Remote View

1y ago

Amendments to the Code of Conduct regarding the Fediverse

Hi all,

With regards to our recent integration into the Fediverse, it has become evident that specific rules should be outlined regarding our conduct towards it and our place in it. As such, we are making provisional amendments to the Code of Conduct in specific regard to federation as we find our footing and stake our ground as a part of the wider Fediverse ecosystem. The amendments are as such, demarcated within the dividers:

Federation

In regards to the Fediverse, a dual-pronged approach should be assumed:

Local Communities

Conduct remains as previously outlined [in the Hexbear Code of Conduct], except:

Users visiting Hexbear should be given breathing room to inquire in good-faith about topics that seem obvious to well-trodden leftists. Assume good faith in even the most obvious of questions, except in cases where a user is explicitly acting in a combative or unreasonable manner.
Do not ping users from other federated instances with intent to goad or mock.
Do not directly link to comments or posts of other federated instances on public posts with intent to goad or mock.
Disengagement rules, whilst not amended, are thoroughly emphasized regarding visiting users.

Federated Instances

Assume the conduct outlined regarding local communities, as well as:

When in a federated instance, their rules (and their code of conduct) apply.
Allow instances their own space for discussion, if requested implicitly or explicitly. If said discussion regards this site or its users, you are allowed to discuss said discussion within the local purview (meaning, within a Hexbear community), with regards to the rules laid out prior.
Conduct that is deemed untenably toxic to the Fediverse and Hexbear’s standing within it (by discretion of Hexbear moderation) may be subject to reprisal, regardless of whether it is explicitly outlined.

We're thankful to the moderation and admins of the instances federated with us for their patience as we carve out our own little hole within the Fediverse. And to our beautiful posters, thank you for bearing with us in this week where decades happen

320 comments

Every instance that has talked shit and got dogpiled should be thanking us for breathing some life into their dead and boring ass websites.
- They're whining and crying about this one over at blahaj.zone even as we speak
  
  Multiple blahaj meta threads, all of them crying about Hexbear. They might as well just defed instead of dragging it out since it's pretty obvious they don't want to federate with us. I think people place too much value on federation anyways. They know where to find us and we know where to find them, so what's the problem?
  
  Hope they defed soon. No more annoying libs pretending to be left when they think Bernie was too radical
  
  Link ?

For those of you who are lurking from other Instances, I'd like to offer you a little light reading. This is an excerpt from The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins, a book about the mass murder program the United States has been enacting on the world's communists since the 1960's. When you see people complaining about the need for civility and respect as they ignore what their own society has unleashed on the world, I invite you to remember this excerpt.
- The Jakarta Method is a great read, def recommend.
- That's been my view for a while too. In an idealised world, I would be an anarchist. In the world we actually live in, I believe the ML/MLMs have the right approach to actually getting us to power.
  
  Same. I was an anarchist for a long time, am still proud to work with them, and still think they're second to none in terms of spinning up small but impactful local initiatives and watching each other's backs in the street. I still absolutely love my arachist comrades.
  But when it comes to mass movements, defending those movements against other state or capital threats, and potential state building I'm firmly in the ML/MLM sphere. That's where my silly screen name came from (long before Hexbear).
- It's flippant but true; "War isn't about who is right, but who is left".

Okay, can we get like, posts from other sites to have red backgrounds with caution tape all over so we don't forget?
- Honestly i was going to ask for same.
  Like a little bit of red outline css around the comment box in federated threads, maybe with a warning linkback to this thread.
  I'm not bright and had one comment already where I thought i was commenting on a dunk_tank thread, but it was external. I wasn't too rude, but i'm gonna fuck up eventually.
- This is a major use-case for the kind of custom CSS reddit used to have. It enabled every community to be unique in appearance and immediately identifiable. This results in much quick code-switching when users move from community to community.
  
  This would be awesome, especially if we could color code specific instances too (i.e. give our lemmygrad comrades a great
  red, etc.)

It's clear that the struggle session now is what role we want to take in Lemmyverse, and how much we're willing to change our site culture in pursuit of that.
Frankly I don't see the point of most of them. I've seen a good argument for being nice to Blahaj, but beyond that trying to enforce these rules just seems like a trap that most Hexbears will fall in to pretty quickly.
The culture and norms here are largely incompatible with other instances. Our normal posting behavior is viewed as overwhelming brigading by a number of other instances. Our attempts at good faith dialogue are rebuffed by deeply ignorant people unaware of their own indoctrination. At some point, for many people including myself, that results in a degree of frustration and heated tempers. And the admins of most instances seem to be completely on board with the distorted State Department version of history that we're trying to dismantle which likely mean it's a matter of time before they defed because we're SEESEEP apologist genocide denying tankies. We can't do anything against bad faith ignorance of that magnitude.
I've seen numerous complaints that our emoji culture is disruptive and "image spam". I theoretically could post without using emojis, but I wont. Giving up one of my favorite aspects of Hexbear to have frustrating conversations with extremely ignorant liberals isn't worth it. I'll stay home rather than engage with other instances.
A lot of people already think we're bots or paid agents of hostile governments. The same bad faith accusations that anything that disputes the official US version of reality is the work of machines and spies that we castigated on Reddit is all over the lemmyverse in force.
And, ultimately - The vast majority of these people are boring reddit liberals. Whatever changes we make we're making to cater to the people we despise for their hegemonic dominance of culture and society. Chapo and Hexbear were created as refuge from these people where we wouldn't have to deal with them, play in to their vile civility culture, hold back about saying what was really happening in the world, or follow "both sides" site rules that accommodated all kinds of reactionary scum as long as they toed the line on the rules.
What are we gaining from Federation? What's the upshot? What's the pay off? It's very nice having Lemmygrad and Lemmie.ml comrades here, and I understand the argument for staying federated with Blahaj, but beyond that I don't see Federation contributing anything, while we'll have to bend significantly on our core culture and indeed the purpose of this community to accommodate, literally, the liberals.
- I remember back in the day when if your forum got raided, you would raid their forum, and you weren't able to successfully muster enough people to raid their forum, it was a skill issue. Raiding was a fact of life on the Interwebs. Absolutely nobody would honor your "pls no raiding" sign and people wouldn't cry if their raid accounts got banned. I absolutely hate this crying about bRiDgAtInG Redditism.
  "But this isn't healthy for the fediversirino!" Look around you. Every instance is defedding from every other instance. Just look at how lemmyworld has defedded from that piracy instance with everyone just saying, "dude, just create two accounts for each instance." So, basically treating two lemmy instances like two forums without federation. The fediverse is already balkanizing, and it's going to be so fractured that within a year, there wouldn't be any sense to even conceive of a fediverse.
  Smarter people here have already came to the conclusion before me that I am having right now: that federation is entirely overhyped and won't pan out in the way Ledditors think it would. Most likely, an instance would just federate with like 5 other instances, and the largest instance would eventually cannibalize the 5 smaller instances so you're stuck with a large active instance "federated" with a bunch of dead instances.
  
  Yeah I think you've got it, and it'll be interesting to watch it continue to unfold. It's really funny how all these instances fear our posting power.
  
  I love how any complaint about an instance is met with "it's shit, it's meant to be shit, if you don't like it here's the door".
- Our normal posting behavior being interpreted as a swarm of brigading and bots has genuinely put a smile on my face. You're all amazing and your posting energy is fierce. Never stop posting
- Our normal posting behavior is viewed as overwhelming brigading by a number of other instances.
  This is what bugs me so much. While I recognize that spamming PPB with the emoji bug right now is a problem, I feel like we shouldn't have to restrict our
  energies. Would it be possible to have more admins put up something about our size and the fact that we're not brigading but just posters? I saw the lemm.ee meta post, and that admin at least acknowledges we aren't brigading.
  From that thread:
  They have quite a large userbase who are very active on Lemmy (often so active that they leave the impression brigading all popular Lemmy posts).
  Obviously perhaps a bit weak, but this kind of education could help some of the growing pains as well, since other instances probably see 10 of us
  simultaneously and think it's a brigade when it's just our normal behavior. Also, the fact we don't have downvotes might be something that other instances should be aware of (i.e. we don't downvote and move on).
- And the admins of most instances seem to be completely on board with the distorted State Department version of history that we're trying to dismantle
  We're never going to dismantle anything if we can't even handle interacting with other Lemmy instances.
  
  Posting isn't praxis
- By placating liberals, we ourselves become liberals

Serious question, wasn't dunking 99% of the reason we federated in the first place? That was definitely the mood in the whitelist/blacklist/no list survey thread.
- I think it was educating and converting not "dunking" lol
  
  It was absolutely dunking
  
  That was not my impression at all. This isn't an educational venue. It's arguably the opposite of that - A redoubt where we don't have to bow down to the hegemonic violence of liberalism, play by their rules, speak their language, and quietly seethe at their villainy and destruction.
  Educating people who wonder in here is a kind thing to do, but that's not what Hexbear is or ever has been for.
  
  You don't educate debate perverts by debating them. You educate bystanders by dunking on them. Also who cares about educating people on some niche internet forum.
- BAIT AND SWITCH. BAIT AND SWITCH.
  *more customers begin to crowd around me.
  BAIT AND SWITCH. . . .

relevant excerpt I just came across in Huey's Revolutionary Suicide
- It's tough reading that and then this back-to-back.
  I think we need both the carrot and the stick. Not everyone is going to respond to civility, just like not everyone is going to respond to ridicule. Both casts a wider net and offers different ways of framing the same ideas, which usually helps clarify things.
  That said, I think we want to lead with civility more often (or at least tone down the dunking to mere teasing at first). We should similarly be quick to deescalate if we tease/dunk on someone and they have a sincere reaction. Of course, if they go gloves off, so should we.
  
  ON THE CORRECT HANDLING OF CONTRADICTIONS AMONG THE PEOPLE
  To criticize the people's shortcomings is necessary, . . . but in doing so we must truly take the stand of the people and speak out of whole-hearted eagerness to protect and educate them. To treat comrades like enemies is to go over to the stand of the enemy.
  Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art" (May 1942), Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 92
  
  I think both of these analyses can coexist. In fact, I think they are more powerful together than they are individually. Bevins is dead on, it is absolutely excruciating to see the liberals make the same mistakes they've made every single time in the past. Knowing we are careening towards yet another anti-communist genocide and seeing how it has gone down in the past time and time again should galvanize the notion that our tactics must be better than any that have come before us. We absolutely have to lean on all available and relevant knowledge in the hopes of tipping just enough liberals to our side unlike all the times in the past. Because of the importance of this task, we can't deny ourselves any material advantage, and if meeting ignorant curiosity with patience and open arms gives us an advantage, we absolutely must take it. I believe that this strategy provides the greatest material advantage.
  We also need to be careful to identify when this patience is advantageous and when it is a waste of energy, as well as being able to differentiate ignorant curiosity from malice or stubborn reaction. It's hard. However, you can always open friendly and start the dunks as things deteriorate, but you can never switch back to friendly once you've already begun dunking.
  
  Keep in mind I didn't post The Jakarta Method excerpt to say, "We will bully who we want.", it's more that our introduction into the Fediverse has led to an exceptional case of heightening the contradictions among the Fediverse. There are absolutely people who are for the first time questioning why the Third World is so against the US, who are seeing our purity of hate for nazis and asking why the Cultural Hegemony (whether or not they know what that is) keeps making exceptions for them in rhe name of "civility". Some people can't be reached and they deserve to be bullied, but I've also seen some great questions being asked in good faith and Hexbears happily answering them with that same energy. Instances may defederate from us, but there are some people on those instances who are only going to radicalize further as a result. The fire has been lit.
- He's right, but also Hexbear largely exists as a refuge from dealing with the hegemonic liberal hellworld we're all stuck in. Being asked to play by Liberal rules in the only place in my entire life that's free from a constant cascade of Liberalism is galling. This is not primarily an education venue.
- I'd rather not fall into the trap of civility politics. We will never be too "civil" for liberals. We could be as polite and understanding as possible and they could literally be yelling racial slurs at us and they will perceive it as us being uncivil and them being civil. They do not care about civility, it is merely an excuse to censor without appearing hypocritical.
- This approach really should be common practice.
  Most people here have forgotten what it's like to be a lib. Education is our goal. Don't let wanting to own someone get in the way of educating.
  People may think tone policing is pointless or an outcrop of liberal civility politics, but we know libs don't understand words and they just focus on tone, so just use a polite tone to explain things. We see through the illusion, but it's important to them, and that's what matters.
  
  This approach almost never works on the internet because there are no negative social consequences for them acting like a little shit. The internet makes dunking required.
  It goes without saying that you should follow Huey's advice irl though.
- While I love the Black Panthers and Huey P Newton, you gotta note that we aren't living in a communist society right now.
  
  neither were the Black Panthers or Huey Newton. This isn't an excerpt about living under communism, it's an excerpt about organizing.
  
  Yeah I guess we can pretty much scratch everything any communist ever wrote
- he's talking about face to face interactions where you have body language to work with. it's possible to actually convince people of things when you're actually talking to them. but online forum posts don't have any of those features. they're purely textual. we draw people in by being funny assholes. we convince them when they ask for more reading to explain our worldview. you can't carry one mode of communication over to another.
- 🥰

no more half measures walter
- I'd tell you to get a new bit but I know what you'd say
  
  idk it's growing on me.

Do not ping users from other federated instances with intent to goad or mock.
Damn, I understand why banning this is probably necessary in preventing defederation, but that makes me sad. Pinging the worst reactionary pieces of shit on the platform to mock and laugh at was one of the best things r/CTH did for reddit. It provided a sense of social consequence for being an open fascist, imperialist, or what have you. I was happy to see it back. I wish it were possible to amend this rule to make exceptions for the worst lemmy users, but that's probably too difficult to draw a clear line on.
- We may issue chud hunting permits
  
  :sicko-yes:

I just have to say I literally don't know how to talk with some people. Maybe I've been over come with terminal brainrot, but it's been whiplash to get accused of being a Kremlin propagandist and a bigot. It's like walking into a game with rules I don't understand. There's a set of pre-established boundaries regarding geopolitics you simply can't talk about. You can't say nice things about China and you can't criticize western imperialism.
I can stop myself from posting guillotine memes, I'm still stable enough to know how off putting that is.
Still like federation. Lots of cool people. I like how they've got a more chill vibe sometimes. I think the average age for a lot of our federated comrades swings a little older, so it's been neat seeing them discuss stuff from the 70s and 80s

Let's be frank for a minute. These rules are only here because we want to continue federation with Blahaj. But some people here are of the mistaken belief that bad faith liberals can be trusted. Just look at what the mod of /c/196 has to say about our admin Carcosa, just rubbing shit all over their face. Last time I checked, exposing PMs is a universal breach of conduct unlike brigading^TM, which is just some made-up rule from Reddit. Carcosa asked for a token of good faith on the side of Blahaj (something that many people, including me, have asked for) and they were rewarded with a spit in the face. And the timing says it all really. The /c/196 mod purposely chose to rub shit all over Carcosa's face knowing that the All Active Army can't air their grievances in return. So not only is the mod of their most popular comm a shithead but a cowardly sniveling shithead as well, just like the rest of Blahaj management.
What do you think the endgame is going to be? Are we to have our arms tied behind our backs while Blahaj management make us all eat a shit sandwich, threatening defederation if we don't eat our shit sandwiches with a shit-eating grin and ask for seconds, only to defed from us in the end anyways?
Since we have plenty of evidence that Blahaj management is not operating in good faith (from the ridiculous "people of NATO" to "haha I can talk shit about your admin and you can't do anything about it") and plenty of evidence that your average Blahaj user doesn't want to federate with us anyways (based on the numerous meta threads crying about Hexbear having giant emotes and being full of tankies), then as far as I'm concerned, defederation is happening regardless of how many shit sandwiches we eat.
These rules no longer have a real reason of existence. Most of the loser Reddit clones have already defed from us. Lemmygrad is cool with us. Lemmy is cool with us. And with Blahaj soon to be out of the picture, what's the point of these rules? To cater to the brilliant minds at lemm dot ee?
If Blahaj is to defed from us, I would rather it be under our terms and not their terms.
Edit: Lol, the mod deleted that post when we started to air our grievances. Fucking pathetic. But what else do you expect from Blahaj management?
- Yeah when their admin removes my "death to Nazis and transphobes" comment, it paints a pretty sus picture of their views.
  
  That's who their admin meant by "People of NATO"
  
  You know things are bad when the instance admined by an Estonian anticommunist isn't the worst one
- this is ridiculous, their mods are running roughshod over their own civility and etiquette discourse and we're over here still fumbling around trying to duct tape the kiddie gloves on. brigade the fuckers and be done with it.
  
  Notice how they are perfectly fine with people from other instances, people who are from neither Blahaj nor Hexbear, commenting on something pertaining to the two instances, but we can't participate because that would be brigading^TM.

love that we have all these rules around how to be civil in their spaces while their own mods and admins talk down and act in bad faith, even reposting private messages from our mods/admins in public to mock them (see the latest post from 196)
really glad all this civility posting is working out for us
- I never used 196 or visited blahaj before. Just checked the post. These people clearly hate us. They're vaushites. Why should we be so civil for them. Isn't this why moretankie196 exists in the first place.
- In the beginning, there were us and lemmygrad.
  In the end there will be us and lemmygrad.
  It is known.
  
  lemmy.ml will always be there too. A permanent source of libs...
- 🥰
  
  less civility posting more @Civility posting

The supply of the Poopballs emoji should be rationed so each Hexbear Citizen receives only one use of the Poopballs every day.
- Introducing false-scarcity?
  
  Oh no, did we just come up with a use case for NFTs?
- We should have class limits. If there are enough PPB posters in the lobby already then you can't choose that class and you have to do hexbear effortposts with extensive bibliography instead. Thems the breaks

Hey, can I just say that if we're going to follow all these rules, can the mods make sure the users that show up here from other instances follow OUR rules too? So we don't, for example, have bad faith wreckers come in and disregard trauma tags on mental health posts? I feel like we used to be a lot tougher on bad faith wreckers then we are being at the moment.
- This is one thing I definitely agree with.
  As other instances defederate in bad faith on admin-ideological lines I see no point in using the kid gloves against wreckers.
  If this is a volume of reported post things I apologize and understand, but if it's to allow more wiggle room for discussion I don't think it's productive and is probably against the wishes of people who wished not to federate at all (note I am not one of these people).
  I'd like to bolster the vibes of the site for those who wish to remain local and think this would be a good way forward if internal moderator interpretations have changed.
  Additionally potentially allowing users to mark local only and having a bot remove all non-hexbrar user posts (stop-gap until local only posts are a feature) seems like another way to aid these users.
  
  This is an alt account, feel free to disregard, but I'll say the same thing I said on blahaj last month when they were cracking down hard on transphobes in their own communities: your house, your rules. If that makes people uncomfortable or hesitant to interact on your instance, a small price to pay to protect the culture and community you want to develop.

In my view this is the state of Federation right now - A meme that simply states what's happening, with almost 500 comments that are all Hexbears dueling with scratched liberals.
Edit: Shoot I need to obfuscate a name brb.

Glad to see this addressed explicitly and laid out in a pinned post for all to read instead of just in comments here and there.
Dunking is great and all but if we're going to commit to federation then there has to be a modicum of mutual respect. Not unlimited patience, nor immunity from harsh criticism and mockery, just the basics of like "don't go over there and shit on the rug, just like we won't let them come here and do that"
- That rug really tied the room together Dude
  
  That rug really tied the room together Dude
  The shit on that rug*
- I'm unclear what we're getting out of this deal. We change our site culture drastically to play nice with the liberals we despise, and in return we get boring reddit takes and then defederated anyway for being tankies? How do we gain from this?
  
  I don't really think it will successfully change the site culture, at least not in a major way, and honestly, it's just a website, much as we all enjoy it.
  Anyhow, you're right that what we gain is not in political insight, though there is some argument to be made that honing our arguments against the left-libs and radlibs at least could be useful.
  What we stand to gain though actually is normal people to interact with, people for whom online politicking isn't everything, who may be completely wrong about liberalism and communism, but have lots of interesting things to say about woodworking or computer programming or bicycle repair or whatever. I don't despise the average liberal (the turbolibs starting slapfights on here, sure, mostly, but not actual normalish people), even if I do despise their ill-considered political stances. They will not likely be my comrades but they can sure be an acquaintance, and I can in return show them that communism isn't just something for horrid weirdo cranks, but simply the only reasonable and kind conclusion in a world ruined by capitalism.

You libs better chill with your kremlin propaganda
- the funniest thing is it's not even bots
  we use the personal touch
  
  Where has amber bot gone? :(
  
  We're luddite posters. We refuse to automate. We're artisanal posters.

Do not individually target staff (mods/admins/devs) of other federated instances with intent to goad or mock, except either in regards to direct defense of this site/its users, or with intent to provide feedback concerning the continued federation with an instance.
What does this mean? If a mod or admin of another instance is a reactionary/racist/whatever do they have diplomatic immunity? IMO this point really needs clarification, especially in light of how shitty the blahj.zone and lem.ee admins are
- If they're being shitty on their instance/not on Hexbear, and they're not being shitty to us specifically, then posts about them being shitty should be in the context of "we should discuss if we want to remain federated with this instance if this is what they're saying" rather than "lmao look at this nerd", with the appropriate level of discretion given that.
  If an instance is making the fediverse feel unsafe for Hexbear users, we don't want to stifle discussion on our continued federation with them. This is more just a "direct potshots at random chuds and not the people we're trying to be relatively diplomatic with" type rule.
  
  I don't agree with this at all. Making mods a extra special protected class above criticism is antithetical to what we're about
  
  Hard disagree. More tea needs to be spilled, not less, particularly when it comes to admins and mods on other instances.

Wow sounds like something a Russian bot would say
- it is 9am in moscow
  
  Clocking in for my shift at the disinformatskaya posting factory

I want to be untenably toxic and intentionally goad other users and instances though, if I wanted to be civil I'd just be a reddit lib

If we are changing our rules to appease blajah they need to change their rules to actually harshly crack down on transphobia(inc fetishization), racism(inc colonial chauvinism), ableism, and holocaust trivialization(including through comparisons of the USSR and the nazis).
This can't be a one way street. Both hexbear and blajah want to be federated but right now only hexbear is compromising, and we are the larger instance
CW:Ableism, racism
- It's really disgusting how many users over there casually compare having a lot of emojis posted at them with real abuse. If this were on Hexbear, I'd hope that comments like those would get removed for trivialization, but apparently this is the only instance that actually bothers to moderate.
  
  The book conflict isn't abuse is bullshit and is a bunch of apologia for abuse,
  But conflict really isn't abuse. They need to learn that someone being rude to them when they're saying horrendous stuff(or really anything) isn't an abusive relationship if it isn't reifying power structures(ei, using slurs). Theyre just doing tone policing civility politics of the tenderqueer variety.

Conduct that is deemed untenably toxic to the Fediverse and Hexbear’s standing within it (by discretion of Hexbear moderation) may be subject to reprisal, regardless of whether it is explicitly outlined.
can we get a few examples here? like if i go onto blahaj and tell someone to suck me through a straw because they called me a tankie, is that untenably toxic? is my role in an argument under scrutiny within hexbear despite it being on another instance?
- like if i go onto blahaj and tell someone to suck me through a straw because they called me a tankie, is that untenably toxic?
  This is how it's going to inevitably end. I'm willing to go along with this appeasement stuff. I just kinda think it's doomed.
  Ultimately the blahaj mods have set up free rein over there to call anyone a tankie. Then you're not allowed to argue back against propaganda, because that's sussy. And if you don't argue back, that's also sussy because you're being a sleeper agent. They already on edge because they see the red menace all around them, and ultimately a hexbear is just going to say something that defeds us anyways. They're basically saying as much.
  I really like a lot of posts and posters over there. But their mods have set up a system where some people are allowed to punch in the name of red scare, and other people aren't allowed to punch back. There's a core set of posters who understand what they've been given and take advantage of it constantly.
  Admins can try this. It's not going to work.
  
  It really feels like a no-win situation. Much of the Lemmyverse outside of Lemmygrad (which much of the Lemmyverse already defederated with, and they're a lot less aggro than we are) is pure undiluted terminal :brainworms:
  They're going to see the Hexbear tag and start screaming SEESEEPEE RUSSIA GENOCIDE UKRAINE blah blah blah no matter what we do.
- Adding to this, would it be toxic if I went into lemmy.blahaj.zone and started asking random people, “You like kissing boys, don’t you?” and accusing them of being “boykissers”?
  
  Just omit emoji for the time being
- If they sow the wind...
  
  They shall reap the seed

Petition to amend every numbered item with, "Post PPB as early and often as possible".

Do not ping users from other federated instances with intent to goad or mock.
This is fascism.
- Yeah, I would really love if exceptions could be carved out here. Maybe don't ping users for having garden variety lib takes, but it'd be nice if we could ping and dunk on the truly vile, worst reactionaries on the federation.

So turns out federation sucks. I don't like changes. I want this site to stay just like it was the past two years. Fuck all new things, I'm old, I want my old internet back.
- You can click Local up at the top and only see Hexbear posts
  
  Well I didn't have to do that three weeks ago, did I!
  In any case, I demand purges. Stalin wouldn't have federated!
  
  Doesn't help the influx of libs coming here that apparently we have to be nice to now

Can I ppb someone for calling me a bot outside hexbear?
- You can if you really want but I think it works counter to our interests, even if they deserve it
  
  I feel like lemmy.ml users are fair game cuz their admins are on our side and very unlikely to defederate, right?
- I'm trying to find a funny quote that is compact enough that converting it to binary doesn't take up the whole page, but it's difficult. Binary is so big. An image could work but then you'd need to find an OCR to pull the text from the image and run it through a binary translator, which is a lot of work.
  
  What about hexadecimal?

I hope we at least get like an ultimatum, like "do these things or else we'll defederate" as opposed to just defederation with no recourse. Like blahaj complained about us posting in their defed thread and now we have rules about it and we're abiding by them. We also have the secret "disengage" button that nobody on the verse knows about.
We do have rules we follow, we just like those rules to be explicit and objective.
- I do not think it is appropriate to follow or even acknowledge ultimatums from liberals. Turning hexbear in to Reddit so people don't have to make two accounts to post is not worth it.
  
  I disagree but I would rather not have this discussion with you across three separate threads.

Yeah. I think we got on high on posting.
I still think that federating with so many communities at all the same time was a bad idea, as well as adding communities to the allowlist during and after the voting was completed. I hope we take a more measured approach moving forward. I'm glad that the admins put the shit.just.works federation up for vote for instance.
EDIT: To be clear, I'm in favor of the rule changes.
- On top of us descending like the posting equivalent of a swarm of locusts on all these instances because we federated with so many at once, I didn't realize how much more active hexbear was compared to most other lemmys. Especially our, like, "culture" of actually responding when someone says something you don't like compared to just lurking and downvoting. It must've been a pretty whiplashy thing for other fediverse users on Hexbear Federation Day.
  
  On Reddit, in terms of posting, we were I think third on the entire site, and the one above us was a 2.3 million member NBA sub. It's one of the reasons we were quarantined - The Admins couldn't keep us from popping up on front pages.

I signed up just prior to federation and was never involved in CTH subreddit so I can't really compare how things were before. But I don't really get what is the point of federation if it requires all these rules. Respectability politics? Everybody seemed to be pretty happy in the 5 days or so I was here. I think this'll become boring at some point.. Might want to start thinking about what the criteria would be to walk it back. Which might never happen. But good to have a line in mind.

This is reasonable, we are still feeling our way and going full hog from the get go have been slightly overzealous.
That being said, I think half our problems would've been avoided if not for the Lemmy bug making our emojis 20x sized in other instances.

? No pinging and no direct links seems pointless. Why have we even federated at that point

With regards to 2: Can we ping users from other instances with intent to like, actually be in good-faith? I've considered doing this once or twice but decided not to because I don't know how it would be received.
- It's allowed, unless they revise that rule but like, if you're uncertain about the context then don't do it. If it's say, in the comments of a dunk tank post, it's probably best to assume they're going to get harassed if you ping them and not do that. Other contexts are probably okay
  
  If it's very clearly friendly, then pinging seems fine. I pinged comrade Lemmy dev nutomic in a thread about Hexbear not being listed on join-lemmy.org, and they showed up elsewhere in the comments to explain what was needed for Hexbear to be listed.
  But yeah, if in doubt, don't ping

I really think c/196 is going to be the sticking point regarding defederation with blahaj. They insist on keeping the fuck tankies banner, which shows that they're absolutely opposed to hearing our side of things, and of course, it attracts anti-communists of all stripes (pic rel). It's always going to be a point of conflict between us.
- Strange that it isnt a fuck white supremacy banner, given white supremacy is so much more common in the country compared to MLs
  
  The obsession is bizarre. Should we make a banner about at most tens of thousands of too-left leftists? Or should we make it about any of the numerous bigots who are real and actually wield state violence like a sword? The answer may surprise you!
  Is this a "libs don't understand power" thing? Like they identify us as a threat because they're unable to understand that we're largely politically neutralized right now?

Other instances’s commitment to good moderation is laughable
- The mod of the linustechtips comm DMed me to say that they wouldnt remove the comments of a mysoginistic user (despite removing his original one for mysoginy) because we should "just downvote and move on" (i told them twice we dont have downvotes) and also literally said they would normally remove for lots of reports but wouldnt here because they "all came from the same instance". Also complained about us "making more work" for them by replying. Literally called the user a troll but wouldnt just... ban them from the comm?
  
  name and shame
  
  I had a longer conversation and explained the reasons to them and they deleted the comment. still disagreed that it was misogynist but banned the user for lying about their intentions.
- It basically seems like there isn't any (with the exception of our comrades over at Lemmygrad of course) .
- Yeah but have you considered...

i totally get what you're trying to do here but this one isn't gonna be fixed. you're asking us not to engage with libs despite the entire history of this site, despite the entire reason people voted to federate, and for what? to hang out with queer libs and get thirdhand memes from twitter and reddit? like what do they actually offer that is worth this much hassle?

I think the blahaj admins/mods need to explain why ableism and chaser shit aren't banable offenses.
- I officially made the jump over from Blahaj to Hexbear. FMHY is gonna be my main instance because I like full federation, but Blahaj as a safe space is a fucking joke to me now. Mods are gonna insult my kid like stupid pricks.
  
  Welcome! Now I can post some emojis directly
  
  what is FMHY? I don't think I've heard about it before. also, welcome!
  
  Welcome!
  
  welcome, friend! we're glad to have you here.
  
  One of us one of us
- Personally, I feel that hexbear should de-federate from blahaj if they don't account for this, fuck all this waiting for them to decide if they want to de-federate.
  
  We should be demanding that 196 mod be replaced over that disgusting display with that admin DM post

Users visiting Hexbear should be given breathing room to inquire in good-faith about topics that seem obvious to well-trodden leftists. Assume good faith in even the most obvious of questions, except in cases where a user is explicitly acting in a combative or unreasonable manner.
I agree strongly with this and think this is good practice for leftists in general, since most people haven't spent the last three years on the super-communist website, and it's perceived as weak to react with immediate hostility to any criticism or question you get. I also agree with abiding by other instances' rules and conduct when you post in those instances.
Beyond that, I'd hate to see our site or posting habits change at all. We've had a wonderful website for the last three years, I broadly like the people here and actually enjoy posting, and I'd hate to lose that just for some pretension of reaching out to mostly useless internet liberals who will shit on us and even lie to disparage us either way.
"Come and be broken upon the rocky shore that is HEXBEAR."

I'm failing to understand how we are this behemoth in the fediverse yet have zero leverage in regards with relations to these other instances. We're the bigger more active instance, we are the bellwether to drive growth of Lemmy. These less active instances should be guarding their rears and we should be the ones considering de-federating from these reactionary communities. Mods, why do I have concerns about anti-communists trying to make my experience on this platform worse?
- These less active instances should be guarding their rears
  What do you mean by this?
  
  we're gonna poop on their balls.
  
  Lemmy is a leftist project, liberals shouldn't expect that they will have anything near leadership roles. The concern of poor behavior causing disenfranchisement should be there's. Sorta how trade unions are intrinsically leftist institutions. Any chud can and should sign up with a union to bargain collectively with his fellow workers. That doesn't mean chuds have an inherent privilege to the executive board or leadership positions.
- Why does Hexbear, the largest instance, not simply eat the other instances?

Seeing some of the stuff from Blahaj and their 196 community I am now less inclined to be generous with them than I was in my previous post in this thread.

First I want to say federation with instances friendly to us is an unmitigated good. There are plenty of those.
But as someone new who only came here because of federation, I have to say it seems like the imposition of rules to appease the libs even in the short time I've been here has put a chill on many of the great discussions I came here for. Why do we want to stay federated with instances that demand we stop saying anything good about the see see see pee (and other oriental horrors, very evil and definitely all the same) and have massive debates about whether we should exist in their perceived reality? The moment such a debate becomes prominent in another instance and under serious consideration by its leadership should probably be the moment for us to defed them. For the benefit of everyone involved. If they want that reversed they should be asking us. This is not a small instance.
If we have to appease the libs here, then here becomes a lot like everywhere else. At least for a minute I felt freer to speak here than for example in the small mastodon instance I'm also in. Mostly because I don't want to make a problem for that small instance and get it massively defederated for being too "tankie." For a small instance that's a death sentence. This is not a small instance.
I can see some value, if this is technically possible, in keeping some comms federated under unique rules with a view to maximize interaction with other instances, and other comms only available for local interaction. But if that's not viable I just don't see the value of engaging with instances whose leaderships don't seem to be acting in very good faith, whose members seem to think at best somehow exposing us to their great lib takes will "soften our views" or something as if their dumb shit isn't the hegemonic garbage forced into our ears and eyeballs and down our throats more or less everywhere but here.
As a recent immigrant and beneficiary of federation (the good kind) maybe I am a hypocrite for saying so. But in my humble opinion, if I may be so bold as to make a suggestion, president Xi, fire when ready.
- I haven't noticed a big reduction in topics libs would get the vapours over, more just that the current federation drama is the flavour of the minute. We had a pretty big and good Tiananmen Square threat the other day for example. And you could always come and hang out in the news megathread. The libs fear to tread there (although I have no doubt they lurk in silent horror from some of the comments I've seen on other instances).

When they go low, we go high!

Looking at the lemm.ee meta thread it's pretty clear that the new federated instance rule 2 isn't being enforced.

There's a contradiction with Rule 1 of /c/The_dunk_tank that effectively puts all of lemmy off limits as content there. Is that the case?

I was willing to play ball, but after the covid thread and these accusations I'm not sure these rules have any utility. They're assuming a level of good faith on the part of other parties that is obviously lacking.
"Federation was a mistake." - Hayao Miyazaki
- these accusations
  That post was removed by the mods.

This seems pretty reasonable over all especially with the caveat that this is fluid and will be updated later.
Sounds like we can still have some fun in the dunk tank if a user decides to participate in the post there. Seems like we might have a lot of

posting in the near future.

I knew all the mods were Feds, thanks for finally admitting it.
- eration

I don't post too much, and comment only occasionally, but I've seen some great content from lemmygrad and lemmy.ml which has made me ok about federating.
The site culture here has been crafted so thoughtfully over the last 3 years that I was worried that it would disappear. However, what I am mostly seeing is that we are just the largest and most active instance, which is hard for other instances to understand as it is massively changing their feeds if federated. Regardless of political bent. This is being interpreted as "brigading", which of course is bullshit, when in we are just that good at posting that we appear to be everywhere.
My biggest concern is that federation might be creating exhausting work for our top notch admins and mods. They are truly the best! And I understand that there must be lots of new influx of accounts here, both good and bad faith, and that need to be gently or not shown the rules. In addition, I can't imagine the amount of new work that is built in removing comments in other instances from our users that are interpreted badly or low effort or inappropriate (it does happen! Sorry to point it out!). So again, thank you best mods and admins.
Last -- I think a lot of the words being used to describe us, like obnoxious, or weird or whatever, really just boil down to the Lemmy bug where our (very bestest) emotes appear as huge images. I think that put a bad taste in a lot of people's face holes right off the bat. Has that been fixed?

I hate this federation shit tbh
These libs are exhausting, site feels like work now, all drama, reactionary content etc etc
Let’s just remove everything from the allow list except lemmygrad and blahaj (which may be redeemable) and be done with it. They’re all obviously going to defed with us anyway so why waste time
Edit: changed my mind fuck blahaj too

when someone tags a lib

Socialism in one country

thanks

Why do deleted posts still show on peoples' feeds?

🥰

Do these rules mean anything? Mods have removed comments in this thread so they've clearly seen it, and it is blatantly violating these rules. Why is it still up?

whoops

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