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1. Embed this notice
   unawarewolf 🐺 (gimmechocolate@bark.lgbt)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 05:14:03 JST unawarewolf 🐺

   Please boost for awareness.

   Recently one of my friends posted an introduction post to the official Ubuntu forums.

   https://web.archive.org/web/20250905060630/https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/lukas-here-hello-to-all/66658
   (original link: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/lukas-here-hello-to-all/66658 )

   Seems fine except for maybe a bit of bad grammar around the "I am also a furry" part right? Well turns out behind the scenes the post was edited to not say "I am queer" before mentioning being a furry, and they got in a lotta trouble with the mods. This led to them no longer feeling welcome on the Ubuntu discourse forums.

   The reason given was that the word Queer is a sexual word, which is just patently untrue. Saying you're queer gives less info into your sex life than mentioning your wife/husband, and if that was banned it'd be fucking stupid. Of course by the responses of the mods, it is made clear that that's not the real reason, and instead they're making the decision because of politics.

   In the next few posts I'll talk about these extremely problematic moderator responses.
   1/5

   • Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     unawarewolf 🐺 (gimmechocolate@bark.lgbt)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 05:16:35 JST unawarewolf 🐺

     in reply to

     CW: Ubuntu mod team takes anti-queer "Don't say gay" stance.

     meme (credit to lukas, the one at the center of this shitshow)

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     unawarewolf 🐺 (gimmechocolate@bark.lgbt)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 05:16:37 JST unawarewolf 🐺

     in reply to

     All in all Canonical and Ubuntu have taken the far right position that people shouldn’t even be allowed to mention their queerness, which gives the extremists what they want, and them not being able to be explicit about their hate (and the mods here are already very implicitly bigoted), is a small loss when they already get their way by forcing us queers into the closet in any of their spaces. On top of that, even though it’s been a couple days so far, the leadership hasn’t done anything and saying queer is seemingly still banned on their forums.

     This is absolutely unacceptable, and I recommend anyone who is queer, has queer friends, or just generally cares about people being allowed to live their lives, to not use Ubuntu, spread the word, and not contribute to their community; until they put solid policy in place to make it clear that everyone is welcome and allowed to be themselves in their community.

     Collection of evidence:
     https://nextcloud.aztinet.eus/s/sxqEDJDZGp7a9rx

     This folder includes the screenshots quoted, along with a lot of other screenshots and information not covered by my post.

     Original post by the one discriminated against:
     https://bark.lgbt/@lukas/115164258497365823

     Other post:
     https://blahaj.zone/notes/aca8zuhiducu005g

     And remember, the more people boost this, the more likely Canonical is to feel pressured to change their policies and take action to help queer people feel included in their community. Queer Ubuntu users deserve to be able to openly be a part of the community and be treated with the same respect as anyone else.

     5/5

     Doughnut Lollipop 【記録係】:blobfoxgooglymlem: repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     unawarewolf 🐺 (gimmechocolate@bark.lgbt)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 05:16:38 JST unawarewolf 🐺

     in reply to

     The next response isn't quite as bad because at least it's fucking honest.

     "OK - here goes one other way to look at this as an issue.
     Say for the sake of argument I am Christian, As a Christian I follow a set of ethics defined in what we call the Bible, Now in this set of ethics is God's declaration that 'queer' is an abomination. As it is abhorrent then it too is something to avoid, And YES discussion of relition too is not permitted - it is in the same vein as a pronouncement of queer"

     Naturally you might think that saying you're queer might equate to saying you're Christian, or saying you're Jewish, which should both be fine; but apparently they equate it to saying you're Christian, and also that you think queer people (other members of the community) are abominations.

     If you look past the fact that they talk like Ben Shapiro and ChatGPT had a baby that didn't know how capitalization worked, there is at least a little bit of sense here though. Saying you're queer and saying you're bigoted are the same in that they will both piss people off. If they actually cared about a fair, friendly, and welcoming community, they'd notice that they are also very different in that one is a statement of identity, and the other is a statement of hate towards other members of the community. Another difference is that bigots want queers to not be able to say they're queer, and queers want to not have to hide their identity, so banning both in this silly hypothetical is still giving the bigots what they want and siding against queers. All in all, I can give the benefit of the doubt here and assume they're simply too much of a coward to fight back against bigots in and out of the mod team, so instead they are taking the path of least resistance and telling everyone to be quiet so they don't have to deal with it, while ignoring the inequity of that.
     4/5

     Miakoda repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     unawarewolf 🐺 (gimmechocolate@bark.lgbt)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 05:16:39 JST unawarewolf 🐺

     in reply to

     Second, the whole idea of things being apolitical is just a vague excuse to discriminate. A few years ago Florida passed a law nicknamed "Don't say gay" which banned teachers from mentioning their sexuality or gender identity to students at all; so if banning queer people from mentioning their identity in your forums is apolitical, then why the fuck is it a more extreme political position than that taken by a far-right politician who literally posted Nazi propaganda on twitter? This fucker is just trying to hide his political extremist views behind a guise of fairness.

     This response sure makes it seem like the values of Canonical and Ubuntu are closer to far-right extremism than all the positivity and inclusivity they claim in their policies.
     3/5

   • Embed this notice
     unawarewolf 🐺 (gimmechocolate@bark.lgbt)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 05:16:40 JST unawarewolf 🐺

     in reply to

     The worst of the posts is as follows:
     "Sorry to intervene, another volunteer moderator here. Point 7 of the general posting guidelines says:

     'Politics: This topic has caused serious problems in the past and as such is subject to tight control. Discussion of the politics of open source it permissible in the lounge. No other political posting is permitted in any form in any other area of the forum. (this includes the use of avatars, flags, and other potentially-divisive graphics.) Please find another venue for political discussions'

     So in my opinion, if your intention was to show political support for diversity, you should avoid using this flag. This will allow us to refuse the use of a flag for instance saying 'non-queer', If we allow your flag, then we have to admit also other similar political flags, both supporting and opposing diversity.
     "

     This reply is just fucking dishonest. First off, if you allow people to post the lgbt flag you don't have to also allow people to post Nazi flags or whatever. Like, being queer isn't an ideology. It should be totally fine to say you're queer or straight or whatever, that doesn't mean you also have to let people be Nazis or say hateful things about each other, like wtf? You can literally just say that some flags aren't allowed and some are. (also idk what's with all this talk about flags, they weren't even the thing that got edited). It is totally reasonable to say that everyone should be allowed to express their identity, whether straight or queer, white or black, man or woman, etc; this doesn’t fucking somehow magically create a loophole for people to start hating on other identities.
     2/5

   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 07:56:34 JST feld

     in reply to
     @gimmechocolate how is that appropriate to even post on a bio in the first place? Are you trying to connect with kinksters or contribute to an open source project?
     
     > Saying you're queer gives less info into your sex life than mentioning your wife/husband
     
     It definitely signals that you're not heterosexual. And the mention of being a furry now means we all have to imagine this person dressing up in an animal costume for sexual gratification.
     
     > Birthday: 24.10.1998
     
     Do GenZ think this is appropriate for some reason? Are they putting their sexual preferences on their CVs/resumés too? I don't get it.
     Another Linux Walt Alt and Johnny Peligro like this.
   • Embed this notice
     Miakoda (hellomiakoda@pdx.social)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 07:58:36 JST Miakoda

     in reply to

     @gimmechocolate

     I haven't used my Ubuntu account in a very ery long time, and apparently never on the forums. I couldn've just let it continue to collect spider webs, with my old Yahoo avatar still sitting in it, but I decided to do this instead
     https://discourse.ubuntu.com/u/hellomiakoda/activity

     There, it can collect spider webs lile that now.

   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 08:23:16 JST feld

     in reply to

     • azalea
     @azalea @gimmechocolate FWIW talking about your kids at work should be a fireable offense
     Johnny Peligro likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     azalea (azalea@woem.space)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 08:23:17 JST azalea

     in reply to

     • feld

     @feld @gimmechocolate straight people talk about their spouse all the time, now we have to imagine them fucking their spouse, how has society come to this

   • Embed this notice
     Miakoda (hellomiakoda@pdx.social)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 08:29:51 JST Miakoda

     in reply to

     @gimmechocolate
     If you use Ubuntu because you're a beginner, might I suggest Mint. It is also beginner friendly, and unless I missed something, you can be queer AF while using it (or straight. You can use it while straight too.)

   • Embed this notice
     Miakoda (hellomiakoda@pdx.social)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 08:51:18 JST Miakoda

     in reply to

     • Kitheyn

     @Kitheyn @gimmechocolate
     Oooh boy that gets wild if you follow that out to it's logical conclusion.

   • Embed this notice
     Kitheyn (kitheyn@bark.lgbt)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 08:51:23 JST Kitheyn

     in reply to

     @gimmechocolate And just to keep the 'excuse' timeline going, we've now gone from 'too sexual' to 'hypothetical christian may find it unethical' to 'too political' to 'secret fourth thing'.

   • Embed this notice
     unawarewolf 🐺 (gimmechocolate@bark.lgbt)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 08:51:24 JST unawarewolf 🐺

     in reply to

     Update: this was posted on reddit and was locked by a moderator of the subreddit who also claims to be a member of the community council, for unspecified inaccuracies. I would love to know what parts of the post I got wrong so I could fix them but as of writing this it doesn't seem like they've reached out to me about it.

     They also claim that the post wasn't edited because of self-identifying as queer at all, as the three different reasons from the first three different people all stated, but instead was for a secret fourth reason to be revealed shortly.

     I am looking forward to hearing their full statement and hope they have been having lotsa productive discussions about how to best make the ubuntu community an inclusive and welcoming space for it's queer members!!!!

     I will do my best to keep this post updated with more information, make sure to boost the top post so you get notified when I do!!!!

     https://web.archive.org/web/20250907224900/https://old.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/1nb60v2/ubuntu_mod_team_takes_antiqueer_dont_say_gay/nczi15v/

   • Embed this notice
     Miakoda (hellomiakoda@pdx.social)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 08:52:15 JST Miakoda

     in reply to

     • Kitheyn

     @gimmechocolate @Kitheyn Quite frankly, I hope Canonical doesn't reputationally survive this.
     They've left a bad taste in my mouth for a long time now.
     There's a reason I haven't run it in so long, despite it being my first daily driver.

   • Embed this notice
     unawarewolf 🐺 (gimmechocolate@bark.lgbt)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 08:52:17 JST unawarewolf 🐺

     in reply to

     • Kitheyn

     @Kitheyn I'm unironically looking forward to finding out how there is any way that removing the text "I am queer" could have nothing to do with identifying as queer. I hope they surprise me lmao!!!

   • Embed this notice
     Miakoda (hellomiakoda@pdx.social)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 08:59:02 JST Miakoda

     in reply to

     • Kitheyn

     @gimmechocolate @Kitheyn
     It's a damn shame. Ububtu used to be cute. It's what pulled me in, circa 2009

   • Embed this notice
     unawarewolf 🐺 (gimmechocolate@bark.lgbt)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 08:59:03 JST unawarewolf 🐺

     in reply to

     • Miakoda
     • Kitheyn

     @hellomiakoda @Kitheyn
     I'm really, genuinely, hoping it'll push them to be better!! More good FOSS is good!!! I'll settle for people swapping to something that's more free, more open, and a better place for us queers though!!!

   • Embed this notice
     Claudius Link (realn2s@infosec.exchange)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 16:35:54 JST Claudius Link

     in reply to

     • Miakoda

     Hey @hellomiakoda
     for some reason the whole text is shown in strike through in my client (standard web client) and therefore hard to read.
     Is this intentional? (IT might be a problem on my side)

   • Embed this notice
     Miakoda (hellomiakoda@pdx.social)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 16:35:54 JST Miakoda

     in reply to

     • Claudius Link

     @realn2s Intentional, yes. I was given new info, so I no longer wanted to recommend it, but I wanted what I said to still be there else the thread wouldn't make sense

   • Embed this notice
     Miakoda (hellomiakoda@pdx.social)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 17:47:52 JST Miakoda

     in reply to

     • Claudius Link
     • Stullekovski

     @stullekovski @realn2s https://masto.hackers.town/@antijingoist/115166008852378107

   • Embed this notice
     Claudius Link (realn2s@infosec.exchange)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 17:47:54 JST Claudius Link

     in reply to

     • Miakoda

     @hellomiakoda
     Die Mint turn out to be anti queer as well 🥴?

   • Embed this notice
     Stullekovski (stullekovski@chaos.social)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 17:47:54 JST Stullekovski

     in reply to

     • Miakoda
     • Claudius Link

     @realn2s @hellomiakoda wanna know tooor just because of ubuntu base? take LMDE :)

   • Embed this notice
     Miakoda (hellomiakoda@pdx.social)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 18:19:42 JST Miakoda

     in reply to

     • Claudius Link
     • Stullekovski

     @realn2s @stullekovski "unfortunately, mint simps Lunduke and pewdiepie, and deletes posts of anyone questioning the appearances of that. "

   • Embed this notice
     Claudius Link (realn2s@infosec.exchange)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 18:19:43 JST Claudius Link

     in reply to

     • Miakoda
     • Stullekovski

     @hellomiakoda @stullekovski
     I don't get anything

   • Embed this notice
     Miakoda (hellomiakoda@pdx.social)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 20:04:07 JST Miakoda

     in reply to

     • Rachel Greenham
     • Claudius Link
     • Stullekovski

     @StrangeNoises @realn2s @stullekovski You could always go with Arch

   • Embed this notice
     Claudius Link (realn2s@infosec.exchange)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 20:04:08 JST Claudius Link

     in reply to

     • Miakoda
     • Stullekovski

     @hellomiakoda @stullekovski
     🤢

   • Embed this notice
     Rachel Greenham (strangenoises@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 20:04:08 JST Rachel Greenham

     in reply to

     • Miakoda
     • Claudius Link
     • Stullekovski

     @realn2s @hellomiakoda @stullekovski and besides which being downstream of Ubuntu doesn’t really feel like rejecting Ubuntu.

     I guess it’s finally time to grow up and use Debian directly 😅 not sure I can bear to stick to one version of gnome for two years though, always was an upgrade junkie…

   • Embed this notice
     Miakoda (hellomiakoda@pdx.social)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 20:16:30 JST Miakoda

     in reply to

     • Rachel Greenham
     • Claudius Link
     • Stullekovski

     @StrangeNoises @realn2s @stullekovski I'm guessing it's cause your mental illness(es) got better.

   • Embed this notice
     Rachel Greenham (strangenoises@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 20:16:31 JST Rachel Greenham

     in reply to

     • Miakoda
     • Claudius Link
     • Stullekovski

     @hellomiakoda @realn2s @stullekovski yes, I have in the past. I’m sure there was a reason why I stopped 😅

   • Embed this notice
     Miakoda (hellomiakoda@pdx.social)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 20:27:01 JST Miakoda

     in reply to

     • Rachel Greenham
     • Claudius Link
     • Stullekovski

     @StrangeNoises @realn2s @stullekovski For servers, Suse is pretty good. For desktop, there's Manjaro if you want less fiddling

   • Embed this notice
     Rachel Greenham (strangenoises@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 20:27:02 JST Rachel Greenham

     in reply to

     • Miakoda
     • Claudius Link
     • Stullekovski

     @hellomiakoda @realn2s @stullekovski 🥹

     with slightly more seriousness, I think probably because it required too much ongoing maintenance effort; too much time dinking with it rather than using it. also by that point being more of a mac user and the arch system being mostly a server, and rolling-upgrades on a server is silly, especially when the point of more frequent upgrades is to catch desktop environment developments.

   • Embed this notice
     SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Monday, 08-Sep-2025 21:20:02 JST SuperDicq

     in reply to

     @gimmechocolate@bark.lgbt the more people boost this, the more likely Canonical is to feel pressured to change their policies and take action to help queer people feel included in their community.I don't want Canonical to make queer people feel included into their proprietary corpo bootlicker "community".
     
     I want Canonical to stop existing.
     
     I recommend all queer people to contribute to real free software projects instead.

   • Embed this notice
     unawarewolf 🐺 (gimmechocolate@bark.lgbt)'s status on Tuesday, 09-Sep-2025 02:17:59 JST unawarewolf 🐺

     in reply to

     Final update (hopefully): The council makes a statement, changes the moderation guidelines.

     First I'll cover the code of conduct changes, which I suggest you give a read yourself:
     https://web.archive.org/web/20250908155110/https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/code-of-conduct-enforcement-process/59844

     All in all this a very good change. I don't think I could've written better rules myself. I've said that I don't think marginalized groups and bigots can coexist when treated as two equal sides. I do, however, think that we can coexist in a world where they work along side us, as long as they are told to shut the fuck up when they start being harmful, divisive, and/or assholes. Studies show that this dynamic when we all interact, just as normal people, without someone being yelled at for being themselves, is the best way to make a more tolerant world. I feel that these rules perfectly accomplish that.

     Of course that all assumes they are enforced fairly, and by people who aren't biased against the vales those rules represent, which brings me to the response itself:
     https://web.archive.org/web/20250908151805/https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/on-discourse-rules-about-politics/66986

     If you give the benefit of the doubt, it casts a new light on why the initial action was taken: due to generational gap, the mod saw it as a sexualized slur. Unfortunately that was a very small part of the criticisms; and the fact that two other mods chimed in, with responses that I've argued were both clearly not a mistake, and extremely ideologically charged; means that this response wasn't as perfect as the rule changes.

     I don't think that necessarily makes it bad mind you, but it does mean that the team will have it's work cut out for them making sure the people enforcing their rules aren't biased against said rules. Lets all remember what happened with Hyprland after the drama: they added rules about discrimination, but the leader of the project still agreed that it's ok to ban people for having pronouns in username.

     Even a really good set of rules are still no better than the people enforcing them.

     Rich Felker repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     unawarewolf 🐺 (gimmechocolate@bark.lgbt)'s status on Tuesday, 09-Sep-2025 02:18:01 JST unawarewolf 🐺

     in reply to

     Update 2: Unofficial response from queer ubuntu member, diversity statement, post is reverted, but...

     The first response is a queer Ubuntu member saying that it was a mistake and shouldn't've happened. As I've argued in my previous posts, I think that the moderator responses are acting on their underlying values as opposed to it being a simple mistake. If those values conflict with the values of Ubuntu, then that is a problem that is a bit more difficult to solve than with a talking to.

     If I were in the position of the moderators I'd be either reflecting on my values; or stepping down, and maybe looking to moderate a space that more closely aligns with my values such as Hyprland. As a moderator myself I've been on the verge of stepping down for much much less.

     Overall though I do think they are taking the right attitude.

     https://fosstodon.org/@AKernelPanic/115166376744790018

     Another response has told me that apparently there is a diversity policy. I was gonna make a whole stink about how it's hard to find, and how it's arguably a suggestion as opposed to the actual CoC (which it's not included in). Then I actually read it and it includes "Political beliefs" as a protected class. This means that the positions of the moderators are actually totally in line with the diversity policy. Putting queer people and people who want queer people gone into the same category IS a component of far-right ideology, as I covered in post 2. Not having discrimination based on political beliefs necessitates having discrimination based on other protected classes.

     https://masto.pt/@DiogoConstantino/115168524107698808

     https://web.archive.org/web/20250908125245/https://ubuntu.com/community/docs/ethos/diversity

     Lastly the post got reverted. This is largely symbolic, as I doubt lukas will actually want to participate in the community after all that. I woulda been a lot happier about writing this down if I didn't just read their diversity statement that implies the moderators' actions were, in fact, in line with the values of of Canonical and Ubuntu.

     Rich Felker repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     unawarewolf 🐺 (gimmechocolate@bark.lgbt)'s status on Tuesday, 09-Sep-2025 02:18:54 JST unawarewolf 🐺

     in reply to

     True conclusion: All in all I think at this point, I think the community finally has good rules in place to protect marginalized people, but I also think it's important to test the waters still.

     Just because the rules are there, doesn't mean that they will be enforced fairly. I do still have my doubts that the mods I called out in posts 2-4, will be able to enforce the rules fairly, and keep their personal biases out of their decisions as moderators of the community, especially since they managed to turn what could've been a simple misunderstanding, into a massive political shitshow. If I were them, I'd be resigning right now, and if I were their peers, I'd be super pissed off, and kindly suggesting they resign right now.

     (to be clear this is only the two who responded, and that I called out, specifically NOT wild_man who initially did the action. I think it'd be good to take the council's word that at least this was a genuine misunderstanding. I do genuinely believe them here myself.)

     Now that this seems to be wrapping up, lets all remember that the actions we take should focus on making the world a better place. I think everyone involved can still be a productive member of the community, even if they shouldn't be the ones enforcing the rules. I also think it should be important to treat each other with kindness by default, it's rare that unkindness makes the world better.

     I hope the community council continues down this path, and makes sure the rules are actually enforced as intended. I also recognize that while a few days is an eternity in internet time, it's just a short moment in bureaucracy time, so I appreciate the council coming together on such short notice to make an overall good decision. If they don't, I will do my best to add one last update.

     I thank everyone for their time, and remember: everyone should have freedom, and the right to be themselves. I hope you all have a great day!!!