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 have no idea who Hexbear is, but it’s well documented how th IMF and World Bank work to endebt developing countries to the US’s corporate rule and then steal all their resources… Are we… Not allowed to talk about that here?
I would like to second this. The OP reeks of opinionated bullshit. Being against NATO and a western hegemony in the world is absolutely a legitimate political opinion, whether you agree with it or not.
The opinion of Hexbear doesn’t seem to be the problem, and because of certain ideological overlap to users here that should be quite obvious in my opinion. You seem to have focused on the wrong part of the OP.
The problem is that they are presenting themselves as an ideological army. And especially that the admins of Hexbear seem to support this position, rather than it just being some rogue users.
Imagine if a Lemmy instance opened up for a specific religion and their whole point was to inject themselves into as many discussions as possible to push information favorable to their religion. The problem isn’t that they believe in their religion, or even that they want to make the best case possible for it. It’s the fact that they are trying to wield open discussions as a sword to convert people regardless of relevance or appropriateness.
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.
“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.
I had enough of people like you, but you don’t see me asking that we defederate you.
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.
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.
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.
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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
Personally, I’d rather just block the stuff I don’t like rather than have lemmy.world trying to decide “who’s worthy of federation”.
What a disappointingly reactionary approach to federation.
Right, so because a community has different views than the leftists you all think it’s your place to “protect” users preemptively without discussion or reason, basically fucking worse than Reddit?
You’d better think long and hard on that.
You guys really just want people who think the same way as you on your instance. You should clearly state that instead of letting people waste their time here.
last resort
preemptive
??
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.
You don’t welcome cancer in to your body because you support all life.
Nazis and Russian trolls are not here to debate or inform. Their sole purpose is to degrade trust in democracy, spread propaganda, and other heinous shit.
Defederation is our only defense and we owe it to users to fight hate and lies.
The thing is that kind of example assumes that it is cancer. Which is something I’m not happy assuming yet, especially without discussion.
Hexbear has over 20k users. I find it hard to believe they’re all Russian trolls, or even that most of them are.
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).
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.
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.
Judging by their responses in this thread it sounds like you made the right move, go back to /b/ crybabies
Loving all the hexbear alt-accounts in the comments here ❤
Btw, if people didnt understand this. I AM being ironical…
I have lurked here for a long time, but I just don’t understand the logic here. I read the statement that was linked here, and it just seemed like they were saying that they should be respectful and follow our rules? … Isn’t dismantling propaganda… through “informed rhetoric” a good thing? Why are NATO, the IMF or World Bank automatically good? … Aren’t we just creating a bubble by preemptively blocking a large lemmy instance just because we don’t like their political speech? As far as I can tell they aren’t promoting racism or bigotry. Has lemmy.world preemptively banned nazi or right-wing instances?
Yea implying that we don’t have propaganda and narratives on our side of the wall is naive
If we want the truth then an open discussion is the path. There will be arguments in bad faith, sure. But that’s not limited to “them”. It’s a human discussion thing.
“informed rethoric” will be some of the most piss poor arguments you have ever seen in your life.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the arguments are made in bad faith.
No, but it’s still free speech, meaning nobody is forced to listen. In this case the “persons” are lemmy instances. If you talk shit, others will walk away (defederate).
Poor arguments does not equal talking shit. And I would prefer to decide for myself who I do/don’t listen to. It’s the admins’ right to ban instances as they see fit, but I don’t see a good reason to do so preemptively. I’d rather include opinions/ideologies I don’t agree with than shut them out (as long as they follow the rules, to which Hexbear didn’t even get the chance).
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.
