This is a community in the spirit of "Am I The Asshole" where people can post their own bans from lemmy or reddit or whatever and get some feedback from others whether the ban was justified or not.
Sometimes one just wants to be able to challenge the arguments some mod made and this could be the place for that.
All posts should follow this basic structure:
Expect to receive feedback about your posts, they might even be negative.
Make sure you follow this instance's code of conduct. In other words we won't allow bellyaching about being sanctioned for hate speech or bigotry.
YPTB matrix channel: For real-time discussions about bastards or to appeal mod actions in YPTB itself.
Some acronyms you might see.
Relevant comms
Today, i couldnt upvote a post from anarchymemes@anarchist.nexus so i decided to check it out on my pc. i noticed that i was banned from the com even though i havent posted anything on the com nor the instance. i guess the reason for the ban is that i posted a meme to different comm a while ago. The meme is homophobic but i didnt know it when i was posting it. After finding out it was homophonic, i added a disclaimer to my post.
i dont think i deserved the ban, and i want to hear your thoughts.
you were banned because you are a flotilla member who posted a homophobic meme, and I don't want to associate with anyone who does something like that. even though you've only upvoted memes in our comm, I'm not willing to share our space with someone who thinks jokes that make queer people the punchline are acceptable.
you weren't the only one banned, a (now formerly) dbzer0 user named redsand had their entire account permanently banned from both Divisions By Zero and Anarchist Nexus by the admins for being so mad over my objection to the post that they encouraged me to kill myself after admitting to attempting to dox me.
if you have reflected on your actions, and are sincerely renouncing them, then I will reconsider your ban from our comm. but if that is not the case, then I must remind you that anarchism depends on the freedom of association, and I don't wish to associate with anyone who makes jokes like this.
You don’t speak for me or the queer community. I don’t consider the meme homophobic in the slightest. It is a play on words in response to Epstein files that mentioned that “Trump blew Bubba.” Reactions like yours give the rest of us a bad name. Do better.
FYI the joke isn't necessarily homophobic. It's a pun on "Big Beautiful Bill" sounding like both the federal statute Trump signed and a nickname he has for Bill Clinton who he allegedly had sex with.
It becomes obvious when you realise the joke still works if Trump is a woman who had a secret affair with Bill and signed a bill. Of course, if people are laughing at Trump supposedly being gay/bi, that is homophobic. But the joke technically isn't.
I understand why it annoyed you, but I think the joke simply went over your head, and you assumed it was laughing at Trump/Clinton being gay/bi. You're certainly not alone in this, given some of the comments here and in the original thread.
I assume you didn't just ban based on this meme and actually looked at the user's history to judge intent.
Then you block them if you truly believe in freedom of association, not ban them from the comms you moderate. I gotta say, Trump and Bill are the punchline of that joke because Trump is the homophobe and that image probably sends him into a rage. It may be tempting to think, but the punchline is definitely not "tehehe gay". It really seems you'd have to intentionally misconstrue the meme to interprete it that way in our current political climate and the context of the platform in which it was posted to.
literally read the article the OP edited into their post. also, maybe don't tell queer people not to be offended over homophobic jokes.
freedom of association means a inviolable right to disassociate. furthermore, since I am a mod of the comm, and Anarchist Nexus is a Piefed instance, and Piefed has better blocking than Lemmy, if I block them they are shadowbanned from the comm anyway and their posts will not federate properly. this is why I had to remove my instance block of .ML so that certain ML users could post to !libjerk@anarchist.nexus.
Your own personal rights are not central to your acting as a moderator.
As a moderator, you represent the interests of the community.
I understand your position, but not everyone considers the matter to be equally unambiguous.
yes, which is why I discussed it with the active community over Matrix. would you like to make a guess on what they thought of the meme?
I was responding to your explanation as presented.
My own feeling is that not giving anyone a chance to take responsibility works against our interests of fostering inclusivity and responsibility. It is essential to keep open space for discussion with those who may be misguided or unthoughtful but are otherwise generally reasonable.
if you want spaces that remain open to a degree for liberals or tankies, then there is !leftymemes@lemmy.dbzer0.com and !flippanarchy@lemmy.dbzer0.com, both places where agitprop that you will often find in !anarchymemes@anarchist.nexus is not welcome. the only reason c/anarchymemes is open to the public is that current Piefed limitations do not allow us to also restrict federation of the community to trusted instances as well, so it has to be public in order for those from dbzer0 and quokk.au to post.
to put it in plain english, the whole point of the comm is to post memes that will piss off liberals and tankies. serious discussion of any kind is forbidden as there are preexisting communities for that. the sidebar quite clearly lays that out. we aren't here for people who don't share our values, and we aren’t here for anything more than memes.
Even if all of it is true, as you say, preemptively banning users who never posted feels very abrasive, even aggressive. I am afraid it may tend to engender negative sentiments about movements, by creating an impression that anarchists or leftists generally tend to be unwelcoming or uncompromising, just as might be actually the case for tankies. We want to maintain the appearance as a group of being open to discussion.
The question arises of whether preemptive banning is constructive, considering the power remains to ban someone later, as actually needed, as well as to remove objectionable content if submitted.
the user in question had upvoted posts in the comm in the past. they only noticed the ban because they tried to upvote again. the ban prevents them from doing that in the future.
May I ask, what is the harm in the user casting such votes?
why would anyone posting in an anarchist comm want upvotes or potentially comments on their meme from someone who posted a homophobic meme? if trump walked up to you and said "good job on those memes", would you appreciate it? I seriously doubt you would.
I feel the analogy is rather weak.
I very much would like to understand whether it has caused any actual harm.
well, I think you're entitled to feel that. and should you ever become an active member of the community, I'll give your opinion some consideration. we do not, as a general rule, worry too much about what outside voices feel about how we run our community. it's a comm for ragebait anarchist memes, it's a given that some people aren't going to like the things that go down there.
I will add that I feel the isolationist attitude is misguided.
You could operate an unfederated instance. However, if you are integrated into the Fediverse, then you are benefiting as a community from the large collection of other instances with which you are federated. Such advantages are offered with an expectation of treating everyone participating with the greatest reasonable consideration, and of preventing unnecessary antagonism.
Freedom of association is not freedom from every unwanted responsibility. It is necessary to acknowledge that our complex systems of interdependence require, for their function, responsible participation. Only considering your inner circle is distorting the meaning, toward your own advantage, of the principles you advocate.
the comm was started because these are memes that got deleted from other leftist spaces for being too agitative, too uncaring of "leftist unity", especially to authoritarian leftists. we're isolationist because we are not welcome to post these to places like leftymemes because they offend some other leftists. we do not care if they offend liberals. it's literally a comm to bait people and piss them off.
the only ones allowed to participate are those who share our values. there are plenty of other communities for people who do not.
we don't have a responsibility to those outside the community. there's no consent for those who think differently to participate. most will call it an echo chamber, and they would be right. we're perfectly ok with that. we've been open about this from the beginning. there's no subterfuge going on here, this is who we are and we're enjoying ourselves.
we don't intend on changing, so anyone offended by this should take whatever steps they feel necessary to remove our comm from their feed or instance. we're perfectly fine with that.
The point is to acknowledge that your community depends for its existence on the resources generated by those you choose to antagonize. Too much antagonism would cause the entire system to collapse, along with it your community. You are acting from within the frame of a bubble that is in fact only imaginary.
Idk it seems like you are deiciding for me if you're banning people from comms.
the fediverse is open and free to everyone. if you want to make your own c/anarchymemes, do so. you're still free to associate with people who make homophobic memes if you want.
but you can't insist another anarchists or anarchist groups let you do it within their circle. I suggest you try reading the AFAQ for a better understanding on what freedom of association means: https://anarchistfaq.org/afaq/
So you would be happy to share an instance with Nazis as long as you blocked them? Kinda sus.
Also by OPs own admission: “ I added disclaimer because other people explained to me why it was homophobic” seems enough other people felt the same.
OPs response when learning it was homophobic was not to remove the offending content but to add a pissweak disclaimer?
What pissweak disclaimer? I added it so that other people would know about it. When I learned the meme was homophobic the post stopped gaining traction, and users already saw it. i think acting aggressive like that wont help anyone. Kindness goes a long way.
If enough people told you it was homophobic, why keep it up at all?
By that stage you were clearly informed it was problematic and your response was to continue to do so but add a “disclaimer” as if that makes the behaviour now okay?
If you want acts of kindness don’t continue to keep up homophobic content, because all that will do is get you hostility from the victims of homophobia.
Who is “enough people?”
The queer community is not a monolith and we do not all agree with this bad take. I sure don’t and I do not appreciate people speaking for me, especially when it reflects poorly on me through no fault of my own. Nor do I appreciate the abuse that mods have exhibited in this thread. The original situation could have been a misunderstanding and it could have been resolved here. Instead, the mods of that community have doubled down on the toxic abuse and rhetoric.
If you want to speak for yourself speak for yourself. You don’t speak for me or my community.
They're own word were "I added disclaimer because other people explained to me why it was homophobic”, that implies multiple other people and as such the 'enough' was whatever number it took of those other people explaining it to OP for them to learn.
Good for you, you also don't speak for me and my community.
I have watched friends die while an entire country cheered and declared it was God’s divine judgement. My family is still actively under attack, our lives threatened constantly, by fascists who claim the namesake of a religion whose tenets they actively oppose. I have lost people. Real people. They suffered unimaginably physically, mentally, and emotionally and died and aren’t coming back. Don’t you baby gays and false allies lecture me on homophobia. I have lived through shit you can’t even seem to imagine. I giggled at that dumb post.
Don’t waste the good will you have earned by dying on this stupid, hurtful hill. I’m happy that you have it good enough that silly internet jokes are the benchmark of homophobia for you. The cost for such a world was immense and it can be undone by careless ally attacks like this. Do. Better.
Please do better.
I have not seen people I know be killed for it, and I am sorry you have. But I have been beaten bloody many times in my life for my orientation. I have no tolerance for it, even in a 'mild' form. I am sick of being made into a joke or worse - jokes about being gay made my life horrible during the '90s and '00s and directly fueled a culture of violence.
My heart genuinely aches for you. I understand what you are talking about all too well. Society is fucking awful and terminally sick. But it’s critical to recognize that this is not that. The joke was not mean spirited or disparaging or mocking in any way. At worst, it was AI slop, which is a different kind of problem. Being included in jokes is not homophobic, and it would have worked just as well if Bubba happened to be Hillary’s nickname. This wasn’t a “Dave Chappelle is punching down at others expense” kind of joke.
Also, Trump and Clinton are Olympian class sluts who spent time in the same circles, and I wouldn’t bat an eyelash if those two really did fuck at one point.
Lol no. Block CSAM and Nazis. But a meme laughing at a hypocrit? Idk
Didn't you just remove that freedom from this user, though?
Freedom of association is always a two way street. If one party removes their consent, than there is no free and consensual association possible.
no, because the anarchist principle of freedom of association also means the freedom to disassociate. and in this case, the active community agreed in discussion that they did not wish to associate with this person if they are making homophobic jokes. we're currently discussing it again in Matrix, due to this thread, and the consensus is still that the person in question is not welcome because they have not renounced their earlier behavior, despite admitting that they know it is homophobic.
there is no anarchist principle that demands you must allow someone to be a part of your community if the community can not accept their behavior. this is why anarchist collectives such as the Zapatista exile people who are guilty of serious breaches of community trust.
they are still free to use the fediverse. they can even create their own c/anarchymemes community. but to insist that they be allowed into our community, when our community has decided they don't represent acceptable anarchist views of solidarity with all peoples would be to establish a hierarchy of them above the community.
Dissociation would be blocking someone you don’t like. You banned them from a community. You personally, unilaterally made a decision on behalf of others without input, discussion, or community involvement. This is a perversion of anarchism.
The community decided that, or the mod team did? Is the whole community a part of that Matrix chat?
yes, the people who post to the comm or regularly comment are all active members of the flotilla Matrix. it's not a requirement, but that is how things turned out because the comm is targeted towards anarchists in general, and specifically the members of the three anarchist instances that make up the allied flotilla. Divisions By Zero, Anarchist Nexus, and Quokk.au.
it is against the rules for liberals or authoritarian leftists to comment in the community, and those outside the flotilla instances are not allowed to downvote posts at all. were it currently possible to set specific communities to not federate outside the trusted instances set in the Piefed settings, the greater fediverse would not even be able to see the community. it is ours, and we aren't interested in association outside of with fellow anarchists. there are other anarchy communities on the flotilla for that.
the whole point of the community is to post agitprop, memes that will anger people who aren't libertarian leftists. if you don't identify as that, then the community is not made for you, and that has always been pretty clearly laid out in the sidebar.
Note quokka is not part of the flotilla as they voted down the suggestion
I call them honorary members. Qk posts some good memes to c/anarchymemes
They exercised self-determination in deciding against joining, but you deem it appropriate to disregard that and group them with something they chose not to become part of?