Poor people are often excluded while being told "We aren't trying to exclude poor people." There is often some BS cover story justifying the policy of keeping out poor people. This is sort of a case study in how that gets done.
Metafilter is an extremely classist site. I am not the only person who thinks so.
When I was an active participant, they had a one-time five dollar membership fee. They claimed it was intended to keep out spammers and was not intended to keep out poor people.
My firsthand experiences do not fit with that claim.
Their policy for how to handle that (and other things) was administered in a fashion that was very much exclusionary of poor people and even abusive towards them. As a poor person, I was met with ugly assumptions about my behavior at every turn and eventually banned with some crazy accusation that I was guilty of trying to make money or some nonsense.
It wasn't true and even if it had been, so? A desperately poor person trying to figure out how to earn a living should not be treated as somehow behaving badly. If they are doing it wrong, help clue them as to how to do it right -- unless, you know, the entire point is that you are a classist asshole who intentionally abuses poor people on purpose, as I suspect is the case here.
While homeless, I was gifted a membership to Metafilter by some random internet stranger. On a few occasions, I used the option to leave an anonymous comment to protect my privacy while answering a question.
At some point, the mods busted my chops about that and told me I was being weird and this was abnormal behavior as most people only left one or maybe two anonymous comments over the life of their account, something that was not at all public info and there were no public written policies about how often you could use that option or whatever.
When they busted my chops, I asked if there was some public statement about how often one was allowed to use that option or what the norm was and they said there wasn't and they still gave me a hard time about it and said I wasn't allowed to post this particular comment anonymously.
They did NOT go "Oh, you know, most people handle this via a sock puppet -- a second account used for such purposes. Since you are homeless and can't afford to pay for one, we will just give you one." Nah.
Instead, they treated me like I was weird and stupid and guilty of somehow misbehaving because I was poor and handling things differently from other people on a detail I had no way of knowing set me visibly apart from how other people behaved -- at least in the minds of the mods, because anonymous comments are, by definition, not something you can readily see who posted and what the norms are surrounding how often specific individuals use them or whatever.
I eventually paid for a sock puppet for myself. They did not at that time offer to refund my money as a courtesy because I was still homeless and still very, very poor and everyone knew it.
At some point, another woman on the site who was also very poor talked about wanting a second sock puppet account for a specific purpose and not having the money for it. It was on the MeTa part of the site, a part where the mods are required by policy to read and address comments there.
No, the mods did not pipe up publicly and tell her "Oh, that policy of you can get an account for free by just asking is not just for initial accounts. We will give you a second account too that way." I believe they also did not contact her privately to say such.
I say that because I later gifted her an account and neither her nor the mods suggested she already had a free sock puppet. Instead, the mods told me she could have one if she only asked and again treated me like I was being a weirdo and bad person and handled it in a manner that was a very negative experience for both her and I.
They told me more or less that I was being an idiot because she could have already had a free account by just asking if she wanted it, so they offered to refund me my money, an offer I turned down while mentally noting "Yeah, you assholes didn't offer me a refund when I paid for MY sock puppet, you jerks." They also refused to tell her she had been anonymously gifted a second account as a sock puppet and told me I had to tell her that.
I was still homeless at the time and she and I were not friends. In fact, she was someone who had been ugly to me and I really did not want to tell her "This person you have kicked around saw your public comment, knows what shitty classist assholes the mods are and decided to be kind, figuring no one else here will be because classist assholery and being abusive to poor people, instead of kind, is apparently the norm for most of the generally well-heeled members here."
So to protect myself, I used my sock puppet to tell her, which made her extremely uncomfortable because she had no idea who this person was. Me being forced to tell her myself via an account that was, to her mind, a stranger to her, sounded like some weirdo stalker trying to take advantage of her and she was very, very uncomfortable with the whole thing which made me feel skeevy for trying to be kind to her.
My impression was she thought I was probably some guy creeping on her and this "gift" would be something I would expect her to pay for with sexual favors.
The classist assholery on Metafilter runs so deep they managed to poison my attempts to be kind to another poor person there, knowing that other people there with more money than me were not being kind to her and were not likely to ever be kind to her.
Neither the mods nor anyone with more money offered to hook her up with a second account. It fell to me and then they made me and her both feel extremely icky and abused by the entire thing.
A charitable interpretation of the shitty mod policies and mod behaviors is to chalk it up to "stupidity" and assume that their comfortable lives made it not an obvious conclusion that (for example) a poor person was using anonymous comments instead of a sock puppet, as was the norm, because five dollars was a big deal to me, unlike with most of their members. A less charitable interpretation is that they are just classist assholes intentionally being abusive to poor people.
The world being what it is, most likely the truth is more like "A little of column A and a little of column B."
When push comes to shove, you know the classist assholes not by the five dollar fee they CLAIM is not intended as a hardship "and all you have to do is ASK for a free account" but by how it is administered.
This was administered in a fashion that, along with other details of what went down on the site, made it very clear that "Poor people are not actually welcome here and will not be given a fair shake. They will be treated different from other members, and not in a good or kind manner, contrary to our attempts to loudly tell the world over and over what wonderful people we imagine ourselves to be."
This made me feel like asking for a free account was sort of like telling the Nazis you were a Jew and wanted in on their free housing program, only to find the "housing" was a concentration camp and you were slated for termination.
Most likely, Jessamyn West was the driving force behind a lot of the worst of the classist assholery by the mod team there. She retired at some point, so in theory Josh Millard could dismantle those abusive classist policies.
Though I'm not holding my breath.
Metafilter is an extremely classist site. I am not the only person who thinks so.
When I was an active participant, they had a one-time five dollar membership fee. They claimed it was intended to keep out spammers and was not intended to keep out poor people.
My firsthand experiences do not fit with that claim.
Their policy for how to handle that (and other things) was administered in a fashion that was very much exclusionary of poor people and even abusive towards them. As a poor person, I was met with ugly assumptions about my behavior at every turn and eventually banned with some crazy accusation that I was guilty of trying to make money or some nonsense.
It wasn't true and even if it had been, so? A desperately poor person trying to figure out how to earn a living should not be treated as somehow behaving badly. If they are doing it wrong, help clue them as to how to do it right -- unless, you know, the entire point is that you are a classist asshole who intentionally abuses poor people on purpose, as I suspect is the case here.
While homeless, I was gifted a membership to Metafilter by some random internet stranger. On a few occasions, I used the option to leave an anonymous comment to protect my privacy while answering a question.
At some point, the mods busted my chops about that and told me I was being weird and this was abnormal behavior as most people only left one or maybe two anonymous comments over the life of their account, something that was not at all public info and there were no public written policies about how often you could use that option or whatever.
When they busted my chops, I asked if there was some public statement about how often one was allowed to use that option or what the norm was and they said there wasn't and they still gave me a hard time about it and said I wasn't allowed to post this particular comment anonymously.
They did NOT go "Oh, you know, most people handle this via a sock puppet -- a second account used for such purposes. Since you are homeless and can't afford to pay for one, we will just give you one." Nah.
Instead, they treated me like I was weird and stupid and guilty of somehow misbehaving because I was poor and handling things differently from other people on a detail I had no way of knowing set me visibly apart from how other people behaved -- at least in the minds of the mods, because anonymous comments are, by definition, not something you can readily see who posted and what the norms are surrounding how often specific individuals use them or whatever.
I eventually paid for a sock puppet for myself. They did not at that time offer to refund my money as a courtesy because I was still homeless and still very, very poor and everyone knew it.
At some point, another woman on the site who was also very poor talked about wanting a second sock puppet account for a specific purpose and not having the money for it. It was on the MeTa part of the site, a part where the mods are required by policy to read and address comments there.
No, the mods did not pipe up publicly and tell her "Oh, that policy of you can get an account for free by just asking is not just for initial accounts. We will give you a second account too that way." I believe they also did not contact her privately to say such.
I say that because I later gifted her an account and neither her nor the mods suggested she already had a free sock puppet. Instead, the mods told me she could have one if she only asked and again treated me like I was being a weirdo and bad person and handled it in a manner that was a very negative experience for both her and I.
They told me more or less that I was being an idiot because she could have already had a free account by just asking if she wanted it, so they offered to refund me my money, an offer I turned down while mentally noting "Yeah, you assholes didn't offer me a refund when I paid for MY sock puppet, you jerks." They also refused to tell her she had been anonymously gifted a second account as a sock puppet and told me I had to tell her that.
I was still homeless at the time and she and I were not friends. In fact, she was someone who had been ugly to me and I really did not want to tell her "This person you have kicked around saw your public comment, knows what shitty classist assholes the mods are and decided to be kind, figuring no one else here will be because classist assholery and being abusive to poor people, instead of kind, is apparently the norm for most of the generally well-heeled members here."
So to protect myself, I used my sock puppet to tell her, which made her extremely uncomfortable because she had no idea who this person was. Me being forced to tell her myself via an account that was, to her mind, a stranger to her, sounded like some weirdo stalker trying to take advantage of her and she was very, very uncomfortable with the whole thing which made me feel skeevy for trying to be kind to her.
My impression was she thought I was probably some guy creeping on her and this "gift" would be something I would expect her to pay for with sexual favors.
The classist assholery on Metafilter runs so deep they managed to poison my attempts to be kind to another poor person there, knowing that other people there with more money than me were not being kind to her and were not likely to ever be kind to her.
Neither the mods nor anyone with more money offered to hook her up with a second account. It fell to me and then they made me and her both feel extremely icky and abused by the entire thing.
A charitable interpretation of the shitty mod policies and mod behaviors is to chalk it up to "stupidity" and assume that their comfortable lives made it not an obvious conclusion that (for example) a poor person was using anonymous comments instead of a sock puppet, as was the norm, because five dollars was a big deal to me, unlike with most of their members. A less charitable interpretation is that they are just classist assholes intentionally being abusive to poor people.
The world being what it is, most likely the truth is more like "A little of column A and a little of column B."
When push comes to shove, you know the classist assholes not by the five dollar fee they CLAIM is not intended as a hardship "and all you have to do is ASK for a free account" but by how it is administered.
This was administered in a fashion that, along with other details of what went down on the site, made it very clear that "Poor people are not actually welcome here and will not be given a fair shake. They will be treated different from other members, and not in a good or kind manner, contrary to our attempts to loudly tell the world over and over what wonderful people we imagine ourselves to be."
This made me feel like asking for a free account was sort of like telling the Nazis you were a Jew and wanted in on their free housing program, only to find the "housing" was a concentration camp and you were slated for termination.
Most likely, Jessamyn West was the driving force behind a lot of the worst of the classist assholery by the mod team there. She retired at some point, so in theory Josh Millard could dismantle those abusive classist policies.
Though I'm not holding my breath.