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:
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3526128
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3526086
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3652828
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.
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What a disappointingly reactionary approach to federation.
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’m not in favour of pre-emptive defederating. It feels like censorship doing so and that bothers me.
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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.
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Defederating can happen at any point, and I think would be better kept as a reactive response and last resort rather than proactive.
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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.
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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.
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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.
What a spez move. Pre-emptively de-federating is just a bad move, no other way to look at it. They’re a very diverse group and generally much kinder than most lemmy users. At the very least you should’ve tested federation for a day or two to see how the interactions play out. But anybody here can go over there and see for themself how nice they can be even when disagreeing, which they do a lot among themselves.
Also where in the Code of Conduct does it say the only ideology allowed is liberalism? Going the way of Reddit with vague justifications and arbitrary decisions will make the administration a lot of profit some day, but there’s a reason people left that one.
L.
And that’s why I’m glad my main accounts are not on world, which has just been a different flavored, smaller Reddit since its inception.
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.
Judging by their responses in this thread it sounds like you made the right move, go back to /b/ crybabies
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 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.
Loving all the hexbear alt-accounts in the comments here ❤
Btw, if people didnt understand this. I AM being ironical…
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”.
I guess I’m back at join-lemmy.org to find a new instance. Any recommendations?
Lemmy.world, you are positively glowing right now :3
It never ceases to amaze me how threatened liberals are by tiny groups of commies. And of course, the fact that a bunch of liberals are busy denigrating the very commies that made their migration away from capitalist Reddit possible in the first place is, unfortunately, very par for the course for liberals.
