It doesn't matter that someone "dropped out". Third parties are a way to have your political views counted. Same as voting for PSL or the Green Party.

Do they have any simple survey results?

The article is so all over the place. It's one of those poll results articles that feels intentionally obtuse.

Dozens gathered on Veterans Day at the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park in Maryland’s Dorcester County for a formal ceremony making Tubman a one-star brigadier general in the state’s National Guard.

This actually seems insulting lol. She was like a sort of underground resistance fighter and they're giving her the lowest ranked general in the national guard.

No you'd have to trust the manufacturer. I wonder if there are any Chinese or other non-US companies that make that kind of thing.

Little Marco is getting a BIG job.

That's what happens to websites without sufficient moderation. Saying "liberals are bad" for the 10,000th time without any kind of commentary is just spam. Some of the stuff I've seen on here recently is indistinguishable from ragebait. Like yes, it actually feels almost as stupid as looking at some right-wing thing on twitter and seeing a bunch of other right-wing idiots being like "So true!!"

People shouldn't be going online just to get mad at something they voluntarily and intentionally looked for and posted. People working themselves into fits.

And maybe admins and mods don't want to spend their time looking at 10,000 posts like "look at this awful liberal lets be mad together"

Does anyone actually think that getting mad online is a healthy activity? This is like one of the number one most common criticisms of social media. People even on here will say like "twitter promotes ragebait to get create more engagement", and then people come to hexbear just to create the exact same atmosphere?

We're seeing content in the dunk tank that is basically ragebait. I don't want to use a website where a bunch of other users are spending their time looking at thought-free ragebait that's half "the got-damn LIBRULS AHHHHHHHHHHHHAFHDSAKFJ". Feels like some of the content here is converging with right-winger type braindead-ness. I think that's all that the admins are trying to clamp down on. The admins may not want to maintain a website that just ends up being used as a bunch of "2-minutes hate" sessions. It affects the overall site culture.

I don't think they're trying to restrict people from venting about stuff.

Nowhere have they indicated that everything needs to be an effortpost. And lower participation is fine if the "participation" is people saying thought-free stuff in response to literal ragebait.

I've seen like a dozen posts on the dunk tank to the effect of "liberals are all showing glee at palestinian suffering and saying they brought it on themselves and gave us trump" based on a handful of random anonymous (likely sockpuppet) twitter accounts. Which is just straight up reactionary braindead nonsense. Like it's the most anti-touch-grass stuff I've seen on here recently. Like fedpost tier nonsense. I don't want to use a website where a bunch of the other users are constantly looking at dumb ragebait and making themselves and everyone else dumber because of it. it's that kind of harmful stuff the admins probably want to clamp down on.

The way some users on here talk about liberals or whatever is actually starting to feel like right-winger tier mush brain ooga booga stuff. Like people are already posting videos and stuff with all caps stuff like "The got-damn LIBERALS are DESTROYING FREEDOM and suppressing FREE SPEECH!!!!!"

"let people enjoy things" is has been discussed on hexbear before. Reddit is the ultimate "let people enjoy things" website because you can engage in any kind of gross behavior on it. Hexbear restricts a lot of things. No bigotry, etc.

people enjoy all kinds of things that are detrimental to themselves or others. And it affects the culture of the website in general.

And does it matter if less or more people are using a website if most of the usage is just engagement with a barrage of posts of people's awful opinions?

Should Hexbear be left-wing clickbait? I swear I've seen so many posts on here that are straight up hyperbole or misconstruing something to make it more outrageous.

Like we've had a massive barrage of posts about how supposedly bloodthirsty liberals are all showing glee at Palestinian suffering now that trump is in office and blaming left-wingers or Muslims for Trump.
Which is braindead narrative. You can pick and choose any kind of random post on twitter to create some kind of narrative. I could easily construct a "communists just love mass murder and are racist and blah blah blah" by just posting a bunch of the most unhinged fedposting and MAGA communist stuff I can find. Everyone here would object to that portrayal. Most liberal voters or whoever are not bloodthirsty and hateful towards Palestinians. But people on here are posting literal ragebait from anonymous online accounts that might as well just be sockpuppet accounts.
It was probably one of the reasons they're getting rid of the dunk tank.

so I think a lot of dunk tank content is reinforcing this kind of echo chamber of reactionary confirmation bias. "liberals love murder" or some other stupid thing with no analysis.

I think the admins want to clamp down on this kind of thought-free content because it miseducates people. There is a responsibility on the part of any website to not make people dumber. If we want horrible analysis of current events we can watch mainstream media.

Did you reply to the wrong post? Seems totally unrelated to my comment lol.

mods this is why you need to keep the dunk tank deleted 👆

😉

This forum and its predecessor have had much higher quality content in the past. I think time and website growth have caused the quality to deteriorate, like all online communities, as many people have discussed on here previously.

And low quality content is not the bread and butter of good online social media. It's the bread and butter of social media everyone likes to point out is toxic and bad for mental health and people's time.

"Low effort" posts can be good, if there's some thinking behind them. Maybe if they're original or interesting in some way. Posting a twitter screenshot of some nazi so that we can do a 2-minutes hate is not healthy.

Why does there need to be a "discussion" about everything? And the posts on here show they didn't need a discussion, because 90% of the responses to this change are "my treats are going away. I love getting mad online! Why are the mods being authoritarian? Change is bad!" Anyone on earth could predict that the responses would be exactly this way. They probably decided that "change is bad" complaints don't matter to them.

policing community behavior is a big part of any online forum. That's just the way it is. Or are the users of this website now absolutists

When it starts becoming a large part of the site it becomes unhealthy. Blocking the dunk tank means blocking a lot of content on the site. They're trying to direct people to more healthy discussions instead of spending their time getting mad online.

From what I gathered among this thread is the primary grievance is that this decision was a unilateral decision made by anonymous moderators who diminished the userbase as being brocialists who like slop as denigrating to marginalized persons, and did it so suddenly, without warning, and so abruptly, without consultation.

Which I would think people on here would be fine with since part of the site culture is that sometimes people with power just bring the hammer down. And that can be a good thing when done by the right people for the right reasons. Endlessly debating and ing on every dumb litte thing is not democracy. And an internet forum is not "a democracy". And there is no feasible way for a website to be "democratically run". The admins are making a decision they think will improve the website. And people are making whiny process critiques and getting mad that their favorite slop is going away. People should get some perspective!

It would be nice to not have to spend half my time at "the bar all the communists go to after the meeting" looking at dumb right-wing opinions I've seen a thousand times.

Wouldn't it be nice for a change to try to keep discussion to more healthy topics than Getting Mad at Stuff Online.

the_dunk_tank was our left-wing equivalent of basically the entirety of right-wing online media. Just getting mad at stuff, indefinitely.

less traffic is good and basically the point. Why do you need to spend your time looking at random people online complaining about random other people online? Not good for anyone's mental state or life.

The whole internet is full of disgusting fascist nonsense

which is why I don't feel like seeing it here lol. What value does it have? It's easy to make fun of or complain about right-wingers. It feels good. It's completely useless and is a time waste.