cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/536902
During the brief time DroneRights was active on the site, DroneRights was treated, by default, in bad faith and as a wrecker, even by moderators. Very first post made by DroneRights, (where they reference their experiences as someone with NPD) First comment responding tells them to “fuck off” and that narcissist is not a slur. DroneRights defended how they feel narcissist is a slur, and then the next comment was “I have literally never heard or seen it used that way. Edit: new account, good troll” A statement that Thus begins the saga of DroneRights, and the half of the userbase that treats it like a troll that couldn’t possibly be real because what it talks about is nothing the users here have ever heard about. And just to be clear, ableist slurs are commonplace on this site. Incredibly common everyday words, phrases, and most intelligence or sanity-based insults come from medical words for disabilities. I would imagine a lot of users would be upset if ND users started insisting, we never used words like “stupid”, because they are so commonplace. But if someone with NPD tells you that using Narcissism as an insult is hurtful and dehumanizes those who have NPD, then don’t speak over them.
Now, DroneRights is an interesting user. I, like most of you, did not know much about anything DroneRights talked about in their posts. From how I see it, DroneRights has been ridiculed for their beliefs, its disabilities, and their gender since it started being open about its gender online. It tried talking about its experiences with neurodiversity and its gender on several instances before posting on hexbear at all, making a new account after being doxxed on their old one. Every instance treated DroneRights in bad faith, invalidated and belittled them, and it comes to hexbear where “we love our trans neurodivergent comrades!!” and it instantly gets treated like someone so unfamiliar and so unbelievable that DroneRights couldn’t possibly be real or valid.
This is the shit we have a thousand dunk tank threads about. Libs saying hexbear users are bots, or not really trans, or paid shills, anything they can say instead of doing some self-crit or considering the experiences of other people. Except now we are doing it, while claiming to be a welcoming, shining beacon of inclusivity. Now, even if you wrongly think DroneRights could not possibly be genuine in the posts it made, I would briefly like if the readers of this post looked at DroneRights post history for a moment, and interpret its posts giving the benefit of the doubt that should be given to someone with NPD, autism, a lack of communication skills, who does not fully understand left wing politics like you might. Take how it interprets its gender seriously, without assuming it is a troll. And look at how users on this site respond to what it says.
https://hexbear.net/u/DroneRights?page=1&sort=Old&view=Overview
Okay, assuming you looked for a little over 5 minutes, you have probably seen some hurtful exclusionary shit said to DroneRights out of bad faith assumptions. The mod log is similarly bad, if you believe that ND users shouldn’t be seen instantly as trolls or worthy of being banned for a couple bad takes, or for their communication problems. These takes are entirely understandable for DroneRights to have, given how it views itself as a non-person. Especially noteworthy, is how DroneRights post got removed and bad faith comments were made towards it (initially, got restored later) in the dedicated comm for neurodiversity, with rules dedicated to not making bad faith assumptions about other peoples experiences. In The rest of the site without those rules, it faced constant ridicule and mistreatment. Saying DroneRights had “bad, wrecker vibes” without attempting to understand them is ableist, and so is labeling DroneRights as a wrecker when its actions could easily be interpreted as a good faith ND user who isn’t quite as aware of Marxist theory unlike other users. Even if for some reason some bad faith troll decided to learn and lie about the experiences DroneRights has had with its gender and how its NPD has changed how it views itself, the normal standards of engagement on this site should not be one where ND users, and users in general should be invalidated like that. Now, the problem of ableism and bad faith assumptions about posts is a very complicated one. Let me first address our site culture of struggle sessions, hostility, and bad faith assumptions. Threads frequently devolve into arguments and dogpiling, often on established users who make comments or posts with no intention of rudeness. The solution to this problem of hostility by hexbear? Don’t talk about it. If drama is brought up, even if its very important or relevant to the site, it is removed. There used to be containment comms in UserUnion and c/Strugglesession. They got removed about three months ago. I never heard about any new place to talk about the site, the code of conduct still tells users to post at userunion, so unless a user looks a little harder and tries to find whatever comm “meta” posts are allowed in, criticism looks purposefully ignored. A cool soviet propaganda poster once said, “Kill it at the Root.” Most struggle sessions either wouldn’t have happened, or been a lot less toxic, if there were sitewide rules saying that “if a user posts something that seems unintentionally harmful or reactionary, ask them what they meant by that comment. Don’t immediately go on the attack. Behave in good faith, and don’t assume the worst from posters by default “
Now, this potential solution obviously increases moderator workload and would make genuine ill-intentioned trolls harder to get rid of, but compared to previous moderation policies, if implemented properly, it would give many users the safe, welcoming space they desire from the site. Now, Hexbear itself has had a rocky start, with issues of inclusivity and toxicity since the beginning. The solution for the past few years? Ban anyone you can label as a liberal! I don’t really have an issue with the initial ban of those labeled transphobic. Were some well-intentioned ND users banned in the process? Probably. But the site is much better without blatant transphobia. The issue is that the policy of banning on the pretenses of “seems like a liberal” or “has a take I don’t agree with” is really only fitting on clear, black and white issues like trans rights. Now, admittedly, a lot of left wing issues are black and white, but not all of them are, and having a bad take on an issue or believing in common misconceptions doesn’t mean a user is malicious or harmful, and the policy of banning “sus” accounts over not having all the facts or not communicating properly is actively communicating that the policy is: that it is ok to ban ND users regularly and make it so those who don’t get banned are constantly worried about it, as long as it gets rid of liberals. When you say “Embrace TC69 thought” what you are advocating for is sacrificing good faith users and the ND community so that liberals are banned quicker. Of course, I’m not the first person to criticize the site on this. Two or so years ago, the site had a lively and welcoming Neurodiverse mod team dedicated to making their comm a great place for ND users to talk, but with the site’s constant hostility, struggle sessions, ND users often got unjustly banned outside of the comm, and those who did not felt like they could be banned at any moment without understanding what they did wrong. When ND users and the mod team representing them asked for users to be unbanned or for site policy to change to be more inclusive to ND users, they were frequently not being listened to. After around a year of moderating and advocating for ND users, (often with no results), an incident where a well-known user made an “I’m leaving post” targeted at an ND user who criticized them. The user was immediately banned, the ND mod team had to fight hard to convince the mod team that they didn’t deserve to be immediately banned for a tiny incident that was not intended to be hurtful, and after convincing the mods to unban the user, they were promptly re-banned by another site mod with no explanation given, and the consequences of that event and the feelings of mistreatment by the mod team prior in combination with that, led to most of the ND team leaving the site completely. The comm has seemingly had little to no leadership since in the past 2 years, and this important history of the site is largely forgotten about.
ND users need a voice, and ableism needs to be discussed and acknowledged to be a problem in this community. Discussion on ableism or ND inclusivity on the Neurodiverse comm should not be removed, especially if the conversation is civil.
[@[email protected]](https://hexbear.net/u/Egon
Has expressed a desire for tone indicators like /s to be normalized and encouraged on the site, which I would agree with. Having /s and other tone indicators would help users with interpreting comments in they way they are intended, and /s being from reddit is not a good enough reason to not use it.
As for what I want to see from the site to be more inclusive to ND users, rules such as ““if a user posts something that seems unintentionally harmful or reactionary, ask them what they meant by that comment. Don’t immediately go on the attack. Behave in good faith, and don’t assume the worst from posters by default “and “do not talk over ND comrades about things you have not experienced” are rules I would want to be enforced site wide.
The most important thing is to acknowledge these issues in our community and address them. Inclusivity of ND comrades should be just as important as other issues the site makes a priority. If one of the main concerns with our site is losing the safe space that hexbear has.
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this. it was enbyphobic and generally just toxic. it always seemed to have a jab ready to go at someone. deeply unpleasant.
I’m also ND and it should absolutely not be a pass to being toxic. as an example, experiencing RSD doesn’t give you a free pass to be cruel to others.
hexbear isn’t somehow ableist for keeping this safe space for everyone. I think DroneRights honestly got waaaay more slack from the mods than an account would typically.
just replying again to thank you for putting some of the examples into a single post. it’s honestly exhausting seeing the banning of an account like DroneRights that was transphobic and hostile held up as an example of hexbear not being inclusive enough.
I really wish its ban hadn’t been folded into a wider discussion about accessibility because that’s something that should be talked through. I think there are ways Lemmy as a whole could improve.
I’m not sure if I’m tired or missing context or what, but I don’t see how the quoted text is racist? I’m admittedly having a hard time parsing it, but it seems to be saying that the definition of whiteness and other racial terms is arbitrary and politically motivated (which is true, of course).
I think because its trying to equivicate white supremecy with the nonexistent notion of Han Chinese supremecy
Ohhh, yeah. That makes sense.
It’s also incredibly shitty to say “Everyone in the Balkans is white and therefore they should get over themselves” as if it’s that simple. I don’t know if that’s racist, per se, but it’s reductive and needlessly provocative. Why tolerate it?
Also true. My eyes kind of glazed over the Balkans part because I couldn’t figure out what that one was even trying to say.
I think that’s a good indicator of a problem in itself. Not that everyone should be expected to communicate perfectly, but being consistently confusing or obtuse is a sign that someone might be trolling, or is just wasting everyone’s time by being careless with their communication.
i’m pretty ignorant and also i don’t want to contribute to sinophobia or be tedious or derail the thread (which is why i kept deleting this comment lol), but… while it’s obviously not comparable to american racism, is it really nonexistent?
Yes, it’s not a thing outside of western orientalism. It’s also a frequent stereotype / conspiracy theory pushed by sinophobic reactionaries and ties in with some antisemitic conspiracies.
What Anarchist said is right. I would also add that its not a question of rascism per se but a power structure. Anyone from anywhere could be rascist, or bigoted, or xenophobic in some way, but there’s nothing comparable to the concept of white supremecy. The false accusation of Han supremecy is a reactionary projection of white supremecy onto a threatening nonwhite nation
I never get involved in this stuff and prefer to watch,learn, and self crit. But I have never seen a more obvious wrecker in my entire time on hexbear. I actually thought it was kinda endearing, if naive, that so many people were engaging Dronerights in good faith. IMO DroneRights was mocking ND people the entire time and taking advantage of this site’s inclusivity to see how far they could push a bit.
Yeah, doing the attack helicopter joke but actually using the language trans people to talk about gender is still doing transphobia. And shit like “asking me to relate to a neurotypical is SA” is fucked up and a dismissal of actual SV. Clearly a wrecker, and a good one at that.
“asking me to relate to a neurotypical is SA”
I didn’t even see that myself but now that I know about it, yeah, definite wrecker.
If we accept that its conception of reality (I don’t know what else to call it) was such that sharing an understanding of that was mind melding and therefore a level of intimacy equivalent to sexual activity, that seems to be self-consistent. But at that point it’s asking for people to treat something that they engage in normally day to day (communicating in order to build concensus understanding) so wildly different that it’s like, what do we even do at that point?
Exactly. And beyond that, telling someone whether neurotypical or neurodiverse in a different way than you that entertaining their worldview and having empathy is immoral is then fundamentally not distinguishable from engaging in bad faith. It’s necessary to be able to do that in order to be able to engage with someone in good faith.
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I also didn’t say anything and just lurked but this was my read on it as well.
I think it’s worth noting that being a wrecker doesn’t necessarily imply intent. A wrecker is someone who wrecks. If someone shits in the pool every time they go swimming, they’re eventually going to have to be banned from swimming in the pool. The question of whether or not DroneRights was intentionally wrecking, or why, is irrelevant if the result is the same. We can all be understanding of each other while also agreeing that we can’t let people shit in the pool.
this is a fair point, but imo intent still affects how we should respond to a person, prior to the point of banning, and how hard we try to integrate them and work through problems.
Sometimes we can educate someone who’s ignorant. Sometimes we can mediate arguments between well-meaning people who got defensive and hurt each other’s feelings. But there’s nothing we can do with someone who’s here to intentionally wreck the place.
there’s only so much effort we can put into telling them apart, but we should put in some effort
Why y’all gotta post two threads like this?
DroneRights had wrecker vibes because it made every interaction it had with any user about its particular ND and gender. That doesn’t mean it was a wrecker, just that no one could tell the difference.
To the extent that we apply the cia howto for disrupting organization to our own community moderation we can’t make a distinction between actual opposition and something else, there is simply no place for that. If the effect is the same then the outcome is the same.
This is another way in which federation is incompatible with safe spaces. We cannot be simultaneously on guard for infiltration and ferreting out bad actors and at the same time welcome all with open arms.
E: to be clear, all mods are cops, free drone rights.
i don’t have the capacity to read the whole effort post rn, but i’ll add that when DroneRights was here and posting, i just chose not to engage with it because its ideas were so foreign to me, but it seemed sincere. that seems like a good personal policy for people here to have when engaging with ideas they don’t recognize but aren’t obvious and typical wrecker shit.
Better to stay silent and be thought a fool, and all that.
all i know is that i know nothing
I’m new to Hexbear so I don’t think that I have much say in the site itself, like moderation or culture and what have you, so I intentionally avoid contributing in these respects because I don’t feel as though it’s my place to waltz into someone else’s house and start dictating my tastes in interior design, so to speak.
I guess in some ways I’m quite lucky because I got the “good at language and culture” flavour of autism instead of the “good at maths/coding” flavour of autism (although sometimes I wish I had the other way around) and that means that I’m much better at camoflauging and integrating into in-group cultures than I would otherwise be, at least the majority of the time.
While I have to admit that my use of language is still characterised by tepid ableism because I haven’t done enough work to really purge the more socially-acceptable forms of ableist tropes that I invoke, and I appreciate the call to accountability, I just wanted to say that what you said about people jumping to conclusions about things that I have said and especially choosing not to seek clarification about what I have said resonates with me. I’m precise with my language to the point of being borderline obsessive because of the cumulative effect of all the social rejection I have faced for being misinterpreted and having my meanings or my intentions mischaracterised, and even then it’s often in vain because “tone” represents so much more than just the sum total of your choice of words.
Often it feels like I’m performing an intricate dance with my phrasing to ensure that I’m not only conveying my message precisely but that my wording can’t be turned around and used against me/what I had intended to say and this mental labour is really taxing and it makes social engagement really difficult for me.
I guess I just wanted to contribute my own personal experience to give some insight into what it can be like for neurodivergent people to experience a world in which they are often vilified for what they didn’t say or for using the wrong inflection or not providing enough of the right facial expressions at the right moments etc. etc.
It can be downright crushing to face the world when you know that you’re going to be held accountable for someone else’s interpretation of your words and the more you try to explain your intentions and your meaning, the more you are perceived to be trying to justify yourself and the more you are intepreted as being combative.
There’s a reason why autistic people often experience verbal shutdowns (i.e. “selective” mutism) and I think a large part of that is by facing the seemingly impossible situation where words get you into trouble with people and the more you talk, the deeper a hole it digs for you despite your best intentions. Of course, not responding is also an implicit admission of culpability and so you’re left in a double-bind where it’s easier to just disengage and avoid socialising entirely.
And this is all coming from a personal who is gifted when it comes to language and culture. I can’t imagine what it would be like if I didn’t have the skills that I do in this respect.
TL;DR: There’s a reason why The Stranger by Camus is one of my favourite books
“good at language and culture” flavour of autism instead of the “good at maths/coding” flavour of autism
fun fact, you can actually have both.
I’m precise with my language to the point of being borderline obsessive because of the cumulative effect of all the social rejection I have faced for being misinterpreted and having my meanings or my intentions mischaracterised, and even then it’s often in vain because “tone” represents so much more than just the sum total of your choice of words.
i’m really glad to know it’s not just me
I mean, coding is just another language as is mathematics (in a certain sense) so that tracks.
On the other hand, this fact aggravates my constant feelings of inadequacy lol.
if it makes you feel any better, i also am so burned out that i can’t be employed or touch grass rn. also, if you’re here, you don’t actually need to know the details of how “AI” works (for example) to know why it’s a grift.
I just made a post about some of these issues as well. Your writing about how you use hyper-precise language really resonates with me as well. I find myself rehearsing speech and getting very frustrated when I can’t find the exact perfect word to convey my meaning, because I hate being misunderstood and then attacked over it. It’s very frustrating when even my most precise words are misconstrued because someone didn’t like the “tone” or finds some other such “fault” with my words that wasn’t intended.
It can be downright crushing to face the world when you know that you’re going to be held accountable for someone else’s interpretation of your words and the more you try to explain your intentions and your meaning, the more you are perceived to be trying to justify yourself and the more you are intepreted as being combative.
I have seen this happen, and once or twice I have experienced it, and it’s infuriating lol
Someone who half understood where Dronerights was coming from I don’t think it was a wrecker. It seemed rather hyperfocused on it’s own experiences to it’s detriment which is a shame. I can understand people confusion at dronesrights it was definitely operating on some unusual paradigms but as someone who is part of some weirder circles they seemed genuine and earnest to me.
There is definitely a culture on this site of not accepting alternative views and ironically a bit of hivemind of correct beliefs probably due to the ML tendencies of this site. I mostly just keep my head down by not posting anything too out there on here but I’m lucky to be able to compartmentalise myself very easily other users especially the neurodiverse don’t have it so easy.
I am believer in Advaita Vedanta so I thought dronesrights was very interesting and sparked some great conversation and I’m sorry to it is gone. It posted a few threads which people could have very easily just not engaged if they couldn’t do it in good faith.
It seemed rather hyperfocused on it’s own experiences to it’s detriment which is a shame.
I didn’t say anything at the time, but what threw me off was the talk of how everyone else’s lived experience was false/illusory (specifically, that the drone/swarm perspective was universally applicable and that billions of other human beings were living a lie of false consciousness/self). I go out of my way to accept different subjective experiences and perspectives whenever I can. When one such experience haver says the rest of us are inherently deluded/wrong and that that one perspective is the key bearer of unique irrefutable truth, that’s where I dig my heels in.
I engaged with it and appreciated its conversation. I felt invalidated when it would respond as it wouldn’t acknowledge the things I said. I don’t think it was an issue, it’s something I expect with someone who is neurodivergent or neurodiverse.
I am a bit more sensitive and have a bunch of false positives with regards to invalidation, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
I value your perspective and I think I can see how you would see that more generously than I did.
Crossposting since the other thread is locked, mostly just because I wanted to thank the ND comrade (/u/anarchist) who replied there to affirm my post. I’m not ND, so if comrades said I were in the wrong, I’d be open to crit, but seems like my take is reasonable/not terrible, so putting it over here:
These takes are entirely understandable for DroneRights to have, given how it views itself as a non-person.
I feel like if anything this esoteric identity was weaponised against those members of our community that were constantly fighting to defend. Also, while I’m all for treating non-persons with kindness and care
the fact is animals can’t weaponize their non-personhood the way that this account did.I just go back to what I thought before, just because it sees itself as a non-person it doesn’t give it the right to be transphobic. Neurodiversity isn’t an excuse to engage in erasure. We can’t carve out some exception that our ND comrades can erase trans people because they’re ND.
And I still don’t see why there’s such defense of an account that engaged in blatant transphobia. Straight up, if you use pronouns like the account did (AND INSIST UPON THEM TO OTHERS), then the turn to
cw transphobic material
Ackshuwally they/them isn’t an identity and doesn’t exist
Doesn’t make sense. Even if you are neurodiverse, how the fuck isn’t this some massive cognitive dissonance/hypocrisy. Again, ND isn’t an excuse to engage in this kind of behavior, all the more that the account frequently noted its own pronouns.
I mean is it too much to ask that a ND person respect the existence of our trans comrades?
thank you for reposting that here. As an ND person, I really appreciate how well you said this.
There are fundamental pragmatic issues with engaging in good faith with someone when your most basic axioms are fundamentally incompatible - and that goes both ways. If you are someone who deeply holds beliefs in, say, solipsism, rejection of the assumption that there is such a thing as reality, then having a good faith conversation with someone else about anything will likely eventually just be a conversation about your basic ways to understand, because those elements are so fundamental that you cannot suspend them for the sake of understanding as you don’t have anything left to understand with. So all you’re left with are discussions about the fundamentals, and if you can’t have those in good faith ( I don’t believe that the ways that the user engaged with people who, say, rely on the assumption that there are things that are real was productive, and at some point it was simply calling other people ignorant for not accepting that framework, which stretches the very limit of good faith), then it’s over.
I don’t believe that refusing to accept such a strongly alien framework means that you are NDphobic. There are just limits to the extent at which someone can accept a different conceptual framework, and that’s okay. Calling people NDphobic or neuronormative because of that is deeply problematic, even if it’s deeply held, and I think it may be problematic enough to be called reactionary. Plenty of neurotypical people are solipsists or have basic conceptual frameworks that are far outside the norm, and if there is some kind of neurodivergence which imposes a framework that is completely alien to even the slightest realism (I don’t believe there is, fwiw), then it being rejected isn’t moreso a consequence of how thinking works in the abstract than of neuronormative thinking.
I never really interacted with DroneRights but early in my self-discovery I interacted with more than a handful of systems. I never really got the concept but I understood it and accepted the why of it.
But the part that raised a few red flags for me was the obsession over the word narcissistic. To me, the way DroneRights broached the topic echoed the way terfs and transphobes speak about trans people being
phobic rhetoric
‘narcissists who want to change the way we speak and to indulge their delusions and mental illnesses.’
…which made me mad uncomfy.
However, I still feel the way the situation was handled by the community was not so great regardless of whether or not it was a wrecker. I don’t know what the right way to go about it would have been, but instantly assuming a user presenting as someone ND is acting in bad faith because of a few missteps closes the door on potential ND users acting in good faith.
Generally, if someone comes in with a new account and immediately starts in on creating a struggle session, it’s been a reliable indicator they were not here in good faith.
While I think we should always try and see how we can be more accepting, part of how Hexbear has been able to stay a safe space is that we don’t put up with hostile / toxic users.
I was starting to get really uncomfortable with enbyphobic DroneRights was getting and the amount of generally transphobic dog whistles kept adding up. I’m glad the mods stepped in, being told my pronouns don’t matter was really invalidating.
I’m quite bummed out that DroneRights was banned. I had seen its post about sex and I found its ideas to be really interesting. I honestly usually just try to avoid site drama for the sake of my own mental health, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t concerned about getting dogpiled here for seriously posting about issues around transmisogyny and kink. I definetly think the site could benefit from being less aggressive towards ‘weird’ people.
I’ve also found that just not really engaging, I guess, with, neurodiversities and identities that I do not understand until I know more is a really good strategy. Even if I don’t really get what someone’s talking about I still try to listen and be tolerating as best I can. Sometimes it does make me a bit uncomfortable but that’s not a problem, a little bit of discomfort is more than worth being able to hear someone out and eventually extend toleration to a new group of people (or non-people!).
I was one of the people dogpiling on DroneRights early on, because it looked an awful lot like a stereotypical new user that tries to dive right into starting a struggle session.
Mods deleted some of my comments, which turned out to be the right call. After reading more of its posting, it became clear that it was actually engaging in good faith, and had a lot of insight to share.
I wish there’d been an opportunity to see some of its less provocative content first. Starting out with the provocative content is a Hexbear faux pas, but it shouldn’t bar someone from being part of the community.
starting out with the most provocative content isn’t just a hexbear faux pas.
“hey i’m so excited to be here for the first day of work! wheres my desk? and coffees in the break room? oh, pleasure to meet you denise! i’m xXthrowawayXx and the DPRK is more of a democracy than amerikkka!”
But youre rite tho
if a user posts something that seems unintentionally harmful or reactionary, ask them what they meant by that comment. Don’t immediately go on the attack.
This x10,000
your interrogatives are crucial! Lead with a question first. Better to regret treating someone with sincerity than to regret treating them with derision.
Has expressed a desire for tone indicators like /s to be normalized and encouraged on the site, which I would agree with. Having /s and other tone indicators would help users with interpreting comments in they way they are intended, and /s being from reddit is not a good enough reason to not use it.
Personally, I’ve been using full italics to indicate something should be read in A Voice. What that voice is, is up to word choice and context. But it seems to have worked at communicating that what I’m writing shouldn’t be read as an earnest statement. I like it better than the /s, 'cus jockulation encompasses more than just sarcasm. For example,
Good after-the-noon, Sir. It has been such a dull, dreary evening; I thought we might liven things up, eh? I’ve had the maid set a kettle boiling, how’s about we throw this pocket full of coins at the poor?
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