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2y ago

Lemmy.world Hexbear Statement

Update:
The comments from this post will not be removed as to preserve the discussion around the announcement. Any continued discussions outside of this thread that violate server rules will be removed. We feel that everyone that has an opinion, and wanted to vent, has been heard.

————-

Original post:
Yesterday, we received information about the planned federation by Hexbear. The announcement thread can be found here: https://www.hexbear.net/post/280770. After reviewing the thread and the comments, it became evident that allowing Hexbear to federate would violate our rules.

Our code of conduct and server rules can be found here.

The announcement included several concerning statements, as highlighted below:

“Please try to keep the dirtbag lib-dunking to hexbear itself. Do not follow the Chapo Rules of Posting, instead try to engage utilizing informed rhetoric with sources to dismantle western propaganda. Posting the western atrocity propaganda and pig poop balls is hilarious but will pretty quickly get you banned and if enough of us do it defederated.”
“The West's role in the world, through organizations such as NATO, the IMF, and the World Bank - among many others - are deeply harmful to the billions of people living both inside and outside of their imperial core.”
“These organizations constitute the modern imperial order, with the United States at its heart - we are not fooled by the term "rules-based international order." It is in the Left's interest for these organizations to be demolished. When and how this will occur, and what precisely comes after, is the cause of great debate and discussion on this site, but it is necessary for a better world.”

The rhetoric and goal of Hexbar are clear based on their announcement: to "dismantle western propaganda" and "demolish organizations such as NATO” shows that Hexbar has no intention of "respecting the rules of the community instance in which they are posting/commenting.” It’s to push their beliefs and ideology.

In addition, several comments from a Hexbear admin, demonstrate that instance rules will not be respected.

Here are some examples:

“I can assure you there will be no lemmygrad brigades, that energy would be better funneled into the current war against liberalism on the wider fediverse.”

“All loyal, honest, active and upright Communists must unite to oppose the liberal tendencies shown by certain people among us, and set them on the right path. This is one of the tasks on our ideological front.”

Overall community comments:

To clarify, for those who have inquired about why Hexbear versus Lemmygrad, it should be noted that we are currently exploring the possibility of defederating from Lemmygrad as well based on similar comments Hexbear has made.

Defederation should only be considered as a last resort. However, based on their comments and behavior, no positive outcomes can be expected.

We made the decision to preemptively defederate from Hexbear for these reasons. While we understand that not everyone may agree with our decision, we believe it is important to prioritize the best interests of our community.

983 comments

I have no idea who Hexbear is, but it's well documented how th IMF and World Bank work to endebt developing countries to the US's corporate rule and then steal all their resources... Are we... Not allowed to talk about that here?

I'm not in favour of pre-emptive defederating. It feels like censorship doing so and that bothers me.
Their note to their users specifically says to keep their anti establishment opinions and trolling to their own communities and don't spread it further for fear of defederation. It hardly sounds threatening to us.
Defederating can happen at any point, and I think would be better kept as a reactive response and last resort rather than proactive.
The more our large instances start fracturing and closing off from one another the less useful Lemmy will become. You're hardly blocking out an idealogy, if hexbear users wanted in they could just sign up and that would make it harder to find them. At least having them federated makes it easy to filter out @hexbear if we wanted.
Practicing tolerance goes both ways. Calling communities 'them' vs 'us' and judging a group based on the noise of the few doesn't seem like the right approach. If hexbear became a problem and moderators complained of hate speech and conflict then absolutely we use the tools we have to keep things functioning, but filtering out groups because we don't like 'their' belief systems will make us judgemental and biased as a result. This is a platform to promote discussion not an echo chamber to gather like minded opinions and bounce them off each other in perpetuity.

Not in favour of this.
I chose Lemmy.world because I wanted an instance that would federate even with people I might disagree with. If it's illegal and abusive, sure. But to defederate on ideological grounds? I was planning a recurring donation but this makes me consider setting up my own instance.
They're welcome to whatever discussions they want to have on their instance. As long as they respect the rules of other instances when they're here, then everybody wins.
As for their point about dismantling western propaganda - if they have documented sources then let's have a conversation. It's not like there isn't western propaganda
- I like your take a lot. It also sounds like lemm.ee might align with your wanted policies, if you don't want to selfhost.
  
  Hm, they've pre-emptively blocked threads.net. But yea the list is shorter
- Well, it's their instance, they can do what they want with it. You should definitely save your $ and setup your own instance so you can federate with whatever you want.
- Given their outings, I don't think you can expect them ye respect other instances' rules. That will give mods a very hard time, which makes effective hosting of lemmy.world an issue. That's not a good thing.
- Fuck that, I spend enough time arguing with ignorant uneducated fuckwits on the Internet without being exposed to a hive of wilful stupidity.
  
  Then make your own instance and turn it into a safety bubble just for you. Don't ruin it for everyone else.
  
  Hi there, potential new friend! Since these folks are willfully stupid, can I assume you're familiar with their positions and background, and have read my books? Which one is your favorite?

I definitely appreciate the hesitation in defederation, but I'm in favor of defeding with both hexbear and lemmygrad.
I've seen more than enough "Stalin did nothing wrong posts" to know that discussions are pointless and would lead me only to frustration and a desire to drink.
- Honestly the hardcore tankies initially soured me from joining the fediverse at first, until I understood how the fediverse functioned and realized it was just a loud minority that held extreme views. It's still disturbing to read genocide denialism while openly supporting things such as authoritarianism and Russian imperialism.
  
  Tankies are souring a lot of people from joining in my subjective experience. One of my friends questioned the presence of them and the views of the developers (and also why the "main" (not accurate but they haven't even joined, so) instance lemmy.ml had the .ml domain to begin with) and I couldn't give a satisfactory answer at the time, as I didn't know enough about the place yet.
  Upstanding instances should do their part to defederate from any tankie or fascist instances, so we can all distance ourselves from extremist rhetoric and make it seem like an actually OK place to hang out.
  
  Yeah, I checked out Lemmy some time ago and noped out pretty quick after seeing it was mostly just Lemmygrad at the time. Happy to be here now that there's a lot more going on and not super keen on that face of Lemmy gaining a bigger presence again.
  
  Are you the PoppinKREAM from reddit?
  
  Whether it's reddit or lemmy I've always blocked all politics and world/local news related communities, since they rarely seem to really be a place that's been cordial in the comments. And I've moved onto RSS feeds anyways over user submission driven news feeds.
  Seems to be what has kept me the most sane and happy using social media.
- "Stalin did nothing wrong" posts. Where are those, exactly?
  We criticize Stalin plenty. We just don't buy that he ate babies and murdered innocent farmers with his bare hands.
- Does hesitation mean something else where you live?
- Just block them bro.
- I had enough of people like you, but you don't see me asking that we defederate you.
  
  Au contraire, mon ami:
  link
  
  It's because as a solid minority. That is often hated in the places they once had jurisdiction for good reason. You generally don't get the chance. Or if you did, it would close you off in a tiny little Echo chamber that's already far too strong. And I say this as someone who is supportive and open towards communism and abolishing Concepts such as private property and replacing with personal property. But I am sanctially against ml communism.
  I absolutely think there can be a discussion about whether or not Vladimir Lenin's Legacy on the whole was neutral. He definitely did some good things for russia. Though those same things were happening around the world regardless. So it is impossible to say that they wouldn't have happened without him. But it is possible to say absolutely that a lot of death destruction and brutality were enabled by him. And his ideology single-handedly setback discussions of all left-wing Economic Development for a century or so. Those defending Stalin Mao or even Xi today. Well I don't have anything diplomatic to say about them.

What the fuck?
I was assured by this server that it has no problem with socialists. This is worse than I expected it to be, I expected a half-hearted attempt to justify this action through means other than "they're socialists and hold socialist views".
To the three points here:
"Western propaganda" - Is capitalist propaganda. Of course socialists oppose it, we oppose capitalism.
"Nato" - An anti-nato position is held by literally every single socialist organisation in Europe. You will not find a socialist org with a pro-nato position. Ffs just look at DiEM25's position on this, it's probably the most well known cross-nation alliance of socialist groups and parties in europe including people like Yanis Varoufakis, Jeremy Corbyn and Zizek to name a few but that really doesn't do the size of the DiEM organising alliance justice. Even Noam Chomsky is anti-nato ffs. What the fuck are you doing acting like this is a fringe position not held by a huge number of people over here in Europe and at the forefront of leftist politics on the continent? Taking the position "you're not allowed to be anti-nato" is blatant american imperialism.
"It is in the Left’s interest for these organizations to be demolished." - Duh? What the fuck do the liberals running this instance think socialists believe exactly? When Marx calls for revolution do you think that we mean to continue the organisations that existed prior? No, we seek to abolish them and create new socialist organisations that serve the new socialist state we seek to create.
Absolutely mindblowing that this instance ever pretended it was going to play nicely with socialists. I'm disgusted.
Every single take above is also the take you will get from every single socialist community over on reddit. The anarchist communities will also even have an anti-nato position. Like jesus christ. I expected this post to be bad but I didn't expect it to be "Yeah fuck socialists, oh and fuck what anarchists believe too".
I'm flabbergasted that @ruud@lemmy.world just completely lied about not intending to block based on ideology, and it's extremely telling that Hexbear gets a pre-emptive defederation for this shit while literal actual nazis were a chore to get defederated.
- I'm shocked by this post. And looking for a new instance.
  I wanted an instance that doesn't defederate based on ideology (except fascist instances) and of a generalist nature. I want to browse the wide fediverse from an instance where I'm allowed to be a socialist, but clearly lemmy.world is not the one for me.
  Any recommendations?
  
  Lemm.ee has a great, reliable admin and doesn't defederate unless instance rules are explicitly broken or network abuse occurs, as far as I know.
  
  After scanning through a few options, Lemm.ee looks extremely promising.
  
  Lemmy.ml probably? Otherwise I don't know. It is the most competently run in terms of not engaging in this defederation bullshit outside of illegal/hate content, but it also took part in actively trying to push users to move here. I'm almost certain that they'll regret having done that given what this community is doing though and won't be actively promoted by lemmy.ml anymore.
  Will take some time to go through the others and figure out who isn't being ridiculous. Then I guess everyone will start promoting the one that makes the most sense.
  
  Lemmygrad. Most users are ML. But users joining discussions and asking questions in good faith is welcomed and encouraged. It rarely defederates from any other instance. MLs argue for the 'ruthless criticism of all that exists' so it doesn't make sense to ignore speech (i.e. defederate from instances) that one doesn't agree with ideologically.
  
  I run a general leftist instance that you could check out. I only intend to defederate fascist and NSFW instances.
- I have no skin in this game as I run my own instance, but well said. I couldn't agree more with your counter points. This move, taken with the delay in defederating from fascist instances, has to be a big concern for the leftist community on LW.
- Absolutely mindblowing that this instance ever pretended it was going to play nicely with socialists.
  There's folks from lemmygrad.ml and lemmy.ml all over in here which is empirical proof that lemmy.world will "play nice" with Socialists. They'll even play nice with Communists. What they're objecting too is the Tankie Army assembling over at hexbear and their stated intention of propagandizing every instance in the fediverse.
  If you don't like it that's cool. Spin up an account on another instance and go on with your day. This isn't your instance and no one here owes you anything.
- Hexbear stated explicitly their intent to [allow only specific narratives (explicitly anti-free speech), they openly stated their intention to engage in content manipulation tactics and pushing propoganda, and they have a delusional take on russia's aggression and atrocities.
  You all talk about this decision being against free speech when hexbear doesn't even permit it! So hypocritical... Even if most users on hexbear have good intentions, it doesn't justify the nefarious means that they openly plan to engage in. If hexbear wants open discussion, then they would permit topic criticism of communism; not suppress dissenting information/discussion.
  I don't care if it's left, right, independent, apolitical... Instances like this create echo-chamers which leads to extreme views and unhealthy communities. They shouldn't be given an audience to try to gaslight and astroturf. And if you don't like this decision to defederate, you can join another instance.
  Saying lemmy.world is anti-free speech for this is a joke. Lemmy.world doesn't have rules disallowing criticism of governing styles or specific governments. Hexbear does... If you all want to criticize NATO and capitalism on lemmy.world, go for it! That discussion is healthy. An instance like hexbear which only allows specific narratives and encourages nefarious practices is not a healthy instance...
  
  You are literally quoting the WRONG INSTANCE'S rules I know that liberals are loath to read past the headlines but this is so egregious it is hilarious.
  
  An instance can behave like a sub or community if they wish to, assuming what you said is even true. Iirc the entire point of the fediverse is to allow groups of users to be free from spez like ban-happy/profiteering behaviour. Lemmy doesn't exist to make you personally happy. Hexbear has its own rules for its own instance and if their community is happy with it it'll survive and thrive.
  Lemmy dot world's decision is disappointing because they seemed open and neutral politically. But are seemingly very much not neutral and damaging for Lemmy.
  
  Wild that you're being downvoted for this IMO
- Bye Felicia
  
  Going nowhere fashy fash

Gotta say, pre-emptive defederation seems like a bit of an over reaction. There's plenty of leftists in other instances, not just hexbear and lemmygrad. Hell, I'm an anarchist that regularly comments on political/social threads in this instance, it doesn't seem to be an issue. Lemmy in general is pretty obviously far left leaning. I don't see the harm in federating with hexbear, unless they show themselves to be actively harassing or trolling. But you'd have to federate first to find out if they will

Why is it wrong to be critical of western propaganda?
- Because "critical of western propaganda" is a front for promoting authorianism and intolerance. The "western propaganda" they're critical of include human rights, inclusiveness, social security etc.
  
  Every fucking "social security" that exists in the western world was achieved by those of us that wave the red flag ffs. 5 day week? Socialists. Most of your holidays? Socialists. Worker protections? Socialists. The length of your work day? Socialists. Healthcare? Socialists. Eliminating child labour? Socialists. The list goes on and on and on.
  And inclusiveness? How the fuck do you work out that the only lemmy that has visible pronouns is not inclusive? 20-30% of the userbase is trans ffs. It's MORE inclusive that this instance which has left transphobic and hateful posts up for many hours at a time on occasion. The post that looked like a relic from r/fatpeoplehate was up for 12 hours before it got taken down.
  
  This is what I find absolutely crazy. I am, by and large, in agreement with socialists on economic matters. But why do they always support China and Russia? Like wtf? In what world is the genocide being committed against the Uyghur people cool? In what world is banning access to free communication including many of the largest websites worth defending? Why is it ok to lock up gay people? How is aggressively invading a neighbouring country cool? How is threatening to invade a neighbouring independent country (which has been de facto independent for over 70 years) whilst frequently flying your military into their airspace as a form of threat somehow the actions of the good guys?
  You can believe in socialist economics without needing to defend the extreme authoritarian nature of countries that pretend as though their economy runs on socialist principles (or worse, which are the explicitly non-socialist successor state to a country that formerly professed to socialism). Tankies make no fucking sense to me.
  
  a front for promoting authorianism and intolerance
  Like defederating from an instance whose user-base appears to have different views to one's own.
  The “western propaganda” they’re critical of include human rights, inclusiveness, social security etc.
  You won't find a single leftist who doesn't argue vociferously for these things. It is the essence of being a leftist. It's what unites them even when they disagree theoretically about the exact root of a problem and of how to uphold them. What they criticise is the idea that these things are possible under capitalism. Any cursory—critical—reading of human rights literature or liberal theory will reveal this. What you're missing, if this is your interpretation of radical thought, is class analysis. If you are interested in the contradiction between capitalism and inclusivity, you could start with Marta Russell, Capitalism and Disability: Selected Writings.
  In this context, where the discussion is about Hexbear, you only have to read their Code of Conduct: https://www.hexbear.net/code_of_conduct:
  We are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all, regardless of gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, personal appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, age, religion, nationality, or other similar characteristic.
  Do not use homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, and other reactionary aliases or other nicknames. "Ironic" prejudice is just prejudice. …
  We will ban you if you insult, demean or harass anyone. That is not welcome behavior. This is distinctly different than ribbing or grilling someone. …
  
  The society that spent the last 20 years in a murder spree in the Middle East does not get to lecture anyone about intolerance.
  How many countries has America invaded in your lifetime? How many murders have American thugs committed?
  
  Yeah, you're thinking of (and listening to, by the looks of it) western propaganda institutions such as the John Birch Society, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party neoliberal leadership 🙄
  
  The authority of the working class and intolersnce for Nazis, sure.
  Re: human rights, inclusiveness, and social security: bullshit. Not even on the same planet at those who bring skepticism towards hegemonic propaganda narratives, and particularly from a socialist perspective, i.e. the preemptively banned instance.
  
  social security
  lmao
  Western countries, famous for loving social security.
  
  Be that as it may, why should people be prevented from questioning it? Isolating people does not make them better informed. Conversation does. All that isolation accomplishes is creating echochambers --which only serves to strengthen their beliefs.

I have lurked here for a long time, but I just don't understand the logic here. I read the statement that was linked here, and it just seemed like they were saying that they should be respectful and follow our rules? ... Isn't dismantling propaganda... through "informed rhetoric" a good thing? Why are NATO, the IMF or World Bank automatically good? ... Aren't we just creating a bubble by preemptively blocking a large lemmy instance just because we don't like their political speech? As far as I can tell they aren't promoting racism or bigotry. Has lemmy.world preemptively banned nazi or right-wing instances?
- Has lemmy.world preemptively banned nazi or right-wing instances?
  no. it was an ordeal for them to ban the nazis over at exploding heads.
  
  exploding-heads also got an admin statement full of actual evidence showing how posters there were being racist. Hexbear only gets this frankly extremely poorly written and thinly argued diatribe with no actual substance.
  
  Concerning.
- Yea implying that we don't have propaganda and narratives on our side of the wall is naive
  If we want the truth then an open discussion is the path. There will be arguments in bad faith, sure. But that's not limited to "them". It's a human discussion thing.
- I read the statement that was linked here, and it just seemed like they were saying that they should be respectful and follow our rules?
  Read through some of the first set of links if you haven't. The same admin who's trying to gently suggest they don't troll is talking about how their instance won't brigade lemmygrad because the energy is better focused on the wider war against liberalism in the fediverse. It calls into question exactly how real that suggestion is vs. just a pro-forma attempt to head off this exact result with a toothless suggestion they know no one is going to follow.
  
  That’s my take on it too. It’s a token post saying to do it, but we’re going to denounce you if you’re called out.
- This would be a lot more believable if your account wasn't just 6 hours old.
  
  Probably doesn't want to be brigaded. I've had random posts and comments downvoted by neckbeards for no reason. To the point that people in that community (LotR) were replying to me in surprise.
  
  shut up troll
- "informed rethoric" will be some of the most piss poor arguments you have ever seen in your life.
  
  That doesn't necessarily mean the arguments are made in bad faith.
- Granted I only see the cherry picked statements in the post, but these things do not speak from a place of neutrality or at the very least openness. When all those things being bad is stated as close to fact, and them being against western propaganda,. They seem, to me, much less like a place that wants no propaganda and discussion of world organizations, and instead it sounds like a place that wants all of it gone and no place for western/left supportive discussion (which can be labeled propaganda, which may be a negative outlook on my side but any other site saying they do not want propaganda of one side usually isn't very happy about arguments in favor of said side even when said thing is a fact or at least relevant to the discussion)
  There were also comments very much critical of federation here because of some political joke posts. If shit post tier jokes on political figures aren't ok things will work out. because it's a Chinese communist it's about, I'm also extremely sceptical of ho well.
  With that said, I'm not completely against the federation, but it would require the mods to be vigilant and see if the federation doesn't harm the general community over time. That might be a lot to ask for, since I do not know how much time and effort they already put into this already.
- Because for these people "informed rhetoric" means quoting russian propaganda websites and repeating keywords to sound informed. They're no different than flatearthers once you do some research, however. Unlike flatearthers, tho, these guys are trying to undermine progress so they are a lot more harmful
  
  But quoting American propaganda is okay?
  
  I hear the accusation thrown around about russian propaganda all the time, and it seems so spurious to me. It seems like a conspiracy theory unto itself. It is thought-terminating. Back when I used to go on reddit, I would get called a bot occasionally myself. It is something people throw out there so they don't have to entertain any sort of cognitive dissonance. Like, if information is exposing a truth, but you don't like source, that does not necessarily mean that it is untrue. Im sorry. That is a logical fallacy itself. it also ignores that the US, and US business entities in particular, are much more powerful and influential... I remember reading that US congress spend $300 billion to "counter the malign influence of the CCP" ... that is close to what China spent on its military alone in 2022... The US also has a history of buying journalists and waging large internet influence campaigns, among other things... but I haven't seen people calling other people shills or bots for repeated US-talking points... just looking it up now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice
  https://cyberscoop.com/meta-blames-u-s-military-for-information-operation/
  https://theprint.in/tech/60-80-of-twitter-accounts-posting-on-russia-ukraine-war-bots-90-pro-ukraine-finds-new-study/1114878/
  
  Is the Russian propaganda in the room with us right now?

Personally, I'd rather just block the stuff I don't like rather than have lemmy.world trying to decide "who's worthy of federation".

What have they actually done?
I'm all for defederating from instances that cause problems but all the quotes above basically seem to say, "I know you want a revolution but you still gotta follow the rules of whatever instance you're posting on."
It's your server so your under no obligation to provide a reason for defederating beyond disagreeing with them but it leaves me wondering if there's anything else or if it's just a matter of disliking them?

I just think it's funny how exploding heads took lots of polling and hand wringing before defederation and socialists get defederated on sight. I also think we should add "This is an expressly pro-NATO instance" to the front page, so people realize this before they make an account here.

Good. I commented earlier about how horrible hexbear was. I signed up for hexbear, hoping to meet leftists, but these are not leftists. They just parrot Chinese/Russian propaganda. They have no original takes, no critical thinking. Call me whatever, but, I'm pro NATO. I don't give a shit about what bullshit propaganda you show me from a totalitarian regime. If the U.S. is bad, then the CCP is pure evil.

last resort
preemptive
??

As a leftist can I just say how cringe it is to treat "fighting liberalism on the fediverse" like it's activism? Go outside.

IDK, I don't think this is the right move at all... The announcement post and the comments you pointed out were cherry-picked and misinterpreted. They are an ideological instance. You wouldn't say blahaj.zone is trying to "spread" LGBTQ+ "ideas". They're just a specifically queer instance.
Everything Hexbear said was, the way I read it, in the direction of "let's behave and be good with the federation". I think you're just confounding your own ideologies, and the way you think things should be done, with what the community at large wants.
That being said, IDC that much, but I do disagree.
PS: Posting from my lemm.ee account because this post doesn't show up on my lemmy.world account for some reason.

Freedom of speech does not constitute an obligation to listen.
Good for you!
- Now if only everyone would be so quick to defederate preemptively from Nazi instances.
  
  Not really no. I have a pretty extensive defed list on my instance if you want to check, but it's not all Nazis (bots as well).
- Exactly. Freedom of speech != Freedom from social consequences
  
  Well, in a truly "free" society, yes freedom of speech would constitute freedom from "social consequences." However, the United States, and in fact, no Earth government, is a truly free society. There are rules and laws that exist, thus restricting freedoms. However, specifically regarding freedom of speech as it is mentioned in US law, it specifically is a protection for citizens from retaliation by the US government, and does not cover interactions between citizens.
  So I wouldn't say "freedom of speech doesnt mean freedom from social consequences," but rather "freedom of speech does not include a requirement that others listen." There are laws with regards to how other citizens can respond, including laws against assault and libel and such. But there is no law that says anyone must to listen to what you have to say simply because you have the freedom to say it. Thats quite a preposterous idea.
  At least in the US, each citizen has the right to say what they choose within the constraints established by law, and to choose who they will listen to.
- What a great sentence, well said. I’m going to use that in the future.
- Try telling that to the lemmyers (lemmings?) In this Technology thread that were clowning mastodon.art for blocking social.bbc for BBC's history of transphobic rhetoric, considering there are a decent amount of transgender people (and other LGBTQIA+ identifying people) are members of their instance. Same situation, definitely not the same reaction.
  EDIT: It was in Technology on lemdro.id, not Fediverse. EDIT 2: Spelling
  
  Yeah but there's a big difference.
  As people right fully call out in that thread, defederation from the BBC without them having had a fediverse presence to do anything worth defederating with is wild. It's the same broken argument as pre-emptively defederating from threads was, barring worries about sync-load or something.
  But in the case of Hexobear, they do have lots of content based upon which you can judge whether federation with the instance is worth the extra moderation effort for you as an admin or not. In this case the lemmy.world admins decided that it is not worth it, an defederated.
  However, importantly they had something to judge what working with the communities from the instance would be like. With BBC or Threads, no one had that. And while every instance admin is of course free to do whatever they want, they're also making a really good point against the fediverse as a technological solution if they act that way.
  Consider that if it were a central site, defederating from tankybear is the equivalent of banning a community. The BBC/Threads thing is preemptively blocking a community from ever being created. There are very rare cases where the latter might be warranted, but it's tough to imagine scenarios where it would have a meaningful reason.
  
  BBC is transphobic? Since when?
- I usually support that sentiment, but it only applies when it is in your hands whether we listen or not. In this case, the admins singlehandedly decided that none of us can. This is pretty much a form of censorship IMO
  
  The admins don't control you. You can have an account anywhere else you want to. So unless you're paying for the servers here, you can deal with the Terms of Service or not use it.
  
  As I said in another reply:
  The people who own a lemmy instance have the right to associate (federate) with whatever other instances meet their guidelines.
  If you don't agree, then you are free to join a different lemmy instance that is federated with objectionable material.
  You don't have the right to demand that lemmy.one meets your standards. You don't own it.
  If you find that no other instance federates with what you want, you're free to make your own, with blackjack, and hookers.
  https://youtu.be/e35AQK014tI
- For example I don't want to listen to you. Go away. Defederate yourself.
  
  You totally have that ability... it's under "Block User".
- What gives you the right to constrain what other people see? Just go ahead and ban them yourself if they offend you so.
  I just created this new account because people like you see in themselves the right to constrain what I see.
  
  The people who own a lemmy instance have the right to associate (federate) with whatever other instances meet their guidelines.
  If you don't agree, then you are free to join a different lemmy instance that is federated with objectionable material.
  You don't have the right to demand that lemmy.one meets your standards. You don't own it.
  If you find that no other instance federates with what you want, you're free to make your own, with blackjack, and hookers.
  https://youtu.be/e35AQK014tI

I'm gonna come out and say, even with the statement, I'm not in favor of preemptive defederation like this.
I know the admins of an instance are hosting us basically out of the goodness of their own hearts, and I appreciate that. And I understand they can do whatever they want, and we can move to a different instance if we want. I get it.
But I joined .world because I wanted a neutral instance that would connect with pretty much everyone unless they were particularly problematic. Could hexbear be particularly problematic? Sure, maybe. But I think there's a big difference between defederating in response to a problem and defederating in anticipation of a potential problem, especially since the users aren't given a chance to discuss it. Like, I know we're not technically entitled to give our input if we're not admins, but I think it would be nice, y'know?
If it was just some small instance of trolls that's one thing, but hexbear is actually quite a big instance, so this is a very impactful decision. I don't like it being made preemptively behind the scenes like this.
- Well said.
  Like, I know we’re not technically entitled to give our input if we’re not admins, but I think it would be nice, y’know?
  Admins not bothering with users' thoughts or opinions is what brought us here from Reddit. I wish they would poll us, even informally, before making these kinds of decisions.
- Your desire to "connect with pretty much everyone unless they were particularly problematic" is admirable,. Just remember, please, that the wider the gates are opened, the more idiots wander in and the more work for mods and admins.
  After dealing with the first thousand or so idiots, you can smell 'em coming. I'm with the admins on this.
  
  Sure, I'm aware of idiots on the internet, but if we tried to avoid idiots on the site we wouldn't federate with anyone. Lemmy.world is specifically billed as a "generic Lemmy server for everyone to use," I want the gates to be open fairly wide, that's why I'm here. Not for everyone, like I'm glad we defederated with exploding heads, but we still gave them a shot first and there was at least some more community discussion on it before that decision was made. That's what would make me feel a lot better about this.
  
  Non-federation with a CTH-successor certainly makes running a community on lemmy.world more desirable. Back on reddit, before the bannings about 1/3 of mod actions were from TD users, 1/3 were from CTH users, and the last 1/3 was just randos. It's not like CTH was just a regular sub, they were the source of a lot of moderation.
- Is joining hexbear an option for you? It's not like we're obligated to only have one account across the lemmyverse.
  
  Sure, but having fewer accounts is easier: that's the whole purpose of federation in the first place, isn't it?
  It's fine now, but I haven't been on Lemmy for that long, and I don't want to have to make a new account every few months to see a new instance.
  
  The more servers we defederate with, the fewer posts will show up in our feeds from everywhere. People aren't going to make an account for everywhere. I'm not particularly sad about this server in particular, but in general the Lemmy.world admin trying to stop people running into content that isn't illegal is annoying and him imposing his ideology on lemmy.world, which paints itself as neutral.
  
  The more servers we defederate with, the fewer posts will show up in our feeds from everywhere. People aren't going to make an account for everywhere. I'm not particularly sad about this server in particular, but in general the Lemmy.world admin trying to stop people running into content that isn't illegal is annoying and him imposing his ideology on lemmy.world, which paints itself as neutral.
- A perfectly fair and balanced opinion. It's ultimately up to the admins since they've effective got to clean the mess if it happens, but gauging community sentiment would always be nice
- Seconded
- Well, you picked the wrong instance, then. Lemmy.world never claimed to be neutral. The goals have always been clearly stated, currently here: https://lemmy.world/legal
  
  Well the server is described up at the top as a "generic Lemmy server for everyone to use," which feels like it's setting up to be a pretty neutral stance.
- Find another instance? That’s the beauty of the fediverse.
  
  Well yeah, I already said I know that's the go-to if you don't like one instance. But I'd still like to be able to express my opinions before doing that. It's not that big a deal but I'd still ideally rather not, y'know?
- The users already made their intentions clear with their instance rules acting as proxy. It’s an aggressive stance and it is not conducive to fair and open conversations about anything.
- This is exactly the thought process I went through while reading the post. Doing it preemptively can make it come across like you’re severing the connection due to opinions rather than rule breaking.
  But still, THANK YOU to the admins, in general. I am not accusing you of anything negative like that. I trust that you thought it through way more than I did. Thanks for keeping this big general insurance of ours awesome.
- I get your argument, but I'm with the admins. It's not like a shop keeper closing their doors because they see someone coming with tattoos and a biker jacket. It's more like they're closing their doors because they heard the person saying they make their living shoplifting and they intend to shoplift in that store. Hexbear stated pretty explicitly that they intend to be a problem. No reason to wait for them to do that.
  
  I'm not really seeing it to be honest. That first bullet point there seems pretty clearly saying to their users to not be a problem so that they don't get defederated.
  I'm sure you can find someone calling to brigade such and such on there somewhere but they have over 20 thousand users total. That's a lot of people to rule out.
- As always, the limits of tolerance are met when it comes to suggesting we tolerate intolerance. The boundary must be set there.
- They specifically said they're being trolls and going to brigade tbf.
  
  That first bullet is saying "don't do stuff that's going to get us defederated" to their users, no? It's a bit tongue in cheek but I feel like it's not as aggressive as some people are describing. The whole server came from a subreddit that was very memey/shitpost.
- You don’t welcome cancer in to your body because you support all life.
  Nazis and Russian trolls are not here to debate or inform. Their sole purpose is to degrade trust in democracy, spread propaganda, and other heinous shit.
  Defederation is our only defense and we owe it to users to fight hate and lies.
  
  The thing is that kind of example assumes that it is cancer. Which is something I'm not happy assuming yet, especially without discussion.
  Hexbear has over 20k users. I find it hard to believe they're all Russian trolls, or even that most of them are.
  
  Unfortunately for you, the userbase of Hexbear is predominantly non-Russian! Ergo, your conclusion is incorrect!

I echo the dissatisfaction people have with this and won't be donating again. This is Lemmy.world not Lemmy.(we need a safe space from the communists)
The fact you were upset about Beehaw's defederation but then turn around and do this is massive hypocrisy.
This is you imposing your personal ideology on your users. The fact you lead with those 3 "concerning statements" tells us everything. You only like free speech when it aligns with your own beliefs.
Shame.

Too bad this instance won't approach federation with Threads in the same manner; I don't think any positive outcomes could be expected from their behavior either.
- It makes you wonder who's actually pulling the strings of dotworld. The instance owners have the same pro-corporate, pro-capitalist, anti-leftist, anti-communist stance as Reddit. 🤔
- I think the thing with threads is it's mastodon type content. I don't know that any threads content will show here anyways just by virtue of format.
  But I agree wholeheartedly that we shouldn't be involved with threads. Nothing good can come of it. Whether it's content, behavior of the company, or a variety of other reasons. Meta et al, have demonstrated a repeated lack of humanity.
- Yup, the stance on Threads is why I jumped ship.
  This bullshit just proves I made the right choice.

Defederating instances on ideological grounds isn't a bad idea IMHO, and I can see why people might not want their feeds to end up full of people who just sort of assume that what we're here to do is use facts and logic to destroy western propaganda, with the goal of bringing about the downfall of the International Monetary Fund. That sounds like an extremely tiring project to be involved in; you wouldn't want to hang out with somebody who does that in every thread.
But I think it's important for the reason here to be that Hexbear is embarking on a project of ideological warfare. Not that the community consensus there is that the IMF is a bad idea. A load of communists is probably fine, while a load of evangelical communists determined to exactly follow the letter of every rule while maximizing the amount that they can evangelize is probably not fine.

I don't have any idea of who they are, but I don't get it: we're not preemptively defederating from Meta because it would be closed minded to do so (as per your admin decision), while Meta bad behavior is well documented (they've been fined by EU several times already), and we want to preemptively defederate from these people without even knowing how they will actually behave? Why? Shouldn't they be "innocent until proven guilty"?

Sorry, but talking against NATO means violating lemmy.world rules? What the hell, I’m out of here.

Disappointing as fuck. You're defedarating based on ideological differences and a guess that they won't engage in good faith? And you're reaching that paltry conclusion after cherry picking posts?
Not to mention the posts you've shared aren't bad at all? They're literally asking their users to engage properly in a civil manner.
Big yikes man.

So communists are not welcome on lemmy.world or what? What even is a Hexbear? How different is this move from when Elon decided to reinstate every banned account apart from Alex Jones'? How thin is the skin of lemmy.world mods? What's the point of censorship on this platform? I can go to Reddit and Twitter if I want protection from communist ideologies??

Taking a glance at Hexbear, it looks ridiculously juvenile.
Doesn't feel like it merits pre-emptive defederation, though.

okay this is freaking wild:
We need a sub dedicated to bot building, trolling and brigading effectively. Screw morals, or decency. They’re tools that maintain the status quo.
- It's a year old post about brigading Reddit, that garnered disagreement and a lukewarm response.
- One year ago, and the guy hasn't posted since then. Like ffs guys we had a home turf advantage if any idiot were to do it they would've done it by now, and the best part: they were talking about reddit.
  You really will take something as stupid as this to spin it in the most unsincere and negative light you can? Seriously?
- It's so melodramatic, it sounds like a child's attempt at satire. Like, try saying that out loud and not cringing.

I'm a bit new to the fediverse and I came to lemmy.world because it's one of the big ones and thought it would be "neutral". But nothing quoted in this post seems dangerous or against the rules ? You don't even explain what rules they are supposedly breaking ? It's weird that the admins posted this thinking "people will understand". All you are saying is "these people are from the left", we don't like them.
You should clearly states in your rules/description that you are a neoliberal instance and contradictory opinions will be squashed.

I don't mind what the servers admins need to do. But please don't take quotes out of context.
“With the cumulative updates Users may show/hide avatars, show/hide scores, show/hide NSFW content, show/hide read posts, show/hide notifications for new posts, block users, block communities, report direct messages, mods can distinguish a comment to sticky it to the top of a post. Users may set their feed in their account settings to determine if the default feed is local (hexbear.net only), subscribed (user subscribed communities only), or all (all posts on unblocked communities on federated instances).
Hello users of Hexbear in the next couple of weeks (exact date will most likely be somewhere around the 5th of August) we will be taking the site down for approximately three hours to update to lemmy 0.18.3 and begin federation., as we prepare for federation we wanted to create a primer for etiquette when engaging in the fediverse.
Please read and respect the rules of the community instance in which you are posting/commenting. Please try to keep the dirtbag lib-dunking to hexbear itself. Do not follow the Chapo Rules of Posting, instead try to engage utilizing informed rhetoric with sources to dismantle western propaganda. Posting the western atrocity propaganda and pig poop balls is hilarious but will pretty quickly get you banned and if enough of us do it defederated. Realize that you are a representative of the hexbear instance when you post on other instances.
Know that your posts, comments, and DMs involving communities/users of other instances are stored on those instances databases, while delete requests are sent there is no guarantee they will be honored, especially if a different platform is involved (mastodon, etc).
In addition, a reminder that you may set your feed or search to local/subscribed/all and block users/communities to have a greater control over what content you have. Local is Hexbear only, subscribed is communities from hexbear and federated instances that you have specifically subscribed to, and All is hexbear + all federated instances. There will be a pinned post in the !hexbear community where you can nominate instances for our allow-list or block-list.
In closing, I want to remind everyone that the moderation policy of Hexbear communities will not change and will be strictly applied to any users from a federated instance. While we are not responsible for moderation policy of remote communities our admins do see reports you make of posts/comments on federated instances, and we are able to remove them, while not actually deleting the post/comment it does hide it so Hexbear users cannot see/interact with it.”

I'm from lemmy.ml, so I shouldn't really have a say in this matter, but I just wanted to give some of my thoughts.
There's no problem in defederating from instances. However, I'm a bit confused by the reasoning given for the defederation. The points highlighted appear to simply be some normal leftist and anti-imperialist ideas, and I fail to see how it signifies intent to violate the rules of the lemmy.world instance (besides maybe point 7, if we were to consider supporting governments deemed "authoritarian" by the west as also being the same as calling for the opression for the people those governments are accused of oppressing (Which I don't believe is valid reason since that's simply not the case. For example, people who reject the idea that there is a campaign against the uyghur ethnic group in China, generally don't do so because they hate that ethnic group, but because they believe the claims are false)).
If leftist instances such as hexbear are problematic, I don't see why instances like lemmy.ml aren't, whose description some time ago was the following:
A community of leftist privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers
Some time ago they removed the word «leftist» in the description, but very much still allow people who hold similar beliefs as the ones you highlighted to use the instance and to express themselves.

So preemptively defederating from Meta (literally Evil Corp, that backed genocide and fascism) is not okey, but doing the same with communists is.
I'm starting to get a feel of what Lemmy World really is.

As one authoritarian admin to another, I applaud you on the use of unilateral decision-making without any input from your mods or user base.
- As a lemmy world user up to now, I do not wish to lose the interests, knowledge and expertise that 20k other people have, so I'll probably be off to lemm.ee if it proves good.
  
  lemee looks like what lemmy.world promsied to be when trying to gain users.
- As a Lemmy.World user, I disagree with this defederation because it would've been fun to make your userbase cry. Now I can't have fun messing with your userbase.
  
  No drama for you 😭
  
  make a hexbear account and start a thread. link your thread here so we can see how it goes. I'm sure you'll do great.

preemptively hitting my last resort button

If this was a specific-purpose non-politics instance like many are, I'd say power to you. But for an general-purpose instance that advertises itself as being:
A generic Lemmy server for everyone to use.
Lemmy.world is a general-purpose Lemmy instance of various topics, for the entire world to use.
...then there's a need for some serious self-examination. Preemptively blocking thousands of users, and talking about blocking another long-lasting substantial community because some other community made comments about them? This is disappointing, this does not sound properly thought-out.
You're right, defederation should only be considered as a last resort. Not as a broad-spectrum discriminatory first action.

I'm not going to pretend to be unbiased, being a poster over on chapo.chat (or Hexbear as it's now [embarrassingly] called), but I hope those of you who support decision can at least understand how frustrating the purported justification is. The notion that hexbear has a consistent ideology to push beyond general amorphic leftism doesn't stand up to any scrutiny, so in the end the decision to defederate just comes down to "these people have opinions".

How is the second statement problematic? It is a fact, that is largely documented in academia and many movements everywhere in the world. Disappointing decision....

What a disappointingly reactionary approach to federation.

"Are you now or have you ever been a member of hexbear.net, or a fellow traveler?"

it became evident that allowing Hexbear to federate would violate our rules.
For the sake of absolute transparency, and clarity, would you mind specifying exactly what rules would be violated if Hexbear were to be allowed to federate with Lemmy.world?
Hexbar has no intention of "respecting the rules of the community instance in which they are posting/commenting.”
This is a rather assumptive statement. You can only guess that this would happen, and have no tangible proof that it actually would -- the previous quotes that you provided outline your ideological differences, and not proof of conspiracy. You leave out the fact that in the Hexbear post that you linked they are telling their users to behave on other instances. In the quotes that you provided, you, quite conveniently, left out some important contextual information which changes the perceived intent -- the full version of the quotes that you pulled is as follows:
Please read and respect the rules of the community instance in which you are posting/commenting. Please try to keep the dirtbag lib-dunking to hexbear itself. Do not follow the Chapo Rules of Posting, instead try to engage utilizing informed rhetoric with sources to dismantle western propaganda. Posting the western atrocity propaganda and pig poop balls is hilarious but will pretty quickly get you banned and if enough of us do it defederated. Realize that you are a representative of the hexbear instance when you post on other instances.
While, yes, I agree that this is a rather uncouth way to word an official statement to the members of an instance, it shows quite the opposite for intent to spread harm to other instances.
In addition, several comments from a Hexbear admin, demonstrate that instance rules will not be respected.
Here are some examples:
“I can assure you there will be no lemmygrad brigades, that energy would be better funneled into the current war against liberalism on the wider fediverse.”
“All loyal, honest, active and upright Communists must unite to oppose the liberal tendencies shown by certain people among us, and set them on the right path. This is one of the tasks on our ideological front.”
Your point here makes little sense to me. If anything, the examples that you just provided state otherwise. These quotes do not prove intent to cause harm on other instances through rule breaking. Your argument seems to be founded purely on an ideological difference.
I have no issue at all with defederating with an instance if they are obviously harmful to the fediverse on the whole -- instances that promote spam, trolling, brigading, etc; however, hexbear, from what I see in the linked official post, shows no evidence of such intent. All I see is difference in ideology.
- Great points! Just realized they posted this with the generic admin account, they aren't reading a single comment in this post lol

What a spez move. Pre-emptively de-federating is just a bad move, no other way to look at it. They're a very diverse group and generally much kinder than most lemmy users. At the very least you should've tested federation for a day or two to see how the interactions play out. But anybody here can go over there and see for themself how nice they can be even when disagreeing, which they do a lot among themselves.
Also where in the Code of Conduct does it say the only ideology allowed is liberalism? Going the way of Reddit with vague justifications and arbitrary decisions will make the administration a lot of profit some day, but there's a reason people left that one.

“These organizations constitute the modern imperial order, with the United States at its heart - we are not fooled by the term “rules-based international order.” It is in the Left’s interest for these organizations to be demolished.
That's pro Putin propaganda, not leftist politics.

to “dismantle western propaganda” and "demolish organizations such as NATO” shows that Hexbar has no intention of "respecting the rules of the community instance in which they are posting/commenting.”
That's one hell of a stretch. NATO and the IMF must be pretty fragile if you can demolish them by posting on lemmy.world from hexbear.
- I think it's more about moderation. It would take a lot of work to keep discussions around this civil, if it's even possible. People feel strongly about their beliefs.
  
  This is why all political discussion is banned at lemmy.world. In fact, there is only one community on lemmy.world and it's about playing checkers (but without saying "king me" because kings are political).

wait, so it really is just ideological? Like, y'all don't ban users who come into lemmygrad to specifically troll communists on ideological grounds, but when hexbear tells its users to engage in good faith you defed them? what the hell?
Edit: Like honestly this is kinda gross, they specifcally try and smooth things out and make things easier for your admins so you don't have to deal with a flood of hexbear users spamming PPB everywhere and you just use it as evidence to defederate lol

Hexbear is for left-unity and has users that range from all spectrums of the left. The clear message here is, if your on the left, lemmy.world is not the place for you. If you support the free exchange of ideas, lemmy.world is not the place for you. The mods couldn’t even be bothered to lie about which rules hexbear users were supposedly going to violate.

Ok, I'm out of here. This is my last post on lemmy.world. I created a new account in a server that (hopefully) does not use defederation for political reasons.
I'm just sorry that I donated here.

I don’t really have a problem with the main post you linked to. Are we a strictly pro-NATO server or something? I think I’m missing exactly what the issue is 🤷‍♂️

Well this is unfortunate. Seems like a mistake tbh. 20k people is a huge loss.
I'll have to make alt accounts soon if account migration isn't a feature.
edit: This is reminding me of when people were calling Lemmy Devs 'tankues'. Are we being sabotaged again?

Loving all the hexbear alt-accounts in the comments here ❤
Btw, if people didnt understand this. I AM being ironical...
- Their instance encourages vote brigading and content manipulation tactics. One of the real reasons for the defederation, unlike all of the strawmen or red herrings they're peddling here.
  
  It's already possible, I had it happen to me, and people on unrelated communities (LotR etc) were replying to me asking why my post and comment got ranked down. This is clearly a lemmy problem, not a hexbear one. And by increasing division we're going to legitimise infantile behaviour like that.
- Yep, especially when they explicitly start doing the exact shit that the admins expected them to.
  Claim: “We’re just a place to talk about leftist ideals”
  Reality: vote brigading, blaming the west for Russia invading Ukraine, “China supreme number 1, super peaceful”
  There’s “Western propaganda is wrong” and then there’s “any anti-western propaganda is explicitly correct because it is anti-western”
  
  Hexbear doesn't even have downvotes to protect trans users from downvote brigades (and they banned the downvoters)
- Everyone remember, those defending pseudo-leftism are paid by China and Russia
  
  You would have to be paranoid to the point of insanity to believe that socialists are secretly in the pay of China and Russia. Yet this is what will pass for acceptable centrism on lemmy.world, while socialist critiques are deemed extremist and too dangerous to allow.
  
  Feels like it, lol.
  
  "Everyone who believes X is a paid shill or a bot"
  Unhinged

i dont like extremists on my feed, good work

I guess lemmy.world really is like reddit.

Oooh let the spicy fedi instance drama begin. The best part of decentralization!

“The West’s role in the world, through organizations such as NATO, the IMF, and the World Bank - among many others - are deeply harmful to the billions of people living both inside and outside of their imperial core.”
“These organizations constitute the modern imperial order, with the United States at its heart - we are not fooled by the term “rules-based international order.” It is in the Left’s interest for these organizations to be demolished. When and how this will occur, and what precisely comes after, is the cause of great debate and discussion on this site, but it is necessary for a better world.”
Well these are totally true and the decision quite disappointing.

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