Lemmy.world Hexbear Statementlocked
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.
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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.”
- https://lemmy.world/comment/121850
- https://lemmy.world/comment/1487168
- https://lemmy.world/comment/1476084
- https://lemmy.world/comment/171595
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3648500
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.
- https://lemmygrad.ml/post/158656
- https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/882559
- https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/540170
- https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/446529
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.
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?
Yes I am, hello o/
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.
Freedom of speech does not constitute an obligation to listen.
Good for you!
Exactly. Freedom of speech != Freedom from social consequences
Now if only everyone would be so quick to defederate preemptively from Nazi instances.
What a great sentence, well said. I’m going to use that in the future.
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.
These are very good points, imo. Preemtively banning a sizable community without even a dialogue beforehand will only stir more extreme opinions and division between instances.
I agree, though I hesitate to call it "pre-emptive defederating". But I can see the viewpoint.
To me, pre-emptive defederating is what was done by most Mastodon instances with Threads. Or how mastodon.art defederated from BBC. There was nothing to judge there. There was no content. Nobody could have said what kind of content would be seen on threads or the BBC instance. You could guess, sure. But you had absolutely no way of knowing.
With hexbear, there is plenty content there to judge, and historically federated influence has always been the same as local, that is, the behavior of a fediverse community is not meaningfully different outside of their own instance. As a result, the admins of instance Y can judge what federation with instance X would look like, there is data there to look at.
Pre-emptive to me would mean having no community content to judge at all, like the Threads and BBC examples.
I will add that this is in the nature of the fediverse. It is inherently not useful as a replacement to social media centers such as Reddit, because it's decentralized nature implies the fracturization has to happen, and social media works best when everyone is in one giant garden party for chance meetings and spontaneous interactions.
That's not necessarily a doom&gloom thing, it just means that by its very nature, software such as Lemmy cannot be useful to users who are seeking to replace Reddit. It can be Lemmy. Which is something else, albeit superficially similar in some regards.
(edit)
However, in general I do agree that they should probably have been allowed to federate and then re-evaluate based on how it works out. If their posts average X% downvotes, if Y% of local users end up filtering them or if a large portions of moderator actions are just from having to manage those users, they can still defederate.
I looked over the instance, and I cannot see anything I'm missing out on, but I can understand why others would want to at least give them one chance.
I completely agree with this well thought-out comment. In fact, point 3 is evidenced in this very comment section.
Yeah, I'm really surprised with regards to point 1. "We have opinions that we recognize are unsavory to others so keep the especially unsavory stuff here so we don't piss people off" seems like a good thing. I feel like defederating this early may have been the wrong call, but I don't think regenerating now is the right call either. I suppose the argument is that they don't believe it will actually be contained.
okay this is freaking wild:
It's so melodramatic, it sounds like a child's attempt at satire. Like, try saying that out loud and not cringing.
That’s a different instance, though, right?
I find it hilarious that the tankies rail against "maintaining the status quo" but in practice all they do is shit on anyone making actual progress in favour of wanking about some glorious revolution that will never come.
That sounds an awful lot like 'we know we're a minority, so we have to cheat, otherwise it might also look like we are, and that would be unfair! (read: we might be rightfully ignored for our minority opinions)'
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?
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.
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.
"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.
No, but it's still free speech, meaning nobody is forced to listen. In this case the "persons" are lemmy instances. If you talk shit, others will walk away (defederate).
Poor arguments does not equal talking shit. And I would prefer to decide for myself who I do/don't listen to. It's the admins' right to ban instances as they see fit, but I don't see a good reason to do so preemptively. I'd rather include opinions/ideologies I don't agree with than shut them out (as long as they follow the rules, to which Hexbear didn't even get the chance).
You can, by spinning up a personal one-man instance and making an account on it, then federating with whoever you want.
Short of that, you're always going to be beholden to someone. The fact you can even do that is more than is possible on mainstream social media.
This would be a lot more believable if your account wasn't just 6 hours old.
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
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/
I'm speaking from experience after wasting countless hours trying to have actual conversations. Even tried direct messages but whenever I did that, it felt like I was speaking to a whole different person. They would clam up and be like "sorry, don't wanna talk about it" or something.
But quoting American propaganda is okay?
"Everything I don't like is Russian propaganda" lmao get the fuck over yourself. It's fine to disagree with people, but to claim everything that opposes your viewpoint is enemy propaganda is the most "baby's first guide to internet discourse" shit ever. Grow up.
Right, my bad, forgot to mention insults.
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 would like to second this. The OP reeks of opinionated bullshit. Being against NATO and a western hegemony in the world is absolutely a legitimate political opinion, whether you agree with it or not.
The opinion of Hexbear doesn't seem to be the problem, and because of certain ideological overlap to users here that should be quite obvious in my opinion. You seem to have focused on the wrong part of the OP.
The problem is that they are presenting themselves as an ideological army. And especially that the admins of Hexbear seem to support this position, rather than it just being some rogue users.
Imagine if a Lemmy instance opened up for a specific religion and their whole point was to inject themselves into as many discussions as possible to push information favorable to their religion. The problem isn't that they believe in their religion, or even that they want to make the best case possible for it. It's the fact that they are trying to wield open discussions as a sword to convert people regardless of relevance or appropriateness.
Of course you are. There's nothing wrong with defending your beliefs, or advocating for them in the right context. Especially if they have sound arguments to back them up. (Also, I don't see any indication why that wouldn't be allowed based on this post, or the rules of conduct)
But pushing your beliefs is different. It's about foregoing actually convincing people and instead using underhanded tactics such as propaganda, brigading, or botting to make an opinion seem more sound than it really is. (Not saying your opinion necessarily is, by the way.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Maybe "federation" or something like it should actually take place on the client side, so you'd join instances with almost the ease of subscribing to communities. Then the client code would handle combining feeds, using the right credentials to post to a given place, funnelling DM's from multiple instances to a single inbox, etc.
I think if we are here now, the fediverse vision has already failed. Defederation is a last resort yet this is the third round of drama in the 1 month past redditgeddon? Two actual defederations and one extended discussion set off by a single troll on another instance.
So, I think fediverse decentralization hasn't yet gone far enough. Thus the idea of handling instance coordination on the client rather than leaving it up to server admins.
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.
I think their admins are doing an honest job trying to put out reminders for good behavior (**edit: I hadn't originally followed the links to the admin's comments elsewhere, I no longer think they're doing an honest job), the problem is that the sub they grew from never heeded similar admonishments and their federation post explicitly says they will not be moderated for activity outside of hexbear, so it's really just a suggestion, not a rule.
I don't agree with anti-western ideology being a good reason for defederation, but I do expect hexbear to be a major source of trolling from past experience with r/CTH. Reddit post-Donald and post-CTH bans was a noticeably less trolly (NOT saying they're even remotely equivalent, just both were sources of trolling and were banned at the same time).
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
Well said.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Feels like a pretty big call to look at a place that has 20k users and think they're all trolls and bots. I get that people aren't interested in differing opinions / discourse nowadays, but defederation before even giving it a go feels a little weak.
The message is pretty clear though: be as subversive as possible but don't set off the alarms that will get us defederated. I don't see them telling their users to be good, I see them telling them not to get caught.
If the rule is fifteen pieces of flair you shouldn’t need to be like pretty boy Bryan and wear thirty seven to be on the law’s good side.
Seconded
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.
The fact that Russia and China are still even considered "Communist" is just happening for the US propaganda really.
They are regime that are moved only by greed.
If you want to meet leftist, you will meet people who are against NATO and who know all the evil the USA has done. Those are entities that have spent the last 100 years genociding left leaning people with the help of fascist groups all around the world, so of course we aren't friendly to them. If you aren't aware of that, you may be from Europe, so I suggest you research Operation Gladio to have an example of what they did here, to their supposed allied countries.
If you're not open to those ideas, I really don't understand why you were hoping to meet leftists.
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".
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
That's cause that's not the problem.
A variety of opinions is great, an army of zealots coming in to shit up the place but assuredly not tolerating the same behaviour towards them? Nope.
This is simply an attitude issue, not a political issue, and we wouldn't even be discussing this if the instance were far right instead of far left, despite stalinists and fascists being functionally identical.
Look at my comment thread. I have a guy calling me a woke tankie for a simple disagreement. The shit slinging is already present in and among lemmy.world users. Having (potentially) more shit slinging is not going to change much. I've browsed hexbear a handful of times and was looking forward to their federation. By and large, conversation on there is pleasant to neutral. It's a bit cringe at times and occasionally hostile to non-leftists. You see the same from the right and centrists as well. That's just how online political discourse goes. If anything, I'd say the online right is a lot more hostile, bigoted and prone to harassment than the left. But I could be biased.
The way I see it, the admins are basically saying that political arguments are fine among our users and those from other instances, just not hexbear and lemmygrad. Which is pretty silly and a tad dramatic
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.
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.
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.
This is entirely reasonable to me. I don't believe there is any good reason to federate with instances that are intending to astroturf, censore dissenting information, and peddle propoganda. You can see their vote brigading in a post on c/fediverse discussing this situation.
Federating with such instances does more harm than good, providing an audience for propoganda aimed at fomenting extreme perspectives thru deviant misinformation and content/narrative control.
Creating those kind of fringe echo-chamer instances is how we end up with toxic and extreme groups like SRS and incels or the donald (on reddit). They can even start out as satire and then quickly devolve into toxic hate.
The argument that we want a diverse fediverse doesn't mean that we should federate with toxic instances with bad intentions. That's not the kind of diversity that we should be promoting. That's the kind of toxic userbase that should be quarantined...
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.
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.
I just want to say that most communists/socialists are not in favor of china or other authoritarian “communist” regimes (any country where factories need suicide nets can hardly be called communist, even if you disregard all the other ways they fail at communist ideals).
Unfortunately tankies are incredibly loud and often well-organized. They are just authoritarian dickriders, no better than the imperialist they claim to oppose.
Communists practice critical support. To quote Marx, “Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.” We do not believe China’s economy is socialist. But the CPC has lifted more people out of poverty than any government in history, at the same time that living standards for the Western working class have collapsed. In so far as they support the working class, we critically support the CPC.
What you call ‘Tankies’, is a word that has been used to associate Marxist-Leninist’s with all kinds of bizarre micro-ideologies. But Marxism-Leninism is the primary form of communism in most countries in the world, and in that sense most communists will practice critical support towards AES states.
I agree, but I'm not so sure that it's the case in the more extreme communities, otherwise those views would be downvoted/grouppressured out to a larger extent.
Socialist covers a pretty wide swath of political ideologies. Some of them buy into the old propaganda that Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Xi, etc, were actually on the right track, and that we can only achieve some sort of utopia with extreme authoritarianism first. They're generally no better than people on the right who fall into the Trump cult of personality. There's a lot of denial on both sides.
The type of Socialists that are generally more sane and denounce those dictators for the monsters they were are the the Libertarian-Left ideologies, like Anarchists.
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.
A prominent example you left out: American politicians and the billionaire-owned media don't like when someone brings it up, but the man who more than anyone else has been hailed by the establishment as the embodiment of peaceful struggle for civil rights, Martin Luther King Jr, was a pro-union socialist and would have been as disgusted by the neoliberal hypocrites in charge of the Dems as the blatant racists of the far right
There's a user down in the comments with a history of transphobic garbage bragging about not having been banned yet. Liberal inclusivity.
ffs
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 🙄
As a leftist can I just say how cringe it is to treat "fighting liberalism on the fediverse" like it's activism? Go outside.
Liberalism has an actual definition, and it is not the colloquial definition used in mass-media to refer to "the left half of what is acceptable."
Liberalism is an idealist (another word which has a very specific definition) political philosophy which champions private property, constitutionalism, republicanism, rule of law, and free trade. It has a philosophical canon, flowing through writers like Locke, Montesquieu, Mirabeau, Rousseau, Paine, etc. Further economic works, like Smith's "Wealth of Nations," are built on this philosophical underpinning.
Marxists are materialists. This is in contrast with the idealism of Liberals. While Liberals believe ideas are the force which drives change in the material world, Marxists understand that ideas are just a reflection of the material conditions they emerge from.
Liberals find themselves banging their heads against the walls of the institutions time and time again, because from their perspective, these institutions are just a reflection of ideas, and as long as the justification for an institution on paper is sound, there is no reason to think it cannot be reformed. An institution like the US Congress, or the Executive Branch is never at fault. It is simply a good institution simply being run by bad people. Marxists (and Anarchists) reject this quite simply, by looking at the material incentives involved, and the long ghastly history surrounding these institutions.
"Combating liberalism" does not mean being a piece of shit to anybody to the right of Bernie Sanders or Jeromy Corbin. There is a genuine struggle to ensure the new crop of social media platforms don't simply end up defending the legitimacy of the established institutions at the expense of genuine radicals who find themselves at odds with the actual longstanding policy and practices of these institutions. To avoid situations like when mastodon.lol banned CODEPINK, a prominent anti-war organization, for being "Tankies." This is Liberalism, and it should be combated.
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?
Yeah this reads as completely politically motivated. Nothing in the post is evidence of rule breaking.
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.
The hexbear userbase has a tendency to attach outsize importance to their posting activities, when in reality it's just an anodyne shitposting website with general leftist politics. When a admin makes an argument to the effect "leftism is better served by you playing nicely on other instances", they're playing to that tendency to try to get everyone to behave, not because hexbear can actually meaningfully engage in coordinated ideological warfare campaigns; we can't even agree with each other.
There's an old propaganda poster about carpooling during the war that works on the same conceit.
In reality, the only thing you're at risk of by federating with hexbear is the occasional post "look at what this liberal is saying on libby.world", and if that triggers a brigade, it's clearly visible due to federating tracking home instances, and can be dealt with (unlike brigading on reddit). This can (and does) even happen without federating, but you lose the biggest tool in your arsenal to actually see it while unfederated.
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 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.
They absolutely should make clear their political positions for clarity and transparency's sake.
To be fair, the hand wringing activities around exploding heads probably included a lot of soul searching and deciding what is and is not important to the admins. Stands to reason that having learned and made some decisions from that would make the process faster next time around.
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.zoneis 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.eeaccount because this post doesn't show up on mylemmy.worldaccount for some reason.We seem to be many to share this view. Really disappointing from Lemmy.world and very concerning for its future.
??
What happened to "defederating should always be a last resort"?
Hexbear is probably the most inclusive major instance. We're the only instance with mandatory pronoun tags. And yet we get defederated before we have a chance, while Exploding-Heads got to stay federated for so long? Our admins even went out of their way to make things easy for you, too. Did you even talk to them?
It's pretty breathtaking that they're taking a preemptive approach on such a large server, feels like they could have federated for a while and assesses but nope.
That would've given Hexbear the chance to prove itself. This decision eliminates that possibility. It's a consciously-made politically-motivated decision.
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.
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.”
This completely changes the context of those snippets thank you
I think it really depends on whether you consider this line to mean engaging in good faith discussion or sealioning with alternative facts.
If they engage with sources to back things up, then that sounds like a discussion to me. I'd rather be the judge of a discussion then some moderator that doesn't think I need to hear it.
I'm not sure where "global communism" and "fascist state headed by Vladimir Putin" intersect, but it sure ain't anywhere sane. Defederation from the Lemmygrad school of insanity seems like a grand old time.
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"?
That's pro Putin propaganda, not leftist politics.
that's like leftism 101 lmao, that's been the default position before Putin was even born
Ah yes, Donald Trump, Victor Orban, and Vladimir Putin: The cornerstones of leftist politics.... Kinda like when in the 1930s the "leftist" UK Conservative Party's had the Appeasement Policy towards Hitler and Mussolini.
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.
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?
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:
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.
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.
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".
There are surely some decent people on Hexbear, the problem is that there are a lot that are not, and many have explicitly stated that they want to disrupt other instances. And the final nail in the coffin is IMHO that the admins on Hexbear have explicitly stated that they will not moderate their users for things they do on other instances (making the "be a good neighbor" part in their original announcement a fig leaf at best).
The entire point of decentralized moderation in the fediverse is that instances are responsible for their member's conduct on other instances. Any instance that explicitly violates this (as Hexbear admins openly say) needs to be defederated as they actively harm the network.
Taking a glance at Hexbear, it looks ridiculously juvenile.
Doesn't feel like it merits pre-emptive defederation, though.
I'd generally agree, but it also feels like that user base would troll their way to this result eventually. I'd still say let them dig the hole first.
Sorry, but talking against NATO means violating lemmy.world rules? What the hell, I’m out of here.
thats what you took out of all the text above? just that?
you should read it again - you might find another 1 or 2 concerning parts in there
Could you point me to a specific passage that is worth a preventive ban?
The three main points listed:
asking not to spam the other instances with aggressive memes, instead engaging with sources. Doesn't look so bad.
A political belief one may or may not agree with. Is it against the rules of lemmy.world?
Communists believe in communism and don't agree with neither liberalism nor fascism. Is this surprising? Should we stop having left-wing content on this instance?
My comment was born out of sadness for the fact that a preventive ban was applied against an instance that professes vision of the world one may disagree with, but that, if argued properly, is certainly worth being, at least, discussed. I'd have totally understood a defederation is such instance would have violated rules in here and so on. But a preventive strike? I disagree with it.
With this said, it's not the end of the world, and I guess I'll find another calm island/instance.
i dont like extremists on my feed, good work
This makes me feel pretty good about my decision to choose lemmy.world as my first instance. There is zero reason to believe Hexbear users will engage in good faith, in fact, the evidence presented in this statement clearly illustrates that they intend to troll and generally derail discussions. Preemptive defederation in this case is the prudent move. Keep up the good work, Admins.
The statement literally says, “follow the rules of the instance you’re in.”
This reaction is very weird.
Do you really believe that will stop their users from trolling? They explicitly say that they won't impose consequences for actions on other instances, so it's basically just a friendly suggestion. Add to it their statement's elsewhere implying there will be non-lemmygrad brigading and it's kind of hard to believe they really care all that much about their users not trolling "the libs".
Carcosa (i.e., the same person who said follow the rules on other instances):
And them on lemmygrad:
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.
Sounds like defederating from a propaganda factory. Commies are one thing, but disingenuous tankies will contribute nothing of value to anything.
What a disappointingly reactionary approach to federation.
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 🤷♂️
Personally I would not want to engage with any community that shares opinions like "the Russian invasion of Ukraine actually may be a good thing".
Me too
As of this post, yes apparently.
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 appreciate the thought that went into this decision and I think this is an example of defederating being a good idea.
Are you joking? The extent of their thought process is essentially "I don't like their opinions".
I think it's important to make note of the fact that they were banned on Reddit for good reason. As a community, they have always been toxic and would consistently brigade and harass other communities on Reddit that even remotely disagreed with them on anything. There was a consistent issue in Jewish focused Reddit subs with users of theirs starting fights about Zionism on random Jewish posts and generally harassing to random people that would be remotely critical of communism. They would behave in a similar way to how exploding-heads did prior to being mass defederated, specifically going into threads and brigading/downvoting and attempting to sway discussions in their favor in bad faith.
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??
It's classic false equivalence from "freedom lovin" liberals, lol
Free speech for everyone! ^(as long as you keep quiet about anything that questions capitalism / the status quo)^
Yay reform! Aren't we just sooo progressive? Conservatives hate us so that means we're totally leftist!
What's funny (funny sad not funny haha) is how much liberals need the conservatives.
Yes, we're capitalist pigs, but at least we're not fascist capitalist pigs so vote for us!
I don't think this is about communists not being welcome on lemmy.world. I think this is about violence not being condoned on lemmy.world. Censorship is one thing, keeping a safe environment for others is quite another. Certain situations, if predictable, are best stopped before they become a reality.
What violence? Is open discussion of anti-capitalist ideas violent to you?
Violence is only okay when it's sanctioned by the state and primarily affects working class people while benefiting the corporate oligarchs.
Speaking out against state sanctioned violence apparently makes you a tankie.
Exactly. What if I, as a landlord, want to post about the tenants I am evicting because they can’t pay their rent. Just imagining the violent howling of the lower class hexbear mob makes my stomach sick. I support free speech but not when that speech is used against me.
"Lower class hexbear mob"? Seriously?? Or is it a satire?
If not, you are using your free speech against others here, showing how superior you think you are. Why couldn't they also express their voice?
I hope it was satire.
It was definitely satire
Nah. It's a (biased) personal interpretation of what "good" "safe" "family-friendly" content means for lemmy users. Idk much about Hexbear's content but isn't it possible to label their posts as NSFW incase of visibly violent content or something similar.
The users who disagree with Hexbear's overall comments know where the block button is. It's not that complicated a solution. People should use more of it instead of looking for reasons to get mad.
Being in favor or support of the status quo is also pushing an ideology.
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.
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:
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.
Now that's a discussion, and I appreciate your pragmatic response. The issue seems to be the flaming that is currently happening. Hopefully it cools down, and we can all resume our daily beliefs in a rational way. Right now, it looks like a clear brigade. A fear response to opposing views is common; but you don't get people listening by asserting that what you believe is correct.
Better to defederate until an understanding can be established about code of conduct. Currently, it looks like a heap of comments that aren't helping the matter.
From hexbears own announcement, they're trying to tell their users that defederation can happen if they don't play nice. And here we are with users creating discourse because of pre-emptive defederation... and it isn't helping their cause. Defederate and let it bump, it's not their instance to moderate. They won't even allow federation to other instances themselves, without admin approval. How is that fair? If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck... it's probably a duck.
This looks like and sounds like targeted ideology, that isn't receptive to opposing views. Show good-faith to actual discussion and it wouldn't be a problem. But just look at the comments and see for yourself that this isn't good-faith, it's a thinly veiled attempt at a brigade. And you can ignore the comments and look at the announcement itself: they're trying to keep their users in-check (from the get-go) for polite discussion, but have already failed
If you don't like my opinion, good! Let's talk about it, cause there's plenty of ways to do so, outside of lemmy.world. That's how it works, and people being mad is not going to change it. Kindness and logic will
We all know the world's fucked up, we don't need another "saint" telling us they have the solution. We're all pretty freaking over any final solution that anyone has to offer
Repeating Putin's BS is neither leftist nor anti-imperialist. If anything it's the far-right that wants to dismantle international cooperation and it's "western" international cooperation under the umbrellas of NATO and EU that's currently helping to fend off an imperialist and fascist Russian crusade. It's not a coincidence that the right-wing and far-right politicians such as US's Trumpists or Hungary's Victor Orban are the opposing helping Ukraine.
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:
...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.
Not a big fan of cherry-picking posts and comments to pre-emptively defederate because of opposing ideals.
This opinion comes from knowing nothing at all about hexbear prior to this post.
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....
I also don't see how the first statement is problematic. To me it reads like they are encouraging their users to act with civility on other instances and keep the regular Hexbear stuff "to Hexbear itself". The statement explicitly tells users to instead debate users in other instances using citations. To me this seems like the best way to go about ideological disagreements in the first place; it's certainly not a reason to defederate.
Made a new Lemmy account somewhere else and will stay there unless this decision is reversed and the policy regarding these kinds of decisions is changed.
I also don't see how the first statement is problematic. To me it reads like they are encouraging their users to act with civility on other instances and keep the regular Hexbear stuff "to Hexbear itself". The statement explicitly tells users to instead debate users in other instances using citations. From where I'm at, this seems like the best way to go about ideological disagreements in the first place; it's certainly not a reason to defederate.
As you know, I'm anti-defed. But in this instance I'm with admins. Hexbear is a cesspool for genocidal lunatics.
Oh boy, less than 1 month here and my first lemmy-verse drama.
Only thing different is, anyone that doesn't agree with it can literally just.... Fuck off to wherever they want
Missed the BeeHaw drama?
Unfortunately, until account migration is added, this is not as straightforward as it may sound.
As an instance owner myself some of this is concerning. I understand why lemmy.world would want to defederate from them. I won't defederate on my instance at this point, but if personal attacks start to happen or rules get broken, then it will be considered.
This i feel is the best take for most instance owners. Wait, watch and react. Good to keep federation going until you actually observe them participating in bad faith
Loving all the hexbear alt-accounts in the comments here ❤
Btw, if people didnt understand this. I AM being ironical...
These comments are wild. At the end of the day, if we really dislike the actions of our instance, we can just change to a different one, or self host. Does it suck? Yes.
I don't think I can reasonably expect someone else to tailor their own instance that they created and paid for to my specific interests. A previous instance wasn't to my liking, so I just made a new account somewhere else. Isn't that supposed to be the whole point?
"If everyone defederates with everyone there will be no content". Well, it's a good thing that it's not everyone defederating with everyone.
I think that maybe the people who are really upset about defederating should try to host their own instances and act as admins for those instances. I totally understand wanting to do your own thing with the amount of time and effort that stuff requires.
Personally? I'm still pleasantly suprised/happy that so many people have created instances that they opened to the world. I also feel lucky that people are putting in a lot of effort to make places that anyone -even complete strangers- could join. I'm happy that there are a wide variety of instances.
Oooh let the spicy fedi instance drama begin. The best part of decentralization!
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?
Honestly, I don't mind this considering the examples given.
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.
Judging by their responses in this thread it sounds like you made the right move, go back to /b/ crybabies
Ignoring the fact that most complaining here are likely members of that instance, I don't understand users' insistence that they shouldn't be defederated. Are most ignoring the numerous examples of Reddit subs users inferred "likely won't be a big deal" becoming obviously problematic down the line, with the inevitable ban/quarantine occuring with most upset it wasn't dealt with from the start?
I read this mostly like "they seem like a bunch of assholes so we're defederating so we don't have to interact with a bunch of assholes". Cause the folks on Hexbear seem intense compared to lemmygrad, etc. I know it's really the anti-NATO stuff, but eh.
I don't like not getting content though, so I'm really not in favor of this move. But I'm also an ex-redditor who liked to lurk communities I don't agree with since it's not like the comments are going to jump out and get you. (Of course, as an American I think I get hit by more far right than far left, though they agree on some of the weirdest conspiracy shit sometimes).
Also it's not like I can't have multiple accounts across the fediverse, lol.
Not a lemmy.world user, so just sharing my thoughts/ideas on this at a general level
This is exactly why they are being de-federated. The Hexbear admins have openly stated that they don't consider their users behaviour on other instances their problem, except that they would find defederation slightly inconvenient and against their openly stated goal to use federation to brigade other instances. This is extremely bad faith behaviour and sadly consistent with the conduct of the CTH/Hexbear community over the years. Don't let them gaslight you into believing they are the good guys.
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.
Nah, I'm very left-leaning and will stick with lemmy.world, which allows criticism of communism (unlike hexbear) while also allowing for criticism against capitalism.
If hexbear was really about free speech, then they would allow criticism of communism in their instance. Their content manipulation tactics like vote brigading are a good reason to defederate as well.
Lemmy.world defederated from them due to their open statement of intent to engage in toxic, rule-breaking practices. Hexbear is poised to be a giant echo-chamer and then you criticize lemmy.world of being an instance with strict ideological fixation and enforcement? It's so hypocritical. It's just projection.
No one is stopping open discussion on lemmy.world. Just protecting users from an instance with bad intentions/restrictive narratives/perspectives.
There's a difference between liberal left (which is what a majority of rational, secular people belive in), honest far-left, which is about socialist economics, eat the rich, BLM/anti-racism, anti-cop, gender abolition, human rights, actual anti-colonialism etc. and the kind of "far-left" that is "anti-west", which isn't really about honestly discussing these issues, but rather about dividing people, being contrarian to established things that work and make sense, and trying to paint everyone who disagrees even a tiny bit as the scum of humanity. On the other hand, any defederation further enlarges the rift between communities and makes being informed on what others think more cumbersome. Also, they think Beehaw, a place that is supposed to be inclusive, is fascist? I am not sure how it is. It's mostly left and liberal, really.
What is it with Lemmy and far-[left | right] politics...
They get banned from Reddit and come here, and create their own little echo chamber
I've not seen much right-wing politics on here thank the gods, but the leftwing stuff comes simply from the fact that that is the ideology of the platform's creator.
People are way too quick to defederate. Let the users use the platform and ban them if they break rules. Arguing isn't against the rules as far as I'm aware as long as it's in the right threads. You think this is going to keep users out? No its just going to drive then to another instance
At least on other instances, they may be subject to more stringent moderation. It's easy to say "just ban them" when you're not the one who will have to manage all 20000 of them.
It's always difficult. On the one hand it's not great to de-federate based on political opinion. After all, I'd have no issues with these people posting memes and other content, adding non-political insight in non-political communities, and even discussing politics in political communities. An echo chamber doesn't really help anyone after all. However, these people seem to actively look down on anyone even slightly more right wing as them, and as shown in the examples they also seem likely to aggressively push their views in places where that would not be appreciated. To me defederation seems like the good call, at least temporarily, to ensure that moderators won't have their hands full. But it would be nice to see at least attempts to federate with these extremists, just to give them a chance to play nice. It would be better in the grand scheme of the fediverse to keep things as connected as possible and to avoid echo chambers.
I guess lemmy.world really is like reddit.
I am also unsure about lemmygrad, as although I dislike the instance, (and a few parts of db0 as well) I do agree with defederation being an extreme option. ::: spoiler unrelated note I am concerned about the defederation system as a whole, as an instance could defederate with all but the most extreme left/right wing instances, causing an extreme echo chamber to develop. (albeit only on lemmy) :::
Ok. It’s been nice. I’ll find a new instance.
Well these are totally true and the decision quite disappointing.
a last resort. preemptively defederate
a last resort. preemptively defederate
a last resort. preemptively defederate
a last resort. preemptively defederate
This has been a demonstration in the use of markdown syntax...
Good call
I guess I'm back at join-lemmy.org to find a new instance. Any recommendations?
Lemmygrad.ml
Not a fan of this defederation - I wanted to at least have fun dunking on them
I respect the autonomy of you admins to federate with who you choose, but as a user, I would prefer not to defederate, and let the votes moderate their 'contributions'. And, of course, defederate if there are too many rule breakers and/or bots. But I also realize the potential hassle this could pose for you admins, so I sympathize with your decision even if I'm not in complete agreement.
Gotta say I'm not surprised that the admins of a "nuetral" instance preemptively ban a socialist instance that's telling its users to follow the rules on other instances while it dragged its feet to ban a nazi instance which was actually causing problems.
Signed,
Hexbear user since inception
Defederation is happening based on Hexbear's potential comments and behavior when there are some absolutely unhinged lemmyworld comments in this very thread.
But it's Hexbear that "wants to be douches."