Cw: discussion of common cw tags and subjects, including violence, sexual violence, animal products, and others.
Bluesky’s trust and safety (betrayal and bullshit) team is engaged in high fuckery and we’re likely going to get some new folks coming in from bksy.
Now’s probably a good time to revisit content warnings and when and how to use them.
Content warnings are just that; a warning about the content of a post or submission. They grew out of the older notion of “trigger warnings” as an acknowledgement that no one could reasonably guess what might be triggering to other people. Instead content warnings are a more general heads up that a discussion contains material that may be upsetting or unwanted by some people.
It’s a friendly warning so folks can decide whether or not they’d like to engage with the discussion.
Note on “nsfw”. When assessing if something is not safe for work ask yourself if a corporate HR rep who hated you would use it as evidence to get you fired.
Animal products - posts discussion animal products like meat or leather should have cw: animal products or cw: meat in the post title or header. Posts should usually be labelled nsfw and it’s courteous to put discussions inside a spoiler tag so people can choose if they want to open it or not.
Sexual violence or sexual assault - posts discussion sexual violence, sexual assault, intimate partner violencen, or sexual violence against kids, all need to be labelled with a cw. Sv is commomly used for sexual violence, sa for sexual assault, csa or csam for violence against children. Posts should always have a nsfw tag or be placed in a spoiler tag.
Violence - posts discussing violence, torture, and related topics should have a cw as such and use spoiler tags and nsfw tags as appropriate.
Graphic images - graphic images of violence, combat footage, severe injusry or death, should be labelled as such and should always have an appropriate cw and be placed in spoiler tags and marked with the nsfw.
Bigotry - sexism, racism, tranphobia, misogyny, ethnic bigotry, ableism, and really any structural violence generally merits a cw. If it’s graphic or upsetting putting the material in a spoiler tag is polite.
Some other things that may merit a cw
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common phobias liek spiders and clowns
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particularly awful politics
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notorious or hated political figures
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Hexbear pop culture enemies - for instance superhero movies are often semi-seriously marked with a “capeshit” warning
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topics discussing religious trauma
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sexual topics and general horniness as a courtesy to our ace and otherwise not-interested comrades
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medical trauma and topics that are frequent sites of medical violence.
If there was a “rule” it’d be; if you think someoen might find your post upsetting it’s usually wroth writing a one or two word cw and sticking it at the top of the post. It’s a courteous way to give people a heads up on what the discussion is about so if it’s content they don’t want to engage with they can skip it and keep browsing.
ngl, kinda weird to see the newbies with their actual faces for their pfp. I’m not sure if we ever had an explicit rule against that, but it’s something that I’ve noticed.
Twitter and its descendants are much more about building a personal brand. This place is more like the old internet where no one felt comfortable doxing themselves. Hopefully, our ways rub off on the newbies a bit. Opsec is going to be especially important in the coming fash wave.
I kinda think it should be an explicit rule against having your actual face, but that’s just me.
What if you use your actual face, but you’re famous, so no one would think it’s actually Jerma?
I know you’re not actually Jerma because I’m actually Jerma
mom said its my turn to actually be jeram
What if we had a Jerma week where everyone’s pfp got changed to a different random image of Jerma?
Dibs on JermaThing
I agree
I was just posting about this in the mega but I didn’t want to say it to every new person and scare them unnecessarily. As an explicitly leftist site, we’re a bigger target for harassment from external right-wingers and so being able to link you on Hexbear to you on Bluesky and Twitter, or especially to real life, is probably not good. Let alone the amount of ironic memes that would probably look bad out of context to the average person.
I think that’s a great idea. I don’t particularly like the idea of the culture here becoming more like twitter.
I posted my face but I was in full halloween makeup
I have posted a few pics of myself but that is only cuz all the cops/fash in my area already know who I am.
If you aren’t a known entity already I get the anonymity but at the same time if you aren’t going that hard IRL then how can you even call yourself a revolutionary?
I didn’t know common phobias were a CW thing, fine by me but I didn’t know clowns or spiders needed a cw. I’m certain I’ve seen uncensored clownposting. I’m not arguing against it, just don’t remember that being a thing.
Given how frequently the jonkler is posted and it’s got its own ream of emojis i think it’d be a cultural shift to get people to consistently cw for clowns
I had legit forgot that he was ever supposed to be a clown. He’s just a guy in a purple suit now.
They call him the jonkler but you never see him jonk
sad
Yeah, seems odd to need to ce something we have emojis of. Clowns may have just been a bad choice of example there.
Not disagreeing with this but I find it funny:
Note on “nsfw”. When assessing if something is not safe for work ask yourself if a corporate HR rep who hated you would use it as evidence to get you fired.
Most corporate HR reps would use literally any posting whatsoever in Hexbear as a reason to get you fired.
NSFW:
spoiler
Unionize
this is gonna sound gross for a second, but imagine hexbear was Reddit.
You have to
yourself nowBan yourself and ban everyone around you!
PLEASE DON’T! Last time they did that it ended in an absolute shitshow.Wait, Alaskaball banned themself?
Damn, this might be the biggest influx of new users we’ve had since federation, how many followers did the bluesky account that gave us a shout out have?
30k
30k
What was the account?
trans.bsky.social
Straw polling found us majority trans among respondents even before this. If there was any doubt before, we DEFINITELY outnumber cis people here now
Culturally, we’re irony and sarcasm-heavy, but often do not label it with tags like /s or /j. If you’re not sure, look for context. I think this aspect of the banter here can really throw people for a loop
True dat. If you’re not sure what someone means you can usually ask them to clarify. There are layers and layers and layers of in-jokes and weird site culture things.
this is something about site culture that might end up changing in the future in an effort to be more accommodating to ND users tbh. For now, new users should know that if you ask “is this a bit?” it is generally honored here that you’ll be answered truthfully first (and maybe jokingly after someone clears it up).
I thrive in the land of ‘is this a bit?’ And I feel like needing to tell the truth when asked is a fair compromise. Being confusing can often be a valuable part of a joke, it’s how you get someone to accidentally tee up your punchline
It’s very context dependent. If it’s a long timer user and they are saying something absurdly reactionary, it’s probably them doing a bit. Check with them if you aren’t sure lol
especially if it’s coming from an account who posts alot about dedollarization (you know who you are)
mfw the rest of Hexbear didn’t recognize “Biden is the lesser evil when it comes to queer rights” as an elaborate bit.
Biden is the lesser evil when it comes to queer rights
This, but unironically. Biden was content to ignore us and let states do whatever. Trump is openly and actievly hostile to trans people.
It’s one of very few things that differentiates them to me
I Really appreciate the specific examples, I frequently have trouble interpreting what needs cw/NSFW and what doesn’t, partially because I have autism and partially because I have never really worked in a setting with corporate hr reps. Thank you Frank
When it comes to content warnings I try to be specific about the content and to give a estimation of how in depth the content is because I think it’s helpful for people to make an informed decision. I also try to remember to bold my content warnings and to put them on a separate line, often I will put them halfway into a comment right before the CW content appears as that way a person can still read part of a response while choosing to skip over a detailed example that may be triggering.
I’m going to give some examples of what I think are better and worse content warnings to illustrate my point in quoted comments:
CW: violence
I disagree with your point because sometimes violence is necessary to defend yourself from harm. For example, take a child who fights back against their abuser…So in this one the CW isn’t as visually distinct so it’s easier to skip over if you’re skimming and it also excludes a person from reading a response before the potentially triggering content. Also “violence” isn’t really descriptive - is it shouting? Is it a gunshot? Is it something really gruelling like you’d expect from a gory horror movie? This makes informed consent much trickier and it unintentionally excludes people.
Another example:
I don’t agree with the absolute pacifist position like you’ve described. I think that justice is something that needs to be defended, with violence if necessary [note here that just mentioning violence in the abstract isn’t a problem imo because what are you going to do - say CW: violence before you mention the concept of violence?]. As MLK put it, the absence of the absence of tension vs. a positive peace, which requires the presence of justice, is an important distinction to make.
[CW: Brief discussion of child abuse and neglect in the abstract]
For example, only the most rabidly dogmatic pacifist would denounce a victim of child abuse for resorting to an act of violence to defend themselves unless it was wildly incommensurate with the threat or perceived threat that they were defending themselves against. Maybe they would take a different position for a child that is being subjected to serious neglect like a child who is being denied meals but I’m uncertain tbh.
In this example, if a person decides to skip the comment because of the content warning they can still participate in the discussion to a large extent, even if they opt out of the last part so it’s less exclusionary by its structure.
The content warning is also visually distinct and it’s descriptive - it provides a good example of what to expect in the next part and who the language will be addressing. If it wasn’t an abstract discussion I might say something like “Detailed personal experience of psychological abuse as a child who went through it” or “Description of fictional animal abuse in a film” because these can be very different experiences for someone to read about and they can have very different impacts.
When it comes to really intense stuff often I’ll just put a CW at the top saying something like “Really in-depth discussions of transphobia, SH, suicide - if this stuff can be too much for you just skip the comment because you won’t get anything out positive of reading this comment.” such as in a case where maybe I’m really getting into the weeds and educating someone on a topic and encouraging them to shift their opinions. Or I might say “Blanket CW for very detail discussion of most/all forms of child abuse” rather than attempting to make a laundry list of each type of abuse. That sort of thing.
Anyway I’m not saying that this is how everyone must do their CWs but I feel like this is a good way to go about doing better, more helpful CWs.
Good stuff, thank you. I’m a BlueSky user, I’m gonna stay there for now but I’ll be active here as well. Glad to have found the place!
For those that asked, Bluesky mods let a certain well known “polite transphobe” “journalist” stay on the platform who is already getting around blocks to harass ppl
We are sooooo much cooler and more fun than a Twitter clone. There is genuine community to be found here that kinda give the old web 1.0 bulletin board forum feel. There’s a lot of posters but not so many you won’t start to get to know recurring names and kinda some of who they are through their posts over time. It’s less of a reddit or Twitter kinda scroll madness algorithmically designed to keep you there with millions of random posters you’ll never see or hear from again. We have really got something special going on here compared to the rest of the post social media internet. If I found out a poster here lived near me irl I’d help them move if they were moving. It’s really nice here and I hope you think so too.
I’m excited to be here! I was just talking with someone irl about how we need to go back to the old forums type social media stuff and Hexbear drops into my life. I’m pretty isolated irl so it’ll be great to meet some new comrades and community
Posting everywhere else is a frustrating ordeal of lib and chud debate nerds, civility perverts and just annoying people. Not having to restate tired arguments over and over and occasionally productive conversation going that isn’t derailed by interlopers is just really nice. And that’s the baseline. We got movie nights, more emoji than words in every language combined, the news mega is genuinely the best news source you’ll find. Hexbear has it.
Yeah it gets exhausting. Like, it’s important to do, but not everybody can and it shouldn’t be something you have to deal with sixteen times a day while posting about your life
You should see the absolute beauty of when a reddit brained debate nerd comes here and tries the same shit that works everywhere else. They are hit with well written effort posts with linked sources as well as additional reading material and if they refuse to engage with the material in good faith (they usually don’t bother to read the sources painstakingly cited and easily hyperlinked) and double down or make Cleary ignorant rebuttals…then its a feeding frenzy. Childish name calling and personal attacks are fair game within reason, we don’t do slurs or encourage self harm etc of course. But it’s totally fine to absolutely rip libs, chuds and your typical internet dorks a new one. We have a user that signs off every post with ‘Death to America’. You can actively celebrate and wish for the death of your enemies and be as cruel as they deserve about it openly! You should search the day kissinger died. If you don’t want to see your landlord dead you’re less welcome here.
Lmao well written and sourced rebuttles are my wheelhouse! I did feel glee when Kissenger died and the corp that owns my complex can fuck themselves. Landlords are parasites. They once gave me a lease violation because I failed to follow their confusing instructions for the annual inspection AND listed it as “abuse to staff.”
You’re gonna really like it here.
Which Journo?
Jesse Singal
Although calling him a journalist is a gigantic stretch. The man is just three bigots and a PR rep in a trench coat going “just say you’re just asking questions about tricky science!”
Lmfao how the hell did Jesse Singal break Bluesky. Of all the people I expected to sink that Habakkuk of a ship, he was not on my list.
Yeah, I would not personally call him a journalist, lol. But then considering the primary role of journalism over the last couple of has been to explain why it’s good that Israel is shooting children in the head, maybe it’s appropriate
I also don’t consider Jesse Singal a journalist, although that is solely because I don’t consider him at all.
The libs instantly rolled over and showed their bellies when he showed up. Par for the course
I’m always happy to have new comrades but at this point I’m also wondering what in god’s name is happening at bluesky? This is far more than the slow trickle of newcomers we usually get
Oh okay I just read up, that’s fucked
also a big account promoted us to their followers so thats another reason for the wave of users
Hexbear pop culture enemies - for instance superhero movies are often semi-seriously marked with a “capeshit” warning
We should actually stop doing this. The function of Content Warnings is to help people avoid upsetting material, not to signal that something is disapproved of. Using them ironically or “semi-seriously” makes them less effective in their actual function.
I agree, ironic CWs are kind of a slap in the face to people who need to avoid certain things for whatever reason.
I think we should start tagging drug use as well, my own trigger.
I think there’s an additional but related issue here:
If CWs are used to signal disapproval, and if an oppressed population wants to discuss triggering content that is relevant to their situation, then the CWs on their discussions are likely to be interpreted by some as disapproval of the oppressed population itself.
And it this happens, I think some people are likely to push back on CWs in general as opposed to just the cases where they were misused.
I love CWs and how they are normalized on hexbear. I don’t want to see their benefits undermined, or to see them weaponized against the people they are supposed to protect.
Maybe we should adopt a new tag to differentiate the uses of CWs? Leave CWs to their original purpose, and perhaps adopt a “BPW” (blood pressure warning) for the semi-serious applications like capeshit.
Or we could just treat CWs and the people they are designed to benefit with proper respect, but that seems like it’s asking a lot.
We ahould actually not stop doing this; superhero films are copaganda-lite at best. That can be a serious trigger for someone, especially racialised comrades who bear the deadly brunt of hero culture
superhero movies are often semi-seriously marked with a “capeshit” warning
I fuckin love this dumbass website without an ounce of irony. Based.
On the sexual violence subheading though, I thought I recalled a post about how shortforms in CWs are a bad idea since not everyone is familiar?
CW? Like country-western?
No, like The CW that TV station that replaced The WB after it replaced UPN
I didn’t know cw was Warner bros until now. The cw should air Babylon 5 reruns so tv can be slightly better if that’s the case.
I feel like using shortforms is good practice regardless, though, because it adds a layer of abstraction so it’s less triggering? Meanwhile if someone who doesn’t want to see some discussion of SA but doesn’t know what SA means, they’ll only get burned once, which is still unfortunate but seems preferable to the alternative IMO.
I can see this argument as well, Idk.
Why is there a sudden influx of blusky folks? Did they do a lefty-purge over there or something?
Tldr: they failed to ban some fascist releasing screenshots of someones medical records which goes against bluesky ToS (ulness you are a fascist, then you can to do whatever you want apparently)
Some power poster or something over there linked to us for all the people there who are mad that twitter 2 is also letting transphobes do transphobia
I will not cw spiders they are cute and my friends
How about a CW for regular spiders (that are scary and gross) but leave them off for jumping spiders (that are curious and cute)?
Tbf I really like some non-vegan foods but I still gotta CW them. And I love
(non-parasocially) but she still gets a CW: clown. Sometimes it really be your own.
what happened, did bluesky finally do a compaction cycle and start purging leftists?
As part of the general Democratic Party turn against trans people, they’re allowing transphobes to operate on their site
Sounds like it’s basically twitter a la /r/politics.
holy shit, succ never changes
Does anyone know if there’s a way to filter out posts with cws or specific words? Not really asking for myself but I’d imagine that would be functionally some people would appreciate
It was brought up to the Lemmy devs and they plan to work on it, but have other things they’re getting done first, so no ETA. https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/5188
I gotta learn Rust better to contribute, that would be a very high value feature.
That’s a really good suggestion. I think users can tag sensitive content, that would warrant a CW, as NSFW. Then other users who do not want to see that stuff can toggle NSFW content off on their profile. It’s not the same bit it’s a workaround (fwiw, not all cw content is currently nsfw tagged and afaik it’s jot a requirement)
Thank Bast there are CW for spiders. I’m a horrible arachnophobe, and my true dread is scrolling a site and BOOM! unexpected eight legged hell spawn
I’m right there with you. the cold engine of logic that is my thinky side brain knows better, but my sleepy soft and occasionally jumpy bonobo brain will make me screech and leap from wherever I lie if I get a sudden spider jump scare.
