Stating that my people (and other Baltic nations) are subhuman

As a member of Hexbear for 3+ years I just want to say that this isn't acceptable over here and would land people with a very serious reprimand or a permaban if they don't admit to being in the wrong for this. The use of "subhuman" in particular is fascist behaviour and I'd assume it is wreckers rather than longstanding members, it's not language that socialists are fond of.

The only other thing I will say is that I genuinely appreciate that you're building this community with your userbase and having these conversations, it's the correct way to create a unique community culture and have people care about the space.

I am also still quite worried about the amount of distinct users on hexbear who have posted Kremlin propaganda. I so far don’t have reason to believe that these users are employed by the Russian state, but the fact that they are spreading the same hateful content which can be seen on Russian television seems problematic to say the least, and it remains to be seen if moderators can truly keep up with such content.

This was why my eyebrows raised when I saw the Hexbear admin response when they claim that "Russian disinformation is generally either refuted in comments or removed by mods". Kremlin propaganda is rife in communities like chapotraphouse, and it certainly seems like the mods there let anything slide as long as it is isn't outright incitement to violence.

I challenged claims made in a couple of different anti-Ukraine posts and despite the fact there were maybe one or two users whose responses were thoughtful, the majority were outright calling me an idiot and a retarded liberal (edit: correction; dumb fuck)

So far, my impression of HB's userbase is pretty negative because the posts on there that make the front page here tend to be the more shit-posty ones.

That said, I appreciate @sunaurus for the stance he's taking. There is some positive and thoughtful content on HB - you just have to block the noisier and more idiotic communities so it doesn't get drowned out.

Thanks for that very thoughtful statement. I am fine with keeping them federated and letting individual users block what they don't want to see. I find it interesting to see what different communities have to say, even if I find it abhorrent.

I'd like to stay federated with hexbear. They bring important information to conversation that people are otherwise not exposed to. American school-taught history is NOT the gold standard in truth.

I feel a little sorry for the Lemm.ee users here that came to make measured, personal posts specific to the annoucement. There's a fair amount of long off-topic arguements happening in bits of the thread now and that probably makes it harder to read and manage.

This is something that's often been pointed to as a pure result of Hexbear users or federation with Hexbear and given rise to accusations of 'brigading here and in the past'. While I don't think every segue into debate has been useful here, and have also told comrades that I didn't think this was the place for specific comments (which they removed) I also think there's some important context to point out - and I hope it helps lemm.ee users wondering about all this traffic not to fall into the trap of assuming the worst based on a couple of comments:

• Hexbear is a very big and very active instance. A very small proportion of users posting in a thread (especially one explicitly about them) can seem like a lot to a lot of instances.
• Hexbear doesn't have downvotes and Hexbear users do not have the ability to downvote posts or comments on other instances. This creates a culture where if people disagree, they tend to reply, not downvote instead. Another reason we're very active.
• This thread has constantly been at the top of people's feeds on Hexbear. if they're not only set to 'local'.
• Finally - and I say this fully acknowledging and appriciating the many ordinary, good faith, pleasant lemm.ee commenters that I've enjoyed reading and talking too even when I totally disagreed with them - a lot of these off-topic arguements and more heated comments do not come from nowhere. While not at all the majority, I do see a pretty shocking amount of actively hostile, hateful, and insulting behaviour here. Sadly, quite a bit of it would be banned under Hexbear's moderation policy against things like slurs and hate speech too.

So try to keep in mind if you see salty Hexbear users replying to people that, just in reading through this thread myself, I've the following instances of abuse or smears against my comrades (and they continue popping up). So I absolutely support them defending themselves (as long as they stay within the rules here):

• Dimissal as the pejorative "tankie" - 4 times (although we actually think this one is pretty funny usually)
• Users stating that Hexbear users are propagandists - 8 times
• Stating that people from Hexbear are specifically paid Russian/Chinese bots/propagandists - 10 times
• Direct equivalences of Hexbear posters to Nazis or just straight up calling us Nazis/fascists - 7 times
• Insults regarding mental health or IQ that would be classed as ablism on Hexbear - 8 times
• Dismissing users as children - 2 times
• Claiming Hexbear users are using vote-manipulation (impossible, as explained above) - 4 times
• Accusations of deliberate brigading rather than just commenting, being active - 11 times

I've tried not to count repeated instances from the same users. But sadly that's not all. Just a handful of the following are comments that have been made against Hexbear users in this thread, without any kind of equal hostility. As far as I can tell they all still remain:

• "You guys are like cancer"
• "Braindead fucking tankies"
• "Get fucked"
• "Asshole" (multiple)
• That our beliefs are "moralistic bullshut"
• That some of our beliefs are "a criminal ideology"
• A comment that simply states "No Russians"
• That we're "evil" (multiple times)
• An elaborate comparison to us "vandalising a Jewish graveyard" and other Nazi equivalences
• And of course a comment that explictly minimised the Nazi death toll with glee, seeming to imply they should have killed more. On the subject of disagreeing with equating the hammer and sickle to the swastika (hidden with spoiler tag, for those who don't want to see it repeated)...

There's also been numerious instances of users misgendering Hexbear users. I'm not going to put all of these down to malice, but at Hexbear we display our pronouns for a reason - we love our trans comrades! You don't have to, but could you please at least respect them and not misgender them?

Again, this isn't the majority, but it's honestly disappointing and worth keeping in mind amongst some of the louder, minority yells of 'brigading' etc.

I posted a comment in the_dunk_tank without noticing where I was. While many people were heated over what I said, it was a misunderstanding due to a lack of specificity and ignorance on my part. After I clarified what I was intending to say, discussion ensued and it was ended on good terms.

The vast majority of users I interact with from hexbear are thoughtful, insightful, kind and genuine individuals that care deeply about humanity and moving forward. The hate that they have is for fascism and actual fascists.

To defederate hexbear would be a disservice to the idea of federated social media.

I've seen the hexbears at work and don't doubt that they'd class some of my views as woefully liberal but in the main I am enjoying being on a site where the left is so unapologetic, doesn't go for all this centrist bollocks and is unafraid to call out bullshit.

Having seen the Overton window constantly shifted to a narrower aspect ratio and then shifted rightwards on reddit was a very disheartening experience and I think seeing active hexbears on all threads will be useful in stopping the uptight right when they inevitably decide that that the fediverse needs shifting towards their own Volkish views.

I generally agree. I thought hexbear was fine until I saw some of the spam/trolling you mentioned, and then the genocide denial... That got me to start blocking communities there.

With that said I think exploding heads is probably just as bad, if not worse since the mods aren't against the content posted there. I know you said you didn't want to defederate and I kind of understand why, but at least keeping a close eye on the users there would be appreciated.

I've seen more posts complaining about Hexbear than actual objectionable things they've done. Maybe that's a sign of effective moderation, but in general I agree that defederation should always be a very last resort, and it doesn't feel like we're even close.

Also, with the ability for users to block instances coming soon, I think everyone will be happy then. At least, users anyway, it will still be down to the admin team to determine if the moderation workload is excessive and act accordingly - but that decision is and should be up to you.

Hexbear is making Lemmy unbearable for me. There's no function for a user to block everything from a server. I don't want to see their communities, their users, their posts, their messages, or their votes showing up.

I block communities as they come up, I block individuals as they post, but it's never ending.

Every popular post is over-run with tankies shitposting, grinding real conversation to a halt.

They're not people open to having a conversation in good faith. They're ChapoTrapHouse shitposters who got kicked off reddit for being pro-violence shitposters.

Their Moderation Policy is incompatible with ours, as they allow hate speech as long as it's directed towards the "right" people.

A first timer looking would see 90% tankie crap and would leave and not come back.

I've contributed less since they were joined simply because I don't want a herd of tankies yelling at me with nobody else even reading it.

Until such a time that I, as a user, can bock everything from a server I support defederation. Or at the very least put a giant poop emoji next to everything from that server so it's easier to skip. They seem to like poop.

Permanently Deleted

My view is that this federation of theirs is just sketchy. Their announcement post reads as some barely veiled call to propagandize the Fediverse, and the instance itself seems almost proud in a way to have developed their particular methods in their isolation. Though from what I've seen, those methods are mostly just whataboutism and "just asking questions", not anything particularly novel.

If there was much content or interaction from them that was just neutral, it'd be much easier to swallow, but everything they post or comment always seems be a dog whistle at minimum. And maybe I'm just not noticing all the users not doing that, but the ones I do notice are all over.

All in all, I'd be more in favor of defederation. I've seen enough of this from the right already to have an idea of where this is going, and barring a larger effort from the instance to change, would rather it just got nipped in the bud.

Please don't defederate unless moderation becomes impossible. People should curate what they want to see on their own. Part of why I joined lemm.ee was that the content is not pre-curated, but I have a wide selection to choose from myself.

i don't have anything in particular to add, I just want to repeat that clicking on "all" isn't brigading.

as a lemmy.world user, I can’t tell you all enough about how much our quality of life has improved since we defederated form hexbear.net. far less moderation is necessary and general browsing is far more pleasant not having to constantly be bombarded by those awful stickers and brigades of trolls with their endless baiting and attacks.

why should users and mods be constantly burdened day I and day out with users from an instance whose entire ethos is that of shitposting trolls? if lemm.ee is supposed to be a nice place, why would you intentionally let in a group of people you know have zero intention of comporting to your expected code of conduct and have a well-established pattern of behavior that’s hostile, combative, and toxic towards a large portion of your user base?

yes, defederation is a last-resort option, but what other choices do you have when current user and mod options simply aren’t sufficient? defederation isn’t permanent, and if, by some miracle, hexbear users suddenly become well-behaved, lemm.ee can always re-federate with them. if they weren’t the titanic problem they genuinely are, several other instances wouldn’t also be currently discussing defederation in addition to those which already have.

I’m reminded of an old post I once saw about a bartender who kicks out any Nazi who enters his bar, even if they're well-mannered and isn’t bothering other patrons. Even though they may be polite and bothering nobody, eventually, they come back with a friend, then another, then then 10 others, and then BOOM, you’e a Nazi bar.

Don’t make lemm.ee a toxic, hostile, troll-filled hexbear bar. keep it nice. keep it safe. ❤️

edit: not even a day later, and I get this pvt message from a lemm.ee user warning me of this scary-ass comment they got with a stalking/death threat they received from a hexbear troll, with a list of users they feel slighted them and other hexbear users.

HEXBEAR USERS ARE DANGEROUS. HEXBEAR USERS ARE TERRORISTS.

names blurred for safety

update 19/8/2023: i have first heard about hexbear 1 day before this thread, i really didn't give care about them before

after they did an excellent job to introduce themselves in this thread, i'd like to change my stance to DEFEDERATE NOW! 😆

Many users (including hexbear users) correctly (and politely) pointed out to me in DMs that the symbol has a much broader use than just as the symbol of the USSR, and people elsewhere in the world may not associate it with the USSR at all

imagine i vandalize jewish graveyard, put swastikas all over the place and my defense is "man, swastikas were used all around the word through history, they don't just belong to nazi germany, you know?" is your reaction going to be "well, you raise some interesting points"?

i doubt that.

"argument" like that is just an asshole trying to obfuscate the facts and delay the consequences of their own action, it is classic propaganda method.

Hexbear admin response After the above events had played out, I reached out to hexbear admins for clarification on their moderation policies and how they handle such cases. I was actually very happy with their response:

do you feel that response is actually going to change something and it is sincere, not just an effort to obfuscate the reality in the line with what i said above?

or is it like this?

the comrade below actually suggests that there is a time and place for such rhetoric, it is just not right here, right now. you have to think politically and wait for our moment, comrade!

i generally agree with your liberal approach to federation, unfortunately sometimes the reality forces you to take some pragmatic steps and i don't think anyone would blame you if you took the easy solution, you are not obligated to dig through pile of shit.

i am also not a fan of pseudoliberalism in the style of "just let everyone make their own decision". it is like saying we don't need police, lets just let everyone to deal with the world themselves. it is obvious nonsense, most people just want to go about their business and they appreciate the fact there is relatively safe environment behind their apartment door.

I really have no problem with communist or leftist views, but some of those guys need to take a chill pill. I'm cool with bashing the fash and social welfare programs, I'm not cool with basically talking about how everyone to the right of Stalin needs to die or how Tianenmen Square was a wholesale fabrication by the west. I typically just roll my eyes, block the bullshit and move on with life, but it's been really dragging down my lemmy experience.

I'm firmly in the "tone it down" camp on Hexbear (especially on other instances) and I appreciate people's patience and I'm glad that some people have gotten past our rough exterior. I'm hoping things will quiet down and stabilize before we burn our bridges. I'm glad to hear that your experience with our mods was positive and that you're focusing more on that, over the years I've come to trust our mods and I believe they're committed to making this work.

As has already been mentioned and acknowledged, clarification on Kremlin propaganda would be appreciated. I agree with removing false information, but I'm of the belief that it's important to understand the positions and perspective of every nation, especially those considered enemies, for the sake of peace. I do not trust any source from any state implicitly, but rather I believe in gathering information from a variety of sources and critically examining each. I grew up in a "post 9/11 world" and in that context, any attempt to understand the motivations or historical context behind that event, beyond "They hate us for our freedom," was treated with suspicion, along with all sorts of lies about Muslims in general. Since then, I don't go along with hating who I'm told to hate, at least until I feel I've investigated the matter fully. To that end, I think there is value in listening critically to state-affiliated sources, from every side.

I look forward to having productive discussions in the future.

Well written. We’re luck to have you.

Defederating from Hexbear would be a hugely disappointing move. They have a lot of insightful posts that I want to see interleaved with my other subscriptions. It would be a true shame to defederate from them because a subset of their users are immature/shitposters (where isn't that the case?). The point of federation was to not require every user to have N separate accounts on every forum. They show up in everyone's feed because they have a lot of users and activity. That's a feature, not a bug success!

I'm a fan of hexbear and like being a lemm.ee user. Hopefully things work out.

For anyone keeping count, I've switched to my lemmy.world account (which has defederated from Hexbear) and the comments on this thread are at 209. When I logged out of my Lemm.ee account there were over 800, so that means roughly 600 of the comments on a meta thread for the lemme.ee instance are from Hexbear users, or in threads started by them.

Edited to remove some slightly frustrated and possibly less than civil comments.

I just gave up and started blocking all of their subs.

Props for staying calm throughout all this. The initial rush of excitement seems to be pretty much over, which means things ought to mellow down on the timeline. I'm sure Hexbear can coexist with the fediverse the same way /r/cth coexisted with reddit, which is to say by showing up and ballin' for Marx and pushing the boundaries of acceptability. Except this time there are no ad revenue sources to placate by banning anything outside of the Overton window.

I can totally understand your strong feelings towards the USSR. I understand you've conceded that the hammer and sickle isn't strictly soviet symbology and can represent other things, but I would like to ask you whether or not you would think of the "stars and stripes" or the "union jack" (or really most western iconography) as hate speech given the centuries of pillaging, rape, genocide and dehumanization that they represent in many parts of the world.

Good, I like having them around. They give the fediverse the spice of life that prevents it from becoming just another necrotic pool of internet backwash filled with stale memes and pandering comments like what late Digg became and what reddit has been turning into.

Russian disinformation is generally either refuted in comments or removed by mods

I mean all you have to do is glance at any Ukraine thread on any instance federated with hexbear to know this is a lie.

These people are trolls, plain and simple. The mods/admins are no exception, they are just slightly more self aware than their users when it comes to diplomacy. They will say whatever they think you want to hear in order to get one more day worth of trolling in.

As a Hexbear user and one of the people your mod and OP interacted with in that thread, I find a good chunk of this post concerning and often spurious.

First, personally, I am one of the people who accused him of engaging in behaviour that was tantamount to Holocaust denial. I did so after his repeated, blunt, assertions of false equivalency between the undisputed horrors of Nazi Germany and those - some true, many disputed, some outright refuted - of the Soviet Union. I explained that this practice is known as the 'Double Genocide Theory' and even linked to articles by Jewish historians and Holocaust academics that explained the issues with the theory and the history of its official use to whitewash far-right movements, particularly in post-Soviet states. Instead of receiving a modicum of serious engagement he instead deliberately and grossly misrepresented and dismissed not only my point but the work of the Jewish academics I linked before leaving with an insult.

Secondly, what exactly constitutes Kremlin propaganda? This is a usually completely baseless claim that is thrown constantly at Hexbear uses, but also almost any marginally left or anti-war figure on the internet. A small but vocal group of cynical users that cannot and will not tolerate opposing viewpoints use it to shut down debate and to smear people. As your mod/OP stated, Hexbear does both refute and ban clear instances of actual Russian (or other) state propaganda when it's demonstrably untrue or breaks our very strict rules on bigotry of any kind. But much of what was smeared as Kremlin propaganda was not, because it was not.

Your very own mod/OP engaged in a version of that in the thread on Hexbear and when pushed on what it meant variably either ignored the question or cast the net as wide as anything Russia (state, politicians, or media) have ever said. Several people made the point that a Russian source can say can say something that's factual, or identify something true and use that as part of a political narrative. Does that objective truth suddenly because false as soon as it's spoken by Russian lips? These questions were ignored.

Personally, I'd prefer that there isn't defederation, that the bad feeling that's undoubtedly been created by members from both instances, is moved on from, and to explore and engage with more of lemm.ee afresh. I also recognise and respect that decision as being lemm.ee's to make, but felt that users deserve to hear some of the other perspective. Especially when I do not believe your mod/OP is either willing or able to be clear eyed or act in good faith around contentious issues like those highlighted in this thread. Which of course is also to be considered, and decided by, users of Lemm.ee.

This post already has a lot of comments, but as a relatively new Lemmy user, I also want to add that I agree against defederation except as a last resort. However, that said, I do find most of these hexbear posts and users very annoying.

I consider myself extremely left-leaning, but I’m also not someone who enjoys engaging in political discussion online. One day recently, my Lemmy feed was suddenly inundated with these “chapo” posts (I don’t even know what a chapo is) and the attitude of the posts and comments is very disheartening. They are obviously aggressive and angry, and while I don’t like homophobes, transphobes, xenophobes, and so on, I also don’t want every other post on my feed to be a hate post. Even hating the bad guys gets old really fast. I get it. I was a hater when I was younger too, but I can’t take two steps online today without stumbling into rage or hatred.

A couple weeks ago when I joined Lemmy, it was still feeling cozy enough and positive enough for the most part that it felt like a little safe haven. I started telling all my friends how great it was (as long as you don’t mind porn or are willing to filter out NSFW) and I was excited to post and comment to contribute to the content. But all of a sudden one day these hexbear posts and users started popping up and now I’m embarrassed that I even recommended this place.

I generally agree with their messages when they are standing up for the rights of others and talking about tearing down corrupted establishments, but the sarcasm is so dense and dripping with hatred that it’s almost impossible to tell what they’re talking about or advocating for, so I absolutely do not want to get involved with their discussions.

Anyway, all I’m saying is even though the content is not what I want to see and not what I think is healthy for this sort of site, defederating is serious and breaks one of the best parts of what Lemmy has to offer. We should let the instance moderate itself for a while, even if it means putting up with some noise while things calm down. Letting users filter entire instances will be a fantastic feature when/if it arrives, but for now I’m fine just ignoring the posts or blocking the communities if they are really bothering me

First of all I would like to offer my support to Sunaurus for this post. I thank him for raising this issue to our instance and for continuing to be discussion led and transparent. I also ask that we discuss this so we are best informed on the Hexbear subject.

I also agree what Sunaurus is saying but would add;

We try to encourage people to engage in a healthy way here on Lemm.ee. Also looking throughout the Fediverse which is growing at the moment we look to encourage that same engagement. This will ensure it’s long term success and resilience. I believe that healthy discussion promotes new ideas, innovation and learning. I do not believe that any abuse, victimisation, harassment or active discrimination has a place.

In the recent days I have seen increased reports coming from content or comments made by Hexbear users. However from what I am seeing although there is a lot, mostly they do not cross the line for significant action although a minority do. So at this time from what I have seen Defederation is not obvious a decision to me. I am expecting the behaviour and style of comments to calm once the excitement of Federating passes. I am also encouraged by the positive steps of the Hexbear admins.

I'm not from lemm.ee, but I believe that this problem is something the whole fediverse is facing.

Users from instances like hexbear, lemmygrad, exploding heads etc. seem to have some things in common: -Brigading -Trolling -Spreading misinformation/lies about genocides, wars, etc. -Demanding to be heard because of free speech and "tolerance" -When they face resistance, they get aggressive and you better believe that the comments going against their narrative are getting deleted on their instance

They are using lemmy to spread their propaganda and hate. This is exactly how propaganda is effective: spew the same bullshit as often as possible and, because humans tend to believe things to be true that they see or read a lot, radicalize users through it. Of course that doesn't count for every person on that instance but in the end it doesn't matter if a user is an edgy teenager, a radicalized senior or someone with hundred accounts. They are doing damage and the only way to win against them is to not let them into the playground.

Stating that my people (and other Baltic nations) are subhuman

Oh, that's includes a now deleted comment of mine. Yes, i admit i got a bit overboard here. I wanted only to highlight a certain political tendency in the region. rather than make a blanket statement about any nationalities and ethnicities. It really came out wrong. And while i don't really care whatever this instance defederates or not, here i must apologize since i was clearly in the wrong. I should only dunk on people for what they do, not what they are.

Banning state propaganda is great, but why limit that ban to Kremlin propaganda? US propaganda is just as, if not more, prevelent and toxic. The narrative surrounding the destruction of the Nord Stream is a good example:

American corporate media and government officials were calling for its destruction and outright threatening to blow it up for months prior to the actual attack. Immediately after its destruction, the corporate news outlets and government officials that had been calling for that very action acted as though they had never done so and presented a unified front that blamed Russia for the attack. Doing some critical thinking and realizing that Russia had neither the opportunity nor the motive to blow up their own pipeline is not Kremlin propaganda. Continuing that critical thinking and realizing that the US had both motive and opportunity, and was a likely culprit because they had repeatedly threatened to blow up the pipeline is not Kremlin propaganda. Shutting down all discussion critical of the US by dismissing it as Russian bots is US propaganda.

I think we need to stay federated. This is not a kindergarten and people can chose what to read and what not.

If we start de-federating every time someone gets offended and set precedent, we will end up de-federating from everything eventually because guess what: there is always someone getting offended for whatever reason. This is internet, grow up.

The neutral stance is the main reason I joined this instance. The moment this changes - I am out.

Hexbear user here so I've no say in whether you defed or not.

Just wanted to say, I appreciate how level headed you've been in this post and with defederation as a whole even though your previous interaction with Hexbear users has made you the target of comments that were heated (to say the least).

At 21 hours old, this lemm.ee meta post has 1123 comments and 3/4ths of the comments are from hexbear users. They brigade every thread with their non sense and it is impacting lemmy in a very negative way. We wouldn't be having this discussion if it wasn't. I don't really like defederation if it was a tool to silence ideology but what hexbear users do is not really debate ideology and more aggressive in your face bad faith argument trolling. This is a spam instance that should be treated as such. Block it.

I usually enjoy the conversations they create, could do less with the poopy pig but that's not a big deal enough to defederate IMO.

Sorry for interloping as a new lemmy.ml user -- I wanted to share my perspective because I was one of the very early adopters of hexbear (then called chapo.chat) after the ChapoTrapHouse subreddit got banned. I no longer have an account there because despite the mods best efforts to uphold "left unity", I at best felt tolerated as an anarchist and just stopped browsing eventually. The reddit strike coinciding with hexbear federating convinced me to create a lemmy account to maybe reconnect with some of the communities there.

The great strength of the old subreddit was that it was a safe haven for leftists of all flavors, practically the first of its kind as comparable places like /r/DankLeft did not exist yet. After a few years of relative isolation, I think it's fair to say that hexbear has become more staunchly ideological (and I'm sure some would say for better) and at least to me it lost some of its more broad appeal. My hope for federation was to see some of the more calcified beliefs over there shaken up a bit with an influx of new users. I guess it's also fair to say that that hasn't happened yet, but it's only been a few days so far.

My hope is still twofold: for Lemmy as a whole, I think it's good that there is a strong leftist presence somewhere to avoid the complete flattening of opinion one can experience on, say, /r/worldnews or /r/politics. I'd hope to see more voices that are critical for example of US hegemony, the two-party system and capital as a whole compared to reddit. And for hexbear I still hope that they can reclaim some of their former big tent appeal, they have always advertised themselves as welcoming to everyone broadly on the left and despite my many criticisms, I do think the mods there do indeed stand by that. These hopes may all be a bit naïve, but I do believe defederating from the biggest leftist instance that (at least in theory) is non-sectarian will only lead to more calcified beliefs on both sides. A lot of that is also for hexbear to decide though, they will have to choose what role they want to play in the fediverse.

It was commonplace among leftists to oppose US military hegemony, NATO, and Raytheon pre-2022, even for relatively lib leaning spaces. This position became basically unacceptable if not bannable in so many left leaning spaces within a matter of months, which should scare you a lot more than the existence of one community where the sentiment has remained the same.

Defederate. I see some thoughtful hexbear users in this thread, but in other threads most of them seem to be spammers and fanatics.

One thing to also take into consideration is the very pro Chinese government slant by many of the users. Many there claim China is a democracy. While I have not seen Uyghur genocide denial there, I also don't peruse hexbear threads very often. That is something that needs to be looked out for.

Edit: well some of them were nice enough to bring the genocide denial to me. Thanks for that. I didn't really feel like seeking it out. The people denying genocide are fairly prevalent posters around hexbear which tells me that instance is perfectly fine with it. I do not think we should be federating with genocide deniers. It was very nice of them to change my mind on federation.

Personally, I would rather see hexbear stay federated. I've never run into problems with their users and a few annoying trolls does not define a community. I would be disappointed if this instance starts defederating from instances that don't break any local or international laws.

Kremlin propaganda

Okay what is meant by this because I have literally no idea

like, you had previously thought communist symbolism in general was Kremlin propaganda, before it was pointed out otherwise. So what still applies to the term? Any defense of modern russia? defense of the USSR? militant communism in general? Revolutionary Marxism? Its a blanket term that doesn't seem to be fully defined in this post. I would like it if someone clarified this.

I believe you handled this situation well, kudos for keeping a level head and trying discussion rather than employing a knee-jerk reaction and blocking the entire instance (or defederating)! Especially considering some of the comments made (like those about your country) seem to have hit you in the feels.

Imho some hexbear users make really high quality posts / comments and engage in discussion or discourse.. While some shit-post and meme everywhere and anywhere. I would be lying if I claimed that I never cracked a smile over a few of these :3

As always, users have the option of blocking any community they find distasteful. I maybe biased in this regard though as the major reason I joined .ee was the "open" approach to federation.. If users are seeking more of a "curated" environment may I suggest one of the many, many instances which would better suit their preferences.

First of all, a great hug to you, it's seems that the ownership/moderation of this instance hurts you. As enjoy-er of this instance, you got my gratitude.

I think that de-federation should be only for extreme instances that allow the worst crimes, besides that, i think that every one should be his own judge. As you stated is a problem that you cant block an instance currently, but hopeful this will be solved soon,

Sorry, English is not my first language.

I blocked hexbear my first day of using Lemmy. Its incredible they amassed such a large group of people I don't ever care to interact with. I have yet to see a comment or post from anyone on hex bear that makes me feel like I'm not wasting my time and mental health. No comment on defederation though, I'm just waiting until clients can block all comments too.

Well, bully for you for being even handed, but the instant I can block a complete server, hexbear and lemmygrad are going on it. The shit far outweighs the roses from either of those instances.

I appreciate the post and your thoughtful reflections. I think I agree on your perspective: defederation should be the absolute last resort (at least for a "generalist" instance like ours, not specifically dedicated to a group of vulnerable people).

I'd like to see what the users of Hexbear have to say, even if I might not agree with them.

I'd say let's keep them federated and see how things go. If resources permit it, mods should keep a watchful eye for propaganda and other unacceptable content.

Also, if users have the ability to block comminities (which is something I was not aware of), they should do it, if they so wish.

Again, thank you for your thoughtful message and for asking our opinion.

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I had to use Connect to block both Hexbear and Lemmygrad. On any political topic, I see a normal discussion for a few hours, and then when the brigade starts, my inbox fills with "This comment blocked using an instance filter for Hexbear" and if I show the comments, they're almost universally negative and abusive.

I support any effort to restrict that instance. Chapos and tankies don't play nice with others. They use their supposed support of LGBT rights and leftist initiatives to infiltrate and disrupt left spaces and undermine reasonable discourse, turning the conversation to acrimony and sometimes even bigotry.

I understand the tension between the communists and the anti-communists here (and that's not going to be resolved in this thread), but the most baffling perspective in this thread are the people just wanting instance blocking. Why are you browsing All and then being upset that it's full of posts from outside your normal bubble? Lemmy's All filter is just like r/all: a mess of wildly different people, interests, and viewpoints. That's kinda the point, isn't it?

Lemmy provides subscriptions to specific communities based on your personal interests. That's going to have the most relevance to you. Settings in every app allow you to pick it as the default view. Use the community explorer to find new communities that actually interest you.

In either case, the focus on instance seems weird. Lemmy is deliberately built around communities. It shouldn't matter where your Lemmy account is hosted: you can subscribe/lurk/participate/ignore any community regardless. It seems like instances are more of an implementation/infrastructure detail. Anytime we start deliberately filtering/censoring/breaking the infrastructure, the more useless it becomes. Defederation actively undermines the network effect that makes Lemmy compelling.

My Instance, that was already defederated from Hexbear, shows around 300 comments right now. Watching this from lemmy.world, that's also defederated from Hexbear, shows a similar number.

Looking directly from the lemm.ee instance, this thread has 1300 comments. Whooping 1k difference. I wonder what that could mean? 🙃

Edit: Just to proof my statement:

• https://feddit.de/c/meta@lemm.ee
• https://lemmy.world/c/meta@lemm.ee
• https://lemm.ee/c/meta

I think the federation should be able to handle some more trolls if there's also some genuine conversations to be had.

My instance has both Lemmygrad and Hexbear federated and I'd like it to stay that way.

I'm all for staying federated. They're style of posting isn't to my taste but I'm not seeing any broad trends that lead me to see the requirement for defederation.

I agree with you. Also I want to say that it's not just hexbear, I have seen groups of users demand defederation from other instances (not just on lemm.ee) because they don't like seeing NSFW and politics (and other topics I'm sure). If we resort to defederation for any conflict then why are we even here trying to grow Lemmy, it's clear that it wouldn't go anywhere and we should just pack up and go back to Reddit and beg u/spez for forgiveness.

Federation is the main point of these platforms, otherwise they are just a bunch of obscure forums walled out from each other, none having enough resources nor userbase to grow into anything meaningful, and quickly being abandoned.

Can't wait until users are able to block instances so this becomes a non-issue. Probably a compromise could be defederating until the feature is ready, not sure if that's possible, and on the event Hexbear admins/mods not do enough to moderate.

I think they're alright. I don't think they're brigading, it may feel that way because leftists are used to discussing ideas, it's done all the time between the different branches, so they go full debatelord when they find easy pickings, users not used to their party line getting challenged with competence and end up resorting to name calling and X-badisms.

I specifically chose lemm.ee because I want to moderate my own experience to a large degree. I'd more support defederating from from spammy instances like lemmit.online which just repost threads from Reddit.

Didn't even notice them until they were pointed out in another thread a few days ago, honestly they seem, at worst, harmless. I disagree with them ideologically in a lot of ways, but I don't really think they're actively harmful. It's not as though they're posting hate speech or anything like that.

Defederating is the wrong move.

Yeah, I generally agree with your stance on it, which is a little bit of a change from previously, but more so understanding better what was already there.

My main problem with their instance is the sub-group of more antagonistic and condescending users, which have an overlap with the ones posting what you've described as "Kremlin propaganda".

Although said propaganda isn't quite exclusive to Russia, there's also Chinese propaganda stuff there too from what I can understand, which again has that same sort of overlap in users, if not the same users as the Russian propaganda sources.

Also, some of the culture of the instance is a bit off-putting, namely the allusions of sorts to pigs, but that could just be my Autism causing me to feel more offended by that than normal.

As it is, politically speaking, I'm not fond of Capitalism, I'm aware of the general historical problems of authoritarianism that have taken over what attempts at communism have been tried, and so I can agree with a decent amount of the views taken there.

But the pro-Russian stuff that shows up there is absolutely wild to me; a country so actively hostile to LGBTQIA+, and yet it's getting support from people in an instance that is inclusive to that same persecuted group? The same country that doesn't even appeal to their ideals of leftism and/or communism in modern day? And the same country that blatantly commits to violations of human rights? It doesn't make any logical sense.

So to your point, it's a moderation issue mainly, and an issue that actually is being addressed, so nicely done to the admins/moderators there for that, and well done to you for bringing that to attention here as well.

And hopefully as you've said, once people start getting used to the rules and connection to other instances, said antagonism, condescension, and trolling will reduce with time.

And apologies for the absolutely flowing sentences that go on for way longer than normal, I blame the Autism/ADHD, as it's closer to how I actually speak vocally. I try to space it out so it's more readable, and less of a wall of connected language that blurs together, especially for those who might have dyslexia.

Everything in this post describing your choice, to me affirms that I have found the right instance to make home. Thank you for your transparency and sharing how your background influences your perspective. Thank you for engaging in healthy reasonable discourse with those using the hammer and sicle (not a communist, but discussion of political ideologies is important and shouldn't be censored). The ways and places where you chose to draw the line show, to me, a lot of integrity and I greatly appreciate and admire your willingness to engage with perspectives other than your own while remaining intolerant of bigotry- I think that balance is something perhaps everyone could aspire to doing better.

For my two cents- soon lemmy overall will have the option for accounts to defederate as they please, giving a good option to those who would like to avoid this community. I support the decision to stay federated, and I support lemmy adding more tools for users to moderate what they want to be exposed to.

I really appreciate that this instance generally favors letting me filter out what I don't want to see for myself instead of making that choice for me. I just moved from lemmy.world and I really appreciate the transparency in communication, and the focus on remaining federated with other communities. Thanks for facilitating this community space!

After reading through the comments here and seeing the level and type of hexbear participation I've lost my qualms and am fully in favor of defederating.

Glad to read this.

Appreciate your approach.

Personally I've seen a lot of hexbear commenters out for blood, seemingly very ready to argue and name-call. Also I've seen many comments and some posts suggesting lemm.ee is for racists.

I assume that is just the "wreckers" someone mentioned.

I don't believe this instance is racist and I don't believe hexbear is all propagandists and lunatics, but I must admit I've been readily blocking subs of theirs. They honestly just seem quite angry with the world and the west. Sometimes for good reason, but sometimes so reflexively it comes off as Russian or Chinese bot posting.

I could be wrong with my personal reflex, but that engagement isn't why I'm on Lemmy at all.

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Throwing my vote against defederation in. People can block instances, users, and communities on their own profile. I signed up for lemm.ee specifically because you federate with everyone and only defederate when absolutely necessary. I'm an anarchist and the authoritarian shit on hexbear can be irritating at times but that's no reason to cut off an entire community. The mods and admins are making a good faith effort to manage harassment and trolling, I'd say that's good enough. And unless that changes there's no reason to defederate

This was a good post and I think you have the right attitude.

To be clear about something, it should be stated tankies are not really left wing. They take the side of Russia and China and defend such actions as you mention. They are quite fascistic in ideology when you break it down. They also remind me of MAGA hats a bit in their rhetoric and I do think given enough time they will/are nationalistic in regards to Russia and China.

I don't think we should defederate from them, as of now, as long as lemm.ee has clear rules on bigotry and other things that are disruptive. Russian or Chinese propaganda should be either removed or have users downvote them and hidden. Regarding their shit posts, i think it should be allowed on certain dedicated subs. Like, 196 had their posts hit all but their culture stayed contained on that subreddit and instance.

And before anyone comments on me not being part of lemm.ee, I am planning to make an account and most likely make it my default but I am watching everything before I make a decision.

Actually had my first conversation with hexbear the other day. Accidentally came from /all and didn’t realize what kind of sub I was in. While I don’t really have their same beliefs, it was interesting to see things from another point of view. Had a swing of upvotes and downvotes as to be expected.

Thank you for your candour, and much respect for you going against what could have been personally easy for you to do. Your adherence to your principles over your emotions and personal experiences show a really strong character.

This instance is my go to, recommended instance. You've shown great technical leadership and now you're showing leadership in moderation. If people don't want to see hexbear, they have a choice in .world or beehaw (who seem to defederate quicker than Chelsea putting in a bid for a player they've just heard of). The fact that .ee can differentiate gives users that freedom to choose.

I do think that those opposed to federation with hexbear are a loud minority and using the same arguments as was applied against lemmygrad and lemmy.ml. In many cases they aren't nuanced views, just recycled lines repeated. It's so frequently and so similar, I have wondered if it's brigading. Is this people who were on exploding heads that are still angry and trying to get even?

Please ignore the initial hot response you'll get, and give people time to come to terms with and accept what you've said. They often push and push and push until you yield, and you need to keep strong to maintain this as your choice, which it should be. Even if you do defederate later, do it on your terms and based on clear criteria of what you feel is right. Many will agree with my view, but don't always wade in on debates. Often the ones that respond are the ones that are most emotionally agitated. I am responding to show support for you and what you have been through, and thank you for your transparency. I respect your integrity.

For disclosure: I am a leftie, but personally opposed to communism. I am opposed to authoritarianism on both sides of the political spectrum. I welcome debate with people that differ from them views. I'm already frequently immersed in debate with Americans that have a very different view of capitalism, and I can live with that. I ain't a snowflake, and I don't endorse cancel culture (I do feel a whiff of irony here and I think it's important to raise that rhetoric the right often throw at at the left, because if you believe if free speech, you believe in free speech).

🥰

For one, the thing I liked about lemm.ee is that they don't seem to enforce an ideology on its users, I consider every participant on this forum to have enough intellectual baguage to deal with propaganda from both sides and to forge their own view on all matters. so as long as people from different instances engage with good faith and arguments they can support with evidence. I can still do my own filtering and banning without having to call for the higher police.

With that said I see alot of distastefull Big ass Gif polluting every controversial thread hexbearians engage with and It makes me just close the thread and not bother reading through the mess or respond to it. I hope it will stop or infinity for lemmy adds a switch to hide those types of comments.

My Opinion for now is wait and see, If they can tune down the edgy shity comments then I can take their opposing oponions, If they keep on polluting the conversation I guess I will be fine if you axe them.

Kind of hilarious that in the midst of this drama, Hexbear themselves have defeded another left wing instance over petty debates about terminology and language. We're giving them more of a benefit of the doubt at this point than they give their own allies, lol. The far left eating its own in a quest for ideological purity is a song that never ends it seems.

Thanks for all the work you've been doing admining this instance @sunaurus.

My immediate opinion from this post was that we should defederate from hexbear, since I've felt myself put off of browsing lemmy because of what I perceived as their annoying comments. I'll admit, by annoying I meant constantly bringing up leftist ideology into threads where it was just plain irrelevant. I'm liberal myself, just not as leftist as the average user on hexbear is. But sometimes I just want to browse my memes in peace, y'know?

But after reading through the comments on this thread, I'm now a little more apprehensive about supporting defederation. It's now apparent to me that the reason why their comments have leftist undertones is because that's what characterizes the instance. Hexbear wouldn't be hexbear if their userbase were centrist or right-wing. Hexbear is hexbear precisely because (for better or for worse) they provide a home for leftist ideology.

Furthermore, there are a couple of reasons why it seems like they're "brigading muh memes." One is because they're such a large instance (larger than us, but certainly smaller than lemmy.world). The other is that their interface doesn't allow downvotes, so the only way they can voice disapproval of an opinion is by literally voicing their disapproval in the comments. I personally think this is an excellent system, if it can be moderated well. I see it as promoting discussion. However if it's not moderated well, good discussion ends up getting drowned out by the shouting of village idiots.

A lot of people are pointing out how 1.4k of the 1.8k comments on this post are from hexbear users. That's ~5.8% of the instance's 24.5k member userbase. The remaining 400 or so comments come from a mix of lemm.ee and other instances. Assuming all 400 other comments from from lemm.ee users, that's 2% of our userbase. Undoubtedly, the percentage is even less because that assumption is definitely false. Thus, hexbear has a participation rate that's almost triple ours (with the best case assumptions in our favor). I'm sure the probability of encountering one (or many) of their village idiots is high. This probability is undoubtedly increased due to the fact that their instance systematically encourages participation because of their lack of downvotes. And if Trumpists demonstrate anything, it's that stupid likes to participate.

I'm intentionally avoiding using the word "discussion", since I recognize that participating in a thread and discussing in a thread are two very different things. Both village idiots and good-faith intellectuals participate, but only the latter's participation can be characterized as discussion. I've seen both types of hexbear users in this thread.

I'm wary of us defederating from hexbear. It seems like we'd be condemning a political community for the actions of their (admittedly rather vocal) village idiots. On the other hand, it's not clear to me if that community's moderators really care about controlling their village idiots, especially since they are undoubtedly wreaking havoc on other communities. My guess is that the wisest course of action is to wait and see how their rule changes take effect. If their new rules are able to control their village idiots, then I see no reason to defederate.

I think the fact that hexbear users couldn't leave this meta discussion to the users of this instance is evidence that defederation might be desirable. Individual users can block users or communities but they'll still show up, and say the same sorta of things they've been saying elsewhere.

I'm sorry about that happening. I think a lot of hexbear users just comment on every instance as if they're on hexbear, which has a very unique culture that will definitely seem extremely weird to outsiders. I remember first joining the site after subreddit bans and getting into some arguments over that.

I have been trying to tell other users (I'm just a normal user myself) to beware when they are on other instances and to tone down the "trolling" and similar antics. I hope the new rules around federation, as well as an upcoming emote scaling fix, can facilitate that.

Wish your instance (and other instances we are federated with) the best of luck on the fediverse.

I initially started using lemm.ee when joing the fediverse. Once you federated hexbear I left for lemmy.world within days, not really because I wanted to but because I felt I had to. I was being harassed because of a single comment that received over 100 responses. None of them were constructive arguments or legitimate discussion, all just trolling and insults. Lemm.ee is not usable anymore as a result of federating hexbear. I'm sure I'm far from the only user who feels that way. If you want lemm.ee to continue to be a viable instance there is no other choice.

Think about this way: f they were acting this way while promoting fascism, you wouldn't even have a discussion post, you would just defederate. Because they claim to be communist and left-wing (though their actually still promoting fascism) you feel the need to deliberate. Just do the thing that you already know has to be done. Stop dragging it out.

I want to defederate from them. The overwhelming majority of interactions I've had with Hexbear users has been profoundly negative, and the user base's politics are, by-and-large chauvinistic and otherwise usually abhorrent. Weird shit like claiming that even trans-friendly spaces on most of lemmy are less trans-friendly than Hexbear.net. Furthermore, every comment out of the website I've seen on The War in Ukraine has been Russia-Sympathetic, which suggests that there's a strong pro-Russia sentiment running through the user base. I don't want anything to do with them.

Let me be honest: every hexbear user I have taken note of has had a massive chip on their shoulder. They want to be targets of hate. They are trolling. If theres been any besides them, I haven't noticed. It's not even agreeing or disagreeing with anything any particular hexbear has said. It's just the attitude. Childish. Trolling. I am not impressed.

Edit: in short I would say defederate if you want. Nothing of value would be lost.

Hi. I was told that your mods welcomed our participation. I personally believe that your instance should absolutely defederate with ours. It is clear that you do not want to see our views for ideological reasons. This is perfectly fine. All these struggle sessions you hold over federation have nothing to do with us and more to do with your examination of your own ideological contradictions. You believe yourselves to be open minded and rational people who support some version of "free speech", and yet certain viewpoints you can not engage with intellectually or bear to see. Either admit that you are not the former, or continue suffering the internal conflict from the latter.

kthanks xoxo.

I have no stance on them but I do find the people that post from hexbear to be a little irritating. A lot of them leave low quality shitpost with massive images and I know that's a bug but it still ruins it for everyone else.

I find myself having conflicting thoughts about defederation in general.

Much of mainstream social media these days leads to isolation of ideologically-opposed communities from one another and pushes together more like-minded communities ("echo chamber"). I think that's a bad thing.

I don't find Hexbear's culture a good fit for me, and though I share many of the same political sentiments, that's why I'm using lemm.ee and not hexbear.

I would not enjoy it if a large group of alt-righters suddenly federated with us and became a very vocal presence, even if a large number of their users were often polite, because I am so strongly opposed to those politics.

How to balance between an "all or none" approach and avoid perpetuating an echo chamber? I'd say continue bolstering controls for individual users to decide and federate widely for now. The more visibility the instances have among each other, the more overall awareness there will be in the user base of which communities are truly bad actors vs. large, vocal, and a little immature.

Just throwing in my 2 cents, I've had the most infuriating argument with some braindead fucking hexbear tankies, but I absolutely still believe defederation is not the answer. As a leftist, I believe in free speech and freedom of autonomy and association. I just block the worst ones.

If hexbear can keep a reign on their users and they understand they need to follow other sub/instance rules when posting there, and proactively bans abusers, then that's good enough.

edit: also @sunaurus your post is excellent btw

I read your whole post to the end. I'm nobody, but my vote is to not defederate. I want to be exposed to all sorts of viewpoints, even if they are offensive. Being inclusive means nothing if you only include those you like.

Defederation should only be done against instances that are full of bots or have technical issues (such as that one instance that had its time wrong for a while, causing problems.)

As much as they can be annoying sometimes, I'd rather they be here than not. We should be very careful with who we defederate and what or else it could really kill the momentum we have and the beauty of being able to communicate with other users. I rather enjoy when an instance respects my responsibility of me as a user on whether I see what content and how. It doesn't matter if it its a mod or an algorithm. I want to see hexbear users whenever I see fit and not let someone else decides for me.

Nice to meet you and thanks for hosting this instance !

I was insulted pretty crudely by a couple hexbear users, unprovoked. However I also understand not everybody has anger issues and I can give other users the benefits of the doubt. I would vote to not defederate.

I am a leftist so obviously biased, but my experience with them in general has been fine, there are some trolls or stupid people like in every instance but i had to deal more with right wing propaganda and objectively false information from conspiranoic people than from anything terrible coming from them so far, to the point of having to block several exploding heads communities where they shared tons of missinformation abour queer people, vaccination and all that bullshit. That one is the harmful instance in general and not hexbear where most of their content are memes and some insightful discussion every now and then.

First off, thank you @sunaurus ! Being an admin is tough. Being an admin that tries to build bridges, is even harder.

I vehemently dislike the "if you don't like them, you can block them" advice that is frequently given out. As a thought exercise, what is the equilibrium state of that method? New users to a community, coming in without a mature block list, would see 3 sets of users: a far-left echo chamber, an everyone-else echo chamber, and a verbal brawl of trolls in the middle. This is not a welcoming scene and will drive new users away.

With Lemmy, I ask myself what is the intent of moderation. "To enforce the rules!" is shallow reasoning. Why do we have rules? I put forward that the rules are there to maintain and build a community (dictionary definition). They are not there to enforce a particular worldview or economic system. While I staunchly oppose hexbear and grad viewpoints, I would not defederate them over their political views. That said, it is extremely hard to stay engaged on Lemmy when there is background of constant, shallow hate and derision thrown at me and my views. The atmosphere created by these comments go beyond simple political views.

Hexbear is confounding. On the rare occasion when the topic is kept nonpolitical, I find the comments helpful or informative. However, it's a sad fact of humanity that you can make anything political if you try and if you've built a strong personal identity around political views, this happens almost automatically. And that is where things go very wrong. Taken as a whole, that brigading effect is hard to ignore. You ask yourself if you're really welcome here, do you belong? "GO BACK TO REDDIT IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT!"

I am an American and another person's observation really resonated with me: it felt like arguing alone against a crowd Fox News viewers. There was an entirely alternate set of facts and you were instantly labeled, stereotyped, and insulted for holding a different opinion. Do I really want to spend a lot of time in Fox News land? And if this analogy holds, is it the intent of Lemmy's various admins to allow for one instance to mandate the tone for the entire Fediverse?

I do not share your optimisim that things will improve based on an updated code of conduct. Hexbear admins have good intentions to balance their ideals with good fediverse citizenship. I think we will continue to see friction between worlds without much stronger rules of engagement.

This is a great post bringing up some serious controversial issues and discussing them in a civil way despite the personal attacks and disgusting comments you received, this is setting a very good example for what the vibe of the instance should be.

My personal opinion about hexbear in particular, is that while there are multiple cases of people being straight up trolls, replying in bad faith, lowering the quality of the conversation by name calling, putting labels on people, and saying really mean shit, there is also a very large part of their community that discusses politely even in difficult topics, and provide very good opinions and facts backed up by multiple sources.

I'm also a fan of 'Theory Thursday' that a user is doing on their instance where he provides a reading material about communism and then they discuss it in the comments.

I think they have a lot to offer, and after deliberately choosing to bear through some of their annoying users and not to block them to avoid creating my own echo chamber, I ended up seeing their good side and changed a lot of my views about things thanks to them.

That said, I think that the instance should enforce some rules strictly and ban users that ruin the image and message of the rest. I noticed that some of them aren't interested in being federated and would rather be left alone, if the rules don't end up being accepted and they continue as they do then I think it's sensible to defederate with an instance that wishes to stay disconnected.

FWIW, that's someone directly saying that their goal is to go out and proselytize.

Since lemm.ee seems insistent on staying federated with Hexbear, can anyone recommend a working instance (.world keeps crashing on me) that's defederated them?

I'm not tech savvy enough to know how to check whose defederated them and personally I find that their low-effort high-spam trolling in every thread they see to be off putting enough that I've been going back to Reddit because it feels less toxic. I liked the culture at Lemmy before Hexbear showed up and if possible I'd like to get that back. Thanks in advance!

Thanks for the write up. I came to lemmy.ee because lemmy.world is defederation happy. That's how I first heard of Hexbear. Several defederations later, here I am. You're right, us, users can block communities and users from whichever instance they come from. We all curate our lists of communities. We are in charge of our experience if we are allowed to. I did not feel like I was in charge on lemmy.world and that's why I'm here. Defederations should really be thr very last resort and even then considered super carefully and perhaps put to discussion like here or a poll.

Kremlin propaganda has no place on lemm.ee

This is worrying. What exactly constitutes "Kremlin propaganda"? Sounds like a personal gripe which is now imposed as an instance-wide rule, which makes this instance topical, at which point you might as well defederate

Meanwhile, I think I'll have to switch instances. I hate the Russian government, and I condemn the war in Ukraine, but I do not support Ukraine either, I support both Maidan and the rebellion that followed, I oppose USA's imperialist politics and I will fight against any attacks on Russians based solely on their nationality. If "Kremlin propaganda" is banned, it is only a question of time until I step on that mine.

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I did not want to take further actions in that thread in general (for archival purposes), but I did take one action, which in retrospect was a mistake: I removed a comment which contained the hammer and sickle symbol. I ignorantly associated this symbolism with Kremlin propaganda, and the atrocities my own people suffered at the hands of the soviet union during the previous century.

Please never apologize for this. The Soviets were some fucked up people who did fucked up things to tens of millions of people. Nobody should be eyeing their symbology favourably.

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There needs to be a way to block entire instances at the user level.

From my own experience hexbear has been very annoying lately, all I see on my Lemmy feed is politics (which is generally ok I am also here for politics but they literally spam it) and rage-bait by them, also their custom emojis are huge (I don't know if it's just me since I use sync) and often take up entire comment sections.

Unless there are some legal issues that could cause the instance to be shutdown I would like to remain federated with other instances. It is my understanding that Lemmy developers will be releasing an ability for individuals to ban instances for their account. I think this is the tool that will make Lemmy first rate.

Thank you for the very well thought out and detailed post!

The same way as with tolerating open fascists, just letting them be around as long as they're "nice" will give them ample opportunity to spread their propaganda in a more covert way. Some things will look innocuous enough and won't be cleaned up, other will create drama on being moderated, so the mods might have harder time deciding. This won't break their echo chamber, as such things existed even in the ever-open reddit. Just cut them off, it will be better both for the communists around, and for the "non-ideological" crowd.

From what I've seen of hexbear users in the wild, we wouldn't lose much by defederating. Their shitposting and general antagonism to anyone right of Stalin adds nothing to instances beyond their own

MHO... I would not miss Hexbear at all if they were defederated. Most of the content I see from them is pretty obnoxious, and even the "nice, polite" posts have a strong sealion scent to them. I block most of their communities when I encounter them in my All feed, and will probably block the instance once Lemmy has that capability.

That being said, I support the decisions that @sunaurus is making in regard to Hexbear. His decisions about site administration and moderation have always been sensible and competent.

Is asking, Does Ukraine really have a neo-Nazi problem?, make me a poopin puppet?

im on this instance because it has minimal curation, i dont support defederating hexbear and would rather users have the option to block communities and users for themselves

thats not to say that defederation would be unwarranted or that id blame you or anyone for taking that route, but i wouldnt stick around if it happened

I appreciate your well written post. After reading, I get the impression that I joined the correct instance.

Thank you for your hard work here.

As someone who has gotten many, many, many rude comments from hexbears, I felt the need to share my experience. (Some of the comments from hexbears were polite though.) These comments had me brooding over them all day long for a couple of days. (I have since then moved on.) I listed the links to the rude comments below, but I think I should make it clear that while I used to support the idea of defederating from them, I have changed my stance since I heard about the upcoming changes to Lemmy allowing users to block instances. I am no longer in favor of defederating from hexbear.net. People should be able to decide this for themselves, but it is too much effort to switch instances to decide which instances you don't want to see.

Please do also note that I chose to leave out the polite comments in the list below. If you don't want to click on every link, just check out the first one and the last one.

(roughly in chronological order)

There are so many people who believe that the ideology suppressed by the government is always bad. While this is sometimes the case, this is definitely not the case for authoritarianism. (Edit: what I meant was that the ideology suppressed by the government is authoritarianism, which many hexbears seem to support)

Edit 2: Before this is inevitably pointed out, I should admit that some of my comments were rude as well. I apologize for those comments.

Prior to this post I was of the mind that hexbear should be deferderated, however you made some very salient points that I had never considered. I agree with your approach to leave deferderation as an absolute last resort, and to try to work things out though the hexbear admin team. I would also like to add that it really speaks volumes of you as a person to have been exposed to such abuse as being called subhuman and still try to work federation out without allowing a seemingly minority of users to goad you into an emotional decision!

Their brand of humor isn’t particularly my flavor, but blocking things I disagree with isn’t something I care for, unless it’s something outright abominable.

It seems the overall sentiment of hexbear isn’t malicious, and so I don’t think we should pass judgment on an entire instance just because of some outliers.

There are people on other instances that even suggest lemm.ee users are tankies, communists, or nazis, so I don’t doubt that there’s a spread of vitriol anywhere you go. Doubly so because of the nature of federation; our blocking policy has likely led to more than a few alternate accounts being created here by users to bypass being defederated from their preferred trolling destinations.

With that said, I agree with your sentiment about judging the moderation response, and am in favor of staying federated with them for now.

I also want to add that I appreciate your very well-worded post, and that it demonstrates a great amount of thoughtfulness. Thank you for that.

The lack of a sense of place by Hexbears by absolutely flooding this comment thread is the full and sole reason for me to fully support defederation. Lemm.ee is our server, our rules, made by people on the lemm.ee server. The fact that they feel the need to comment and respond on everything says enough about them.

And no, you're not being attacked so that you have the right to defend yourself. Federation is not a right.

I'm also of the opinion that defederation should be a last resort and frankly should never be looked at as a permanent solution anyhow, rather a temporary bandaid (See the bug abuse earlier on)

With individuals having the ability to block instances/communities as a whole forthcoming, I don't see a reason for lemm.ee to take that choice out of the hands of the users.

We're all adults, once we have the ability, we will be able to curate what we want to see and what we don't and as such, any defederation is frankly unnecessary.

My instance defederated from them without much explanation. My first experience with their users was quite negative, super sketchy posts with WW2 type stuff in the comments on an unrelated post. Generally, I try to avoid culture war type stuff, but the few shocking things I've seen, have unfortunately been mostly coming from that instance. Couple of aussie and shit just works ones too, but the majority from the aforementioned one.

I will not say a word on this topic itself, but dude you should be in politics. The world would be at least a little better place to live in with such an amount of consideration and thought about others and how we should interact.

One of the things wrong with platforms like Facebook and Twitter are the filter bubbles they create through their algorithms. I think it would be a mistake to again create filter bubbles through non- (or de-) federation.

This type of level headed response and acknowledgement that defederation is supposed to be used as a last resort tool is why I'm glad to be on lemm.ee.

I definitely do not agree with the majority of that instance's mindset and would love to see a way to block whole servers in lemmy like I'm sure most people would. cough cough devs plz

The posts from Hexbear accounts in this thread is exactly why they should be defederated. Can't have any thread without them shitting in it.

Lemm.ee is doing the right thing - instead of being super-safe and defederating from potentially bad instances just because they have bad actors, it's actually trying to moderate in a sensible way. Defederation should be a last resort - that makes the most sense.

I see federation of hexbear as a manifestation of the tendency to make certain behaviors against the rules, but then to also make being the type of person who would do those behaviors or being associated with that type of person also against the rules. The former part is of course both okay and necessary. There have to be behaviors that aren't okay or the whole world ends up being a Nazi bar. The latter is, as you said, something we should reserve for instances that are either entirely unmoderated or purpose-built to be hubs of such undesirable activity. Hexbear is neither of those things. There's definitely problematic behavior, but that behavior is already against the rules and should be handled on a user by user basis. Based on OP's experience with the hexbear mods, that seems to be exactly what's happening. There's some valid leftist thought over there that deserves consideration, and unless the bad behavior becomes such that it renders federated instances toxic or unusable I think it would be a shame to throw the good content out with the bad actors.

A good take on the concept of brigading.

If we defederate then I probably wouldn't be against it but I lean more towards having individual users block individual communities.

I myself have blocked a whole bunch of hexbear communities because I'm mainly a comments section guy and I find their style of posting to be really annoying even though I occupy the same end of the political spectrum.

However as annoying as I find many of their users, I haven't really seen anything that would warrant defederation. Sure you'll see some tankie propaganda but you'll see that over other Lemmy instances too.

On an unrelated note, I joined Lemm.ee to ease the burden on the larger instances but I'm very happy to have found this place being led by an extremely level headed person. Thank you

We stan the Lemm.ee admins. Just this post is proof you have the right process, whether we agree or disagree with the end result.

I agree with staying put right now and re-evaluating if necessary. The content is a little overwhelming right now but hopefully the additional user base helps prop up the other instances while their audiences grow, and it's not like the CalvinandHobbes sub is suddenly going to be lefty memes like you can curate an entirely separate existence if you want to.

Thank you for how you handle things like this. It's great that we have such a open Admin to lemm.ee.

I have blocked a lot of the hexbear.net communities myself. I'll be glad when I can block instances, then I won't have to keep blocking communities that keep popping up.

That being said, I'm voting to keeping federation with hexbear.net. I don't think stopping others from hexbear.net is the correct way to go about it, if I don't want to see it, then I can block them myself.

I'm more exhausted at everyone constantly going to defederation as a first response to not liking an instance.

I'm against it in principle. But until the tools are available for users to block an entire instance, I understand why people want it.

Personally, I'll probably try to whip up a greasemonkey script to accomplish it.

Thank you for your thoughtfulness on the subject. I'm mainly a lurker around these parts. I agree that defederation should be a last resort and agree that it's not necessary to defederate at this time. Though I do appreciate the ability to block certain instances and users at the user level. Thanks for your dedication and hard work.

Already commented once but wanted to add: After my interactions with hexbear and the aggressive and disproportionate way they responded, I was legitimately left feeling my personal irl safety could be in danger.

Lemmy in general and Lemm.ee specifically should not be a place where users are left feeling like that over innocuous statements or opinions.

Defederate.

I actually think defederation is the greatest strength of Lemmy. It allows everyone to have their space and control the content. I would say though that defederation should be tied more to the admin and mod behavior than individual users.

I don't usually pay attention to a user's instance but even I notice patterns with troll accounts. I have no interest in comment sections filled with purposefully offensive trolling and bad jokes. When I see this I don't block users I block the community because if that is the kind of content they want I have no use for it.

Obviously defederating an entire instance is different but I kind of think the same applies. Is this content you want to see? It appears the admins are ok with it or they would work to change it. Maybe Hexbear admins are. I don't really care I know where my block buttons are.

My only other comment is that if you sit at the table with six assholes there aren't six assholes at the table there are seven. The company you keep reflects on you.

Lemmy.ca is already defederated, and while I'm not against federating, tell the Hexbear peeps to chill with their emoji usage on Lemmy servers, please?

I have had mixed experiences with Hexbears. While some are thoughtful and provide insightful commentary, there are a good amount of trolls as well.

However, I agree that defederation is not the correct move here, and I appreciate the mods for asking us for our input rather than defederating from it unilaterally (like some instances do). One of lemm.ee's strengths is that it is a true general instance. We can see everything that the Fediverse has to offer and make our own decisions on whether to ignore the trolls, engage them (especially if the troll is egregiously wrong), or look at the context they present, however misleading.

Free speech has limits, I don't like having to hear about violent rhetoric just like I didn't like it on Reddit. Even still, we have mechanisms to deal with them currently (downvotes and reporting) and using broad strokes can silence those who don't espouse such views and who express their speech in a responsible manner.

Id rather not get flooded with chapotraphouse shit. I know i can filter them out but id prefer their stupid shit not to influence people

Thank you for this post, I appreciate a lot your well balanced approach and I fully agree with it, kudos to you especially considering you've been personally "hit".

Bad apples exist in every instance, defederating from them without actual proof of the entire instance (or most of it) being bad, is detrimental to the fediverse IMO.

I will trust your judgement, if the time comes to actually defederate I will know it truly is a last resort, as it should be, thanks to what you've written here.