 Hello and welcome to yet another episode of Angry Rans that will make me no friends whatsoever. Today we'll talk about the Hyperland project and how the developer's account has been removed from the free desktop GitLab instance and related IRC channels. The reason behind it is quite complex and it requires going back a couple of years to have full context over this story. But wait, you might say, what's the Hyperland project? And sure I could tell you all about how it's a dynamic tiling Wayland compositor based on WL roots that has explicit goal of having a super good looking design. But firstly, I don't know anything about Wayland compositors and secondly, I actually actually doesn't matter at all for this story because the reason for the ban has nothing to do with the project itself, but rather with the behavior of the lead developer as we're gonna see. So let's take a step back. And yes, factory, I know that you hate when people bring this up, but it's context, we just have to do it. So on September of 2022, an user on the Hyperland Discord changed their username to include their pronouns. This was done to have the same username as on Matrix, since Matrix did not have an about section for that. They were quickly made fun by some random user, got told that they shouldn't care about it and misgendered by a moderator within minutes. And then their username was changed again by moderator to replace them with who cares and the user couldn't change it back either. The whole thing was handled as unprofessionally as could be. Generally speaking, back then the Discord community had very light moderation and allowed even hateful content. One year later, September 2023, a user suggested to add a code of conduct to the project. The initial reaction from Backstreet main developer was... So first of all, why would I pledge to uphold any values? Seems like just inconveniencing myself. I am not able to enforce the code of conduct, neither do I want to. I just write code. If I'd want to moderate, I would spend 90% of my time reading kids arguing about bullshitting instead of coding. Generally speaking, we can see that Backstreet is very much not taking this suggestion seriously at all and even calling the master on post talking about the pronoun thing feces of a post. Eventually, Backstreet closed the issues as of topic. As a result of all of this, developer Drew Devold decides to privately contact Backstreet to talk about all of the above. Thus, Backstreet decided to run a poll on the Discord server, asking whether users felt they have experienced harassment within the community. And 40% answered they did. Let me repeat that. 40% of the people who voted in the poll claimed to have been harassed within the hyperland community, which is something. Because of that, Backstreet has since implemented a new changes in moderation of the Discord channel, and it seems like the situation is better now. He says that it's way less of a toxic hellhole, which I've checked this discussion multiple times over the past few months and I can confirm that it's okay, with multiple queer folks being able to be part of the community without issue. I still wouldn't recommend it to join it though, especially because firstly, it's still quite toxic. Here's somebody saying that developer Lüde has brain damaged, and also this new change in moderation included a complete ban over the discussion of politics and the inclusion of LGBT entrance topics into the politics label. This means that if you start talking about LGBT, you might get banned for it. However, this rule is sparingly enforced, with many people being able to discuss it even in a positive manner, which is great, but without any moderation. Do you stay away, however, from the subreddit, which even nowadays is not a place I would like to be in, so to say the least. On top of all of that, Backstreet joined the podcast Attack Over Tea by Brody Robertson. This is how he addressed the pronoun incident from a year earlier. A trans person joined the Discord server and made a big deal out of their pronouns, because they put their pronouns in their nickname and made a big deal out of them, because people were referring to them as he, which on the internet, let's be real, is the default. And so on, one of the moderators changed the pronouns in their nicknames to who curse. That was very unprofessional, but let's be real, this isn't like calling someone the n-word or something. Now, this is the worst apology you can say. First of all, they didn't make a big deal out of their pronouns, they just added them to their username and that was enough to be made fun of. And secondly, yes, being misgendered is a big deal and no calling people he is not the default on the internet, whatever that means. And finally, and this is the most important part, seeing that, yes, it was unprofessional, but it's not like I said the n-word or something is not an apology. It's right there with, I'm sorry, you got offended. There's also another apology, which by my mistake, I'm really sorry, I don't have right now on the screen, that was made in the blog post as a response to the default. And there might be the blog post hints about it, more apologies from earlier on. However, all apologies that I was able to find were in the middle of actually minimizing the thing and saying that Drew default was wrong, so I'm not totally sold on them. Overall, I think it's clear that Vaxry doesn't really understand some key points about the trans community. He actually said it himself. He used a very derogatory term for them and more recently he said that he just didn't know that you weren't supposed to use that because it doesn't keep up with the LGBT community or something. He also said, again in 2022, that we all shit on the LGBT community here along with some very dumb stuff, like about being gay is like he already want to get his like, but again, he says that he has changed since then and so has the moderation of the Discord channel. His opinions haven't changed that much though, like he more recently published a blog post minimizing this whole idea of harassment through messages. He says, I am definitely not a fan of how seemingly weak people online, especially teenagers, have become. Words are just words, somebody calling another person a retard shouldn't really be a big deal. Ultimately, without a strong mentality, you will most likely not be very successful in life, end quote. All of the above really started to become a common talk point around September of the last year when Drid of World published an article with the findings that I mentioned above. During the last few months, the story and Vaxry's very weak apologies, I think, have started circulating more and more. This brought us to the more recent events. But before we get to them, I would like to remind everybody's of today's sponsors, which is nobody actually, I don't have any sponsors. I'm only able to do all of this, which actually includes, yes, I'm not kidding, three hours of research at least, and then editing and then setting up all of the technological part of, believe me, text time. Thanks to the patrons and Libra payers and co-fires and paypollers. So if you want to chip in something to help the channel running, you're probably all screaming at me in the comments, but let's continue with the video. The Cut of Conduct group of the Free Desktop Foundation most likely heard about all of the above and after discussion decided to send an email to Vaxry. The developer that was representing the group was like, oh, I don't know how to pronounce that. I'm going to say Lyude and I'm really sorry if I get this wrong. The developer that was representing the group was Lyude Paul, though she made it clear from the email, the email was from the entire group. They warned Vaxry that the past behavior goes against the Cut of Conduct of the Free Desktop project and that if it were to continue, they would have to revoke Vaxry's access to the Free Desktop infrastructure. She does say, however, that the recent moderation changes seem to have improved the situation. The whole email actually is very kind, I think, in depth and explains really well why it's important not to see that sort of behavior in the community in the future. Now, it's worth having a discussion about this Cut of Conduct thing. The Cut of Conduct of Free Desktop cannot dictate how people should behave in the hyperland community, even the email says so, which of course has its own rules. Free Desktop is not trying to regulate that or to be an internet cop, the email is very clear on this. However, they are very much free to choose who they work with. If your actions have been violating their Cut of Conduct, even in the hyperland community they can choose not to collaborate with you. You will still be able to join the hyperland community, which has its own rules. The thing is, your actions define you, regardless of where you are. If you act in a rude and disrespectful manner, enabling or participating transphobic behavior, that's gonna define you, even in communities outside of those where you took those actions. This is especially true if you're the leader of a pretty big project, thus having a lot of attention on you and extra responsibilities. It's far for Free Desktop to say, hey, if that behavior continues, then we don't really want to collaborate with you anymore, because we do not want to associate with such behaviors. And this applies to pretty much any community or product. If I were to say something very offensive and transphobic or discriminatory on my channel, even though to be clear, I don't think that Vaxry is transphobic, this is an example. But if I were to say something offensive or transphobic or discriminatory on my channel, thus publicly and in front of thousands of people, that's gonna define who I am. And I might lose my job to that, because maybe my job doesn't want to have an employee like that. I might get thrown out of KDE, because there's a code of conduct there too. And I might even get removed from YouTube, which has its own terms of services. I would still be able to say offensive and transphobic stuff on myself, hosted space, my free speech isn't put at risk, but other projects and communities might not want to have anything to do with me. Welcome to episode one of How the World Works. Of course, Vaxry paints this in a completely different way. He talks about Red Hat wanting to be the internet police and applying the code of conduct outside their project, and that they are threatening him. By the way, this has nothing to do with Red Hat, except that Lüde uses redhat.com email address. It closes off this section with I respect everybody, everyone's rights to moderate, sorry, I respect everyone's right to freedom, to moderate their community however they want. What I don't respect is people going outside of their communities trying to enforce their own moderation rules on others, especially when it's based on outdated information and hearsay, like we're seeing in this email. And again, that's not what they're doing. It's actually very well explained in the first email. You are the leader of a somewhat known project. You're indulged in offensive behavior in the past. They're telling you that if you keep on doing that, they don't want to collaborate with you anymore. You can still do that. You just lose access to the free desktop infrastructure because they don't want to work with you. And on top of that, I would like to remind everybody that as much as Vaxry constantly tries to downplay the past issues and incidents, seeing outdated information and hearsay, we've seen multiple examples of discriminatory or insulting behavior in the community or from himself. And it's very much not hearsay, as he admitted the whole pronoun incident to you before, yet again downplaying it. I don't think he understands that yes, that was a serious issue that has happened. And sure, Yudez is at least monthly, or sorry, the whole kind of conduct team is at least monthly compared to when the Drudevolts article was out, which is when the change in moderation happened. But she even pointed this out by saying that the situation improved. She just said this happened in the past and it did. Please don't make it happen again. I particularly love your country that it's too small. I'm sorry about that. I particularly, particularly love how a random hacker news users under the name of Akerl underscore put it. Well, it seems pretty straightforward to me. The free desktop foundation isn't acting as internet police. They're exercising control over their own community membership and taking the behavior of the participants in and outside their community as representative of whether they want to permit that participant. Vaxry said the ban hammer is wielded by people who seemingly only wielded to silence people whom they disagree with. And if this is what it looks like to be silenced, it seems pretty loud. After their original post, Yudez sent another email to inform that the language in the post was unacceptable and that Vaxry's account would be suspended from free desktop infrastructure, which has happened. She seems to be somewhat worried about receiving harassment as results of publishing her email and attributing it specifically to her rather than the code of conduct team of free desktop, which is not completely unreasonable if you recall that just today somebody has said that she's brain damaged on Vaxry's or rather, sorry, hyperlance discord without any repercussions so far. And on top of that, she was misgendered on hyperlance discord yet again with no consequences that I could see. Finally, the emails from Vaxry include some of the dumbest talking points of the right-wing community, even if Vaxry himself is not right-wing as a person, such as as per your own values or at least the ones you preach, diversity and inclusivity, so people with different beliefs should not be marginalized. Although according to the leaked internal documents, it seems that only that only includes non-white, non-right-wing, non-religious people. Everyone else is not invited. This refers to the leaked documents by Lunduk and, hey, I've done a one hour long video about how Lunduk's content is very often misleading or straight up incorrect and about how is a far right-wing person who holds conspiratory beliefs such as vaccines that are auks or climate changes and tappening. The specific leak in question was about an optional diversity training happening in Red Hat about privilege. It's very common and yet again, Red Hat doesn't have anything to do with this. It's pre-desk. It's very common and very clueless to say that by excluding those who discriminate against marginalized groups, you're actually not being inclusive towards poor white, right-wing, religious people. To make sure this whole thing makes sense, let me conclude by saying that Hyperland is a good, maybe even great project led by a clearly skilled developer. However, having great development skills does not mean that you're also knowledgeable about political issues and how to approach them, how to handle communities and respond to criticism, how to respectfully deal with others and so on. Personally, I think that Baxary is currently learning about all of this and there's clear improvement signs such as the better moderation and learning more about the trans issues and so on. But at the same time, I kind of understand that Free Desktop might not want to be associated with him at the current time. I really hope that we can change that in the future and that Baxary can get back to being able to use the Free Desktop infrastructure, especially because it was doing some very cool work in there with Cursors and KD. That was everything for this segment. Thanks for watching. I'll be back reading the comments if you're still there. Are you still there? Oh my god, there's a lot of people still watching.