Hey everyone, I've removed bans for everyone that did not request one in the previous admin thread. (I think. If you got banned and I didn't restore your account yet, let me know and I'll fix it.) Don't worry! We're not gonna just ban people for no reason.
In case anyone hasn't seen it yet, Alaskaball confirmed that Sangria was their admin alt. They were messing around with their admin tools on their own account and figured it would be seen as a funny bit, but without being informed of the bit many of the mods and admins were just as shocked, confused, and appalled as you were. I've talked to the other admins and mods, and we're all gonna take it easy on bits for a bit. (Pun intended. This is the last one, I promise.)
If you're afraid that there's been an infiltration of transphobic, egomaniacal wrecker mods who hate the users, I want to assure you that's absolutely not the case. The overwhelming majority of mods and admins on this site are trans. Our admins are all trusted, long-time users in good standing. We regularly browse, comment, and post on our main accounts. You post and chat with us daily as comrades, and we value all of you. You may not recognize the usernames on our admin accounts because we regularly swap the alts used for admin privileges. This is why you'll see really old or unused alt accounts as well as really new accounts on the admin team.
I've seen a lot of speculation down below, some entertaining, some upsetting. We absolutely do not accept transphobia or any form of bigotry on this site. Some of the statements provided by mods and admins have been seen as transphobic and bioessentialist. I want to offer some transparency, but also clarify that I can't get much more specific on this for personal security reasons.
During the earlier discussions on how we felt things could be improved with these communities, multiple trans mods and admins described their reasoning in favour of the change by expressing with a variety of wording that it's the [he/him] demographic in particular that has been the source of toxic and troubling behavior in the tanks. That the he/hims haven't been beating the accusations, so to speak. With that group being largely cishet white guys on this site, these two terms were assumed to roughly correlate. We weren't making prepared statements for release, the comments that got posted here were paraphrased and combined from more casual comments made by trans people, in the mod chat to mostly other trans people about some of the chauvinistic and ironically bigoted posting habits that they saw as alienating and unhealthy for the site, and what we could do to improve the situation. We genuinely didn't foresee the potential for a miscommunication of those statements as being bioessentialist, and want to extend our sincerest apologies for the misunderstanding.
Edit: Please feel welcome to post in c/gossip as you would have posted in the_dunk_tank, and in c/counterpropaganda as you would have posted in the_dredge_tank.
Can we keep this one civil (@[email protected]) please folks
The other threads were kept civil though. Mostly anyway, aside from the wrecker who kept making alts to harass people. That wrecker is a mod btw.
I've seen this thrown out a few times but is there any real evidence to it other than a similar style?
Well here's what I'll say. A very confrontational and aggressive mod not known for letting arguments go waded into the first struggle session in a vitriolic way, overstepped the line, and got some of their comments removed. They then immediately logged off, coinciding with the beginning of the creation of the spam alts, and have not shown themselves here for multiple days of struggle sessions despite myself and other users openly accusing them of being the one responsible for the creation of the spam alts.
You crunch those numbers and get back to me.
Yeah, fair. I haven't actually dug into things so I'm going off what other people say.
I was watching and read the other 3 threads on this and I think assigning blame to just one or even a few people for this entire shitshow is a bit of a stretch.
Don't get me wrong, I think there is plenty of blame to be assigned broadly to a lot of mods and admins. But on this one specific issue of this person who kept making alts to harass users who were critical of the changes, that was very very likely to be the work of a single mod.
We don't believe that wrecker was a mod. Someone's name was floated out there the other day, but we were able to confirm that it was not that person.
How did you confirm it? Did the mod in question just pinky promise that no it wasn't them doing the alts? And completely aside from that, can you also confirm that the mod in question is not the same person as one who was banned multiple times from hexbear in the past for being a wrecker and unable to stop harassing vegans in particular?
I would be very glad to know it if you were in fact able to confirm that neither of these things are true. But given what I've seen and what I personally know, it would have to be seriously convincing evidence.
I know the person you are referring to, and I was able to confirm that they were busy offline and could not have been posting at that time.
I know this will sound unreasonable and I apologize, sometimes we're going to be unreasonable. I do not believe you. Not even a little, not for a second, not once. I feel that I have many strong reasons to disbelieve admin statements at this point and it will take a lot of work before I believe a word from any red-badge again.
Given this admin statement I will in the future refrain from making that specific accusation again. Feel free to purge the specific comments of mine in which I leveled the accusation. But I stand by it.
I don't believe it either. It's not even necessarily that I don't believe Lyudmila who may well be honest that that's what the mod in question said. But that doesn't mean I believe the mod in question. Of course she would say she was busy and offline and was not making alts to harass users when asked if that's what she was doing. There are several places in this chain where you can disbelieve what's being reported. I don't believe it for one second either. It's also telling that half of my question wasn't even acknowledged, let alone answered. To me, that's pretty much confirmation that not only is this mod that same banned wrecker from months ago, but that the mods are aware of this, accept it, and keeping it quiet.
To articulate a bit further, there are two possibilities I deem plausible.
The wrecker in question is the mod.
The wrecker in question wants to frame the mod.
In option 2, the wrecker in question would have to be aware that the mod (currently engaged in a struggle session and getting more heated with each post) has suddenly been called away for an offline engagement where they will be unable to vouch for themselves for multiple days.
Even if we accept the plausibility of option 2... That still means the wrecker was either a mod or long-standing hexbear user. Because it would have to be someone who has that kind of personal connection to the mod AND the knowledge of how to frame them for ableism and transphobia on hexbear.
The mod who was accused often has limited internet access on weekends and I was able to confirm that she literally hasn't had internet access since Friday and still doesn't. I had to get in touch offline.
Let's say this statement is completely true. That still does not preclude the possibility that the first wrecker account (which was made on Friday) was the mod in question. The mod in question was actively posting only minutes before the wrecker accounts popped up. You expect me to believe that the mod in question coincidentally lost internet access at exactly that moment? At the moment that someone decided to impersonate them on alts? Come on.
Almost every weekend she goes to a place that does not have internet access. She is currently in that place. Multiple mods were able to confirm that she is in that place, and that there is no internet access there. We're not going to doxx the person you're accusing, obviously.
Also, honestly I feel like I've moderated enough of her comments to say I don't really see enough resemblance to say it's an impersonation either.
Oh ok, so you just think I'm a complete fucking rube who will believe whatever bullshit you make up. Come on. No one talks like that.
https://hexbear.net/comment/5609816
Maybe I'm not analyzing the posts hard enough, but I've never seen helltakerhomosexual call someone a bozo, and lots of terminally online twitch viewers say things like "let's goooo," I wouldn't exactly call that a smoking gun.
I don't think you're a rube, but I do think you're very invested in this whole thing and could probably benefit from stepping away and taking a break from the site for a little while. As could I.
Unfortunately, because you admins clearly are not. Instead of giving me a bunch of unsolicited lies buried deep in a thread where I'm just trying to put my thoughts out there without having to debate obvious bullshit, why don't you reply to my top-level comment? It was like the third comment in the entire thread, it was a simple and natural and reasonable question phrased in a reasonable way. This comment chain down here is dead to you. I have already explained why I will not and cannot believe you, your story does not make sense. Give this one up, and try telling the truth about something for a change.
Stopping by to say I think I figured out another candidate for who could be behind the lemme club dork accounts.
I've said this once before but I would like to state it publicly. I am a dumbass. Ive been wrong before and I swear to you all I will be again. If I can be proven wrong here I'll apologize myself. I would hate to be in their position if they really are innocent lol
I'll say I'm more or less spitballing here but while I was with the movie watching crowd on the hexbear live one of the regulars there mentioned someone, who's name I haven't heard in a hot minute, getting a temp ban over being a little shit and DM harassing someone. Coincidentally after that a bunch of these lemmy club accounts start popping up.
I can't confirm the helltaker thing because that info outside my wheelhouse, but I'd be willing to say helltaker's like a secondary suspect to who I'm thinking of mostly because I haven't seen a little peep from them but plenty of suspicious activity from my prime candidate, at least on the mod logs
For what it's worth, I fully believe that Helltaker's offline for legit reasons now. Whatever I think of the admin team at this point I don't think they'd go quite that far. At this point my main theory became that they made the first or first few accounts, then someone else saw us speculating about who it was and decided to add fuel to the fire by copying the style.
Just another note while we're on this topic, I fully expected to be banned the first time I made this public accusation. I am pleasantly surprised to still be here, and to still be able to stoke the flames of, uh, discontent or whatever's going on here, with my persistent and at times aggressive comments. I've been very happy to see people finally talking about issues with the site's management that I've been harboring for a long time and simply haven't felt like it would be worth getting banned to bring up. It would be really embarrassing if one of the main issues I've been hanging on to turns out to be verifiably wrong, I am absolutely certain I'd never live that one down (if I somehow continued to avoid being banned over it). I think it would be extra funny if it's somehow proven that this user I've been accusing actually isn't even the other user I keep accusing them of being. All I can say is that I fully believe everything I've said, and all I want is dialogue in which everyone else can say the same.
I've never been wrong in my life, except all those times I somehow became wrong retroactively. Funny how that works, eh?
Anyway like I said I've been expecting the ban for days so it won't surprise me if/when it arrives. I wish you the best of luck in your investigation, and seriously do let me know if it turns out fruitful so I can get that apology done.
Follow-up, should be resolved. If not now, pretty shortly after I comment this.
Make sure to use comic sans in your letter.
Duly noted. Make sure to report and DM harassment should it occur
Maybe it's this Catradora person and she's under a new name*
(*This is tongue in cheek, the lure of the bit is strong)
@[email protected] for your satisfaction
Lmao, nice find. We're all still pretty confident it's not her given the lack of internet access in the place she is.
I'm not going to doxx someone to prove their innocence from being annoying on the internet. This weekend, I mean. She's definitely guilty of being annoying on the internet plenty of other times.
Whoever this mystery wrecker is, they've returned again. Like a hydra, for every acct felled, two alts shall take its place.
Not a hydra, remember this is a dork-ass loser. A slime, splitting in two each time you smack it.