Hexbear Discussion Round 2
Hexbear Discussion Round 2
I figured since their admin has asked them to stop participating over here it may be worthwhile to get a new discussion going that is primarily blahaj. I'm almost certain they'll still be upvoting so keep that in mind as that may skew things. Worthwhile to check in from instances that have already defederated them. The previous thread definitely left a bad taste in my mouth but what do y'all think?
Old thread can be found here
EDIT: With regards to the post on new federation guidelines here: https://hexbear.net/post/352119
The current top comment is:
Every instance that has talked shit and got dogpiled should be thanking us for breathing some life into their dead and boring ass websites.
The last thread was incredibly toxic thanks to hexbear users. If that is what they do on discussions about them then they are in effect nothing more than trolls. We should Defederate.
I agree with defederation based solely on the fact that nothing can be argued without it developing into an utter shit-fest with them. They only have memes and a spectrum of weird to abhorrent takes politically to give.
What, overall would we be losing vs gaining the ability to use the rest of Lemmy in peace?
This is exactly how I see it
Honestly I find them more toxic than the people over at Lemmygrad and that is by no means a support of those people either, they're both shit.
Exactly. I've been on boards, communities, channels and networks on dozens of different variations of internet based communication for more than two decades now. I've dealt with these types longer and more often than I'm proud to admit. It doesn't matter how well spoken or well intentioned a few of them are, the people making the most noise on their behalf are shitheel trolls who aren't worth engagement.
Mark my words, they're trying to make a leftist version of The_Donald.
It's up to us to call them on their bullshit before it really takes hold.
Hexbear is... a lot. It really does feel like they swarmed the last thread. I wish there were a way to lock threads to the local instance.
They seem to really take glee in harassment of "liberals". Their justification of "if we are harassing you you deserve it" doesn't hold a lot of water for me, because they seem to harass anyone who doesn't think the exact same way as them. I certainly get the hostility towards liberals, but while that's all well and good in their little quarantine zone over there now that they're in the larger Threadiverse their whole "dunking on libs" thing just makes lemmy an exhausting place to be.
And then they turn around and mock everyone for being bothered by their hostility. I want to like Hexbear, but I'm not sure whether they're good federationmates.
I hope we don't have to defed, but if Ada decides to it'll certainly be earned.
When I heard that hexbear was a lefty instance that was federating I was initially a bit excited
Then I went to hexbear to check it out and saying it's a lot is an understatement
The one's I've encountered here and only other instances on some of my alt accounts have some pretty shit views in regards to some current events
Their (at least every single one I've encountered) strong stance on letting Ukraine get steam rolled because "No war but class war," is definitely one that rubs me the wrong way. Considering how much that statement used in that regard missing the very idea of defending one's self.
Basically the ones I've encountered are straight up tankies, yeah they seem to support trans rights and other queer folk but it's definitely hard to associate with them when their political views or so shit on other regards.
If we defederated from them I'd support it, though I think that perhaps encountering more people outside of their echo chamber they've been living in for years might dampen some of their shittier views a bit.
But god damn are they fucking hostile to anyone in the out group.
I feel like every time I see a comment from hexbear, it's a tankie with the most insane take possible. I often see them use their emotes/memes not to add to a conversation, but to deflect or avoid directly responding to criticism. I also keep seeing entire comment threads taken over by hexbear as soon as one of them replies to someone. Almost like a bat signal goes out to call in reinforcements. I'm sure that's mostly a product of them being terminally online and not necessarily malicious, but I have to block like ten hexbear users for every one I come across that isn't like that.
It's worth noting that most of the hexbear users I see are under politics stuff posted on large instances like .world and .ml, so these issues may be less prevalent or even non-existent on posts hosted on blahaj.zone. But fuck I really hate the energy they bring on. Honest to god I almost stopped using lemmy altogether because of how bad it gets under most of the posts I come across. I'm sure a lot of hexbear users are fine, but I don't like constantly blocking half of a comment section because the tankies came out of the woodworks to say some dumb shit about Ukraine or whatever. I doubt I'm the only one constantly blocking tankies from hexbear.
I'm mostly posting this to see if others feel the same way or have had similar experiences. I've searched for posts about hexbear a couple times over the past week and haven't seen one until here right now. I'm going through the first post from two days ago and it seems like I might just be coming across a very loud minority from their instance. If that's the case, then defederating seems extreme and unnecessary. But if this is just what most of hexbear is like, I'd prefer to defederate and let the non-tankies make a new account here or on another instance that we federate with.
Update after two days: I'm officially casting my vote as "defederate from hexbear please god," final answer. The tankies and trolls are exhausting and I'm sick and tired of dealing with them. Either they can't be reigned in or they simply aren't. It's not even just their politics. Now that I've been thinking consciously "is this comment's bad politics indicative of the whole instance" I've noticed that a lot of people from hexbear are kind of just assholes. I don't want to deal with them anymore. "The good ones" can make another account here or somewhere that we federate with. But honest to god, most of their instance is a drain on my mental health and I can see that I'm not the only one from blahaj zone that feels that way.
I know they come off as trans-friendly, but they also let tankies run defense for authoritarian countries that don't treat queer people like me well. If hexbear keeps up like this I'm just gonna stop using lemmy altogether. Logging on isn't worth the excruciation of dealing with their instance. I know Ada wants solidarity with other trans-friendly instances, but I don't think the tankies and trolls at hexbear care about that, and I don't think the rest of their instance cares enough to get them to chill out. It feels like they're taking advantage of blahaj zone's charitability to keep vomiting authoritarian apologetics and brigading any comments or posts that call out that behavior. Dealing with that isn't what I signed up for.
In the interest of transparency, this comment was at 38 upvotes when I added this update.
Almost like a bat signal goes out to call in reinforcements. I’m sure that’s mostly a product of them being terminally online and not necessarily malicious
In the case of the last defed thread, it was because someone posted a link to one of my posts in their "dunk on libs with shit takes" community.
That's the issue I raised with their admin. The admin deleted the post in question and made changes to stop it happening again.
Going forward, it's going to come down to this. If they dogpile on any blahaj lemmy community, or any external queer or trans communities frequented by our users and impact the ability of blahaj members to use those spaces, we'll be talking defederation again. I'm hopeful that it won't come to that though
I’d be suspicious of drawing those kinds of subtle lines in the sand. Malicious groups savor those kinds of guidelines so they can dance around them and test their firmness.
The spirit of their dialogue is designed to be disarming, giving them a foothold in this community. Their chosen behaviors and methods of influence are not what I want to see in a virtuous fediverse.
Maybe this is because I have a guarded heart after being burned a lot, but if you’re giving someone “one more chance”, that’s a good sign you’ve given them too many chances already.
That explains why I saw a bunch of them commenting on a few random posts over the last few days. Randomly a comment had a reply from a hexbear account and then over a dozen replies in a comment chain of mostly just hexbear users.
I thought it was just luck that they all saw each other to meme together, but them having a community for posting comment links makes sense.
almost stopped using lemmy altogether
I definitely empathize with this
I'm not from this instance, but I know exactly what you're talking about and had the exact same experience. I had to block over 20 accounts per thread when they'd flood in to spread their nonsense and harass people, and it almost made me quit the site entirely. They're like a horde. When my instance defederated with them, it was a night and day difference for how much better the site is to use. Comment sections are actually usable and you can discuss China/Russia/Ukraine without them flooding in and disrupting everything. As someone from a defederated instance, I believe it is a good idea for you guys to do the same.
It’s not a bat signal, likely the thread popped up into their “all” feed and a bunch see it at once.
Some of the stuff is because they were already a very established community with their own culture, who has only just recently federated with others. They are bringing their culture, which is full of memes and shitposting, out to where a good portion of normal Lemmy users don’t even know how to post a picture, and it is a lot all at once. It does seem that their admins want to have relatively good citizens, and it seems like most of what Blahaj really cares about is compatible (they are possibly even more extreme with caring about it). Being disruptive in political threads does not seem like a good reason to defederate an instance.
I've said almost all I care to on this matter except to point out that it has taken less than a day for a Ukrainian war related post to appear on 196 and for hexbear "Marxist Leninists" to start proudly proclaiming their pro Russia opinions. You give these people a platform by staying federated and they will do this, and whether or not you consider their opinions to be offensive is somewhat subjective (I do) they are at the very least a major vibe killer. Anyways, I was right and if this shit keeps popping up in my feed I'm out, peace.
Yeah I'm a strong supporter of Ukraine in that conflict not just for political reasons.
I know 3 people who's lives have been massively impacted by it; a friend who went home to defend his home who has been unreachable for a year, a friend who lost his whole family less than a month into the conflict, and a friend who now has his parents and younger brothers living with him because they fled Russia when it all kicked off.
To say I have strong opinions about the conflict is a bit of an understatement.
I'm so sorry about your friends. At this point the admin has made it clear they have no problem with this behaviour. Literally making excuses for and handwaving a cryptofascist state ravaging one of its smaller neighbours doesn't constitute harassment.
It doesn't seem possible to me that you can maintain a safe and inclusive space for all queer people while allowing a minority to engage in war apologism and all other manner of Soviet themed, larper bullshit. I really don't want to actually try to address why what they're doing is inexcusable because frankly they live for that kind of engagement, but its fucking shameful that this has become an issue at all, let alone a permanent feature of the community.
I really hope that your friends stay safe.
I'd honestly still prefer defederation. If they were malignant on their own instance that's one thing, but they made this instance feel pretty unwelcome to me, and I've seen way too many red flags to be able to be comfortable having them around. Trans solidarity is no reason to put up with abuse. I know I'm not really an active participant here so this is more or less meaningless to most, but I'd rather leave and go through my transition alone than to stay and have to deal with their terminally online behavior. I don't think it should be our responsibility to rehabilitate them, nor do I think that's possible given the relative size of our instances.
Edit: I also feel it's worth pointing out that they've been defederated from several other instances for malignant behavior and I've seen all of that here.
Edit 2: Just saw we're staying federated with them, so it looks like this is my stop. To all of the fine people here at blåhaj.zone, thanks so much for being a bunch of cool people, I never really chimed in but you all just living your lives helped me figure out a lot of stuff about myself, and I wish you all nothing but the best! I can't stay a member of an instance that welcomes tankies though, so happy trails.
Understandable. I might also stop using Blahaj because of this. Have a good one
After speaking to one of their admins and seeing the change in the rules on hexbear, I'm happy enough with the outcome.
Trans solidarity is incredibly important. It's the reason this instance exists. I prioritise that.
Hexbear (and Beehaw) is one of the only Lemmy instances that genuinely prioritise the protection of their gender diverse users, and honestly, if for nothing else, I believe it's worth a bit of discomfort to find a way of staying connected.
Im very saddened to hear this. Sounds like staying in an abusive relationship because "They have good times too". I hope you rethink this decision, or myself and atleast a few others will stop using this instance
All I can say though is the reason I am making the choice not to defederate now is because I believe that this is the best chance of developing a large positive trans userbase on the lemmyverse. At the moment, unlike the broader fediverse, lemmy and kbin are quite hostile or indifferent to trans folk. Despite hexbears bullshit, one thing they are, is strongly supportive of trans rights. And if the bullshit is kept to their own instance, then we can benefit from the voices of their trans users.
If they can't keep their bullshit under control, then we'll cut them off.
Why not give it a chance and see how it goes?
And what's your opinion on this admins take from their post on their recent rule change?
It's one of the highest upvoted comments on the thread.
Or the highest upvoted comment in that thread that's pretty blatant on how they feel about coming over to the rest of Lemmy?
Trans solidarity isn't beneficial when they're also brigading, harassing and abusing people, and disrupting threads constantly. They might be allies in terms of LGBTQ, but they are actively harmful in every other way.
I think they need to be defederated. Many users over there seem to be very edgy and tankie. I also saw too many very upvoted posts from this instance with bad faith arguments, idiotic takes and strawmen, with lots of users supporting this crap
Where in the blahaj rules does it state that you must be squishy and also be a supporter of the deadliest, most antisocial and most destructive economic system humanity has ever seen
First comment for me, but I've been a blahaj member since the migration. When I learned about hexbear, I was really excited because I lurked r/cth back in the day and always liked their content a lot. I'm a GenX queer anarcho-syndicalist who is terminally irony poisoned and moderately online, so it's basically my people.
So I spent a bit of time looking at what they've built over the last 3 years and it was impressive. The reasons behind the mandatory pronouns are fantastic. As a cis person (sorry), whenever I specify my pronouns, it's an attempt to normalize specifying them so that it isn't just for trans people. That's why they added them in hexbear, and when they did that, it outed a whole bunch of transphobes and shitty people, who were then removed from the instance. Sounds like good praxis to me. Seeing cynical interpretations of that sucks.
They also don't allow downvoting, same as us, for many of the same reasons.
What we're seeing right now is a culture shock because they've only been loose in the fediverse for a week, and the folx over at hexbear are having a struggle session about it. They've been in a bubble for a while and they seem to know it They didn't know their emojis were so big, they're working out guidelines for engagement, they're trying to rein in the users who are getting too aggressive (including admins and mods DMing people).
It would be really cool if we at least gave them a couple more weeks to get the hang of things. Their communities are easy to block and the instance as a whole is very value aligned with blahaj. Queer and leftist unity is important.
Being harassed and called a lib for criticizing their dogpiling doesn't feel like unity to me.
Not minimizing that at all, a lot of that wasn't cool, but it was a handful of users from a very large instance, so it wasn't necessarily the fault of the whole instance. They're having internal arguments about that last thread, and many of them feel gross about it (notice they aren't here this time). They're also gonna have some new users who are too eager to dunk on libs to think about it for 5 seconds - a human problem, not an instance one.
Editing to add this link https://hexbear.net/post/353633 Wherein hexbear tells us all their universal safe word, and links to their code of conduct.
That is a fair point, though, as a Catalan anarchist, as much as I believe in the unity of the left, I cannot and will not collaborate or tolerate tankies, history knows we tried that in times of need and it did not work out.
I'm with you and feel the same way. I think that many of them came in really hot and somewhat misdirected. I think with the chance the good will outweigh the bad.
I'm also a former /r/cth poster though too, and while I'm not a ML, I'm also not repulsed by the general flavor presented by the average poster there. That's said my impression is that the average hexbear user was more of the moretankiechapo type than the Bernie supporter type. Not a problem for me but I can see why there would be culture shock.
Either way I'm glad this is the direction Blahaj is taking if only so I can doomscroll more leftist shitposts without changing instances.
I commented before on that thread (before hexbear members got to weigh in) and today I still don't think permanent defederation is warranted.
Hexbear absolutely needs to do better and some of the issue could also be with Lemmy's technical limitations. For example, Hexbear emotes are bugged on other instances and also the fact that hexbear and other instances were able to comment on that thread which muddled the objective of the post. Only blahaj members should have participated and we know that for the better.
Defederation to me means complete erasure of an instance that threatens the integrity of the host. I joined Blahaj to be express my queerness on lemmy and Hexbear isn't taking that away from me. Nor do I believe (imo) there was evidence of that in the 1st thread.
If it's too inconclusive then I'd say not to defederate and instead focus on making sure Lemmy as a whole can be improved for its users.
I've never heard of them until now, but nothing I'm seeing makes me feel like I'd miss anything if blahaj defederated from them.
Straight up I've blocked more people from hexbear than anywhere else
At this point I'm looking forward to defederating from them due to how toxic they are
I switched from Infinity, the client I've been using for years since Reddit and love dearly, to Sync, just so I could block the entire instance. The only people I've blocked on Lemmy are Hexbear users because all they do is spam anti American, anti capitalist takes everywhere they can and spam comment sections with essays denying the wrongdoings of any nation that is nominally communist. They're more preachy and aggressive than street preachers, and my experience on Lemmy has been significantly more relaxed with them blocked
I hadn't noticed an issue with hexbear until the recent post. They definitely gave me a bad impression of their whole instance with their behavior.
I definitely think defederation is in order. Unless I'm mistaken, the most their admins have done to stop the brigading has been a comment on the post saying to stop interacting. No post on hexbear, nothing.
They seem like a bunch of shitty trolls. Acceptance of trans people aside, there's not really a reason to continue to federate with an instance like that.
EDIT: they just added to their code of conduct disallowing the kind of behavior we saw yesterday. Still unsure if remaining federated is a good idea
Yeah I'd say we can expect more as an admin clarified it's just for other instances meta posts. In the same post where they updated their rules.
I'd recommend checking the thread and sorting it by top. it's pretty telling what they support.
Why would anybody thank them for doing nothing but spam propaganda and huge emojis and brigading? Absolutely delusional. The instance I'm from defederated from them and it's been a night and day difference. You guys should do the same.
It would be a shame to defederate them. While they can be abrasive and a bit trolly at times, I think they add very diverse opinions and insights compared to the rest of the community. The most thought provoking comments I've read during my time here have come from hexbear users, even if I think it's a nonsensical take it's at least unique to me.
The brigading in the other post probably pissed a bunch of people off, but I couldn't help but find humour in that whole situation. It didn't seem too bad, just mildly annoying. It doesn't feel like it's a widespread enough issue to warrant defederating, but only time will tell I guess.
This was essentially how I felt about them before, I had nearly made the first comment in the original thread to say something like “sometimes annoying but their code of conduct seems pretty compatible” - I don’t agree with the original proposal.
I wasn’t impressed by the response from them, although it did seem to be a few users and I’m not sure if we shouldn’t just write it off to the heat of the moment.
Also one of them in the original thread suggested an interesting history podcast about US imperialism (Blowback), the bashing of which I am totally down with.
My opinion is please defederate, thank you
Putting this down as it may be relevant. It was posted very recently:
I edited my post to mention this. I think it's notable that the current top comment over there is:
Every instance that has talked shit and got dogpiled should be thanking us for breathing some life into their dead and boring ass websites.
"Enjoy our abuse, it's good for you."
Yeah I'd say that's a shitty take seeing so much support over there
Edit: And this response from one of their admins about dunking on people being the point of federating in the first place is pretty damning.
Being completely honest here, I don't think we should defederate from them. I don't see a point why. They are clearly pro-LGBTQ+, have huge support to our fellow trans brethren.
It also rubs me wrong in every single way to outright scrutinize one of the oldest still active Lemmy Instances, we all have to clearly remember which folks precursor the majority of us. Those being the left wing folks, we should respect their space and we respect theirs, otherwise it will be like mocking them to their faces. I have seen it with many others users treating them like garbage, how about we don't? It is like inviting guests to your house and them stealing that home and turning it the way they want, and when you complain they start spurting crap about you being horrible, etc, etc.I have said this one, and I will say this again;
For fuck's sake keep your mouth shut, and move on(This doesn't apply to fascists/conservatives). (This comment is not meant to come as rude, I am just stating my honest opinion.)
update: I noticed the mods went ahead and defederated with hexbear. I am going to say I am not exactly the happiest with this decision, because of the mere fact of going against one of the most trans friendliest we have in Lemmy, all because of their conflict between ideology.When is the line crossed between security and delusion? I think this time it passed that line...I am just disappointed.ignore what i said here, i am very dumb sometimes and misread the instances section.
I will summarize my views that I left on the first thread:
- While I do not agree with mandatory pronoun marking, or with needing to have one's neopronouns approved, the number of Hexbear users with neopronouns in their names indicates that the instance is extremely pro-trans and inclusive of all non-binary identities.
- Ada has very poorly handled the response to her "people of NATO" statement in a way that leaves a very bad taste in my mouth regarding the administration of Blåhaj Lemmy. I have noticed that a comment left by a Hexbear user saying "death to Nazis and transphobes" is gone now as well, which if this was an act of a Blåhaj Lemmy administrator, further reflects poorly on Blåhaj Lemmy's administration.
- For as much as I've enjoyed some of Hexbear's communities, such as [email protected], Hexbear users have often been weird, annoying, or wrong as well. However, I do not think that being weird, annoying, and wrong is cause for defederation, and would prefer that defederation be reserved for illegal content and neo-Nazis, lest we create a culture that is hegemonic in its beliefs and values.
- The ideal solution is for individual users to be able to block Hexbear, but this appears to only be possible using uBlock Origin and half-possible with one of the mobile clients for Lemmy. Until this becomes a feature of Lemmy itself, I believe that Hexbear should be defederated if this is the will of a majority of Blåhaj Lemmy users.
I will also state that I am biased in my views due to the fact that I am an anarchist who doesn't use the word "tankie", I am very strongly opposed to respectability/civility politics, and I am very careful about SIFTing every bit of news that appears on my feed. For these reasons, my experiences with Hexbear and its users will be markedly different from those with differing views or social media practices, a number of whom report experiencing "harassment, brigading, disinformation, and bad faith arguments". I am sure that these people are being honest, but I can only speak from my own experience.
Lastly, I would like to note that I read that a number of Hexbear users were opposed to federation to begin with, due to the potential disruption this could be for the site's culture, and as Hexbear's culture (e.g. emojis, which improperly scale on other instances) are taken to other sites. It is therefore my conjecture that some fraction of Hexbear users may be intentionally going against their admins' words and being annoying on other instances specifically in order to get Hexbear defederated. I do not fully understand Hexbear's culture or site politics, so I would prefer to hear from Hexbear users on this matter: since this thread is local-only, Hexbear users may wish to send me a DM explaining the controversy on their site regarding federation, and if my conjecture has any merit.
I may edit this comment with other thoughts as they come to me.
Edit: I received this DM from a Hexbear user regarding federation politics on the site. I am sharing this with his permission. I will create an audio version upon request.
Relevant links in the DM:
@[email protected] also sent me a message reading, "[...] Also, it looks like our admins have posted new rules concerning federated conduct. Some people are being grouchy about it, but I do think moderation is going to improve: https://hexbear.net/post/352119?scrollToComments=false"
I can't think of anything less trans-friendly than mandatory pronoun marking.
I quite liked this quote from Isabel Fall (more about identity than pronouns specifically, but still related!)
“We make boxes that seem to enclose a satisfying number of human experiences, and then we put labels on those and argue about them instead,” she says. “The boxes change over time, according to a process which is governed by, as far as I can tell, cycles of human suffering: We realize that forcing people into the last set of boxes was painful and wrong, we wring our hands, we fold up some new boxes and assure ourselves that this time we got it right, or at least right enough for now. Because we need the boxes to argue over. I do not want to be in a box. I want to sift through your fingers, to vanish, to be unseen.”
They basically just make it required so you can't tell who is trans, and the trans users support it so I don't really have an issue with it.
I essentially agree with the quote, but I can think of plenty of things that are less trans friendly than a digital pronoun circle. My point is that there is a very large trans population on Hexbear, and we can only assume that the trans population there are also universally the types of trans people who are open to sharing their pronouns publicly anyways — or else they would most likely just join a different instance without that requirement.
I think mandatory pronoun marking is a bad thing in IRL spaces, but in online spaces it's probably less of a big deal, especially when neopronouns or even None is an acceptable answer.
Top comment on this post is
Every instance that has talked shit and got dogpiled should be thanking us for breathing some life into their dead and boring ass websites.
Ada has very poorly handled the response to her "people of NATO" statement in a way that leaves a very bad taste in my mouth regarding the administration of Blåhaj Lemmy
What I was trying to say is that wishing death on people is not acceptable, but wishing for the downfall of organisations is perfectly acceptable.
If that leaves a bad taste in your mouth, I don't know what to tell you.
And if the bad taste in your mouth was because you thought I was saying something else, or that I was trying to make some sort of implicit comparison to terms like "people of colour", then hopefully this clarifies things, because it wasn't any of that.
or that I was trying to make some sort of implicit comparison to terms like “people of colour”, [...]
Honestly that just seems like people reading too much into things, even though "people of NATO" is still a really unusual and imprecise phrasing. If English is your second language and it was sort of a heat-of-the-moment edit, then phrasing things oddly is understandable, and it's really bad that people were assuming ill intent just because of unusual phrasing.
Anyways, sorry if I've been too impolite and added too much to your stress, you do good work overall (and if this seems like groveling, sorry about that, too) — I'm not going to change my views, but it's also probably best not to keep prodding at such differences, in your den. I wasn't aware of this unwritten rule when I signed up and I'll make sure to respect it regardless of how I feel about it.
Ada has very poorly handled the response to her “people of NATO” statement in a way that leaves a very bad taste in my mouth regarding the administration of Blåhaj Lemmy. I have noticed that a comment left by a Hexbear user saying “death to Nazis and transphobes” is gone now as well, which if this was an act of a Blåhaj Lemmy administrator, further reflects poorly on Blåhaj Lemmy’s administration.
I really do not think it's fair to go after Ada about this. I think this is such a weird hill to die on.
If you say so, but I just feel like this reflects on a broader issue I've noticed of the admins here being overly concerned with civility or respectability, and it just felt very avoidable.
Edit: And besides, my life is nothing if not a series of weird hills to die on. I think I've always had a problem with refusing to let things go, which can be both a strength and a weakness.
I agree with almost everything you said here, even though I don’t participate in any of the communities on that instance I would probably start looking for another instance to use if we go through with defederation. I’d like to be able to participate in discussion with queer folk and other leftists (including those that I have differing opinions from) across all of lemmy because to me that’s the value of using a federated platform in the first place.
I’d also like to note that I’m not a “tankie” or a ML for the sake of clarity, but I do value left unity because none of these reductive arguments over international politics actually matter when you’re doing real work and helping others, which is what this is all about in the first place.
I believe in blahaj-hexbear unity and I think we should all hug
I would not even call Hexbear extremists or allies, they are just plain trolls who use leftist arguments and tone policing to establish themselves as superior. The current thread on the supposed ableism that is being argued is a clear example of that: Tone policing, forcing absolute rules on who can and who can't use their dialects, moral judgement on strangers based on absurd rules, and not to mention the flooding and baiting that has been done so far. They are the equivalent of a SomethingAwful leftism, loud, demanding and pointless.
Voting for defederation, if only to clean up the mess that they've been making.
I have never had or seen an interaction with another instance that makes me want to defederate them. I'm sure there are vaild reasons for defederating some instances, but defederating with every community that has trolls in it will eventually have us disconnected from every instance.
I want to give them a chance, I liked most of the times I came across them aside from the previous thread. The previous thread was pretty concerning though ngl - I don't think they intended to brigade but it still happened. I want to have solidarity with them, but so far, coexisting with them has been hard for a lot of people here. I'm hoping they settle down somewhat and listen to their admins requests such as staying out of c/main discussions and not spamming emojis, so it doesn't have to come to defederation.
They do intend to brigade. They actively discuss spreading their forces across other instances to shut down discussion and deny everyone else a platform, or to troll. They aren't around to participate in good faith.
The previous thread was pretty concerning though ngl - I don’t think they intended to brigade but it still happened.
I think it's hard to deny that when other people start talking about your community then you are likely to feel somewhat attacked. I say judge on any thread except the ones that are about them. Base it on their behavior and comments in the wider Lemmiverse. Personally, I want to try to make things work rather than being reactionary. That said, I had one (and only one) user from there try to talk a bunch of shit at me. I just stopped engaging and things were fine.
If you want my honest opinion, tolerating tankies is not worth whatever kind of project you want to build. I think we should unite forces with trans people on trans issues sure, but giving a platform to tankies ain't it. They'll poison discussions, as they already have, name-call and take-over whatever thread they do not like. They like to put on a nice face to avoid being deferated, but I doubt it'll last.
I shared what I learned about Hexbear in the previous thread. As far as interacting with Hexbear goes, if we keep our interactions to sharing memes and support for trans people then I think we will be fine. I like the idea of getting along with them, but they have to meet us in the middle. If they continue to be disingenuous about their political views then I think we will have problems.
What do you mean by disingenuous? I feel like they've been very upfront with their political views, to the point of causing problems with how upfront they are.
I told them upfront that we moderate tankies. I told them I thought the best way for us to get along would be for them to be honest. I said I don't mind communists, but I do have a problem with authoritarian communists. They insisted they were just communists. One of them seemed to imply I was being presumptuous by putting "authoritarian" in quotes.
Then after about three days of talking, they started giving me authoritarian communist talking points. You can check my comment history. But it's all in the I Love Twitter Rule post. When I gave them my opinion that they were defending authoritarian government's like North Korea and the Taliban the two people in question suddenly stopped talking.
Then I posted what I found in the previous meta thread. The same person who had defended the Taliban came on and tried to safe face. I suddenly got a bunch of other replies on the I Love Twitter Rule thread too. One person started defending North Korea and China, and reciting Russian propaganda all in one comment.
The problem I had with it, is those people could have just admitted that they agreed with these authoritarian communist talking points from the get go. Rather than doing that, they tried to gaslight me. If a group of people don't want to outright admit what they believe when prompted, then that's an indicator that there is something wrong with those views and that those people know it.
