I must admit I mostly lurk there and never quite made the jump culturally to lemmygrad, but I do respect your opinions and the last few days are making me feel a bit insane and wanting an outside perspective. I'll explain and provide links for context
A longtime user got banned for bad behavior in live chat on hextube. That part isn't all that surprising. But then we got dueling impersonators one and two making meta posts about the ban and a notorious also-banned user he had conflicted with a long time ago (melina).
This was... mostly just annoying, clearly someone was doing a nasty bit, but mods just banned them both and the site moved on which I guess is fair enough.
Fast forward to today, and we have an account (not brand new, but not a longtime account either, only a few weeks old with limited post history) purporting to be our resident China guy (and China doomer, to some extent) from the news mega, posting a long winded story about going to xinjiang and getting 1984'd or whatever. It starts to feel like it could be a bit as it gets more and more absurd, but this user was always very serious from what I recall.
If this is a troll/psyop I guess it's a good one because this garbage is giving me a fucking headache. What do you grad'ers think is going on? Were any of these real or all impersonators (and relatedly who? melina?) Am I just too autistic to get the joke? Is this a fed psyop? what else could be going on?
These "WTF is wrong with hexbear" posts are starting to show up like clock work. I love my Hexbears but there's some rotten apples in the admin team and I don't expect any good changes.
There is a systemic issue in the moderation/administration team. Anonymity has made the admin team completely unaccountable to the user base and also to each other. Until that issue is rectified there will continue to be bans issued for minor issues and misunderstandings as well as serious infractions that are not properly addressed.
I am under the impression that this issue has been exploited by an intentional wrecker or group of organized wreckers. Though the use of alts or backchannels these wreckers are able to maintain one or more constant admin positions that they use to sow discord. Sometime around september last year they fortified their position and begun to hunt for reasons to ban some of the most prolific members of the community.
When Awoo was banned was there ever any action taken aside from her getting reinstated? Or did the petty vindictive admins that fought to keep her banned (and all the others they banned because of unrelated disagreements) just take the L and maintain their authority?
I won't go back to hexbear. I love you all but the system of moderation makes me feel gross. Users shouldn't have to tiptoe on eggshells for fear of being banned because they fear a vindictive mod interpreting what they said in the worst possible way. Incorrect views should be challenged in order to foster growth not used as an excuse to shut people out. Admins should have to have their name pinned to their arguments in a struggle session so that when they ban another user for something petty they can be held to account.
The admin team needs a complete overhaul but people who abuse the power they have never give it up willingly and so I see no method of fixing Hexbear. Instead Hexbear will keep banning ideologically correct posters until it is a withered husk, a mere shadow of itself.
If you take the view that these constant struggles are just a extension of the operation that got R\CTH banned as I do, this new phase of destroying leftist spaces on the internet is a master stroke. What is going on now is way more effective because destroying trust that individuals have for the community is more effective than burning down the meeting place.
Well stated.