this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2025
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El Chisme
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Place for posting about the dumb shit public figures say.
Rules:
Rule 1: The subject of a post must be a public person.
Rule 2: All posts must include links to the subject matter, and no identifying information should be redacted.
Rule 3: If your source is a reactionary website, please use archive.is instead of linking directly.
Rule 4: No sectarianism.
Rule 5: TERF/SWERFs Not Welcome
Rule 6: No ableism of any kind (that includes stuff like libt*rd)
Rule 7: Do not post fellow hexbears.
Rule 8: Do not individually target other instances' admins or moderators.
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They're separate because in one you're allowed to post literally fucking anyone, like lemmy users writing complete garbage, whereas on the other you're only allowed public figures.
I think some people wanted the public figures content, but did not want the random dipshit lemmy users content. The separation enables having one instead of the other. It also makes searching for content easier because it narrows down searches, if you know you're looking for public figure you know it'll be there, if your memory is of a random dipshit you know it'll be in the other. I very very very regularly use the search function for old content by hazy memories I have.
The issue is not that there are 2 comms but that the names don't really stick in your memory and people get confused about which one to use. I don't remember how the names were chosen but I'd guess they were named by someone that wanted to remove dunk tank's content from the site entirely until the drama it caused.
Merging the comms won't reduce content, you'll just have the same amount of content but without separation so any public figure stuff will be drowning under the random lemmitor stuff.
My take is that the name could benefit from being changed. No merge.
i don't think there was a strong user push to separate them in the first place. Not that it means everyone has strong views against them being separate, but the split was pretty mod originating in the first place.
I honestly don't remember that part tbh
"Public figure" doesn't actually mean anything though. For example, take these two recent posts:
One from c/slop, the "anonymous nobody" comm: https://hexbear.net/post/6579302 literally the official account of the DHS.
One from c/gossip, the "public figure" comm: https://hexbear.net/post/6581795 Almut Rochowanski, literally who.
That's a moderation issue rather than a policy issue though. Part of that is that hexbear mods don't really want to be petty tyrants about content and another part of that is no ability for mods to just move the content to the correct place themselves. If the ability for mods to move the content existed, none of this would happen because mods wouldn't be reluctant to do that like they are with outright removing things. I'm absolutely certain that mods look at stuff, know for a fact that it's rulebreaking, then move on and pretend they didn't see it, because I have done that myself in my own communities outside lemmy.
No, actually enforcing the split, when that was being done soon after it was instituted, only resulted in deleting a bunch of posts that already had comments and pissing people off, especially because there never was, and never could be, any kind of objective measure of who is and isn't a public figure.
Right and I'm not disputing that, but that's still a moderation issue. Mods not doing the moderation because they don't like it when their moderation actions cause people to be upset is very much a moderation issue.
A rule being unenforceable both because there is no consistent criteria for enforcing it and because enforcement is near-universally disliked is not a moderation issue, it's a bad rule.
If a post gets upvoted and used, people always get mad at removal. This is always the case for literally any post removal on the entire site. It's not limited to the dunk tank drama. It's not even a unique phenomenon to hexbear, it's how it goes with literally every content removal on reddit when something is placed in a sub with content rules if that content also got upvotes/comments, it always upsets the users if something that got upvoted gets removed.
That doesn't make the content rule bad. Just means mods didn't get there early enough to remove it before people would start upvoting and using it.
They're not mad about content enforcement or they'd be upset at the 0 comment threads being removed, what they're actually mad at is having their activity disrupted. That's not actually the rule, it's the existence of rules altogether.
You're really eliding the part where no consistent criteria for enforcement exist
Anyone who is a brand or working for one, or anyone who is part of a public-interest news event. Everyone else is not a public figure?
Million follower streamer: not a public figure.
Amazon delivery driver: working for a brand, public figure.
Streamers are all brands if they're making income from it. Some are shitty brands, they are brands nonetheless.
Is the amazon delivery driver using their position as a delivery driver to raise the platform that their voice stands on?
The reason a person working for a brand is mentioned here is because someone working at CNN who tweets something is using the fact they work for the CNN brand as a platform to stand upon to raise their voice above that of others. This makes them a public figure. The amazon driver is not gaining a platform from being an amazon driver, so they're not a public figure, except in the cases where they've been thrust into being a public figure through some news event, for example if an amazon driver is involved in a police shootout and was present at the scene.
We like when you nuke wreckers or racists or transphobes. We don't like when you stop our fun just because you're not having fun. It's not that complex.
Like if no one is actually being a piece of shit just stay out.
As the One True Egoist of Hexbear and famous rule hater, I simply cannot remember having any moderation action taken against my posts due to rules. Complainers should simply post better. 💁
Yeah I think anyone that has moderated a space anywhere would realise this.
I really think that the people that are like that just need to be bullied a bit about it. Some moderation is good and needed. I think some of it is just general anti authority sentiment in the left and sometimes users in a leftist space allow their behaviour towards cops to leak into their behaviour towards moderators when that's an absolutely inappropriate way to react or behave. Not that mods aren't guilty of mistakes either at times though.
If users are upset about a post getting removed, maybe mods shouldn't have removed it?
This site had dreams of democratic moderation when we started, and I know that's far easier said than done, but there's still been too much paternalist, "its for your own good"-moderation since then that has always upset the user base. No one here is ever upset about racist/misogynist/wrecker/etc posts getting nuked, we're only ever upset about mods being weird about stuff.
Where would you draw the public figure line?
Anyone who is a brand or working for one, or anyone who is part of a public-interest news event. Everyone else is not a public figure.
Is a musician a brand? Heather Morgan wasn’t one I would recognize, though Thom Yorke is - and is certainly better known. Is helping launder billions of dollars of stolen property a public-interest news event? Is being a Zionist?
Is running for elected office a public-interest news event? Does the level of office matter? Does it need to be a current campaign? Maria Danzilo ran for state level office. Zohran Mamdani is running for city level office.
Chris Geidner works for BuzzFeed. When TNOQuoProQuid reposts his photo of the east wing of the White House being destroyed, is that a public interest news event?
Yes.
There's an argument that your garage band is not a brand, but it is aspiring to be one. It is a startup brand.
Yes and anyone doing so is also a brand. Zohran Mamdani is a political brand.
No
Does it need to be a current campaign?
Yes. Someone who has exited politics ceases to be a brand, except where they continue to cultivate a public image as an influencer or transition that public image into some other grift, then they're still a brand and thus still a public figure.
It's a person working for a brand who uses the fact they work for that brand for their own interests as an influencer (another brand), therefore a public figure.
Maria Danzilo may not be actively running for office any longer, but she doesn’t seem to have exited politics.
TNOQuoProQuid is “design lead for @TNOmod” which I knew nothing about until recently, but is apparently a pretty well known game mod within some communities. The question IMO is more about whether the content was a “public-interest news event” than the specific person posting about it being a “brand” though.
In short, it sounds to me like your definition doesn’t actually change any of the content recently posted here, though I can simultaneously justify removing most of it or keeping all of it depending on how I choose to interpret your definition. Are there recent posts here that would have been removed if the mods were following your criteria?
Still a brand then.
Easier to identify whether people are brands or not than whether an event is public interest enough, that is a much looser thing to identify than whether someone or something is a brand which I think is actually very easy.
To summarize, it sounds to me like you are saying that this comm largely does not need to have any changes to how it’s moderated for the content to comply with rule 1. Is that an accurate interpretation?
Yeah for the most part I just think the people that get upset at content moderation need to be bullied a little bit because content moderation needs to happen even if it is inconvenient at times. For me the convenience of two comms for separation is higher than the inconvenience of moderation.
Sorry, I’m not following. Are you saying that there are recent posts in this comm that should be removed by mods because they belong in slop? Scrolling through several pages, I see at most one post that, based on my understanding of where you’re drawing the line, is probably something that would be better in badposting than either here or slop.
I haven't done an audit. My commentary is mostly based on other people's complaining. I am not complaining.
Gotcha - I do appreciate that you’ve been willing to share your perspective on the value of keeping this comm, even if it’s still not something I understand. Thanks for discussing it with me!
Does Lemmy support per-comm tagging requirements (automated so mods don't have to review everything)? For example, a checkbox for "is this a public figure?" I'm guessing no but that seems like a better way to deal with wanting to filter subcategories.
Not yet but it will.