~500 comments about our instance and admins in the past week. Talk about needing to touch some grass...
What do you expect? There's a reason everyone who has a desire to maintain their sanity has defederated from them.
There's some good peeps there and they help in keeping the crypto-fash in check. But their clannishness is unchecked.
they help in keeping the crypto-fash in check
Unless your users at large are crypto fascists I don't think you need crypto authoritarians to keep crypto fascists in check.
Well their criticism of the current system is on-point, and they can help counter pro-capitalism ideologues. It's just that their praxis tends to be shite when they try to be all "vanguard of the proletariat" or overuse their "bullying" as a tactic.
they can help counter pro-capitalism ideologues
Only with authoritarian ideals, and while supporting places like China and N. Korea, giving capitalists every reason to mock what the tankies falsely present as communism.
Like, you do you, but personally simply having anti-capitalism in common isn't enough to overlook the oppressive ideas they preach and support (even if indirectly, by using that instance specifically, they actively endorse and condone those ideals), just like having anti-stateism in common isn't enough to overlook the oppressive ideas "an"caps preach and support.
They're telling you who they are, the best thing you can do is listen (and if any of these users really are that chill and not at all tankies like you give them credit for, they should understand why being affiliated with authoritarians is a red flag to most users, and have no problem creating an account on another instance that isn't bringing mass defederation on to itself by brigading and harassing anyone who doesn't agree with their oppressive views)
Do we really need their help keeping fascists in check? Problem is hexbears consider everyone who's not on ml or hexbear to be an ipso facto fascist, and act accordingly. There's zero room in their ideology for anyone with more moderate political views. I'd say the majority of our users are probably left leaning, but unless they happen to want the violent destruction of the western liberal democracies, then they just aren't left enough for hexbears to accept.
Having said all that, I feel like we've managed to successfully remove most of the overt political trolling from hexbear on our instance lately, so our own communities aren't too affected. But they really hate the fact we've been clamping down on them.
I'll also acknowledge the majority of hexbear's users don't go trolling. They seem to have a bunch of well meaning people who are focussed on community building, a bunch of political history/theory enthusiasts, and a bunch of awful trolls who are just there for the lulz. You can see in their own modlogs that there's tensions within their instance between those groups.
So, it's a complicated situation to deal with, and depending which groups you interact with, you might have a very different experience. From my own experience I'd say the bad far outweighs the good though.
I think it's because you and me face the brunt of their ire for trying to defend our instance inside their toxic comms, and that colors our perspective. But I try to step out of this and see things less personally when it affects more than just me. Just my take. I generally appreciate having the chance to be challenged from the left on occasion. None of us is perfect at the end of the day.
but unless they happen to want the violent destruction of the western liberal democracies
Btw, I think we also need to be cognizant when they exaggerate, but then again, a lot of their users will be the first to say "Lol, they think we exaggerate" so it's not always clear since they're too many levels deep in irony, which has it's own impact on their userbase's mentality. Similar statements generally require discussion and deconstruction before one can decide if that person deserves some sort of sanction.
I think we just need to take what they say at face value, because it's all to easy for problematic users to pivot to "just joking" when they get called out.
Yeah I couldn't agree more, they've caused enough issues to prove that it really isn't and hasn't been a joke for a long time.
Since you're just humans and we never know if the insults are slowly getting to you or you're just having doubts, I want to give a voice to the lurkers in here and reiterate one thing: I feel exceptionally well taken care of in this instance! I'm extremely happy to be a part of it, I don't even know what a downtime is and I don't see much drama or toxicity if any at all. I'm simply loving Lemmy (yes, seriously!), I'm loving my time on it and I can just focus on following the communities I'm passionate in, which is the main point of Lemmy. I'm also aware that this does not happen without considerable hard work from the people behind it. So while I'm sure most of it goes unnoticed, I hope to at least convey with this that it's not taken for granted or unappreciated in the slightest bit. A very big thanks to you all (and I try to donate where I can) <3
As for my personal experience, whenever a hexbear post makes it into my feed it's mostly an overly aggressive political take or straight up trolling. It reminds me of the League of Legends kind of humour: It's supposed to be a joke, but it's not explicitly spelled out that it's a joke and it attacks the individual. It's a mix of aggressive trolling and just straight up toxicity. You just never know if you're supposed to take it serious or not. But I personally like to have a choice if I eventually want to block them or not, and I feel like having a choice is one of the common threads between FOSS, Linux, the fediverse, self-hosting, piracy and so on.
But, while I do appreciate this, it isn't crucial to my experience on Lemmy. So, if at any time this balance is taking too much of a toll on you guys, it wouldn't be a big deal for me if we would "lose contact" with hexbear. Last thing I want is to slowly cook your sanity bit by bit, with each passing day a bit more, over something that is frankly not that important. I'd rather prefer you focus on what you love doing, be that doing technical stuff, improving the instance, memeing around, learning new stuff or simply discussing things with other people in peace. Life is much too short to argue with people, and over the internet it's even worse!
Hey matey. Your comment is much appreciated! Thanks for taking the time.
Feels really good to read that. Thank you!
I don't think they cook our sanity bit by bit. We all are pretty resilient and take a good chuckle whenever something like this happens.
Those of us in the DB absolutely love you guys. You’ve got our support. Normally I’m against defederation as much as possible, but I know you guys will make the right choice and do what is best for our instance.
Give ‘em hell.
even if these posts were "grilling the admins" it's literally your instance, you don't have to listen to anybody lol.
this instance is by far one of my favored instances though. So i'll continue to use it regardless, and if it does go to shit, i'll just jump ship lol. Freedom to surf is part of federation after all.
Oh so I'm not the only one. The users on Hexbear are always angry for some reason.
That's because it's a toxic community
Not from what I've seen, it's just not tolerant of liberalism.
Not from what I've seen, it's just not tolerant of liberalism.
There, I fixed it for you.
Not in my experience, they are very tolerant towards Marxists, Anarchists, trans people, etc. Liberalism is bannable, though.
Well yes they just label anyone who they want to be removed a "liberal", like they did with me.
Take it as a badge of honor. All clowns over there... First instance I blocked, and it reduced the toxicity on Lemmy by 70% on the spot.
I've read the things you have posted, and IMHO you were banned for being a loud dumbass
Sure, whatever. That's their prerogative. But if you also insult me and delete my comments explaining our position so as to allow your disinfo the fester all the better, I might just call you a disingenuous pos
Edit to say, that being a loud mouth is not a "liberal" or "reactionary" either 😁
For what it’s worth, I’ve always thought of you as more of a loud smart ass. /s
Don’t take these fools to heart. You are entitled to express your opinion in threads, and you know where the line of civility is.
Ironic- considering how butthurt they get when their communist shit gets banned. You really can’t make up that level of stupidity.
What do you mean? Lemmy itself was made by Communists along Communist principles, people usually defederate from Hexbear because they are rowdy.
What I mean is that it’s ironic that they ban people for being liberal, while crying when they get banned for being tankies.
Know who else bans liberals? Conservatives. Yet the only ones that ever seem to see the similarity between communism and conservatism and get shit on for pointing it out….
Are liberals. Your shared enemy.
None of that made any sense, lol. Conservativism and Communism have nothing in common whatsoever.
This comment is a hot mess because you used "liberal" as the implied opposite of conservative, but that isn't the definition @Cowbee@lemmy.ml implied when talking about hexbear, or at least that isn't how he bear defines it.
I really wish we could have some better descriptive words in these communities. "Tankie" is equally meaningless and confusing.
So the common american usage is liberal = leftist (or whatever counts for leftist)
On hexbear (and elsewhere) liberal is just the centrist of the conservative capitalists. By this definition, every politician in america is a liberal, whether democrat, republican, or independent, since they are all capitalists (if any of them aren't liberal, it's because they are too small to be relevant or because they are just blatant fascists). Anyone who isn't anticapitalist is conservative by that standard.
I could be wrong in some of what I said I'm just trying to help clarify but I'm not perfect lol please don't take this as an attempt to argue
I honestly don’t care how the clowns on Hexbear have chosen to redefine words to use in their own wind-tunnel. I’m using the actual definition of the term.
Like the rest of the world does.
Theirs is the global, older, more universal use of the word. Using "Liberal" and "conservative" to basically exclusively refer to "democrats" and " republicans" is a modern/american thing.
I believed that, myself, for quite some time. I ended up blocking them, however, despite being an anarcho-syndicalist. The instance has very much cultivated a toxic and anti-social culture where the most active users are climbing over eachother for a chance to "dunk" on someone.
Just like right-wingers abuse outrage to get a rush some of the polygonimals clearly have become addicted to aggressive behaviors, with the rush from bullying and dunking being rather apparently more important than leftism. It's a problem.
Additionally, their claims of anti-sectarianism and dialectics do not hold water when they are quick to label dissenting leftists as libs so that they can justify bans for those who don't toe the line.
Hey I remember when I got temp sitebanned from db0 for getting too spicy about trans rights in some transphobic .world or shitjustworks thread, as much as I don't like tankies they seem to be correct about this instance also having shit politics in some ways. Yet I'm still here because I'd like to think broadly as leftists we all agree on more things than we disagree on.
How about instead we all chill on the infighting and all touch some grass and stay out of each other's way?
I think they want the drama/attention
I don't know who you mean by 'they' here (Hexbears? Db0? Mods?), but don't give it to them. Ez.
Edit: FYI the guy below who got banned and his comment removed was saying the admin of db0 wanted attention btw. My roflcopter goes soi soi soi.
Drama like this is exactly why I laugh when people say its better on lemmy than reddit, its just a different flavor of the same shit when you're on All.
But no ads tho.
I use adblock :/
you put a whole two people in a room and you'll get drama sooner or later. In this regard every place will be the same. At least we more actual people to have drama with, with reddit getting closer and closer to the dead Internet uh, practice (no longer a theory)
Yes well turns out it is an innate part of those kind of forums. The more specialised the topic the less drama generally. There is very few places with no drama whatsoever on the web.
Sorry actually it’s quite old post I should stop commenting on old comments truly
Eh, within a day or two is normal to respond imo, not everyone sees the post immediately.
It's honestly sad, almost to the point where defederating from them would be better
But I'm sure we'd be loosing good people from hexbear too
Eh, I don't plan on defederating over such drama. They see some value in some of our users and we see some value in some of their users and we can ban the red-fash apologists and disinfo peddlers if they become a problem.
I've never had a positive interaction with anyone on that instance.
I've had, but it's mostly outside of their areas, or with people who are not immediately closing ranks and arguing in bad faith. Just before I got banned I had someone praise me for being chill, so 🤷
Most people on hexbear with any desire to participate in good faith will have other accounts elsewhere, Hexbear is already isolated as can be so multiple accounts is basically required for them to participate on the rest of the Fediverse. Shouldn't feel too bad about cutting off their Hexbear accounts since they almost certainly have others.
My instance is defederated with them, and most of the (politically) negative interactions I've had with people from other instances, I check hexbear, and so far 100% of the time they have an account with the same name there
I had to join a defederated server after the mods sent hexbear users my way to harass he after a I reported users for harassment....
As someone no longer part of their drama, yall should defederate.
I thought users could individually block comms now. For example i tried blocking lemmy.world and while that was in place i didn't see comments from there. Is this not the case for you?
You can block an instance, but not all users from that instance. It’s essentially a “don’t see this instances posts” option.
Oh. I saw a ton of hidden comments i could not view when i blocked .world (cuz of facebook, not the lovely commenters). I thought that was because i blocked the comm they were coming from.
Could be your client doing that actually, but it’s not a Lemmy feature.
I just use a browser. I dunno if it varies by insurance but it is a Lemmy feature not client-side
Sorry, to be clear I meant “block this instance” is a Lemmy feature, but “block users from a blocked instance” is likely client side. And to be clear, the web front ends are also clients. Many of them are non standard.
If you look at the description of the instance blocking, it says it doesn’t block users.
Didn’t mean to confuse things, I should have been more clear.
Ah yes i see. I'm out of my depth when it comes to the tech side of how this all works clearly. I also admit my experience was just from a end-user perspective and not like, scientific. Youre saying i am incorrect in my belief that blocking instances blocks comments from that instance? If that is the case i will look back into blocking the instance itself because blocking the users was not my intent
It definitly wasnt at the time
I think it is a recent development, in the last few months. Have a look in your settings if you haven't yet, should be an option now
We've been at the point where defederating would have been better for months.
But I’m sure we’d be loosing good people from hexbear too
Not really, the good people will just make accounts elsewhere and start using those accounts to interact here and on the rest of the fediverse, most of the good ones already do that because hexbear is already very isolated by virtue of the fact they're using whitelist federation and also the fact that they already have been defederated for the spam, trolling, and harassment their less savory members bring about (and more importantly the fact that it is unpunished by their instance's moderators if not encouraged).
They should be quarantined like Reddit did with The_Donald.
It's funny how butthurt they always get about the simplest shit. It's kinda hilarious.
Their instance has always been blocked on my end since the second lemmy added the instance block feature, but since that only gets rid of posts, my individual user block list has grown to about 40 hb users by now. Life gets better every time I add one to it.
I hopped over there for a second and saw them gloating about banning you from their instance like it was some huge win. And then shitting on db0 because they're "not real pirates" because they.... don't support dictatorships or something? Lol wtf?
Do not ever try to reason with them because you are burning your breath. I am surprised you have tolerated them this long. Quite literally, the only thing that can ever be done with hardcore radical trolls is blocking or defederating. Removing their voice always hurts them the most, because their only source of energy is controversy.
I think the rest of us reasonable folk really love what you do here db0. This has been by far the most stable, cleanest instance I've been on so far, and i've tried 3 or 4 of them. don't let the assholes try and pull you down for not kowtowing to their weird ideology. Keep it up!
Edit: And as expected, the downvote brigade is monitoring this post, lol.
Would be a great feature if we could block all users of an instance.
And then shitting on db0 because they’re “not real pirates” because they… don’t support dictatorships or something? Lol wtf?
the dbzer0 shitpost was funny lmao. Cry harder next time.
dbzer0 is honestly one the better instances out here (though im biased obviously)
I've blocked, like, 5 HexBear users and then haven't seen a single shitty post or comment from that instance since. Either they are all banned from the other instances/communities, or it's really only 5 dickheads.
There are a lot of dickheads, but a lot fewer of them intentionally reach outside their instance to harass other people. The problem arises when the originating instance's mods/admins take no action to control their brigadiers.
I'm literally getting pinged from inside hexbear after being banned, from people cackling that I can't respond.
I had to clean up a bunch of obvious bot spam from FoodPorn yesterday when I noticed it all after accidentally clicking into the community and leaving my all feed. I am now not sure if the report feature works; all the posts had tons of down votes but my report inbox has never had anything in it.
If other mods are relying on the report feature and it's broken, it would explain why even the active mods are slow to react to things.
to be honest: hexbear is an awful instance, and to me absolutely nothing would be lost if we just defederated from them. they are a constant source of drama, are awfully quick with the banhammer if they get criticized, and have cultivated an echo chamber that makes any meaningful discussions with them impossible. comparing them to lemmygrad is more than valid, and noone bats an eye when someone defederates from that cesspool.
i'm really for keeping as many doors as possible open, but the big question is if we really want the door open to an openly authoritarian and for the most part radicalized community. looking at the comments here, i can see that i am not the only one who thinks this way.
let's also not forget that they tend to infect all other connected instances too, there's a high number on .ml that are basically Hexbear satellite offices where almost every single commenter is a hb user.
you can always refederate after the fact if you want to, It's not like a fusible cpu in an xbox 360 or something lol.
Preach
Aren’t all Hexbear admins hypocritical pieces of shit? I mean, I thought it was a requirement.
Can't represent the users adequately if you're not one of them.
Shit. That’s a great point. Hadn’t looked at it that way.
I'm glad that v19 of Lemmy introduced user-facing instance block settings. Just block hexbear and move on.
Funny, in this 'drama' hex voted against defederation and voiced support for dbzer0 users. The bans from hex admins seemed reasonable if you look at the event history.
Prefacing with the TL;DR since I went much longer than I meant to and don't feel like deleting lol. But I thank you for seeing that most HB users (that voted) value keeping federation with dbzer0. The rest of my reply might be pointless nonsense, so fell free to stop here.
I also have a HB account in addition to my lemmy.ml I am obviously replying to you now with. I also voted that we should stay federated along with many others (which as you saw was a large majority). While there are real moments of hard trolling that I see, the shit happens with lots of other instances that aren't .ml, lemmygrad, or HB. It is something that happens no matter old internet, new internet, federated, mega social media sites. One person's troll is another's friend depending on so many factors. Some of which is even misunderstandings turning into people just all jumping in all due to said misunderstandings. While others are intentional, but might not be malicious and just taken the wrong way (completely text-based communications are constantly taken wrong).
For example (in my case) I might take a post or comment differently depending on which account I am using. But not notice right away that the source is from an instance that I don't have an account on. So I might comment with a take thinking of the instance I am on (and therefore a different understanding of the regular vibes) and be taken much much differently than I mean. Sometimes I delete a reply right after posting when I see it is not from the instance I am using.
I personally get taken wrong by people IRL when I am fucking around due to strong sarcasm and sometimes lack of expression on my face. My main point is that a lot of people on HB, Lemmygrad, and .ml actually like lots of the boards on dbzer0. I personally make sure to subscribe to the same boards from dbzer0 on my different accounts just to make sure I see the information, guides, and news no matter which I am signed into.
And like many (if not most) of the comments in the vote on HB to stay federated or not (and some folks from dbzer0 in this thread), people do find the exposure to other instances to be of value. We can learn lots of things that we might never have if not faced with such exposures and interactions. There will always be people that make problems that really aren't helpful. But it really doesn't help to make sure everything is reduced to pure echo chambers and just "other" everyone else. It guaranties that hate grows as the "others" are just spoken badly of and enforces not bothering to try to interact. It allows lies about the "others" to not be questioned.
HB doesn't want to defederate because they lose more of their power as trolls and propagandists if they do.
Really wish people would take the time to learn how the options work and not just assume they work a certain way, instance blocks are just for communities and not the users on the instance:
Users can now block instances. Similar to community blocks, it means that any posts from communities which are hosted on that instance are hidden. However the block doesn’t affect users from the blocked instance, their posts and comments can still be seen normally in other communities.
When people frame this option as if it's an alternative to defederation it is both deceptive and dishonest because it does not help with the current issues instances like hexbear bring to the table, it just blocks the communities of that instance.
Blocking certain instances improves the experience by a huge amount, but it really isn't sufficient. I don't really need to encounter edgy teens saying that they hope America collapses and everyone inside gets murdered.
Have you read the comments? Plenty of people think this is silly evidently, it's not brigading when a lot of dbz users are hexbear users also
Upvoted comment here:
I don’t care for the drama on Hexbear. And I don’t care for it here either. This post is drama baiting.
That's a reasonable sentiment to me
It is a reasonable sentiment, but unfortunately it has to be dealt with if hb is gonna keep triggering said drama, because it's a common recurring theme across multiple instances.
Yes, definitely not hexbear users gaslighting the crap out of you.
But honey, you love getting gaslit!
You don't have to be from hexbear to feel like this drama was played out days ago.
I think a lot of our users on dbzero are genuinely confused why our admin keeps posting about this, ngl. They're also talking smack on their Matrix channel for some reason despite saying that they think more about us than vice-versa.
It honestly looks like he wants/likes the drama to me.
Wait what do you you mean "keeps posting"? This is the only thing I've posted about hexbear for months!
Posting rent-free in his mind
We're confused? Why do you talk for other people like that's somehow authorative ngl. Not a great thing to insult the intelligence of a whole group with the 'I think' line.
Not really sure what you mean here tbh. Plenty of people seemed to be downvoting his stance on the matter. I imagine we share a lot of users with hex, so poking the bear seemed like an odd choice.
There you go again dropping huge reaches as if they were facts. Doubt many people here give two flying shits about hexbear.
The fact we stay federated with them is disgraceful.
Nah, life is all about meeting people with different opinions
No, it's about talking with reasonable people with different experiences. Hexbear users aren't reasonable, and largely nowadays, neither are those on .ml; trolls need victims, so they moved over.
These threads are so fuckin' weird from my instance. They keep coming up like clockwork every couple weeks.
I have them blocked personally, awful server
You may want to remember that blocking servers in lemmy only really targets the communities and doesn't target users from the instance. So in these situations it kinda doesn't do anything. It's a common misconception that instance blocking in Lemmy is stronger than it actually is and many people think it does things that it doesn't actually do.
Users can now block instances. Similar to community blocks, it means that any posts from communities which are hosted on that instance are hidden. However the block doesn’t affect users from the blocked instance, their posts and comments can still be seen normally in other communities.
then defederate?
hexbear and lemmygrad should burn in hell, they're one of the worst places on the internet
Only instance admins can do that though lol
That's what he is
I see nothing indicating that but it's not like there's an "INSTANCE ADMIN" flag lol.
You're either confusing me with someone else or whatever app you're using is broken because I am not an instance admin here.
Also even if I was it still wouldn't be my decision alone and would be up to the rest of the team to decide, because that's how a large instance is run, you don't just go do big things like that randomly without having a discussion about it first.
Edit: Fucksakes people, read the text in the images. Two of them are the exact same message from db0 with the above/below cropped out. And read the to/from.
The harassment is coming from the person taking the screenshots, db0 is the one not harassing people. Though he isn’t being super nice, I can’t really blame him.
Of what? I replied to their replies. That's not harassment
What do you think harassment is?
Aggressive pressure or intimidation
So like that?
How is calling someone a “disingenuous pos” harassment? Like, mean, sure. But harassment?
You didn't read the 1st message in the pic where I could say 3 could constitute it.
Following it with that would put me over the edge if I got it in a string of dms
That first message is to db0, not from. Look at the headers.
Just.. Fucking glorious. They're so hell bent to hate me, they correctly understand the mean context but just proceed project it onto me.
Once again for the audience: I sent one single pm to the mod who insulted me and deleted all my non-rule breaking comments and clarifications, therefore allowing all the disinfo to fester once more. The follow up goading and trolling is all them. They literally admitted to trying to goad me in their PM replies and then proceeded to open yet another thread about me to continue the abuse.
hexbear the instant someone even so much as dares to comment a dissenting view point.
Don't forget the role which .ml which plays in enabling the hexbears. Without .ml, the hexbears would effectively be cut off from the fediverse at this point, and likely wouldn't feel the need to brigade at all.
The real question is: how to we harness the power of their toxicity to build an army worthy of Mordor?
Sadly no way has been found yet to harness the power of the terminally online trolls.
In my personal experience, Hexbear is a group of rational actors with strongly held beliefs and 0 tolerance for liberalism. If you aren't a liberal/conservative/fascist/some other right winger, and you aren't a left-sectarian, it's a pretty reasonable space.
The bulk of the "mythology" surrounding Hexbear comes from people defederating from it and allowing that mystique to fester in their minds. I suggest people just go there and check it out, you don't have to agree with them, but it does eliminate the idea that they are a toxic instance.
Pissing off tankies just means you're a net positive to the planet. Rejoice.
I had a Hexbear account for about a month, and noticed whenever I logged in or refreshed the webpage that someone else's username would momentarily appear at the top right of my desktop screen where mine would normally be, and then mine would appear.
This had never happened with any of my user accounts in other instances, and I was considering deleting it out of fear that my username (and, perhaps, login credentials) might somehow get compromised.
Anyway, I ended up deleting it for something else -- the very same reasons often mentioned in the comments here, after experiencing some of that toxic shit firsthand. Good riddance!
The only part I hate about lemmy is this. Constant whining about other instances. Can I block this instance on my app and still be able to access piracy instance?
To quote KRS1- "Give me relief, squash all beef, don't let these arguments destroy us"
Which is why hex voted against defederation ahah, hex and dbzer0 users are largely allies from what I've seen so it's kind of funny the admin is banned.
Eh, They were gunning for an excuse to ban me for months now. Their mod admitted as much. Eventually I lost my cool from all their harassment facilitation and rampart hypocrisy and and gave them one.
I don't know all the details of the drama but I'm sorry you haven't had better interactions with hexbear. Some users can be problematic like any place, but I have been inspired by the effort, genuine good faith debate and historical analysis that is common in hexbear discussions. I'm anarchist, I first came to the fediverse through this instance and haven't had any issue with hexbear, and personally would defed from .world before hexbear lol.
Can you clarify how hexbear facilities harassment? I'm not saying you're wrong but I just don't know what you mean. They have the_dunk_tank which you could argue does but they changed the rules to discourage dunking on anyone that isn't a prominent voice, if there is harassment from users I haven't seen the mods do anything to encourage it.
They literally ignore the rules of the dunk tank just to allow flinging abuse at our admins for trying to do our jobs. If we try to defend or clarify ourselves peacefully we just get insulted. I once even pointed out that they are breaking their own rules and got ridiculed for even saying that.
On top of that every time I showed any vulnerability by tying to explain that their behaviour of constantly bashing us based on uncharitable interpretations is hurtful, I just get ridiculed even harder for doing so. All this while their admins just turn a blind eye until much later when they might remove the rule breaking thread.
I think everyone who hates hexbear should just.... Make a hexbear.net account and go hang out there. That's what i did, waaaay back when sh.itjust.works defedded. I hadn't heard about them before and i just had to see what the food was about first-hand.
It's not the den of wolves people seem to fear. In fact, i spend nearly as much time hanging out in their threads as on this instance. I have always liked learning new perspectives and stuff, and i believe I've gained quite a bit from making that place one of my innanet homes
I'm on an instance federated with them, and subscribed to a couple of their comms, but their most popular politics boards are exactly what you'd expect from it being where r/chapoTrapHouse went.
I swear 90% of the people deriding hexbear were offended by one post and never went back or saw a post that was entirely full of sarcastic comments and thought it was unironic. I'm not even ML, I call myself an anarchist and argue about all kinds of shit on hexbear and I have found it to be a very caring community, and actually doesn't tolerate transphobia or imperialist apologia unlike most online spaces.
Hexbear sends their commissar clown car around to threads they disagree with, especially in political/news communities, and brigade them with their tankie bullshit ideology.
Well? Care to elaborate on your findings?
They definitely aren't china/russo spies or the funnier ideas ive seen folks have. They skew about the same age range and nationality as the rest of Lemmy. Lotsa yanks yaknow? They aren't afraid to show you your own ass if you drop trou around them, and they have the mental acuity to expose every pimple, so you better have a thick skin if you want to speak on something you aren't as informed on as you think you are. I do have one (id like to think) and i got my clock cleaned over there once, had to touch grass for a few days. But i didn't get banned or harassed for it. (Probably because i didn't double down on my opinion) in fact i am still friendly with those same people, even the ones who hurted my feefees.
I think maybe the shock many commenters feel going over there is actually whiplash from the perspective change. From arguing politics from a position of "the left" towards people on "the right" political spectrum.
When you're talking communists as a liberal, you are the right wing. This whiplash is dizzying and difficult, and not at all pleasant. Unless you plan to learn, and go there with the idea that you are going to learn something, it's not going to be a fun expedition. Proselytizing types get mocked and banned.
Reason i say one must learn isnt to say one must convert, there are simply a lot of things we have been told about what communism/capitalism actually are that are simply untrue. In addition, there's a lot of additional historical context those who don't dedicate themselves to the subject just won't know that kinda changes the way one views how we came to be where we are today.
And one doesnt have to believe or agree with the conclusions drawn to gain this insight and perspective, but i feel knowing more is always better than Knowing less. At the very least you may find yourself understanding where they come from, and agree with many points they make.
Ive just read my ramble and i don't know if it is descriptive or helpful at all haha. Lemme just say in closing i think those folks have good heads on their shoulders and I'm quite glad i found them. taking the time to try to understand what they're about was a lesson for me in both political theory and history and i am better for it
Yeah I agree with a lot of what you've said here. I actually switched to db0 from lemm.ee as my primary instance when hexbear defederated from ee. I mostly lurk anyways but I do like seeing their posts from time to time, at the very least it's good to get a wider perspective on things. Tbh Lemmy in general and especially the leftist instances have made me reconsider some of my long standing beliefs and have contributed greatly to my radicalization lol
What do you mean by "radicalization"? I know you're talking in hyperbole, but are you saying that you're more fervent of your original ideas, or that going over there made a huge impact on the things you believe in?
Thank you! Sounds point, and I appreciate you typing all that. I will check it out with an open mind. But that will be difficult. I come from a place where socialism/communism was implemented, in which the message was "being rich is a bad thing," and the government is just a bunch of hypocrite authoritarian corrupts. So I have my reservations.
But I'm always willing to learn.
Not who you asked, but it really is just a group of rowdy leftists that do not tolerate liberalism of any manner. Defederation has resulted in an inflated mythology surrounding them, as though they are a pack of rabid animals, but if you go on their site it's pretty normal for a leftist space.
but if you go on their site it's pretty normal for a leftist space
A dirtbag left space, certainly. You’ll get dogpiled for most any dissenting opinions, but it’s generally “here’s [link] where you’re dumb and wrong, do better” not “kys bootlicker”.
I don’t get ppb as the peak of comedy, they can keep that
I tried finding the point of that opinion piece you linked and found only frustration. Not going after you but the author really. On a different note, could you tell me what ppb is? I looked it up and only found parts per billion
I think that’s the point, no? They’re enthusiastic, but turn that energy into online spaces to argue. Yes there’s organizing in meatspace, but largely devolves into online circle-jerks.
Like us all.
To your point about organizing there are seemingly more folks on there who do it for real, i don't have numbers tho just vibes from hearing peeps on there talking about their work. Ymmv. But you're not chiding them for not being political enough are you? They have no more responsibility to do that than you or i do (a responsibility i personally haven't risen to since Bernie).
Ppb
Ahhhahaha i should have known. But i love ppb (and all their cool custom emojis) so we'll have to disagree on that one.
Yep, hence describing them as rowdy. They are kinda like twitch chat in many ways.
100% agree. Largely, defederation from Hexbear by the larger servers has resulted in a sort of vastly inflated mythology surrounding it.
Just visit it, and see for yourself what it's actually like, it won't hurt.
I don't think people view it as a den of wolves more so a small car filled with clowns. Their instance code of conduct requires a trigger warning to show a picture of an egg.
Cmon over to lemm.ee. They blocked us. As much as I miss the gems in their swath of noise, I don't miss ppb.
Hello fellow ee’er!
Maybe stop being so cringe and acting like a baby
I was born in cringe. Molded by it...
Lmao, pot meet kettle.
Something about you .ml types, you can't seem to take accountability. It's always "blame it on that fella over there" type. dodging reality. Sad.
Just remind me again, which instance produces hundreds of hate comments every time one of their shitty takes is removed from another instance? Hint: it's not us. They have zero tolerance for us, so why should we be tolerant of them exactly? I'm curious to know your logic.
Edit: and every downvote is from .ml. Wonder why they are wading in on this? Lol
What hate comments are you talking about? I legit don't know what you are talking about and I post there almost exclusively. You say 'not us' but what is this post full of attempted shame on hexbear then? Have you seen the hex thread about defederating? The hex users share kindness for dbzer0 users, the reasons for the banning seemed pretty reasonable and consistent with their policies, and they voted against defederating. From my perspective this whole situation seems a bit immature.
This whole thing started because one .ml poster got salty than we removed one post of theirs from piracy and went there to whine as they know hexbear loves to just believe any disinfo that reinforces their dislike. At which point it was a thread full of insults and hate (as usual). When I tried to explain calmly why we actually removed the post, there were a few initial positive interactions which were followed by Americans waking up and starting the bad faith arguments with a bit of ableism sprinkled in for good measure.
Finally I misused one unwritten rule, once, by following the example of someone who used it towards me (which I respected) which their mod used as an excuse to insult me, remove all my comments and ban me.
I gave them a piece of my mind for that behaviour and the rest is history.
This post is the only attention I've given hexbear in this instance since months (the second such attention in total) , while they've had multiple of them in the past month alone. Not to mention 1000-comment brigades full of toxicity and sealioning in the past year. Hell they even made a thread explicitly to ridicule my pfp for good measure 😁 I'm not even allowed to vent in my own space apparently.
But sure, we're immature.
I wasn't saying you were immature, I said the whole situation was. The impetus for the whole thing, deleting of the post, also seemed to make no sense to me at all. But to elevate the situation after that was what I meant was immature really. And from there it just seemed like a schoolyard fight or something, all of it just being a waste of time distracting and taking energy away from everyone involved.
Yes it was immature to allow that post in the dunk tank immediately believe the salty person and just start hurling abuse and spreading disinfo about our admins again. Their admins once again dropped the ball, but whatever.
Maybe you argue we should be the better people and let other just misrepresent us openly to ferment even more hate towards our instance? I don't quite agree with that and I felt compelled to calmly set the record straight. Was that so wrong?
Sure, I admit I lost my cool when their admin among all the toxicity they enabled towards us, finally found the flimsiest gotcha to delete all my comments and insult me on top for good measure. I'll take my "immature" label for that, but I'm only human after all.
Well yes I think all of us should be the better person, obviously easier said than done! I'm not a fan of ridicule or bullying of course (except against actual nazis maybe) and I feel bad if you or anyone has been hurt by harassment. I am mostly just trying to say this sort of infighting is all just taken too seriously, and arguing about 'tankies', which can mean any number of things to different people, doesn't seem helpful to anyone in my view.
For what it's worth, like another comment said I do really appreciate the work you and others have done to make this instance possible! I don't have any resentment for anyone in this situation and I hope hexers and us here can all come together better in the future, we have more alike than in difference.
You know what's funnier? The reason they're so obsessed with me is because I don't take this infighting seriously. I don't know if any of my comments remained after they banned me, but my modus operandi is to just self deprecate or be sarcastic towards insults. This, it appears, has been intolerable, which is why their admin was looking for any excuse to ban me.
However what is actually frustrating is the follow up propaganda, where they pretend and keep repeating that they banned me for being "reactionary" and "harassment", both of which are blatantly false. But they'll keep repeating it forever now, attempting to character assassinate me every opportunity. It's this dishonesty I just can't stomach.
reason they're so obsessed with me is because I don't take this infighting seriously. I don't know
What do you expect? There's a reason everyone who has a desire to maintain their sanity has defederated from them.
There's some good peeps there and they help in keeping the crypto-fash in check. But their clannishness is unchecked.
Unless your users at large are crypto fascists I don't think you need crypto authoritarians to keep crypto fascists in check.
Well their criticism of the current system is on-point, and they can help counter pro-capitalism ideologues. It's just that their praxis tends to be shite when they try to be all "vanguard of the proletariat" or overuse their "bullying" as a tactic.
Only with authoritarian ideals, and while supporting places like China and N. Korea, giving capitalists every reason to mock what the tankies falsely present as communism.
Like, you do you, but personally simply having anti-capitalism in common isn't enough to overlook the oppressive ideas they preach and support (even if indirectly, by using that instance specifically, they actively endorse and condone those ideals), just like having anti-stateism in common isn't enough to overlook the oppressive ideas "an"caps preach and support.
They're telling you who they are, the best thing you can do is listen (and if any of these users really are that chill and not at all tankies like you give them credit for, they should understand why being affiliated with authoritarians is a red flag to most users, and have no problem creating an account on another instance that isn't bringing mass defederation on to itself by brigading and harassing anyone who doesn't agree with their oppressive views)
Do we really need their help keeping fascists in check? Problem is hexbears consider everyone who's not on ml or hexbear to be an ipso facto fascist, and act accordingly. There's zero room in their ideology for anyone with more moderate political views. I'd say the majority of our users are probably left leaning, but unless they happen to want the violent destruction of the western liberal democracies, then they just aren't left enough for hexbears to accept.
Having said all that, I feel like we've managed to successfully remove most of the overt political trolling from hexbear on our instance lately, so our own communities aren't too affected. But they really hate the fact we've been clamping down on them.
I'll also acknowledge the majority of hexbear's users don't go trolling. They seem to have a bunch of well meaning people who are focussed on community building, a bunch of political history/theory enthusiasts, and a bunch of awful trolls who are just there for the lulz. You can see in their own modlogs that there's tensions within their instance between those groups.
So, it's a complicated situation to deal with, and depending which groups you interact with, you might have a very different experience. From my own experience I'd say the bad far outweighs the good though.
I think it's because you and me face the brunt of their ire for trying to defend our instance inside their toxic comms, and that colors our perspective. But I try to step out of this and see things less personally when it affects more than just me. Just my take. I generally appreciate having the chance to be challenged from the left on occasion. None of us is perfect at the end of the day.
Btw, I think we also need to be cognizant when they exaggerate, but then again, a lot of their users will be the first to say "Lol, they think we exaggerate" so it's not always clear since they're too many levels deep in irony, which has it's own impact on their userbase's mentality. Similar statements generally require discussion and deconstruction before one can decide if that person deserves some sort of sanction.
I think we just need to take what they say at face value, because it's all to easy for problematic users to pivot to "just joking" when they get called out.
Yeah I couldn't agree more, they've caused enough issues to prove that it really isn't and hasn't been a joke for a long time.
Hexbear and lemmygrad are the only instances I blocked in-client, and it was a drastic instant improvement.
Hey db0 and mods!
Since you're just humans and we never know if the insults are slowly getting to you or you're just having doubts, I want to give a voice to the lurkers in here and reiterate one thing: I feel exceptionally well taken care of in this instance! I'm extremely happy to be a part of it, I don't even know what a downtime is and I don't see much drama or toxicity if any at all. I'm simply loving Lemmy (yes, seriously!), I'm loving my time on it and I can just focus on following the communities I'm passionate in, which is the main point of Lemmy. I'm also aware that this does not happen without considerable hard work from the people behind it. So while I'm sure most of it goes unnoticed, I hope to at least convey with this that it's not taken for granted or unappreciated in the slightest bit. A very big thanks to you all (and I try to donate where I can) <3
As for my personal experience, whenever a hexbear post makes it into my feed it's mostly an overly aggressive political take or straight up trolling. It reminds me of the League of Legends kind of humour: It's supposed to be a joke, but it's not explicitly spelled out that it's a joke and it attacks the individual. It's a mix of aggressive trolling and just straight up toxicity. You just never know if you're supposed to take it serious or not. But I personally like to have a choice if I eventually want to block them or not, and I feel like having a choice is one of the common threads between FOSS, Linux, the fediverse, self-hosting, piracy and so on.
But, while I do appreciate this, it isn't crucial to my experience on Lemmy. So, if at any time this balance is taking too much of a toll on you guys, it wouldn't be a big deal for me if we would "lose contact" with hexbear. Last thing I want is to slowly cook your sanity bit by bit, with each passing day a bit more, over something that is frankly not that important. I'd rather prefer you focus on what you love doing, be that doing technical stuff, improving the instance, memeing around, learning new stuff or simply discussing things with other people in peace. Life is much too short to argue with people, and over the internet it's even worse!
Hey matey. Your comment is much appreciated! Thanks for taking the time.
Feels really good to read that. Thank you!
I don't think they cook our sanity bit by bit. We all are pretty resilient and take a good chuckle whenever something like this happens.
Those of us in the DB absolutely love you guys. You’ve got our support. Normally I’m against defederation as much as possible, but I know you guys will make the right choice and do what is best for our instance.
Give ‘em hell.
even if these posts were "grilling the admins" it's literally your instance, you don't have to listen to anybody lol.
this instance is by far one of my favored instances though. So i'll continue to use it regardless, and if it does go to shit, i'll just jump ship lol. Freedom to surf is part of federation after all.
Oh so I'm not the only one. The users on Hexbear are always angry for some reason.
That's because it's a toxic community
Not from what I've seen, it's just not tolerant of liberalism.
There, I fixed it for you.
Not in my experience, they are very tolerant towards Marxists, Anarchists, trans people, etc. Liberalism is bannable, though.
Well yes they just label anyone who they want to be removed a "liberal", like they did with me.
Take it as a badge of honor. All clowns over there... First instance I blocked, and it reduced the toxicity on Lemmy by 70% on the spot.
I've read the things you have posted, and IMHO you were banned for being a loud dumbass
Sure, whatever. That's their prerogative. But if you also insult me and delete my comments explaining our position so as to allow your disinfo the fester all the better, I might just call you a disingenuous pos
Edit to say, that being a loud mouth is not a "liberal" or "reactionary" either 😁
For what it’s worth, I’ve always thought of you as more of a loud smart ass. /s
Don’t take these fools to heart. You are entitled to express your opinion in threads, and you know where the line of civility is.
Ironic- considering how butthurt they get when their communist shit gets banned. You really can’t make up that level of stupidity.
What do you mean? Lemmy itself was made by Communists along Communist principles, people usually defederate from Hexbear because they are rowdy.
What I mean is that it’s ironic that they ban people for being liberal, while crying when they get banned for being tankies.
Know who else bans liberals? Conservatives. Yet the only ones that ever seem to see the similarity between communism and conservatism and get shit on for pointing it out….
Are liberals. Your shared enemy.
None of that made any sense, lol. Conservativism and Communism have nothing in common whatsoever.
This comment is a hot mess because you used "liberal" as the implied opposite of conservative, but that isn't the definition @Cowbee@lemmy.ml implied when talking about hexbear, or at least that isn't how he bear defines it.
I really wish we could have some better descriptive words in these communities. "Tankie" is equally meaningless and confusing.
So the common american usage is liberal = leftist (or whatever counts for leftist)
On hexbear (and elsewhere) liberal is just the centrist of the conservative capitalists. By this definition, every politician in america is a liberal, whether democrat, republican, or independent, since they are all capitalists (if any of them aren't liberal, it's because they are too small to be relevant or because they are just blatant fascists). Anyone who isn't anticapitalist is conservative by that standard.
I could be wrong in some of what I said I'm just trying to help clarify but I'm not perfect lol please don't take this as an attempt to argue
I honestly don’t care how the clowns on Hexbear have chosen to redefine words to use in their own wind-tunnel. I’m using the actual definition of the term.
Like the rest of the world does.
Theirs is the global, older, more universal use of the word. Using "Liberal" and "conservative" to basically exclusively refer to "democrats" and " republicans" is a modern/american thing.
I believed that, myself, for quite some time. I ended up blocking them, however, despite being an anarcho-syndicalist. The instance has very much cultivated a toxic and anti-social culture where the most active users are climbing over eachother for a chance to "dunk" on someone.
Just like right-wingers abuse outrage to get a rush some of the polygonimals clearly have become addicted to aggressive behaviors, with the rush from bullying and dunking being rather apparently more important than leftism. It's a problem.
Additionally, their claims of anti-sectarianism and dialectics do not hold water when they are quick to label dissenting leftists as libs so that they can justify bans for those who don't toe the line.
Hey I remember when I got temp sitebanned from db0 for getting too spicy about trans rights in some transphobic .world or shitjustworks thread, as much as I don't like tankies they seem to be correct about this instance also having shit politics in some ways. Yet I'm still here because I'd like to think broadly as leftists we all agree on more things than we disagree on.
How about instead we all chill on the infighting and all touch some grass and stay out of each other's way?
I think they want the drama/attention
I don't know who you mean by 'they' here (Hexbears? Db0? Mods?), but don't give it to them. Ez.
Edit: FYI the guy below who got banned and his comment removed was saying the admin of db0 wanted attention btw. My roflcopter goes soi soi soi.
The admin who made this meme/post
Drama like this is exactly why I laugh when people say its better on lemmy than reddit, its just a different flavor of the same shit when you're on All.
But no ads tho.
I use adblock :/
you put a whole two people in a room and you'll get drama sooner or later. In this regard every place will be the same. At least we more actual people to have drama with, with reddit getting closer and closer to the dead Internet uh, practice (no longer a theory)
Yes well turns out it is an innate part of those kind of forums. The more specialised the topic the less drama generally. There is very few places with no drama whatsoever on the web.
Sorry actually it’s quite old post I should stop commenting on old comments truly
Eh, within a day or two is normal to respond imo, not everyone sees the post immediately.
Yep.
It's honestly sad, almost to the point where defederating from them would be better
But I'm sure we'd be loosing good people from hexbear too
Eh, I don't plan on defederating over such drama. They see some value in some of our users and we see some value in some of their users and we can ban the red-fash apologists and disinfo peddlers if they become a problem.
I've never had a positive interaction with anyone on that instance.
I've had, but it's mostly outside of their areas, or with people who are not immediately closing ranks and arguing in bad faith. Just before I got banned I had someone praise me for being chill, so 🤷
Most people on hexbear with any desire to participate in good faith will have other accounts elsewhere, Hexbear is already isolated as can be so multiple accounts is basically required for them to participate on the rest of the Fediverse. Shouldn't feel too bad about cutting off their Hexbear accounts since they almost certainly have others.
My instance is defederated with them, and most of the (politically) negative interactions I've had with people from other instances, I check hexbear, and so far 100% of the time they have an account with the same name there
I had to join a defederated server after the mods sent hexbear users my way to harass he after a I reported users for harassment....
As someone no longer part of their drama, yall should defederate.
I thought users could individually block comms now. For example i tried blocking lemmy.world and while that was in place i didn't see comments from there. Is this not the case for you?
You can block an instance, but not all users from that instance. It’s essentially a “don’t see this instances posts” option.
Oh. I saw a ton of hidden comments i could not view when i blocked .world (cuz of facebook, not the lovely commenters). I thought that was because i blocked the comm they were coming from.
Could be your client doing that actually, but it’s not a Lemmy feature.
I just use a browser. I dunno if it varies by insurance but it is a Lemmy feature not client-side
Sorry, to be clear I meant “block this instance” is a Lemmy feature, but “block users from a blocked instance” is likely client side. And to be clear, the web front ends are also clients. Many of them are non standard.
If you look at the description of the instance blocking, it says it doesn’t block users.
Didn’t mean to confuse things, I should have been more clear.
Ah yes i see. I'm out of my depth when it comes to the tech side of how this all works clearly. I also admit my experience was just from a end-user perspective and not like, scientific. Youre saying i am incorrect in my belief that blocking instances blocks comments from that instance? If that is the case i will look back into blocking the instance itself because blocking the users was not my intent
It definitly wasnt at the time
I think it is a recent development, in the last few months. Have a look in your settings if you haven't yet, should be an option now
We've been at the point where defederating would have been better for months.
Not really, the good people will just make accounts elsewhere and start using those accounts to interact here and on the rest of the fediverse, most of the good ones already do that because hexbear is already very isolated by virtue of the fact they're using whitelist federation and also the fact that they already have been defederated for the spam, trolling, and harassment their less savory members bring about (and more importantly the fact that it is unpunished by their instance's moderators if not encouraged).
They should be quarantined like Reddit did with The_Donald.
It's funny how butthurt they always get about the simplest shit. It's kinda hilarious.
Their instance has always been blocked on my end since the second lemmy added the instance block feature, but since that only gets rid of posts, my individual user block list has grown to about 40 hb users by now. Life gets better every time I add one to it. I hopped over there for a second and saw them gloating about banning you from their instance like it was some huge win. And then shitting on db0 because they're "not real pirates" because they.... don't support dictatorships or something? Lol wtf?
Do not ever try to reason with them because you are burning your breath. I am surprised you have tolerated them this long. Quite literally, the only thing that can ever be done with hardcore radical trolls is blocking or defederating. Removing their voice always hurts them the most, because their only source of energy is controversy.
I think the rest of us reasonable folk really love what you do here db0. This has been by far the most stable, cleanest instance I've been on so far, and i've tried 3 or 4 of them. don't let the assholes try and pull you down for not kowtowing to their weird ideology. Keep it up!
Edit: And as expected, the downvote brigade is monitoring this post, lol.
Would be a great feature if we could block all users of an instance.
the dbzer0 shitpost was funny lmao. Cry harder next time.
dbzer0 is honestly one the better instances out here (though im biased obviously)
I've blocked, like, 5 HexBear users and then haven't seen a single shitty post or comment from that instance since. Either they are all banned from the other instances/communities, or it's really only 5 dickheads.
There are a lot of dickheads, but a lot fewer of them intentionally reach outside their instance to harass other people. The problem arises when the originating instance's mods/admins take no action to control their brigadiers.
I'm literally getting pinged from inside hexbear after being banned, from people cackling that I can't respond.
I had to clean up a bunch of obvious bot spam from FoodPorn yesterday when I noticed it all after accidentally clicking into the community and leaving my all feed. I am now not sure if the report feature works; all the posts had tons of down votes but my report inbox has never had anything in it.
If other mods are relying on the report feature and it's broken, it would explain why even the active mods are slow to react to things.
It was more like a few dozen for me, but same experience.
to be honest: hexbear is an awful instance, and to me absolutely nothing would be lost if we just defederated from them. they are a constant source of drama, are awfully quick with the banhammer if they get criticized, and have cultivated an echo chamber that makes any meaningful discussions with them impossible. comparing them to lemmygrad is more than valid, and noone bats an eye when someone defederates from that cesspool.
i'm really for keeping as many doors as possible open, but the big question is if we really want the door open to an openly authoritarian and for the most part radicalized community. looking at the comments here, i can see that i am not the only one who thinks this way.
let's also not forget that they tend to infect all other connected instances too, there's a high number on .ml that are basically Hexbear satellite offices where almost every single commenter is a hb user.
you can always refederate after the fact if you want to, It's not like a fusible cpu in an xbox 360 or something lol.
Preach
Aren’t all Hexbear admins hypocritical pieces of shit? I mean, I thought it was a requirement.
Can't represent the users adequately if you're not one of them.
Shit. That’s a great point. Hadn’t looked at it that way.
I'm glad that v19 of Lemmy introduced user-facing instance block settings. Just block hexbear and move on.
Funny, in this 'drama' hex voted against defederation and voiced support for dbzer0 users. The bans from hex admins seemed reasonable if you look at the event history.
Prefacing with the TL;DR since I went much longer than I meant to and don't feel like deleting lol. But I thank you for seeing that most HB users (that voted) value keeping federation with dbzer0. The rest of my reply might be pointless nonsense, so fell free to stop here.
I also have a HB account in addition to my lemmy.ml I am obviously replying to you now with. I also voted that we should stay federated along with many others (which as you saw was a large majority). While there are real moments of hard trolling that I see, the shit happens with lots of other instances that aren't .ml, lemmygrad, or HB. It is something that happens no matter old internet, new internet, federated, mega social media sites. One person's troll is another's friend depending on so many factors. Some of which is even misunderstandings turning into people just all jumping in all due to said misunderstandings. While others are intentional, but might not be malicious and just taken the wrong way (completely text-based communications are constantly taken wrong).
For example (in my case) I might take a post or comment differently depending on which account I am using. But not notice right away that the source is from an instance that I don't have an account on. So I might comment with a take thinking of the instance I am on (and therefore a different understanding of the regular vibes) and be taken much much differently than I mean. Sometimes I delete a reply right after posting when I see it is not from the instance I am using.
I personally get taken wrong by people IRL when I am fucking around due to strong sarcasm and sometimes lack of expression on my face. My main point is that a lot of people on HB, Lemmygrad, and .ml actually like lots of the boards on dbzer0. I personally make sure to subscribe to the same boards from dbzer0 on my different accounts just to make sure I see the information, guides, and news no matter which I am signed into.
And like many (if not most) of the comments in the vote on HB to stay federated or not (and some folks from dbzer0 in this thread), people do find the exposure to other instances to be of value. We can learn lots of things that we might never have if not faced with such exposures and interactions. There will always be people that make problems that really aren't helpful. But it really doesn't help to make sure everything is reduced to pure echo chambers and just "other" everyone else. It guaranties that hate grows as the "others" are just spoken badly of and enforces not bothering to try to interact. It allows lies about the "others" to not be questioned.
HB doesn't want to defederate because they lose more of their power as trolls and propagandists if they do.
Really wish people would take the time to learn how the options work and not just assume they work a certain way, instance blocks are just for communities and not the users on the instance:
When people frame this option as if it's an alternative to defederation it is both deceptive and dishonest because it does not help with the current issues instances like hexbear bring to the table, it just blocks the communities of that instance.
Blocking certain instances improves the experience by a huge amount, but it really isn't sufficient. I don't really need to encounter edgy teens saying that they hope America collapses and everyone inside gets murdered.
Also the Lemmy.ml admins when you call Hexbear accounts tankies
Or lemmy.ml mods when you say something mildly critical of China or Russia.
I don't see them. I've blocked them all several months ago. Thankfully.
Same. But their drama still manages to seep out of every crevice of lemmy.
Is this getting brigaded? Lmao the downvotes
Have you read the comments? Plenty of people think this is silly evidently, it's not brigading when a lot of dbz users are hexbear users also
Upvoted comment here:
That's a reasonable sentiment to me
It is a reasonable sentiment, but unfortunately it has to be dealt with if hb is gonna keep triggering said drama, because it's a common recurring theme across multiple instances.
Yes, definitely not hexbear users gaslighting the crap out of you.
But honey, you love getting gaslit!
You don't have to be from hexbear to feel like this drama was played out days ago.
I think a lot of our users on dbzero are genuinely confused why our admin keeps posting about this, ngl. They're also talking smack on their Matrix channel for some reason despite saying that they think more about us than vice-versa.
It honestly looks like he wants/likes the drama to me.
Wait what do you you mean "keeps posting"? This is the only thing I've posted about hexbear for months!
Posting rent-free in his mind
We're confused? Why do you talk for other people like that's somehow authorative ngl. Not a great thing to insult the intelligence of a whole group with the 'I think' line.
Not really sure what you mean here tbh. Plenty of people seemed to be downvoting his stance on the matter. I imagine we share a lot of users with hex, so poking the bear seemed like an odd choice.
There you go again dropping huge reaches as if they were facts. Doubt many people here give two flying shits about hexbear.
It absolutely is.
The fact we stay federated with them is disgraceful.
Nah, life is all about meeting people with different opinions
No, it's about talking with reasonable people with different experiences. Hexbear users aren't reasonable, and largely nowadays, neither are those on .ml; trolls need victims, so they moved over.
These threads are so fuckin' weird from my instance. They keep coming up like clockwork every couple weeks.
I have them blocked personally, awful server
You may want to remember that blocking servers in lemmy only really targets the communities and doesn't target users from the instance. So in these situations it kinda doesn't do anything. It's a common misconception that instance blocking in Lemmy is stronger than it actually is and many people think it does things that it doesn't actually do.
then defederate?
hexbear and lemmygrad should burn in hell, they're one of the worst places on the internet
Only instance admins can do that though lol
That's what he is
I see nothing indicating that but it's not like there's an "INSTANCE ADMIN" flag lol.
You're either confusing me with someone else or whatever app you're using is broken because I am not an instance admin here.
Also even if I was it still wouldn't be my decision alone and would be up to the rest of the team to decide, because that's how a large instance is run, you don't just go do big things like that randomly without having a discussion about it first.
CC: @vox@sopuli.xyz
I don't care for the drama on Hexbear. And I don't care for it here either. This post is drama baiting.
K
Ah here we go, grab your pop-corn and head over to thread #7 :D
The first comment is about you harassing them in dms now you're doing a call out post because they banned you for harassment?
Isn't that kind of proving their point?
Have you seen all the hexbear posts about it?
Hundreds.
I didn't harass in dms. I sent a single dm as a reply to the banning message.
https://hexbear.net/comment/4892908
Then why do they have so many examples?
There’s like 2 there
Edit: Fucksakes people, read the text in the images. Two of them are the exact same message from db0 with the above/below cropped out. And read the to/from.
The harassment is coming from the person taking the screenshots, db0 is the one not harassing people. Though he isn’t being super nice, I can’t really blame him.
Of what? I replied to their replies. That's not harassment
What do you think harassment is?
Aggressive pressure or intimidation
So like that?
How is calling someone a “disingenuous pos” harassment? Like, mean, sure. But harassment?
You didn't read the 1st message in the pic where I could say 3 could constitute it.
Following it with that would put me over the edge if I got it in a string of dms
That first message is to db0, not from. Look at the headers.
Just.. Fucking glorious. They're so hell bent to hate me, they correctly understand the mean context but just proceed project it onto me.
Once again for the audience: I sent one single pm to the mod who insulted me and deleted all my non-rule breaking comments and clarifications, therefore allowing all the disinfo to fester once more. The follow up goading and trolling is all them. They literally admitted to trying to goad me in their PM replies and then proceeded to open yet another thread about me to continue the abuse.
Is this you admitting that those screens are all real?..
Er ye? I never denied it.
🤡
It says the thread has 5 comments so far but I can't see any of them.
Are you going via lemmy.dbzer0.com or via hexbear.net?
I'm not quite sure how Sync for Lemmy handles the link in your comment.
Link should be opened as if you were accessing it via dbzer0
Then open it in a browser?
hexbear the instant someone even so much as dares to comment a dissenting view point.
Don't forget the role which .ml which plays in enabling the hexbears. Without .ml, the hexbears would effectively be cut off from the fediverse at this point, and likely wouldn't feel the need to brigade at all.
The real question is: how to we harness the power of their toxicity to build an army worthy of Mordor?
Sadly no way has been found yet to harness the power of the terminally online trolls.
Then they have elected…the way of pain.
If I'm reading their "interesting" voting system correctly, it's surprisingly level headed https://mander.xyz/post/12788313
In my personal experience, Hexbear is a group of rational actors with strongly held beliefs and 0 tolerance for liberalism. If you aren't a liberal/conservative/fascist/some other right winger, and you aren't a left-sectarian, it's a pretty reasonable space.
The bulk of the "mythology" surrounding Hexbear comes from people defederating from it and allowing that mystique to fester in their minds. I suggest people just go there and check it out, you don't have to agree with them, but it does eliminate the idea that they are a toxic instance.
Pissing off tankies just means you're a net positive to the planet. Rejoice.
I had a Hexbear account for about a month, and noticed whenever I logged in or refreshed the webpage that someone else's username would momentarily appear at the top right of my desktop screen where mine would normally be, and then mine would appear.
This had never happened with any of my user accounts in other instances, and I was considering deleting it out of fear that my username (and, perhaps, login credentials) might somehow get compromised.
Anyway, I ended up deleting it for something else -- the very same reasons often mentioned in the comments here, after experiencing some of that toxic shit firsthand. Good riddance!
The only part I hate about lemmy is this. Constant whining about other instances. Can I block this instance on my app and still be able to access piracy instance?
To quote KRS1- "Give me relief, squash all beef, don't let these arguments destroy us"
Which is why hex voted against defederation ahah, hex and dbzer0 users are largely allies from what I've seen so it's kind of funny the admin is banned.
Eh, They were gunning for an excuse to ban me for months now. Their mod admitted as much. Eventually I lost my cool from all their harassment facilitation and rampart hypocrisy and and gave them one.
I don't know all the details of the drama but I'm sorry you haven't had better interactions with hexbear. Some users can be problematic like any place, but I have been inspired by the effort, genuine good faith debate and historical analysis that is common in hexbear discussions. I'm anarchist, I first came to the fediverse through this instance and haven't had any issue with hexbear, and personally would defed from .world before hexbear lol.
Can you clarify how hexbear facilities harassment? I'm not saying you're wrong but I just don't know what you mean. They have the_dunk_tank which you could argue does but they changed the rules to discourage dunking on anyone that isn't a prominent voice, if there is harassment from users I haven't seen the mods do anything to encourage it.
They literally ignore the rules of the dunk tank just to allow flinging abuse at our admins for trying to do our jobs. If we try to defend or clarify ourselves peacefully we just get insulted. I once even pointed out that they are breaking their own rules and got ridiculed for even saying that.
On top of that every time I showed any vulnerability by tying to explain that their behaviour of constantly bashing us based on uncharitable interpretations is hurtful, I just get ridiculed even harder for doing so. All this while their admins just turn a blind eye until much later when they might remove the rule breaking thread.
I think everyone who hates hexbear should just.... Make a hexbear.net account and go hang out there. That's what i did, waaaay back when sh.itjust.works defedded. I hadn't heard about them before and i just had to see what the food was about first-hand.
It's not the den of wolves people seem to fear. In fact, i spend nearly as much time hanging out in their threads as on this instance. I have always liked learning new perspectives and stuff, and i believe I've gained quite a bit from making that place one of my innanet homes
I'm on an instance federated with them, and subscribed to a couple of their comms, but their most popular politics boards are exactly what you'd expect from it being where r/chapoTrapHouse went.
I swear 90% of the people deriding hexbear were offended by one post and never went back or saw a post that was entirely full of sarcastic comments and thought it was unironic. I'm not even ML, I call myself an anarchist and argue about all kinds of shit on hexbear and I have found it to be a very caring community, and actually doesn't tolerate transphobia or imperialist apologia unlike most online spaces.
Hexbear sends their commissar clown car around to threads they disagree with, especially in political/news communities, and brigade them with their tankie bullshit ideology.
Well? Care to elaborate on your findings?
They definitely aren't china/russo spies or the funnier ideas ive seen folks have. They skew about the same age range and nationality as the rest of Lemmy. Lotsa yanks yaknow? They aren't afraid to show you your own ass if you drop trou around them, and they have the mental acuity to expose every pimple, so you better have a thick skin if you want to speak on something you aren't as informed on as you think you are. I do have one (id like to think) and i got my clock cleaned over there once, had to touch grass for a few days. But i didn't get banned or harassed for it. (Probably because i didn't double down on my opinion) in fact i am still friendly with those same people, even the ones who hurted my feefees.
I think maybe the shock many commenters feel going over there is actually whiplash from the perspective change. From arguing politics from a position of "the left" towards people on "the right" political spectrum.
When you're talking communists as a liberal, you are the right wing. This whiplash is dizzying and difficult, and not at all pleasant. Unless you plan to learn, and go there with the idea that you are going to learn something, it's not going to be a fun expedition. Proselytizing types get mocked and banned.
Reason i say one must learn isnt to say one must convert, there are simply a lot of things we have been told about what communism/capitalism actually are that are simply untrue. In addition, there's a lot of additional historical context those who don't dedicate themselves to the subject just won't know that kinda changes the way one views how we came to be where we are today.
And one doesnt have to believe or agree with the conclusions drawn to gain this insight and perspective, but i feel knowing more is always better than Knowing less. At the very least you may find yourself understanding where they come from, and agree with many points they make.
Ive just read my ramble and i don't know if it is descriptive or helpful at all haha. Lemme just say in closing i think those folks have good heads on their shoulders and I'm quite glad i found them. taking the time to try to understand what they're about was a lesson for me in both political theory and history and i am better for it
Yeah I agree with a lot of what you've said here. I actually switched to db0 from lemm.ee as my primary instance when hexbear defederated from ee. I mostly lurk anyways but I do like seeing their posts from time to time, at the very least it's good to get a wider perspective on things. Tbh Lemmy in general and especially the leftist instances have made me reconsider some of my long standing beliefs and have contributed greatly to my radicalization lol
What do you mean by "radicalization"? I know you're talking in hyperbole, but are you saying that you're more fervent of your original ideas, or that going over there made a huge impact on the things you believe in?
Thank you! Sounds point, and I appreciate you typing all that. I will check it out with an open mind. But that will be difficult. I come from a place where socialism/communism was implemented, in which the message was "being rich is a bad thing," and the government is just a bunch of hypocrite authoritarian corrupts. So I have my reservations.
But I'm always willing to learn.
Not who you asked, but it really is just a group of rowdy leftists that do not tolerate liberalism of any manner. Defederation has resulted in an inflated mythology surrounding them, as though they are a pack of rabid animals, but if you go on their site it's pretty normal for a leftist space.
A dirtbag left space, certainly. You’ll get dogpiled for most any dissenting opinions, but it’s generally “here’s [link] where you’re dumb and wrong, do better” not “kys bootlicker”.
I don’t get ppb as the peak of comedy, they can keep that
I tried finding the point of that opinion piece you linked and found only frustration. Not going after you but the author really. On a different note, could you tell me what ppb is? I looked it up and only found parts per billion
I think that’s the point, no? They’re enthusiastic, but turn that energy into online spaces to argue. Yes there’s organizing in meatspace, but largely devolves into online circle-jerks. Like us all.
Ppb
Yeah, toilet humor is not for me either.
To your point about organizing there are seemingly more folks on there who do it for real, i don't have numbers tho just vibes from hearing peeps on there talking about their work. Ymmv. But you're not chiding them for not being political enough are you? They have no more responsibility to do that than you or i do (a responsibility i personally haven't risen to since Bernie).
Ahhhahaha i should have known. But i love ppb (and all their cool custom emojis) so we'll have to disagree on that one.
Yep, hence describing them as rowdy. They are kinda like twitch chat in many ways.
100% agree. Largely, defederation from Hexbear by the larger servers has resulted in a sort of vastly inflated mythology surrounding it.
Just visit it, and see for yourself what it's actually like, it won't hurt.
I don't think people view it as a den of wolves more so a small car filled with clowns. Their instance code of conduct requires a trigger warning to show a picture of an egg.
Are you a little baby?
Cmon over to lemm.ee. They blocked us. As much as I miss the gems in their swath of noise, I don't miss ppb.
Hello fellow ee’er!
Maybe stop being so cringe and acting like a baby
I was born in cringe. Molded by it...
Lmao, pot meet kettle.
Something about you .ml types, you can't seem to take accountability. It's always "blame it on that fella over there" type. dodging reality. Sad.
Just remind me again, which instance produces hundreds of hate comments every time one of their shitty takes is removed from another instance? Hint: it's not us. They have zero tolerance for us, so why should we be tolerant of them exactly? I'm curious to know your logic.
Edit: and every downvote is from .ml. Wonder why they are wading in on this? Lol
What hate comments are you talking about? I legit don't know what you are talking about and I post there almost exclusively. You say 'not us' but what is this post full of attempted shame on hexbear then? Have you seen the hex thread about defederating? The hex users share kindness for dbzer0 users, the reasons for the banning seemed pretty reasonable and consistent with their policies, and they voted against defederating. From my perspective this whole situation seems a bit immature.
This whole thing started because one .ml poster got salty than we removed one post of theirs from piracy and went there to whine as they know hexbear loves to just believe any disinfo that reinforces their dislike. At which point it was a thread full of insults and hate (as usual). When I tried to explain calmly why we actually removed the post, there were a few initial positive interactions which were followed by Americans waking up and starting the bad faith arguments with a bit of ableism sprinkled in for good measure.
Finally I misused one unwritten rule, once, by following the example of someone who used it towards me (which I respected) which their mod used as an excuse to insult me, remove all my comments and ban me.
I gave them a piece of my mind for that behaviour and the rest is history.
This post is the only attention I've given hexbear in this instance since months (the second such attention in total) , while they've had multiple of them in the past month alone. Not to mention 1000-comment brigades full of toxicity and sealioning in the past year. Hell they even made a thread explicitly to ridicule my pfp for good measure 😁 I'm not even allowed to vent in my own space apparently.
But sure, we're immature.
I wasn't saying you were immature, I said the whole situation was. The impetus for the whole thing, deleting of the post, also seemed to make no sense to me at all. But to elevate the situation after that was what I meant was immature really. And from there it just seemed like a schoolyard fight or something, all of it just being a waste of time distracting and taking energy away from everyone involved.
Yes it was immature to allow that post in the dunk tank immediately believe the salty person and just start hurling abuse and spreading disinfo about our admins again. Their admins once again dropped the ball, but whatever.
Maybe you argue we should be the better people and let other just misrepresent us openly to ferment even more hate towards our instance? I don't quite agree with that and I felt compelled to calmly set the record straight. Was that so wrong?
Sure, I admit I lost my cool when their admin among all the toxicity they enabled towards us, finally found the flimsiest gotcha to delete all my comments and insult me on top for good measure. I'll take my "immature" label for that, but I'm only human after all.
Well yes I think all of us should be the better person, obviously easier said than done! I'm not a fan of ridicule or bullying of course (except against actual nazis maybe) and I feel bad if you or anyone has been hurt by harassment. I am mostly just trying to say this sort of infighting is all just taken too seriously, and arguing about 'tankies', which can mean any number of things to different people, doesn't seem helpful to anyone in my view.
For what it's worth, like another comment said I do really appreciate the work you and others have done to make this instance possible! I don't have any resentment for anyone in this situation and I hope hexers and us here can all come together better in the future, we have more alike than in difference.
You know what's funnier? The reason they're so obsessed with me is because I don't take this infighting seriously. I don't know if any of my comments remained after they banned me, but my modus operandi is to just self deprecate or be sarcastic towards insults. This, it appears, has been intolerable, which is why their admin was looking for any excuse to ban me.
However what is actually frustrating is the follow up propaganda, where they pretend and keep repeating that they banned me for being "reactionary" and "harassment", both of which are blatantly false. But they'll keep repeating it forever now, attempting to character assassinate me every opportunity. It's this dishonesty I just can't stomach.
makes meme post specifically calling them out
A meme is serious business now? Come off it mate
Its you making it into a bigger deal than it is
Citation needed on all this abuse you keep talking about
There's at least 10 threads in hexbear about me and the instance full of insults and disinfo. Also this is not Wikipedia
So what that's their instance. They can post what they want there just like you can delete their posts here.