Hey all,
The mod team is well aware that attacks on the art style of someone’s project are often proxies for attacks on their queerness. It’s difficult, in general, to prove intent about something like that, and so we err on the side of making mod decisions on the basis of things we can be confident of, but let nobody think that we don’t see what they’re doing. Discussion of the art style of a technical project are already off-topic per a highly similar situation four years ago.
In that spirit, then, of focusing our enforcement on things where there’s clear intent: his “coded as underage” wording is a veiled insinuation of pedophilia. Because it’s ambiguous, it likely doesn’t rise to the level of being legally actionable defamation, and because it’s clear that the only basis of it is that you don’t like the art or the person who commissioned it, it likely also doesn’t rise to the level of requiring us to notify law enforcement about your supposed suspicion, but these are things we assess every time something like this happens. If mods had any reason at all to think you were basing your ambiguous almost-accusation on anything of substance, we would have no choice but to get authorities involved, because that’s what it means to run any sort of social venue, online or off. I think you may feel as if your words have no consequences, perhaps because of some false idea that the internet isn’t real life, but I can assure you, they do.
For anyone who lacks context: Unfounded accusations of pedophilia have long been thrown at queer people. This comes in a context where certain alleged democracies have been attempting to cast any form of queerness as inherently sexual and inherently pedophilic, with the likely end-goal of treating all queer people as criminals. Spreading this rhetoric actively helps that agenda. Again, we don’t know what’s in anyone’s hearts, but there is really no other way to take the remark. Lobste.rs is not a place for promoting hatred.
Additionally, @friendlysock, you seem to know that there is no evidence for your insinuation, since your attempted clarification dropped the claim without mentioning it, even after you were asked again. Even if it was said in the heat of the moment, and even if you were simply imitating a form of hate that you’ve seen other people express without fully thinking through its implications, this rises to the level of requiring a public apology. The mod team has talked this over and, while we have various perspectives, we are all agreed that you need to apologize to @cadey so that we can all move on from this.
