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

As a queer trans woman, I'm glad I switched to Fedora.

At least they are admitting it was wrong instead of doubling down

Debian is basically Ubuntu without Snap.

You can switch. Just sayin.

Good to know. I hate snap anyway
last time i reformatted was in the pandemic. dunno when next time is gonna be, but it's definetly gonna debian or fedora instead of ubuntu.

Official response of the Discourse moderators: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/on-discourse-rules-about-politics/66986

The mods say that the mistake was in the misinterpretation of "queer" as a slur (because it used to be a slur), but they also mention that they privately discussed with the new user to convince them to remove a trans flag from the profile... and the mods didn't really explain in the response why this happened...?

As always, read the response to make your own judgement.

The original content was restored and a comment made by a mod underneath the profile page of the guy says this :

The original text of this topic has been restored. The moderator action was a mistake and not reflective of the Ubuntu Diversity Policy 6.

As stated within the policy “…we explicitly honour diversity in age, culture, ethnicity, genotype, gender identity or expression, language, national origin, neurotype, phenotype, political beliefs, profession, race, religion, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, subculture and technical ability.” The Ubuntu community is for everyone.

reads like a stereotypically canned HR message.
- What wording would you have them use?
- Chat, please write an apology that clarifies Diversity Policy 15 and assures the reader that as a company we are not homophobic. Please use a professional, courteous tone and limit the response to 500 characters or less.
- Good

'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.

Ah yes, the 2 sexualities: Straight and political

This is the thing that makes me as angry as I am right now. This is exactly what they are doing.
Thanks! I'm going to reuse this.

It seems for the last 5 years or so, Ubuntu has done a good job of making everyone hate them.

I think historically Canonical has always been a bit or a weird company. I ended up ditching Ubuntu because they seem to have this weird penchant for picking some new shiny feature (Unity, the convergent Desktop/Phone OS thing, Mir, currently Snaps) and just going all-in on it whether people want it or not, working on it until it's almost good, then ditching it for the next shiny thing.
Also their hiring process is apparently bonkers.
- Upstart was the one that made me ditch it back in the day. I came back when they embraced the more sensible systemd
shit all you have to do is try to update/upgrade the thing and it's like rolling the dice if it'll bork your system or not so they've done an excellent job in people hating them for that one reason.
without fail whenever they roll out an update you'll see threads on mastodon or bluesky with people saying "welp, my Ubuntu is fucked" after an update.
- tbf ive been using it for years and never had it break on update.
That is the correct move for them. Once you have built a lot of capital, whether that be monetary, political, or social, then you spend the capital.

Ironic

Ubuntu is a South African ethical ideology focusing on people's allegiances and relations with each other. The word comes from the Zulu and Xhosa languages. Ubuntu is seen as a traditional African concept, is regarded as one of the founding principles of the new republic of South Africa and is connected to the idea of an African Renaissance.
A rough translation of the principle of Ubuntu is "humanity towards others". Another translation could be: "the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity".
"A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed."
 
        --Archbishop Desmond Tutu

  
As a platform based on Free software, the Ubuntu operating system brings the spirit of ubuntu to the software world.

If you come from South Africa, you'll know that Ubuntu is bullshit, in SA it's just "fuck you, I got mine".

At least link to the correct thing: https://bark.lgbt/@gimmechocolate/115164408860865811

Holy Hell! The twists! (spoilers) I couldn't believe when an Ubuntu mod said "if we let you say you're queer, we would also have to let people say they hate you and want you dead." I was even more shocked when they were acting appropriately- Nazis are a protected class at Ubuntu (this is only a little hyperbolic and also that's all the spoilers)

I thought they just went with "if you upgrade you will break it".

Reddit flagged this as inaccurate and the mod added this:

The issue was never with the poster's self identification. The Ubuntu Community Council have been contacted and have been discussing the issue since Friday it happened.

The Ubuntu Community Council rarely comments publicly when complaints are dealt with, but the moderation team is welcome to do so.

Because I am on the Ubuntu Community Council and have been working on this issue, I am unable to comment further at this time.

That doesn't make sense. The only change to the comment was to remove part of their statement of identity.

I don't see where the mods made them change it. (Edit: I see it now. If you check the edit history on the post, it shows who made the edits, in this case it was DIscourse mod wild_man.)

Also, why is this a link to reddit?

The post on Mastodon has a screenshot of the post edit history:
And a copy-pasted response from a moderator (the most relevant bit):
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.
- "If we allow your flag, then we have to admit also other similar political flags, both supporting and opposing diversity."
  Consider the following: no, they don't.
- But why must they also allow bigotry if they allow people to express who they are? That is the biggest load of shit. So if I say "I have a husband of X years," they must also allow someone to say a bunch of bigotry as a counter view?
  Or if I say I like open source software they must allow the trolls that want to call me a dirty hippie and tell me to get a job so I can pay for software? And I agree everything is political, and ignoring it doesn't make it any less so.
- But there aren't any political flags on there...
- That response does not appear on the Ubuntu site. There is no source on the mastodon paste.

First of all, this is not a professional setting, he's not an employee there, and that forum is open for everyone.
Secondly, and way more important, people do that daily and no one cares especially when introducing oneself it's common to mention stuff like your wife/husband and your preferred pronouns, hell, my corporate slack profile has my pronouns and those of everyone else. I've worked with trans people who introduced themselves as trans on the first day, and no one cared. So no, it's perfectly okay for people to talk about themselves during an introduction even in professional settings.
Last but not least, people being uncomfortable is not a good reason to ban something, members of the KKK might be uncomfortable about working next to a black person, so what? Should the black person hide that he's black to not make the others uncomfortable? That's bullshit. If a person is uncomfortable by another one saying they're queer, then that first person needs to deal with it, being queer is part of who the other person is and he shouldn't have to hide who he is because someone might be uncomfortable about it. You mentioned religion, which I don't think falls into the same category because religion is a set of beliefs that many people change through their lives, but still, people wear crosses daily in professional settings and no one cares.
The amount of corporate bios I've read that talk about wives, husbands and family is astounding.
But I'm not totally sure what this is. It looks like someone joining the community to work for free? I might be wrong. If that's the case they should be allowed to write whatever the hell they want as long as it's not hurtful.
And super weird they'd take out "queer" but leave the furry thing. Not that there's anything wrong with either.
You'd be pretty surprised what conversational topics would reveal one's implied sexuality that no one would probably push back against, because it's "normal." For instance, I recall straight people announcing at my work that they'd been trying for a kid or their partner was pregnant. :|
- Inferring something from a conversation is way different than someone advertising it. It's also way different in a social setting with co-workers versus the office, which in this context, it seems like it was an office communication.
Every corporate tech job I've had has dozens, if not hundreds, of openly queer people openly identifying as such. And that's how it should be.
Whether it's as simple as a rainbow or trans flag emoji in slack, as individual as speaking up internally about problematic anti-queer messaging, or as deep as an affinity group who coordinates pride events and such, it is and should remain acceptable and protected.
And honestly same with furry. I don't care if who I am as a person may make someone uncomfortable. That's solidly not my problem, and shouldn't be an HR issue either.
Edit: Christ, I'm not even saying controversial and I'm being brigaded ffs 🤣
Don't worry about it. It's Reddit refugees who haven't yet figure out up/downvotes mean noþing in þe FediVerse. Þey're still karma-farming þinking þey're going to get gold some day.

Regardless of how impartial the source might be, there are facts there:
Fact 1: Someone made an introductory post in which, among other things, they mentioned "I am queer".
Fact 2: A moderator working for Canonical deleted that part, and only that part, of that post.
Fact 3: Another moderator re-added that and claimed the first one acted erroneously.
While Fact 3 is a bit of a relief, they still haven't communicated what they intend to do to prevent this from happening again.
- If the post was about themselves, saying "I am queer" is fine IMHO (as would've been to say "I am straight" or imply it for example by saying "I'm a man" and "I have a wife") as that's about that person so sharing what they feel defines them as person is the whole point and restricting mentions of one's sexual orientation there is at best idiotic.
  Had it been on a post about something something Canonical or Ubuntu, in my view mentioning one's sexual orientation would probably not have been appropriate, mainly because it would be raising an irrelevant and (sadly, in the present day) ideologically charged subject, same as it would be inappropriate to mentioning one's political allegiance in the same context.
  All in all I hope the moderator who made that mistaken moderation action has been taught the difference and been alerted to how their own internal biases are leaking into the professional sphere, which they shouldn't.
Why does it matter if it's impartial or not? Just go read the thread on Ubuntu discourse if you want to verify the information? It's all there. The mod fucked up. Simple as that. It's good that someone brought this to light.

:^)