Ehhh... I'll try to assume the best here and just quote what Wikipedia has to say on struggle sessions.
If you read that and still think that's an apt choice of words, then... idk? yikes?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session

Struggle sessions or denunciation rallies were violent public spectacles in Maoist China where people accused of being "class enemies" were publicly humiliated, accused, beaten and tortured by people with whom they were close. Usually conducted at the workplace, classrooms and auditoriums, "students were pitted against their teachers, friends and spouses were pressured to betray one another, [and] children were manipulated into exposing their parents". Staging, scripts and agitators were prearranged by the Maoists to incite crowd support. The aim was to instill a crusading spirit among the crowd to promote the Maoist thought reform. These rallies were most popular in the mass campaigns immediately before and after the establishment of the People's Republic of China and during the Cultural Revolution.

Regardless of where one stands on this particular topic, I don't think this is a term we should ever want associated with anything, let alone our vote discussion threads?

The discussion should be an integral part of the vote and decision making process and to me, dismissing it or shitting on in kinda stinks up the whole thing.
Dismissal, and implying the discussion is a sham, coming from someone in a position of power... I mean yea, that's kind of insulting? — not to me, but to the ideals of this place and the agora.

I can't really know your intent, and while I prefer to assume the best, it's not really a good look.

[–] imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I apologize. I acquired that term from hexbear users within the past month and I hoped to send them some kind of signal that our server was receptive to their users and not immediately hostile. Unfortunately, they still chose to be immediately hostile, so that didn't work out. I was not aware of the derivation of the term, I thought it was just a zoomer term for a thread where people were flaming each other.

It actually gives me great relief to know that there is a reason why people were so upset about that term, and yet it also makes me ashamed of myself.

The discussion should be an integral part of the vote and decision making process and to me, dismissing it or shitting on in kinda stinks up the whole thing.

I completely agree. My assumption at the time was that the discussion was yet to unfold, and the thread I was linking was merely a flame war with no productive outcome. Which is technically true.

I shouldn't have used that term without researching what it means, and I probably shouldn't have agreed to federate with hexbear in the first place. But I wanted to give them a chance, because I believe in leftist ideals and I hoped they could help us.

Honestly at this point I feel like just leaving Lemmy entirely, because I'm trying to guide this community and it's just an uphill battle that I will never win. Things have gotten distinctly more tedious in the past month, and I was hoping hexbear could inject new life into the rest of Lemmy. Now, I worry about whether there even is a viable path to relevancy for us.

I appreciate the fact that at least you gave me the benefit of the doubt, unlike many others.

[–] Natanael 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You should think over a federation policy and baseline behavior policy/ToS (and possibly disable sign-ups if you think you can't handle that right now) and discuss it with the members.

You should probably investigate what all these different groups are, and learn to recognize the signs of dishonest argumentation, like the most frequent styles of whataboutism, poisoning the well, brigading (even the non-argumentative variants which can also be called a Sybil attack, pretending to be the victim (usually using dogwhistles), etc.

If you recognize malicious tactics you're in a much better position to call bullshit on trolls (and also remember sometimes both sides on a conflict is wrong, so beware of taking sides before you know what's going on).

[–] InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

I think you're an alright person fwiw and being a mod is a very ungrateful job.
It's easy to see the stuff you wanna see and tell yourself you can just ignore the more extreme stuff.
But that's dangerously insidious.
I'm somewhat of a leftist myself, at least in today's Overton window, but I like my socialism to be bound by democracy rather than wielded as a weapon by authoritarians. I think what they're doing, especially here, is not really in good faith.

They honestly give off a lot of the same vibes as the alt-right, and it kinda reminds me of the_donald, except they're authoritarian leftists. I will always distrust authoritarians, even those I could otherwise agree with.
There's a lot of othering, a lot of brigading, a lot of populism and nationalism and very cultist vibe.

When I came here, I enjoyed the smaller communities (than reddit) and people more talking with each other and less at each other. A more human interaction, so to speak, certainly more nuanced.
Some of that is bound to degrade as the feddiverse grows in numbers, but hexbears have definitely not been a positive in that regard these last few days, certainly not the loud ones who come here.

[–] jack@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Please don't feel ashamed... Intent matters a lot, and I see you and the mod team trying your ass off to do right by our community. You made a good faith effort to connect with a bad faith community and you honestly deserve props for trying.

At hexbear, anger, conspiracy, and disrespect for everyone else is the primary focus, and leftism is nothing more than the vehicle they choose to deliver it. They actively encourage trolling and discourage philisophical deviation beyond tokenism. They actually believe the CIA is out to get them. Anyone who's not with them is a dirty liberal, Nazi, going to the gulag, etc. It's exactly the same vocabulary and mindset as the conservative extremists, or even any religious cult. At best, they believe they need to fight fire with fire, when the better answer is to smother the fire with a blanket.

They could remake the world exactly the way they claim to want, but they'd still be dickheads. We're better off without them; I get the sense they're happier without us as well.

Thanks for trying, seriously. You make this instance a better place.

[–] imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

Thank you for the kind words, it really does mean a lot to me.