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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Idk it seems like you are deiciding for me if you’re banning people from comms.
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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.
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
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.
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The community decided that, or the mod team did? Is the whole community a part of that Matrix chat?
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Note quokka is not part of the flotilla as they voted down the suggestion
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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%.
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