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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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.
“Stalin did nothing wrong” posts. Where are those, exactly?
We criticize Stalin plenty. We just don’t buy that he ate babies and murdered innocent farmers with his bare hands.
discussions are pointless
I find this to be the most frustrating. hexbear/lemmygrad/lemmy.ml users are the whiniest group of users I see on lemmy. They complain about not having a place to share their views (despite all the instances catered/created for them), then complain about you not sharing their views/diminishing the views of others on the left (echochamber disguised as “open discussions of world views”). It’s wild they’re all complaining about getting defed’ed.
Just block them bro.
Removed by mod
I had enough of people like you, but you don’t see me asking that we defederate you.
I was demonstrating a point.
just admit you were wrong. It’s ok.
?
you high?
It’s because as a solid minority. That is often hated in the places they once had jurisdiction for good reason. You generally don’t get the chance. Or if you did, it would close you off in a tiny little Echo chamber that’s already far too strong. And I say this as someone who is supportive and open towards communism and abolishing Concepts such as private property and replacing with personal property. But I am sanctially against ml communism.
I absolutely think there can be a discussion about whether or not Vladimir Lenin’s Legacy on the whole was neutral. He definitely did some good things for russia. Though those same things were happening around the world regardless. So it is impossible to say that they wouldn’t have happened without him. But it is possible to say absolutely that a lot of death destruction and brutality were enabled by him. And his ideology single-handedly setback discussions of all left-wing Economic Development for a century or so. Those defending Stalin Mao or even Xi today. Well I don’t have anything diplomatic to say about them.
Does hesitation mean something else where you live?
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.
These are very good points, imo. Preemtively banning a sizable community without even a dialogue beforehand will only stir more extreme opinions and division between instances.
(Previous comment looks like it was bugged or something. Reposting it)
That’s not the real danger. Anyone that thinks that isn’t going to happen anyway is fooling themselves. All social networks trend toward individual clubhouses, and Lemmy’s design is perfect for that. This is not a fault of technology, it’s a people problem, it will be recreated everywhere one way or another.
The danger with preemptive moderation of any kind is that it turns moderation into gate keeping, and we simply can’t trust that to be even handed, no matter if they’re left, right, or center. There perverse incentives to abuse that are too numerous.
Whether it be users or instances, action should be taken after something has been done, not before. This is one of the slippiest slopes there is and it’s troubling there’s no standard, shared code of ethics admins are using that will prevent that
All of that being said…when I read Hexbear’s rules, the tone and obvious motivations of the admins there, I can’t help but feel like this isn’t unwarranted. For one very basic reason:
Hexbear’s motivation is openly about how it can affect other instances, and it’s rules are basically just telling their users to “go forth and do the thing but don’t get banned”. That, more than anything else, should get a defederation. Instances should not exist for the purpose of influencing other instances. Full stop.
Just…read that shit. Really take in the open contempt they have for other instances filled with people that don’t toe the line. It’s like a ship flying neutral colors coming up on the starboard side but the cannons are clearly loaded, and the deck is filled with peg legs and eye patches. It’s painfully obvious what they want, no parley needed.
deleted by creator
I’m not in favour of pre-emptive defederating.
I agree, though I hesitate to call it “pre-emptive defederating”. But I can see the viewpoint.
To me, pre-emptive defederating is what was done by most Mastodon instances with Threads. Or how mastodon.art defederated from BBC. There was nothing to judge there. There was no content. Nobody could have said what kind of content would be seen on threads or the BBC instance. You could guess, sure. But you had absolutely no way of knowing.
With hexbear, there is plenty content there to judge, and historically federated influence has always been the same as local, that is, the behavior of a fediverse community is not meaningfully different outside of their own instance. As a result, the admins of instance Y can judge what federation with instance X would look like, there is data there to look at.
Pre-emptive to me would mean having no community content to judge at all, like the Threads and BBC examples.
The more our large instances start fracturing and closing off from one another the less useful Lemmy will become.
I will add that this is in the nature of the fediverse. It is inherently not useful as a replacement to social media centers such as Reddit, because it’s decentralized nature implies the fracturization has to happen, and social media works best when everyone is in one giant garden party for chance meetings and spontaneous interactions.
That’s not necessarily a doom&gloom thing, it just means that by its very nature, software such as Lemmy cannot be useful to users who are seeking to replace Reddit. It can be Lemmy. Which is something else, albeit superficially similar in some regards.
(edit)
However, in general I do agree that they should probably have been allowed to federate and then re-evaluate based on how it works out. If their posts average X% downvotes, if Y% of local users end up filtering them or if a large portions of moderator actions are just from having to manage those users, they can still defederate.
I looked over the instance, and I cannot see anything I’m missing out on, but I can understand why others would want to at least give them one chance.I completely agree with this well thought-out comment. In fact, point 3 is evidenced in this very comment section.
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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 have lurked here for a long time, but I just don’t understand the logic here. I read the statement that was linked here, and it just seemed like they were saying that they should be respectful and follow our rules? … Isn’t dismantling propaganda… through “informed rhetoric” a good thing? Why are NATO, the IMF or World Bank automatically good? … Aren’t we just creating a bubble by preemptively blocking a large lemmy instance just because we don’t like their political speech? As far as I can tell they aren’t promoting racism or bigotry. Has lemmy.world preemptively banned nazi or right-wing instances?
Has lemmy.world preemptively banned nazi or right-wing instances?
no. it was an ordeal for them to ban the nazis over at exploding heads.
exploding-heads also got an admin statement full of actual evidence showing how posters there were being racist. Hexbear only gets this frankly extremely poorly written and thinly argued diatribe with no actual substance.
I think the issue is, for some, showing Hexbear’s rules makes it self-evident. Unless you think an instance formed with the goal of pushing themselves into other instances isn’t an issue.
Basically, any instance that has such open contempt for other instances in its rules, and has to tell its users don’t fuck around and get us defederated but please do go into other instances and spread the gospel…can you not see why that wouldn’t be welcomed? It shouldn’t need to be spelled out.
YOU ARE NOT QUOTING OUR RULES: hexbear.net/code_of_conduct Those are our rules
Concerning.
no. it was an ordeal for them to ban the nazis over at exploding heads.
it wasn’t an ordeal. nazi apologists, tankie apologists. you’re the same, quit acting like you’re different. Coming to other instances to insist your views or how this instance should act. the hypocrisy never ceases to amaze me
Im an evil tankie out to control the other instances, you caught me!?!?!? Only thing I’ve come to do is ask your admins to be consistent and say this is for ideological reasons. Are you going to call the other .world commenters with concerns tankies too lol
Are you going to call the other .world commenters with concerns tankies too lol
If they support the promotion leftist propaganda? Yes. Just as I would call those who support nazi’s, nazi’s. If it walks like a tankie, talks like a tankie,…
If they support the promotion leftist propaganda?
Lmao y’all don’t normally go mask off like this. Scratch a liberal ig
(Psst you’re supposed to say “Tankies aren’t really leftists!!!”)
Yea implying that we don’t have propaganda and narratives on our side of the wall is naive
If we want the truth then an open discussion is the path. There will be arguments in bad faith, sure. But that’s not limited to “them”. It’s a human discussion thing.
I read the statement that was linked here, and it just seemed like they were saying that they should be respectful and follow our rules?
Read through some of the first set of links if you haven’t. The same admin who’s trying to gently suggest they don’t troll is talking about how their instance won’t brigade lemmygrad because the energy is better focused on the wider war against liberalism in the fediverse. It calls into question exactly how real that suggestion is vs. just a pro-forma attempt to head off this exact result with a toothless suggestion they know no one is going to follow.
That’s my take on it too. It’s a token post saying to do it, but we’re going to denounce you if you’re called out.
This would be a lot more believable if your account wasn’t just 6 hours old.
Probably doesn’t want to be brigaded. I’ve had random posts and comments downvoted by neckbeards for no reason. To the point that people in that community (LotR) were replying to me in surprise.
shut up troll
Granted I only see the cherry picked statements in the post, but these things do not speak from a place of neutrality or at the very least openness. When all those things being bad is stated as close to fact, and them being against western propaganda,. They seem, to me, much less like a place that wants no propaganda and discussion of world organizations, and instead it sounds like a place that wants all of it gone and no place for western/left supportive discussion (which can be labeled propaganda, which may be a negative outlook on my side but any other site saying they do not want propaganda of one side usually isn’t very happy about arguments in favor of said side even when said thing is a fact or at least relevant to the discussion)
There were also comments very much critical of federation here because of some political joke posts. If shit post tier jokes on political figures aren’t ok things will work out. because it’s a Chinese communist it’s about, I’m also extremely sceptical of ho well.
With that said, I’m not completely against the federation, but it would require the mods to be vigilant and see if the federation doesn’t harm the general community over time. That might be a lot to ask for, since I do not know how much time and effort they already put into this already.
Because for these people “informed rhetoric” means quoting russian propaganda websites and repeating keywords to sound informed. They’re no different than flatearthers once you do some research, however. Unlike flatearthers, tho, these guys are trying to undermine progress so they are a lot more harmful
I hear the accusation thrown around about russian propaganda all the time, and it seems so spurious to me. It seems like a conspiracy theory unto itself. It is thought-terminating. Back when I used to go on reddit, I would get called a bot occasionally myself. It is something people throw out there so they don’t have to entertain any sort of cognitive dissonance. Like, if information is exposing a truth, but you don’t like source, that does not necessarily mean that it is untrue. Im sorry. That is a logical fallacy itself. it also ignores that the US, and US business entities in particular, are much more powerful and influential… I remember reading that US congress spend $300 billion to “counter the malign influence of the CCP” … that is close to what China spent on its military alone in 2022… The US also has a history of buying journalists and waging large internet influence campaigns, among other things… but I haven’t seen people calling other people shills or bots for repeated US-talking points… just looking it up now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice
https://cyberscoop.com/meta-blames-u-s-military-for-information-operation/
https://theprint.in/tech/60-80-of-twitter-accounts-posting-on-russia-ukraine-war-bots-90-pro-ukraine-finds-new-study/1114878/I’m speaking from experience after wasting countless hours trying to have actual conversations. Even tried direct messages but whenever I did that, it felt like I was speaking to a whole different person. They would clam up and be like “sorry, don’t wanna talk about it” or something.
Can’t imagine why someone wouldn’t want to have a DM conversation with a person who thinks they’re worse than a flat earther
Good thing that never happens with the liberals here.
You should see what happens over on the 'grad when we give liberals reading recommendations.
“Fucking tankies, never willing to open their minds to new ideas.”
“Here’s some new ideas!”
“No.”
A liberal on Lemmygrad thinking he’s got some new ideas to show the tankies is hilarious.
”Have you even read Xi’s Wikipedia article?”
Let me tell you about how calling a Chinese guy a yellow bear is the funniest thing ever and definitely not an unconsciously racist thought-terminating cliché.
“Here’s some new ideas!”
Hands you a Karl Marx book.
Stupid fucking tankies.
Hands you a Karl Marx book
I mean, Marx is rarely ever actually recommended to people who are not already socialists of some flavor. His works are important and foundational, but more often than not we recommend more modern texts.
You are speaking only to your ignorance and the hatred that keeps you from engaging with other ideas. I’d go so far as to say you’re proving my point.
There are more modern, digestible pieces of theory and historiography… hundreds upon hundreds of books and articles that would shatter your illusions in an instant if you ever bothered to touch them.
In fact, for any lurkers (not the person I’m responding to, who will likely never pick up another book in their life) who still passively or actively support the U.S. or NATO or the other heads of empire, I recommend William Blum’s Rogue State and Killing Hope. Both peer-reviewed. Intelligence officials have reviewed them and said “I don’t like this book, but it’s correct and well-sourced”.
If you refuse to even engage with the literature, then you are not good faith actors desiring conversation and freeze peach or whatever. You have an ideological agenda.
Give me a question about communism, give me a question about imperialism – I will answer to the best of my ability and will reference writings not from the 1800s. You know how I know more than just what Marx said? Because I read. Literacy is a gift and so many of y’all just proudly waste it.
“Everything I don’t like is Russian propaganda” lmao get the fuck over yourself. It’s fine to disagree with people, but to claim everything that opposes your viewpoint is enemy propaganda is the most “baby’s first guide to internet discourse” shit ever. Grow up.
Right, my bad, forgot to mention insults.
You’ve done nothing but insult hundreds of people here. All without saying anything of actual substance.
Are you sure we’re the bots?
Because dismissing everything you don’t agree with as “Russian propaganda” and “undermining progress” is completely civil.
But quoting American propaganda is okay?
Do you speak disingenuously on purpose? Or are you just an idiot?
Is the Russian propaganda in the room with us right now?
Not in favour of this.
I chose Lemmy.world because I wanted an instance that would federate even with people I might disagree with. If it’s illegal and abusive, sure. But to defederate on ideological grounds? I was planning a recurring donation but this makes me consider setting up my own instance.
They’re welcome to whatever discussions they want to have on their instance. As long as they respect the rules of other instances when they’re here, then everybody wins.
As for their point about dismantling western propaganda - if they have documented sources then let’s have a conversation. It’s not like there isn’t western propaganda
Fuck that, I spend enough time arguing with ignorant uneducated fuckwits on the Internet without being exposed to a hive of wilful stupidity.
Hi there, potential new friend! Since these folks are willfully stupid, can I assume you’re familiar with their positions and background, and have read my books? Which one is your favorite?
Yes, they’re so wilfully stupid that they limit their understanding of social development to what they can dredge out of history and apply idealisms to reality with the willingness of authoritarians.
and apply idealisms to reality
Marxism is a materialist philosophy, it is specifically anti-idealism. I suspect this is a case of a person that does not understand what idealism actually means in this context though so I’ll help out with a very simplified explanation:
Idealism = the belief that human beings control their environment through the use of ideas. That humans have ideas, and then use those ideas to impact their environment.
Materialism = the belief that human beings get their ideas from the material conditions that they find themselves in. That it is actually the environment that human beings exist in that gives them their ideas.
Marxism is a fundamentally a materialist philosophy. Its key thinkers were viciously anti-idealism and sought to ground marxist analysis in scientific analysis, hence the nickname “the immortal science”. Liberalism on the other hand holds idealism as its core tenet and believes that if you just get enough people to change their ideas you can create change. Hence why many liberals think you can just convince the rich to go completely against their material interests with discussion rather than understanding that they hold their ideas because they are the rich, because of the material conditions they have that differ from the working class.
Pseudo-leftist like you tankies do not belong here or anywhere else. Go back to your wannabe-commie instance. While you are defending imperialism over there, we will be here having our fun - in reality
That has fuck all to do with idealism or materialism.
Idealisms in this case is referring to the attempted application of one’s ideals, not the philosophy of idealism. Materialism is a Marxist ideal for example.
I suspect this is a case of a person that does not understand what idealism actually means
If self awareness was a disease you’d be the healthiest person alive. Funny how you tried to throw your pseudo intellectual weight around but missed the first important step of ensuring you had adequate cognizance of the message you were responding to.
Asking a simple question about my use of idealism, or for that matter having more than passing grasp of English, would have clued you onto your misinterpretation.
If you had you’d have saved yourself a lot of keystrokes.
And this conversation right here is why it’s a good thing we defederate.
Conversations like this are weaponized by groups like them. It’s not a good faith attempt at reaching common ground. It’s pigeonholing arguments for dunks and upvotes in an effort to destabilize the more unified conversations that are organically arising.
You said yes but didn’t answer my question! You’ve read my books? Which is your favorite?
Grow the fuck up. Carl Marks isn’t an author. You’re not Karl Marx, he is very dead. They’re not your books, and no one came here to have that conversation. Go somewhere else. I heard hexbear is neat.
Excuse me, officer. I’d like you to arrest this person for JESTING in my thread.
Comedy is hard. I suggest trying another thing.
This is not your thread. Get fucked.
You haven’t written any, there’s a fellow by the name of Karl Marx that has a few, and he’d be an intellectually engaging enough fellow to converse with.
But you? You are but a pathetic wannabe facsimile with no purpose beyond a poor attempt at humerous, though disingenuous, engagement.
It sounds like you get the dumb joke that is my username. Congratulations! With that in mind, perhaps you’d like to take a third try at answering a simple and relevant question?
Have you read Karl Marx’s books? Which is your favorite?
Do you practice being this stupid or does it come naturally?
Given their outings, I don’t think you can expect them ye respect other instances’ rules. That will give mods a very hard time, which makes effective hosting of lemmy.world an issue. That’s not a good thing.
okay this is freaking wild:
We need a sub dedicated to bot building, trolling and brigading effectively. Screw morals, or decency. They’re tools that maintain the status quo.
It’s a year old post about brigading Reddit, that garnered disagreement and a lukewarm response.
40 upvotes, 4 downvotes, thread is still up and instance admins had no issues with it.
The thread is from a year ago. Do you really expect the admins there to delete year-old threads just so people couldn’t trawl through them in bad faith?
Also, Lemmygrad != Hexbear.
One year ago, and the guy hasn’t posted since then. Like ffs guys we had a home turf advantage if any idiot were to do it they would’ve done it by now, and the best part: they were talking about reddit.
You really will take something as stupid as this to spin it in the most unsincere and negative light you can? Seriously?
Removed by mod
It’s the conspiracy theorist mindset:
They’re people who wish they were smart, and can’t handle that they’re not. So they latch onto ideas that most people agree are dumb. Then use that to convince themselves that they’re super geniuses who have realized the truth of something that even scientists couldn’t figure out.
Then when they’re challenged with evidence or facts, they double down and start insulting or even assaulting people in response. Because they don’t see it as evidence in an argument, they just think the other person is calling them stupid and that really strikes a nerve.
TL;DR: They’re in denial and project their own self-hatred onto others.
Some conspiracies are real, and are some of the most harmful things on the planet. They’re both evil and banal, and they look like petrochemical consortia trying out some new PR firms or Victoria Nuland casually talking about who should be put in political leadership in Ukraine post-Euromaidan.
The people who are best-informed get pretty invested in opposing those harms and wonder why (some) others are so viciously opposed to learning about them.
I find it hilarious that the tankies rail against “maintaining the status quo” but in practice all they do is shit on anyone making actual progress in favour of wanking about some glorious revolution that will never come.
Your comment’s intent is rather dubious – why post a quote from Lemmygrad, when the original post was talking about Hexbear? I encourage you to state that your quote is from Lemmygrad within the comment itself, instead of hiding it behind a link.
Cause maybe lemmygrad should be defederated as well.
I too think we should de-federate instances based off a post made a year and a half ago from a user who doesn’t use the site anymore, and even only 3 of the commenters still use the site (a few of the commenters are actually banned!)
I mean personally I’m 100% down to defederate from any instance that not only harbors but supports Russian invasion of Ukraine apologia. The fact some people intended to be brigadey is just extra reason in my book.
then the lemmy.world admins should put that in their code of conduct. I don’t know how old you are but I sure hope you would have had this same energy for Iraq and Afghanistan, or even Vietnam! (you would be cheering on the empire then I can almost guarantee you :p)
I’m not an admin, this is just my opinion.
And yes, I can also denounce unnecessary American invasions in the name of “freedom” at the same time. This isn’t some kind of sport, I don’t need to pick a team and stick with it. I simply find it kind of hypocritical that a lot of the same people hypercritical of American intervention on a global scale are cool with Russia’s invasion because it is “anti-NATO” or some such. People are fucking dying, it’s hell, not a game. That plus, no matter how you slice it, Putin’s regime is certainly worse than the current American climate - I can at least actually vote for the next president and criticize what they’re doing without fear of falling out a window.
I’m not talking about right now, it’s common and easy to condemn America’s past crimes in today’s climate, I’m saying you would have been supporting and peddling American propaganda back then too. You don’t listen to what we actually say. we don’t like Russia. We don’t think the invasion is “cool”. We think the USA provoked them (and ruined peace talks). we view America as the great Satan that oppresses the world and crushes communist and anti-colonial movements everywhere, and anything that destroys its hegemony of the globe is a good thing in our eyes, even though it’s a fucking travesty that working class Ukrainians and Russians are dying right now in a proxy war between Russia and the United States. That’s why we advocate for peace talks.
Did you have an opinion on the killings in the Donbas from 2014-2022? People getting locked in a union hall that was set on fire? The promotion of neo-Nazis to “handle” the ethnic Russians there?
Or did you only begin caring about Ukrainian lives when it was 24/7 on Western media, acting like Russia’s invasion had no background, like Minsk II never existed, etc?
A follow-up: have you opposed the US-backed Saudi genocide in Yemen with the same ferocity? That one doesn’t get as much play in the media, but a child dies there every minute or so due to the US-backed blockade, preventing basics like food from getting to the population.
The U.S. has fought maybe two justified wars in its existence, but trust me, this one is good for real!
Be that as it may, the comment is rather misonformative, as it is currently written. It is evident that the main topic of conversation here is Hexbear; therefore, people scrolling through the comments are going to be expecting that all comments will be talking about Hexbear. The posted quote could very easily be interpreted as a quote from Hexbear, given the context, if read in passing by someone who doesn’t feel motivated enough to follow a link.
read the entire post, you’ll see this exact link being mentioned there as Lemmygrad defederation was also considered
That sounds an awful lot like ‘we know we’re a minority, so we have to cheat, otherwise it might also look like we are, and that would be unfair! (read: we might be rightfully ignored for our minority opinions)’
One year later and nothing has been done! So much for leftist “organizing”!
Edit: The Leninist downvote brigade continues! Up yours, woke moralists!
I’m gonna come out and say, even with the statement, I’m not in favor of preemptive defederation like this.
I know the admins of an instance are hosting us basically out of the goodness of their own hearts, and I appreciate that. And I understand they can do whatever they want, and we can move to a different instance if we want. I get it.
But I joined .world because I wanted a neutral instance that would connect with pretty much everyone unless they were particularly problematic. Could hexbear be particularly problematic? Sure, maybe. But I think there’s a big difference between defederating in response to a problem and defederating in anticipation of a potential problem, especially since the users aren’t given a chance to discuss it. Like, I know we’re not technically entitled to give our input if we’re not admins, but I think it would be nice, y’know?
If it was just some small instance of trolls that’s one thing, but hexbear is actually quite a big instance, so this is a very impactful decision. I don’t like it being made preemptively behind the scenes like this.
Your desire to “connect with pretty much everyone unless they were particularly problematic” is admirable,. Just remember, please, that the wider the gates are opened, the more idiots wander in and the more work for mods and admins.
After dealing with the first thousand or so idiots, you can smell 'em coming. I’m with the admins on this.
Sure, I’m aware of idiots on the internet, but if we tried to avoid idiots on the site we wouldn’t federate with anyone. Lemmy.world is specifically billed as a “generic Lemmy server for everyone to use,” I want the gates to be open fairly wide, that’s why I’m here. Not for everyone, like I’m glad we defederated with exploding heads, but we still gave them a shot first and there was at least some more community discussion on it before that decision was made. That’s what would make me feel a lot better about this.
“Give them a shot first” is easy to say, but it’s hours or days of moderators and admins’ lives.
They chose to be admins and moderators. Perhaps they should be expected to administrate and moderate.
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Avoiding echo chambering (is that a verb?) will take work. Admins and mods should be willing and ready to do that for the health of the fediverse.
Fwiw, I was a reddit mod for a sub of 4.3 million, so I’d like to think I’m not being naive about this, but I could be wrong…
As others have pointed out, the population of the whole fediverse is currently less than a bunch of subreddits with far less than 4.3 million users. Mod/admin energy shouldn’t be taken for granted, but people are way overstating the potential for issues.
A game thread on any popular sporting event has way more comments and problems than basically any post in the history of this place.
Non-federation with a CTH-successor certainly makes running a community on lemmy.world more desirable. Back on reddit, before the bannings about 1/3 of mod actions were from TD users, 1/3 were from CTH users, and the last 1/3 was just randos. It’s not like CTH was just a regular sub, they were the source of a lot of moderation.
Is joining hexbear an option for you? It’s not like we’re obligated to only have one account across the lemmyverse.
Sure, but having fewer accounts is easier: that’s the whole purpose of federation in the first place, isn’t it?
It’s fine now, but I haven’t been on Lemmy for that long, and I don’t want to have to make a new account every few months to see a new instance.
Maybe “federation” or something like it should actually take place on the client side, so you’d join instances with almost the ease of subscribing to communities. Then the client code would handle combining feeds, using the right credentials to post to a given place, funnelling DM’s from multiple instances to a single inbox, etc.
I think if we are here now, the fediverse vision has already failed. Defederation is a last resort yet this is the third round of drama in the 1 month past redditgeddon? Two actual defederations and one extended discussion set off by a single troll on another instance.
So, I think fediverse decentralization hasn’t yet gone far enough. Thus the idea of handling instance coordination on the client rather than leaving it up to server admins.
Well I think this is just the nature fediverse as well. You gotta respect the admin and it’s really not super hard to use multiple logins with different instances via an app.
If Lemmy starts to allow seamless migration of accounts across instances, this will become less of an issue. But I suspect creating multiple accounts isn’t going to be palatable to most users.
A single login solution is to find a third party that federates with both lemmy.world and hexbear. Hexbear’s list is pretty limited so it’d have to be one of those, but unless others follow lemmy.world’s choice you’ll be able to see and post on both instances.
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The more servers we defederate with, the fewer posts will show up in our feeds from everywhere. People aren’t going to make an account for everywhere. I’m not particularly sad about this server in particular, but in general the Lemmy.world admin trying to stop people running into content that isn’t illegal is annoying and him imposing his ideology on lemmy.world, which paints itself as neutral.
The more servers we defederate with, the fewer posts will show up in our feeds from everywhere. People aren’t going to make an account for everywhere. I’m not particularly sad about this server in particular, but in general the Lemmy.world admin trying to stop people running into content that isn’t illegal is annoying and him imposing his ideology on lemmy.world, which paints itself as neutral.
Well said.
Like, I know we’re not technically entitled to give our input if we’re not admins, but I think it would be nice, y’know?
Admins not bothering with users’ thoughts or opinions is what brought us here from Reddit. I wish they would poll us, even informally, before making these kinds of decisions.
Seconded
They specifically said they’re being trolls and going to brigade tbf.
That first bullet is saying “don’t do stuff that’s going to get us defederated” to their users, no? It’s a bit tongue in cheek but I feel like it’s not as aggressive as some people are describing. The whole server came from a subreddit that was very memey/shitpost.
I think their admins are doing an honest job trying to put out reminders for good behavior (**edit: I hadn’t originally followed the links to the admin’s comments elsewhere, I no longer think they’re doing an honest job), the problem is that the sub they grew from never heeded similar admonishments and their federation post explicitly says they will not be moderated for activity outside of hexbear, so it’s really just a suggestion, not a rule.
I don’t agree with anti-western ideology being a good reason for defederation, but I do expect hexbear to be a major source of trolling from past experience with r/CTH. Reddit post-Donald and post-CTH bans was a noticeably less trolly (NOT saying they’re even remotely equivalent, just both were sources of trolling and were banned at the same time).
Concerning
Wasn’t The_Donald already abandoned by its members before Reddit banned them to make it look like they were being neutral?
Find another instance? That’s the beauty of the fediverse.
Well yeah, I already said I know that’s the go-to if you don’t like one instance. But I’d still like to be able to express my opinions before doing that. It’s not that big a deal but I’d still ideally rather not, y’know?
Well, you picked the wrong instance, then. Lemmy.world never claimed to be neutral. The goals have always been clearly stated, currently here: https://lemmy.world/legal
Well the server is described up at the top as a “generic Lemmy server for everyone to use,” which feels like it’s setting up to be a pretty neutral stance.
Hating tankies is a neutral stance, as is hating fascists and neo-confederates.
This is exactly the thought process I went through while reading the post. Doing it preemptively can make it come across like you’re severing the connection due to opinions rather than rule breaking.
But still, THANK YOU to the admins, in general. I am not accusing you of anything negative like that. I trust that you thought it through way more than I did. Thanks for keeping this big general insurance of ours awesome.
I get your argument, but I’m with the admins. It’s not like a shop keeper closing their doors because they see someone coming with tattoos and a biker jacket. It’s more like they’re closing their doors because they heard the person saying they make their living shoplifting and they intend to shoplift in that store. Hexbear stated pretty explicitly that they intend to be a problem. No reason to wait for them to do that.
I’m not really seeing it to be honest. That first bullet point there seems pretty clearly saying to their users to not be a problem so that they don’t get defederated.
I’m sure you can find someone calling to brigade such and such on there somewhere but they have over 20 thousand users total. That’s a lot of people to rule out.
The message is pretty clear though: be as subversive as possible but don’t set off the alarms that will get us defederated. I don’t see them telling their users to be good, I see them telling them not to get caught.
There is nothing wrong with following the rules and being “subversive.” That is literally just challenging people’s ideas.
As always, the limits of tolerance are met when it comes to suggesting we tolerate intolerance. The boundary must be set there.
Why is it wrong to be critical of western propaganda?
Gotta say, pre-emptive defederation seems like a bit of an over reaction. There’s plenty of leftists in other instances, not just hexbear and lemmygrad. Hell, I’m an anarchist that regularly comments on political/social threads in this instance, it doesn’t seem to be an issue. Lemmy in general is pretty obviously far left leaning. I don’t see the harm in federating with hexbear, unless they show themselves to be actively harassing or trolling. But you’d have to federate first to find out if they will
What the fuck?
I was assured by this server that it has no problem with socialists. This is worse than I expected it to be, I expected a half-hearted attempt to justify this action through means other than “they’re socialists and hold socialist views”.
To the three points here:
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“Western propaganda” - Is capitalist propaganda. Of course socialists oppose it, we oppose capitalism.
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“Nato” - An anti-nato position is held by literally every single socialist organisation in Europe. You will not find a socialist org with a pro-nato position. Ffs just look at DiEM25’s position on this, it’s probably the most well known cross-nation alliance of socialist groups and parties in europe including people like Yanis Varoufakis, Jeremy Corbyn and Zizek to name a few but that really doesn’t do the size of the DiEM organising alliance justice. Even Noam Chomsky is anti-nato ffs. What the fuck are you doing acting like this is a fringe position not held by a huge number of people over here in Europe and at the forefront of leftist politics on the continent? Taking the position “you’re not allowed to be anti-nato” is blatant american imperialism.
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“It is in the Left’s interest for these organizations to be demolished.” - Duh? What the fuck do the liberals running this instance think socialists believe exactly? When Marx calls for revolution do you think that we mean to continue the organisations that existed prior? No, we seek to abolish them and create new socialist organisations that serve the new socialist state we seek to create.
Absolutely mindblowing that this instance ever pretended it was going to play nicely with socialists. I’m disgusted.
Every single take above is also the take you will get from every single socialist community over on reddit. The anarchist communities will also even have an anti-nato position. Like jesus christ. I expected this post to be bad but I didn’t expect it to be “Yeah fuck socialists, oh and fuck what anarchists believe too”.
I’m flabbergasted that @ruud@lemmy.world just completely lied about not intending to block based on ideology, and it’s extremely telling that Hexbear gets a pre-emptive defederation for this shit while literal actual nazis were a chore to get defederated.
I’m shocked by this post. And looking for a new instance.
I wanted an instance that doesn’t defederate based on ideology (except fascist instances) and of a generalist nature. I want to browse the wide fediverse from an instance where I’m allowed to be a socialist, but clearly lemmy.world is not the one for me.
Any recommendations?
After scanning through a few options, Lemm.ee looks extremely promising.
Lemmy.ml probably? Otherwise I don’t know. It is the most competently run in terms of not engaging in this defederation bullshit outside of illegal/hate content, but it also took part in actively trying to push users to move here. I’m almost certain that they’ll regret having done that given what this community is doing though and won’t be actively promoted by lemmy.ml anymore.
Will take some time to go through the others and figure out who isn’t being ridiculous. Then I guess everyone will start promoting the one that makes the most sense.
Lemmygrad. Most users are ML. But users joining discussions and asking questions in good faith is welcomed and encouraged. It rarely defederates from any other instance. MLs argue for the ‘ruthless criticism of all that exists’ so it doesn’t make sense to ignore speech (i.e. defederate from instances) that one doesn’t agree with ideologically.
Absolutely mindblowing that this instance ever pretended it was going to play nicely with socialists.
There’s folks from lemmygrad.ml and lemmy.ml all over in here which is empirical proof that lemmy.world will “play nice” with Socialists. They’ll even play nice with Communists. What they’re objecting too is the Tankie Army assembling over at hexbear and their stated intention of propagandizing every instance in the fediverse.
If you don’t like it that’s cool. Spin up an account on another instance and go on with your day. This isn’t your instance and no one here owes you anything.
Hexbear stated explicitly their intent to [allow only specific narratives (explicitly anti-free speech), they openly stated their intention to engage in content manipulation tactics and pushing propoganda, and they have a delusional take on russia’s aggression and atrocities.
You all talk about this decision being against free speech when hexbear doesn’t even permit it! So hypocritical… Even if most users on hexbear have good intentions, it doesn’t justify the nefarious means that they openly plan to engage in. If hexbear wants open discussion, then they would permit topic criticism of communism; not suppress dissenting information/discussion.
I don’t care if it’s left, right, independent, apolitical… Instances like this create echo-chamers which leads to extreme views and unhealthy communities. They shouldn’t be given an audience to try to gaslight and astroturf. And if you don’t like this decision to defederate, you can join another instance.
Saying lemmy.world is anti-free speech for this is a joke. Lemmy.world doesn’t have rules disallowing criticism of governing styles or specific governments. Hexbear does… If you all want to criticize NATO and capitalism on lemmy.world, go for it! That discussion is healthy. An instance like hexbear which only allows specific narratives and encourages nefarious practices is not a healthy instance…
You are literally quoting the WRONG INSTANCE’S rules I know that liberals are loath to read past the headlines but this is so egregious it is hilarious.
Wild that you’re being downvoted for this IMO
An instance can behave like a sub or community if they wish to, assuming what you said is even true. Iirc the entire point of the fediverse is to allow groups of users to be free from spez like ban-happy/profiteering behaviour. Lemmy doesn’t exist to make you personally happy. Hexbear has its own rules for its own instance and if their community is happy with it it’ll survive and thrive.
Lemmy dot world’s decision is disappointing because they seemed open and neutral politically. But are seemingly very much not neutral and damaging for Lemmy.
Lemmy dot world’s decision is disappointing because they seemed open and neutral politically.
Bah. There’s plenty of users in here from Lemmy.ml, lemmygrad.ml, and other leftists instances. It’s quite clear that the lemmy.world is pretty darn open ideologically. Hexbear is getting ban hammered because they’ve made it very clear that they aim to misbehave.
I don’t think they were going to, since Hexbear doesn’t actually have downvotes. Only upvotes. And the post above apparently cuts out the part where they’re told to follow the rules.
If they wanted to misbehave they could do it already. I’ve personally had posts and comments mass downvoted and people have complained elsewhere. The only thing this defederation will contribute to is an increase in alt accounts and the very misbehaviour you fear. This is a Lemmy problem, not a Hexbear one.
Bye Felicia
Going nowhere fashy fash
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What have they actually done?
I’m all for defederating from instances that cause problems but all the quotes above basically seem to say, “I know you want a revolution but you still gotta follow the rules of whatever instance you’re posting on.”
It’s your server so your under no obligation to provide a reason for defederating beyond disagreeing with them but it leaves me wondering if there’s anything else or if it’s just a matter of disliking them?
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”.
As a leftist can I just say how cringe it is to treat “fighting liberalism on the fediverse” like it’s activism? Go outside.
Good. I commented earlier about how horrible hexbear was. I signed up for hexbear, hoping to meet leftists, but these are not leftists. They just parrot Chinese/Russian propaganda. They have no original takes, no critical thinking. Call me whatever, but, I’m pro NATO. I don’t give a shit about what bullshit propaganda you show me from a totalitarian regime. If the U.S. is bad, then the CCP is pure evil.
It makes you wonder who’s actually pulling the strings of dotworld. The instance owners have the same pro-corporate, pro-capitalist, anti-leftist, anti-communist stance as Reddit. 🤔
The instance owners have the same pro-corporate, pro-capitalist, anti-leftist, anti-communist stance as Reddit. 🤔
you tankie apologists… please stop… this comparison is laughable
I think the thing with threads is it’s mastodon type content. I don’t know that any threads content will show here anyways just by virtue of format.
But I agree wholeheartedly that we shouldn’t be involved with threads. Nothing good can come of it. Whether it’s content, behavior of the company, or a variety of other reasons. Meta et al, have demonstrated a repeated lack of humanity.
Yup, the stance on Threads is why I jumped ship.
This bullshit just proves I made the right choice.
