On Buzzly and Purification by Fire
Mar. 24th, 2022 10:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osteophage[Note: this post was originally made to Pillowfort on March 24, 2022.]
A few thoughts about the March 24th "Moving Forward" statement from the current dev team of Buzzly.
Previously, I discussed the community poll, which I argue was underhanded and inflammatory in its design. If you disagree with my assessment of the poll, the place to argue with me about that would be on that post.
From the outset there was a lot of speculation about how to understand the motivations behind this poll. Some people saw it as a transparent attempt to manufacture (the appearance of) support for particular policies. Some people saw it as a deliberate attempt to get a rise out of people. The current dev team is maintaining otherwise.
In the March 24th statement, ChStark and the rest of the team claim that the poll was genuinely intended to measure community perspectives. They say that they wanted to create "a mechanism to discover and show the community what the community wants" and that "we wanted to use these questions in order to create a 'mod' guide based on what the community wants out of the site." Supposing we buy that for a second, the poll was horribly designed for that purpose.
However, this expression of motives is at odds with other comments ChStark has made and even other parts of the statement. As discussed on other posts, he seems to hold a positive view of backlash against the poll and has described the resulting exodus in purifying terms. Statements like "If you read between the lines, it's going great actually" make it sound like outrage was the intended outcome. Statements like "I hope this site passes for [sic] this cleanse and makes a better site" refer to the situation as a "cleanse." The wording of the March 24th "Moving Forward" statement also contains similar language, referring to the expulsion of angry users as "an opportunity to cleanse (and help) the community." Most of those who left are implied to be collectively "toxic," and those who stayed are thanked for being "critical thinkers" and "the exact kind of people we want." All together, it reflects a perspective that some parts of the userbase were/are inherently rotten and that the site must be purified of their presence.
Let's imagine, for sake of argument, that this is entirely true. Let's imagine that a part of the Buzzly userbase was made up of absolutely irrational, vicious people who could not conceivably reasoned with. In our hypothetical scenario here, I would have two things to say about the dev team's choice of strategy:
1) Expulsion of unhappy users is in conflict with their own stated goals to merely measure, listen, and bend to community will. In the March 24th statement they describe the poll as an effort to "discover and show the community what the community wants," to "detect and share the sentiment of the community," and to create site policies based on "what the community wants out of the site." If the community hates the poll and hates current leadership, then that itself is its own message about "what the community wants."
2) The thing about purification by fire is that fire is not a precision instrument. The people alarmed and disappointed by this behavior are not solely, exclusively "toxic" people who lash out violently in anger. In ChStark's effort to "cleanse" the site of specific people, he has burned other people, too.
I've been thinking about how to describe these mistakes, and initially one of the terms to come to mind was "unprofessional," but there's a lot of classist baggage attached to a concept like that. I want to distance my critique from a lot of what that could entail. So instead, let me put it like this:
Regardless of whether you think Buzzly should or shouldn't reverse its content restrictions, behavior like this from the people in charge does not instill confidence. These are bizarre and reckless choices that have antagonized many people in an attempt to deliberately run them off the site, while demonstrating sharp internal divisions among the staff and sending mixed messages about leadership goals. And that itself -- irrespective of anything else -- is an irresponsible way to run a site.
In closing, I think the patterns here merit comparison to other start-up social media projects. The Buzzly approach to a userbase "cleanse" reminds me the Fanexus application form, which was predicated on preemptively excluding certain demographics of people rather than simply requiring members to abide by certain rules. This is a fundamentally wrongheaded way to approach a general-purpose fan site or art site. The point of a general-purpose site is not for everyone to be your friend. It's to provide a service, and to make sure that people abide by certain basic rules about how to use that service. A selective approach to the userbase can make sense for narrowly-focused sites and small communities, but in general (and especially at scale), it is absolutely not a foolproof strategy to ensure that everyone behaves themselves.
A few thoughts about the March 24th "Moving Forward" statement from the current dev team of Buzzly.
Note if this is the first you're hearing about Buzzly drama, you may want to go run a search for "buzzly" and "buzzly art." Some of the places this situation has been discussed are bluestone's Buzzly WTF post and PineAura's Buzzly Situation post.
In this post, I am more narrowly focused on the team's statement of goals/intentions and why their chosen strategy for those ends is absurd.Previously, I discussed the community poll, which I argue was underhanded and inflammatory in its design. If you disagree with my assessment of the poll, the place to argue with me about that would be on that post.
From the outset there was a lot of speculation about how to understand the motivations behind this poll. Some people saw it as a transparent attempt to manufacture (the appearance of) support for particular policies. Some people saw it as a deliberate attempt to get a rise out of people. The current dev team is maintaining otherwise.
In the March 24th statement, ChStark and the rest of the team claim that the poll was genuinely intended to measure community perspectives. They say that they wanted to create "a mechanism to discover and show the community what the community wants" and that "we wanted to use these questions in order to create a 'mod' guide based on what the community wants out of the site." Supposing we buy that for a second, the poll was horribly designed for that purpose.
However, this expression of motives is at odds with other comments ChStark has made and even other parts of the statement. As discussed on other posts, he seems to hold a positive view of backlash against the poll and has described the resulting exodus in purifying terms. Statements like "If you read between the lines, it's going great actually" make it sound like outrage was the intended outcome. Statements like "I hope this site passes for [sic] this cleanse and makes a better site" refer to the situation as a "cleanse." The wording of the March 24th "Moving Forward" statement also contains similar language, referring to the expulsion of angry users as "an opportunity to cleanse (and help) the community." Most of those who left are implied to be collectively "toxic," and those who stayed are thanked for being "critical thinkers" and "the exact kind of people we want." All together, it reflects a perspective that some parts of the userbase were/are inherently rotten and that the site must be purified of their presence.
Let's imagine, for sake of argument, that this is entirely true. Let's imagine that a part of the Buzzly userbase was made up of absolutely irrational, vicious people who could not conceivably reasoned with. In our hypothetical scenario here, I would have two things to say about the dev team's choice of strategy:
1) Expulsion of unhappy users is in conflict with their own stated goals to merely measure, listen, and bend to community will. In the March 24th statement they describe the poll as an effort to "discover and show the community what the community wants," to "detect and share the sentiment of the community," and to create site policies based on "what the community wants out of the site." If the community hates the poll and hates current leadership, then that itself is its own message about "what the community wants."
2) The thing about purification by fire is that fire is not a precision instrument. The people alarmed and disappointed by this behavior are not solely, exclusively "toxic" people who lash out violently in anger. In ChStark's effort to "cleanse" the site of specific people, he has burned other people, too.
I've been thinking about how to describe these mistakes, and initially one of the terms to come to mind was "unprofessional," but there's a lot of classist baggage attached to a concept like that. I want to distance my critique from a lot of what that could entail. So instead, let me put it like this:
Regardless of whether you think Buzzly should or shouldn't reverse its content restrictions, behavior like this from the people in charge does not instill confidence. These are bizarre and reckless choices that have antagonized many people in an attempt to deliberately run them off the site, while demonstrating sharp internal divisions among the staff and sending mixed messages about leadership goals. And that itself -- irrespective of anything else -- is an irresponsible way to run a site.
In closing, I think the patterns here merit comparison to other start-up social media projects. The Buzzly approach to a userbase "cleanse" reminds me the Fanexus application form, which was predicated on preemptively excluding certain demographics of people rather than simply requiring members to abide by certain rules. This is a fundamentally wrongheaded way to approach a general-purpose fan site or art site. The point of a general-purpose site is not for everyone to be your friend. It's to provide a service, and to make sure that people abide by certain basic rules about how to use that service. A selective approach to the userbase can make sense for narrowly-focused sites and small communities, but in general (and especially at scale), it is absolutely not a foolproof strategy to ensure that everyone behaves themselves.
