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.
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.
I moderate 8 subreddits with a combined userbase of 4.2million subscribers. And a bunch of small ones.
Originally I intended to bring those userbases over here. But the way this instance has been run and the interactions I and other mods have had with the team over PM trying to resolve various issues resulted in each and every one of the modteams I’m in saying “yeah fuck that” over time and getting to know the place. This would have resulted in stickyposts and bringing over thousands, perhaps 10s of thousands, in extremely enthusiastic waves. And this didn’t just affect the teams I’m part of, because everyone on those teams also shares links to many many other teams through all the backrooms.
Communists aren’t the problem. This instance’s policies - which started out looking incredibly promising and had everyone highly optimistic - has singlehandedly killed the interest of dozens and dozens of modteams and by extension the opportunity to bring across massively more people.
You do realize that you don’t need to join Lemmy.world, right? There’s plenty of other instances with different moderation policies that might suit you, or you could just make your own instance. That’s kind of the whole point of the fediverse. The reason why there’s so much contention around this post is because the people who have accounts here are somewhat stuck until account migration is added.
Of course I do have you read my username?
Apologies, I did not.
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(previous comment bugged, reposting it)
Given the way Hexbears own rules are written, the tone and very obvious motivations behind it, I’m not sure we’re missing much.
But would you care to share some examples of what the issues are?
Sorry what? I can’t read context so I don’t quite get what you’re trying to say. Could you maybe quote what you were responding to?
I’m not sure what the problem is with hexbear’s rules. It’s a socialist instance of course it aims to remain socialist. Do you look at the lgbt instances and say “how dare they have motivations to keep their community lgbt!” No of course you don’t. It’s a fundamentally absurd notion.
Hexbear’s goal is to be leftist and have a fucking laugh while doing it. Nothing more. This shit has created a mountain of entertainment, nothing changes for Hexbear but this instance has pissed and shit all over itself.
Yeah, I checked out Lemmy some time ago and noped out pretty quick after seeing it was mostly just Lemmygrad at the time. Happy to be here now that there’s a lot more going on and not super keen on that face of Lemmy gaining a bigger presence again.
Are you the PoppinKREAM from reddit?
Yes I am, hello o/
Whether it’s reddit or lemmy I’ve always blocked all politics and world/local news related communities, since they rarely seem to really be a place that’s been cordial in the comments. And I’ve moved onto RSS feeds anyways over user submission driven news feeds.
Seems to be what has kept me the most sane and happy using social media.
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“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.
Just block them bro.
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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?
Freedom of speech does not constitute an obligation to listen.
Good for you!
Exactly. Freedom of speech != Freedom from social consequences
Well, in a truly “free” society, yes freedom of speech would constitute freedom from “social consequences.” However, the United States, and in fact, no Earth government, is a truly free society. There are rules and laws that exist, thus restricting freedoms. However, specifically regarding freedom of speech as it is mentioned in US law, it specifically is a protection for citizens from retaliation by the US government, and does not cover interactions between citizens.
So I wouldn’t say “freedom of speech doesnt mean freedom from social consequences,” but rather “freedom of speech does not include a requirement that others listen.” There are laws with regards to how other citizens can respond, including laws against assault and libel and such. But there is no law that says anyone must to listen to what you have to say simply because you have the freedom to say it. Thats quite a preposterous idea.
At least in the US, each citizen has the right to say what they choose within the constraints established by law, and to choose who they will listen to.
Well, in a truly “free” society, yes freedom of speech would constitute freedom from “social consequences.”
Just as people can refuse to listen, they also can refuse to interact with persons that say things that upset them. This is a social consequence, and one that would be still be present in a “truly free society”.
A truly free society would have no consequences, laws, or restraints on behaviour.
You can see a very obvious reason why that would be very bad. Thus there is no society on Earth that is truly free. Restrictions exist to protect people, that is the nature of things.
I think you’ve managed to define an oxymoron of a society.
Society does not exist without consequences. That’s what laws/rules/agreements are necessitated on. As in, a society with no consequences is not a society. I’d go so far to say that society is a system of consequences.
Even in a “lawless societies” hierarchies form, and then agreements turn to rules turn to defacto law.
This is like saying “I can never truly be free because gravity binds me to the ground”. Like, ok, sure, but you had to define freedom in a non-standard way to get to that conclusion (I’m trying make this make sense, is it landing well?)
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Well, in a truly “free” society, yes freedom of speech would constitute freedom from “social consequences.”
No? That would imply it’s not free, as the receivers aren’t free to act upon the given information freely?
If the society is truly “free”, as in, absolutist free, then if someone said something you didn’t like, you could just punch them in the face without consequence. But that means the original speech had a consequence based on the social interaction with you!
Now if only everyone would be so quick to defederate preemptively from Nazi instances.
What a great sentence, well said. I’m going to use that in the future.
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I usually support that sentiment, but it only applies when it is in your hands whether we listen or not. In this case, the admins singlehandedly decided that none of us can. This is pretty much a form of censorship IMO
What gives you the right to constrain what other people see? Just go ahead and ban them yourself if they offend you so.
I just created this new account because people like you see in themselves the right to constrain what I see.
Try telling that to the lemmyers (lemmings?) In this Technology thread that were clowning mastodon.art for blocking social.bbc for BBC’s history of transphobic rhetoric, considering there are a decent amount of transgender people (and other LGBTQIA+ identifying people) are members of their instance. Same situation, definitely not the same reaction.
EDIT: It was in Technology on lemdro.id, not Fediverse. EDIT 2: Spelling
Yeah but there’s a big difference.
As people right fully call out in that thread, defederation from the BBC without them having had a fediverse presence to do anything worth defederating with is wild. It’s the same broken argument as pre-emptively defederating from threads was, barring worries about sync-load or something.
But in the case of Hexobear, they do have lots of content based upon which you can judge whether federation with the instance is worth the extra moderation effort for you as an admin or not. In this case the lemmy.world admins decided that it is not worth it, an defederated.
However, importantly they had something to judge what working with the communities from the instance would be like. With BBC or Threads, no one had that. And while every instance admin is of course free to do whatever they want, they’re also making a really good point against the fediverse as a technological solution if they act that way.
Consider that if it were a central site, defederating from tankybear is the equivalent of banning a community. The BBC/Threads thing is preemptively blocking a community from ever being created. There are very rare cases where the latter might be warranted, but it’s tough to imagine scenarios where it would have a meaningful reason.
For example I don’t want to listen to you. Go away. Defederate yourself.
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 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?
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.
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go away troll.
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Try not to feed the trolls
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Ahhh… And so the reddit bullshit begins on Lemmy. When will everyone just agree not to be dicks to each other?
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We’re all being dicks.
When people stop being stupid morons that inflict their idiocy on the world like a miasma of ignorance. So, never.
Good to know.
Theyre doing a pretty obvious bit and CPC or Communist Party of China doesn’t have the racist baggage the use of CCP does.
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Of course you are. There’s nothing wrong with defending your beliefs, or advocating for them in the right context. Especially if they have sound arguments to back them up. (Also, I don’t see any indication why that wouldn’t be allowed based on this post, or the rules of conduct)
But pushing your beliefs is different. It’s about foregoing actually convincing people and instead using underhanded tactics such as propaganda, brigading, or botting to make an opinion seem more sound than it really is. (Not saying your opinion necessarily is, by the way.)
You mean the conspiracy theory that somehow the World Bank isn’t there to do it’s real job, provide loans to poor countries to aid their development, but instead part of some grand scheme to rob poor countries of their resources?
Because what you claim to be well documented isn’t actually objective fact. It’s more construing mistakes these institutions definitely did make to be something they very much aren’t.
“We’ll give you this money if you cut all your social safety nets, depress wages, and hand your resources over to foreign companies.”
“Fuck, who could have predicted that our stipulations would stunt your economy and impoverish your workers? Welp… guess you’ll have to stay poor and keep offering cheap sweatshop labor so we can sell the products at 10x the price overseas. Oh woe is us! Next time, we’d better do the exact same thing over again, proving that we learned from our innocent mistake!”
I’m heading out to meet friends. Don’t take my silence for defeat lol. Hopefully someone picks this up where I leave off.
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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
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.
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.
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.
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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
Watch out or these reactionary nutjobs will ban you
That’s cause that’s not the problem.
A variety of opinions is great, an army of zealots coming in to shit up the place but assuredly not tolerating the same behaviour towards them? Nope.
This is simply an attitude issue, not a political issue, and we wouldn’t even be discussing this if the instance were far right instead of far left, despite stalinists and fascists being functionally identical.
Look at my comment thread. I have a guy calling me a woke tankie for a simple disagreement. The shit slinging is already present in and among lemmy.world users. Having (potentially) more shit slinging is not going to change much. I’ve browsed hexbear a handful of times and was looking forward to their federation. By and large, conversation on there is pleasant to neutral. It’s a bit cringe at times and occasionally hostile to non-leftists. You see the same from the right and centrists as well. That’s just how online political discourse goes. If anything, I’d say the online right is a lot more hostile, bigoted and prone to harassment than the left. But I could be biased.
The way I see it, the admins are basically saying that political arguments are fine among our users and those from other instances, just not hexbear and lemmygrad. Which is pretty silly and a tad dramatic
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Fair enough! For what it’s worth I think the admins statement was self righteous and pretty fucking stupid as well. But it is what it is, communities are more than their admins and I think they’d make a good addition to Lemmy. And at the end of the day, there’s nothing stopping me from making a hexbear account or one on an instance that federates with them
honestly, when reading comments like this i think maybe pre-emptive is a good idea.
Lemmyworld is forever going to be referred to as the instance full of pedos, transphobes and fascists that tried its hardest not to defederate an explicitly nazi instance while pulling this shit with a soft dirtbag left instance that spawned from the chapo podcast of all things.
Like, what a fucking reputation to give yourselves so early on.
https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3655725
and most of the comments are in that vein
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You’ve been all over this thread calling people woke, globalist tankies. And a quick glance at your profile history shows that the only one here that has trouble operating in good faith is you. I’d add more but you’re clearly not worth the time. Go fuck yourself, bye
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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”.
That’s what different instances are for, although a lot of big instances do this kind of blanket ban. Maybe you just have to run your own instance.
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“Woke” 🙄
What have they actually done?
I’m all for defederating from instances that cause problems but all the quotes above basically seem to say, “I know you want a revolution but you still gotta follow the rules of whatever instance you’re posting on.”
It’s your server so your under no obligation to provide a reason for defederating beyond disagreeing with them but it leaves me wondering if there’s anything else or if it’s just a matter of disliking them?
Yeah this reads as completely politically motivated. Nothing in the post is evidence of rule breaking.
They’re not just saying “follow the rules.” They’re promoting arguing in bad faith and being trolls, while not being so overt with their bullshit it gets them banned. They can’t even be subtle about telling each other to be subtle, which is why we’re here.
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Forgive me. I’m old so I’m not up on the current vocab. I thought “woke” and “tankie” were opposite pejoratives. What is a “woke tankie”?
And more to my original question, what have they actually done that causes any problems? Even if these “woke tankies” have terrible ideas, who cares if they’re not actually causing any problems?
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He’s making fun of anti-communists by comparing liberals(right wingers, as they support the right of undemocratic ownership of the means of production) calling people tankies with conservatives calling people woke.
I dont think the bit lands but figured you deserved an explanation.
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What is a globalist?
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What is a tankie?
Somebody who is terminally online and blindly supports the CCP and Putin’s Russia, claims to be communist and thinks the former are genuinely communist depite being authoritarian capitalist systems, and are blindly anti-America because the glorious Soviet Union was somehow better and global imperialism or something. The name “tankie” refers to the Tiannamen Square massacre, which they will be quick to defend or pretend like it wasn’t that bad.
You can usually find them invoking whataboutism on any thread involving China or Russia, where they’ll go “BUT AMERICA DID IT TOO SO IT’S OKAY AND YOU’RE RACIST FOR HATING CHINA” as well as spouting parroted CCP/Russian propaganda and talking points. Try calling them out on that, of course, and they’ll screech about American propaganda. You can’t reason with tankies, they’re no better than Wehraboos.
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How do they do that?
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Are you just trying to see how many buzzwords you can fit in a sentence or did you actually think this was an intelligent thought worth sharing?
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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.
What happened to “defederating should always be a last resort”?
Hexbear is probably the most inclusive major instance. We’re the only instance with mandatory pronoun tags. And yet we get defederated before we have a chance, while Exploding-Heads got to stay federated for so long? Our admins even went out of their way to make things easy for you, too. Did you even talk to them?
