VladimirLimeMint, the whole reason I defended that other person is in the spirit of stopping bickering and reinforcing solidarity. I did not defend them because I have anything against you or Cuba, but because I don’t think it’s healthy for us to get in the habit of making threads to call out another user that we had an interaction with we weren’t happy about.

This is a pretty niche place. As far as I’m aware, hexbear is too. If there is a conflict, it’s small enough that we should be able to address it person to person. If we turn it into callouts, that can, over time, cause one-off disagreements to form into cliques and prolonged backbiting.

Please do not accuse me of being dishonest if you’re not bringing receipts on the how / in what way. That is not going to build solidarity with anyone. If I were intentionally dishonest and you offer no reason why, there is nothing for others to look at to spot it. If I were unintentionally dishonest and you offer no reason why, there is nothing for me to learn from to act differently. If the character of my words and actions does not look dishonest in any obvious way and you claim it is with no reason why, it can end up resulting in making you look dishonest.

I encourage you to be strategic in engaging with perceived dishonesty and also give others a chance to learn and change. Something I have learned from engaging with people who are dishonest but aren’t necessarily obvious about it at the offset: sometimes if you resist the urge to condemn immediately and question in a friendly manner, someone will show you and others precisely who they are and remove all doubt. But without that, an immediate accusation may end up looking unfair and may in fact be unjustified if the person was only miscommunicating rather than of ill intent. Note: I do not always have the patience for this myself. I can preach it, but I will fully admit it is not always easy to do in the heat of the moment. However, I will emphasize it can be very useful strategically. You might be surprised sometimes what people will reveal about themselves just from simple questions. For example, in the situation being discussed with the other user, a questioning approach might look like: “What is causing you to doubt this source?” Trying to suss out through questioning if there is an intentional bias against sources that portray AES states in a good light, or if it is general skepticism that may be a bit tone deaf. With this approach, the goal is to avoid questions or statements that will put a person on the defensive, but rather see what their thought process is - at least until they have revealed something that is considered indefensible among a space like ours.