safe talking about my feelings about the recent US election because many people felt similar. I don’t post or comment much on hexbear, I really should though. Hexbear did a survey that revealed a significant amount of their users were trans. I did not understand why the mods said white cis het men were the problem and was the majority of their userbase. I am a mixed bi cis latina, I know I do not have a hexbear account but I just wanted to point out that their assessment is wrong. I just hope they can recover from this.
They seem to have burnt a lot of their regulars with this one. I read two heart wrenching posts from ND people in their comms who were respectively devastated for being banned frivolously, or being stressed about potentially being banned frivolously. And I totally understand it as RSD is a common symptom and most of us are traumatized for being constantly excluded. It’s part of the reason why I try to be careful with the banhammer because I know how much it affects ND people.
Yup. I blocked the instance after being on the receiving end of such a frivolous ban, together with bad faith modding, and having people jump down my throat a few too many times over miscommunication interpreted the worst possible ways to justify “dunking” so that they can look cool to people on the Internet.
What the admin did wrong was to let those comms exist in the first place. Not only can such behavior have deeper effects on those of us who are ND but, by allowing the comms, they helped to cultivate a toxic culture on the instance that is at the root of much of the inter-instance drama. They’ve been celebrating and rewarding dehumanizing and deriding others, which motivates others to create situations, whether through behaving poorly or tailoring context so that they too can be celebrated and part of the in-group.
Speaking personally, them stating they outright lied to other instance admins is just one step too much. Wielding our collaborative spirit for manipulative purposes just sows distrust, and is downright asocial behaviour. It’s so out of line, that I honestly don’t believe they actually lied. I think they were being earnest and only claimed they were being manipulative when caught by hexbears to save face. But if not, that’s even worse.
This is the action which made you realize that they are operating in bad faith? Not… gestures wildly
As much as I love my personal instance overlord for most of their beliefs and being a generally good person, they are incredibly naive, I assume purposefully so to avoid ever accidentally upsetting someone
Its an admirable trait to a degree even if it is incredibly frustrating
It’s not naivety. I try to be charitable as a matter of course because I’ve been personally burnt too many times by people being uncharitable towards me and my ND expressions. It’s a learned behaviour I have, to make sure I don’t attack someone for a mere misunderstanding. Of course even I have my limits.
It’s of a piece with a lot of the behavior I see on Lemmy. It is, at the root, hostility to collaboration. It’s the model where the person speaking is automatically right, and anyone who doesn’t reach the same answers as them is an enemy who must be either corrected or defeated. Once you adopt that mindset, then of course lying to people to achieve that defeat is justified. After all, the people with the bad ideas are hurting everyone, on purpose, and they must be stopped. Reasonable conversation and argument doesn’t enter into it, at that point.
The thing is, there’s no single person who’s got all the answers. There aren’t any worldviews that apply correctly to all situations. Part of the idea of talking things out is that you can learn from others, detect missing pieces in your own thinking and correct them before they become too deeply ingrained into your worldview. I see way too many mods who think that their job is to remove the wrong ideas if someone “attacks” their community by posting them, or instance admins who think their job is to “wield” their instance against the people with the incorrect ideas. I think adding tribalism to the mix, allegiance to the other vegans or anarchists or whatever, just makes it ten times worse.
Even if the liberals or non-vegans, or whatever, are wrong, then the right answer is to talk with them. I understand that it might be difficult, because they might have the model that they have to defeat your incorrect worldview without listening to anything you’re saying except to detect things they should disagree with, but for as long as that’s your model on your side, you’re doing something wrong, regardless.
I’m missing something. What was the difference between what they said in matrix chat to other admins, and what they said to their users? Because from your description it kinda sounded the same.
You can see both on my screenshot and my link. They themselves claimed they were lying as a ruse. It’s not me editorializing.
No no, I’m not claiming you’re editorialising. I’m just having comprehension issues and failing to understand, thus I’m trying to get an ELI5. So basically, as I understand it, hexbear admin urges others to shut down their drama comms, then proceed to announce they’ll be doing the same on their own instance. I’m not seeing the duplicity or clash of motives? Maybe I’m just bad at understanding this drama stuff.
I cannot, for the life of me, understand what the appeal of all of this is.
I think it’s the same hunger for excitement that makes sports appeal to people, or leads people to create drama at work.
That was a ruse in an attempt to get the other admins to close their drama communities like the ones that harassed vegantheoryclub admins but I did not expect the hexbear sleuths to find that so not only did the ruse fail but I blew up any chance of doing another in the future with other lemmy admins while further alienating hexbear users.
It blows my mind that they thought this would work.
Hexbear users are alienated because they enjoy being annoying. That’s it. That’s the secret. They can always stop doing that, that’s always allowed. Being dishonest isn’t great, but there are a lot of people in authority on Lemmy that are dishonest, and it’s mostly not a problem.
I also like the implication that it was the unmasking of the ruse that made it not work, instead of the fact that this is the stupidest ruse I’ve ever heard of.
Eventually that was resolved, and admins are asked to tone down the “bit doing” during this heated period.
Not in general, of course. It’s only a problem right now during this heated period. I wonder what some other “bits” are.
