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.
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.
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.
It seems to me that the significant majority of people here in this thread at least, do not think the joke is innately/inherently homophobic, and that that is more or less a way that you can read it, if you choose to, but it still works as a joke without a homophobic reading.
And ... that includes me, someone who has been ... at least somewhat, depending on your criteria, victimized by actual homophobia.
Its not as cut and dry as you seem to think, to at least personally judge them in the way you are...
... sure, many people may have expressed their feelings one way, but many here have expressed them the other way....
... and it seems like a considerable mod/admin overreach to ban them for it.
Sure, people can not like it all they want, downvote, explain why they think its bad... but... banning for this seems extreme, needlessly censorious.
And shaming them and demanding an apology thus also to me seems wholly unwarranted.
Lol no. Block CSAM and Nazis. But a meme laughing at a hypocrit? Idk
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.
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.
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.
May I ask, what is the harm in the user casting such votes?
I feel the analogy is rather weak.
I very much would like to understand whether it has caused any actual harm.
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 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.
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.
The community decided that, or the mod team did? Is the whole community a part of that Matrix chat?
Note quokka is not part of the flotilla as they voted down the suggestion
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?
I'm happy to be an honorary member. If it wasn't for the Hex federation, I'd have voted yes personally and that would have tipped the vote into succeeding as it only lost by 6%.
Well, hexbear should have effectively defederated from qk now
so might be a moot point at this time :D
Sadly it's too late :(
Let us cook... 😉
thoughts here, quite simple:
Crypt has a point but I'd like to bring some details.
1: while quokka.au chose to not join us in the flotilla, they still share many similar takes and values with us. We have reasons to trust many of them, and anarchy is about mutual support of each other.
2: any single user level action has little bearing on whether the quokka.au community on a whole is trusted. If there were systemic activity with admins knowing and ignoring, or condoning, then trust would break down.
3: communities have control over their own rules of conduct. So does the server. If you violate these, even accidentally, there can be consequences. You can appeal these, but if the mods and or admins believe there still remains an issue, then so do the consequences.
Directly put, your own actions and consequences have little to do with quokka.au . If you want the flotilla to specifically take any actions related to our relation with a fellow server, regardless if they are a part of the flotilla, that would need governance involvement and related vote. Bringing up that kind of issue over a single user ban for a bad attempt at a joke gone wrong is not appropriate avenue for this.
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.
You’re right that I don’t understand how your community works. I’m glad it was discussed democratically, but there is someone you clearly forgot to include or this post wouldn’t exist.
You are putting defamatory words in my mouth, and I think you are aware that you are doing it maliciously with intent to defame. To me, this only further confirms my suspicions about you. The only person doing harm here is you. My generation has sacrificed too much, I have personally sacrificed too much, to stand quietly while decades of progress won at unimaginable and horrifying costs is undone by privileged children that can’t tell the difference between homophobia and situational humor that has nothing to do with our community.
I recommend you look at the discussions that Deceptichum and I just had, then calm down, collect your thoughts, and process what exactly I am saying. It is important that you understand the harm you are doing to those you claim to care about with behavior 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.