I started using reddit around 2013-2014. I pretty much immediately gravitated to places like r/top_minds as I still had a bit of the deboonking spirit in me from the early aughts. I also liked the other reddit critique subs. I never got into the podcast when it started, I avoided it. I also avoided the sub. It wasn't until 2019 that I started actually listening to the podcast. Of course the sub got removed. I was part of a CTH discord that sucked pretty bad and I wanted a new place. Reddit sucked. I heard about chapo.chat about a month after it started.
I stayed because it was a great reddit replacement and I felt way more comfortable posting here than anywhere else. I have gotten to watch the site grow and change. I have changed a bit too.
Okay I'm not going to back off of the main point to get into a semantic argument about analysis. You said that the mod being "butchered" for "not wording things perfectly" proves that the user base as a problem with being entitled consumers. You try to frame this stance in class analysis in a thread where the same exact people from yesterday come to encourage the mod. Whatever flows downstream from broader society, regardless of whatever tendencies you see, the mod is clearly not butchered.
You can see tendencies everywhere. In order to connect that with the behavioral problems of the Hexbear user base, you'll need a little more explanation than just saying the tendencies exist and they come from broader society.
I'm not asking what power and capital they have in the real world, I'm asking in the context of the website. It's a very simple question. At the end of the day, disregarding vibes and that one post you saw, what power do users have that the owners of the site do not? If the users have less than or equal power to the owners, then there can't be an exercise of power over them.
Plus, I would like to remind everyone who read Settlers yesterday and are now channeling the power of true leftism, that we do have surveys on users. Either everyone is lying, which is quite misanthropic and portrays a view of inherent distrust, or everyone here isn't a cis white dudebro tech aristocrat from the suburbs. In case of the latter, we have to brush-off our critical thinking skills and take a bite of humble pie despite being used to whipping out the ol-reliable rhetoric. It's easy to come in and just go "My personal feelings on this subject means that everyone on the other side is not a good leftist"
They're the consumer of a product produced and maintained by the labor of the mod/admin team. There should be input from the users, but democratic power should be in the hands of the workers, not the consumers. The low barrier of entry for becoming a mod supports this. If you want a political voice, become politically active.
Not exactly. The mods are more like old artisans. They own the means of production (the site) and participate in the labor of generating content. They own the ability to post and the platform consumers use to post. They can turn off the site, ban, and make decisions over which users have no influence. You're correct in where the democratic power lies but wrong about why it lies with the admin. It's not because they're laborers, it's because they have the passwords and the admin features. Thus, this is the real material power behind the position.
This is exactly why hexbear can never be a place for organizing or a political party. The users do not have power over the platform. We're not charged rent, but we also can't hold anyone accountable for anything outside of that for which they hold themselves accountable. Websites in general are not setup to be owned by a community. They're designed to have an owner who has the power over life and death.
If we're going to do power analysis on a website, we have to meet the nature of the platform on its own terms rather than try to work through analogy.
I've seen toxicity on places like reddit because reddit is a place where you're not allowed to draw a connection between the state of the world and capitalism. You are allowed to blame it on individuals being too stupid or too poor. I've also seen the biggest dunk cultures in the trans and vegan communities here. And you know what? It's good. Being poor or disenfranchised doesn't give you license to be a bigot or a murderer. In fact, this is like the vegan struggle session where we were told that veganism for rich white people who make fun of poor indigenous peoples for basic survival.
The toxicity thing doesn't happen when people correctly draw conclusions that there is an organizational problem with society and while it's not the fault of individual randos, they sure as shit don't get to exist in a vacuum at the expense of vulnerable people.
The battle against Chapo is coming about 8 years too late. The mods in-favor make it sound like the heyday of the Bernie bro. Most people here don't even listen to Chapo or care about it in any way that shapes their interactions.
I think it would go a long way for all the people involved making these decisions to post an actual cogent reason for the moderation. Rule 8 wasn't exactly clear why it needed to be there. We defined the problem, that people were posting literal whos, but we never heard why that is a problem. I see some small attempts at trying to say it hurts the site in some way, but nobody can describe the harm.
Controversy over Rule 8 turns into a new comm. But now people are mad that the new comm is popular and again, it's somehow harming the site or leftism or rhetoric.
There only needs to be one comm for this. It's all the same thing. Mocking Rob Reiner for posting cringe isn't accomplishing more than mocking pepehitler42069 on reddit. Again, it's like there is someone with an idea of how all this matters and is important and needs to be changed but can't articulate why.
Here are my guesses:
Someone wants the comm to be a compilation of the day's hottest takes but is thwarted by images of pepehitler88 on reddit being cringe. They want to use the comm as twitter news, to see what all the big dogs and they don't care about the little stuff.
Someone thinks that critiquing twitter posts is some kind of agitprop and not critiquing power (aka people with follower) is ruining praxis. The election of burger king exacerbated this as high-level users saw it as an opportunity to agitate.
Someone hates twitter posts, they hate any post that isn't super serious leftist literature except for community in-jokes and power users posting pee-pee poo-poo
There's not much else going on so mods are trying to solve a problem that doesn't need solving. We're just keeping busy, trying to find some grievance to salve for our users.
If you're still in line, stay in line. They have to let you vote.