Stating that my people (and other Baltic nations) are subhuman

As a member of Hexbear for 3+ years I just want to say that this isn't acceptable over here and would land people with a very serious reprimand or a permaban if they don't admit to being in the wrong for this. The use of "subhuman" in particular is fascist behaviour and I'd assume it is wreckers rather than longstanding members, it's not language that socialists are fond of.

The only other thing I will say is that I genuinely appreciate that you're building this community with your userbase and having these conversations, it's the correct way to create a unique community culture and have people care about the space.

Thanks for that very thoughtful statement. I am fine with keeping them federated and letting individual users block what they don't want to see. I find it interesting to see what different communities have to say, even if I find it abhorrent.

I feel a little sorry for the Lemm.ee users here that came to make measured, personal posts specific to the annoucement. There's a fair amount of long off-topic arguements happening in bits of the thread now and that probably makes it harder to read and manage.

This is something that's often been pointed to as a pure result of Hexbear users or federation with Hexbear and given rise to accusations of 'brigading here and in the past'. While I don't think every segue into debate has been useful here, and have also told comrades that I didn't think this was the place for specific comments (which they removed) I also think there's some important context to point out - and I hope it helps lemm.ee users wondering about all this traffic not to fall into the trap of assuming the worst based on a couple of comments:

• Hexbear is a very big and very active instance. A very small proportion of users posting in a thread (especially one explicitly about them) can seem like a lot to a lot of instances.
• Hexbear doesn't have downvotes and Hexbear users do not have the ability to downvote posts or comments on other instances. This creates a culture where if people disagree, they tend to reply, not downvote instead. Another reason we're very active.
• Finally - and I say this fully acknowledging and appriciating the many ordinary, good faith, pleasant lemm.ee commenters that I've enjoyed reading and talking too even when I totally disagreed with them - a lot of these off-topic arguements and more heated comments do not come from nowhere. While not at all the majority, I do see a pretty shocking amount of actively hostile, hateful, and insulting behaviour here. Sadly, quite a bit of it would be banned under Hexbear's moderation policy against things like slurs and hate speech too.

So try to keep in mind if you see salty Hexbear users replying to people that, just in reading through this thread myself, I've the following instances of abuse or smears against my comrades (and they continue popping up). So I absolutely support them defending themselves (as long as they stay within the rules here):

• Dimissal as the pejorative "tankie" - 4 times (although we actually think this one is pretty funny usually)
• Users stating that Hexbear users are propagandists - 8 times
• Stating that people from Hexbear are specifically paid Russian/Chinese bots/propagandists - 10 times
• Direct equivalences of Hexbear posters to Nazis or just straight up calling us Nazis/fascists - 7 times
• Insults regarding mental health or IQ that would be classed as ablism on Hexbear - 8 times
• Dismissing users as children - 2 times
• Claiming Hexbear users are using vote-manipulation (impossible, as explained above) - 4 times
• Accusations of deliberate brigading rather than just commenting, being active - 11 times

I've tried not to count repeated instances from the same users. But sadly that's not all. Just a handful of the following are comments that have been made against Hexbear users in this thread, without any kind of equal hostility. As far as I can tell they all still remain:

• "You guys are like cancer"
• "Braindead fucking tankies"
• "Get fucked"
• "Asshole" (multiple)
• That our beliefs are "moralistic bullshut"
• That some of our beliefs are "a criminal ideology"
• A comment that simply states "No Russians"
• That we're "evil" (multiple times)
• An elaborate comparison to us "vandalising a Jewish graveyard" and other Nazi equivalences
• And of course a comment that explictly minimised the Nazi death toll with glee, seeming to imply they should have killed more. On the subject of disagreeing with equating the hammer and sickle to the swastika (hidden with spoiler tag, for those who don't want to see it repeated)...
  
  spoiler

  "you are right, it is nor really fair to nazis, who killed measly 17 million people, compared to impressive 100 million killed by communists."

There's also been numerious instances of users misgendering Hexbear users. I'm not going to put all of these down to malice, but at Hexbear we display our pronouns for a reason - we love our trans comrades! You don't have to, but could you please at least respect them and not misgender them?

Again, this isn't the majority, but it's honestly disappointing and worth keeping in mind amongst some of the louder, minority yells of 'brigading' etc.

I am also still quite worried about the amount of distinct users on hexbear who have posted Kremlin propaganda. I so far don’t have reason to believe that these users are employed by the Russian state, but the fact that they are spreading the same hateful content which can be seen on Russian television seems problematic to say the least, and it remains to be seen if moderators can truly keep up with such content.

This was why my eyebrows raised when I saw the Hexbear admin response when they claim that "Russian disinformation is generally either refuted in comments or removed by mods". Kremlin propaganda is rife in communities like chapotraphouse, and it certainly seems like the mods there let anything slide as long as it is isn't outright incitement to violence.

I challenged claims made in a couple of different anti-Ukraine posts and despite the fact there were maybe one or two users whose responses were thoughtful, the majority were outright calling me an idiot and a ~~retarded liberal~~ (edit: correction; dumb fuck)

So far, my impression of HB's userbase is pretty negative because the posts on there that make the front page here tend to be the more shit-posty ones.

That said, I appreciate @sunaurus for the stance he's taking. There is some positive and thoughtful content on HB - you just have to block the noisier and more idiotic communities so it doesn't get drowned out.

I posted a comment in the_dunk_tank without noticing where I was. While many people were heated over what I said, it was a misunderstanding due to a lack of specificity and ignorance on my part. After I clarified what I was intending to say, discussion ensued and it was ended on good terms.

The vast majority of users I interact with from hexbear are thoughtful, insightful, kind and genuine individuals that care deeply about humanity and moving forward. The hate that they have is for fascism and actual fascists.

To defederate hexbear would be a disservice to the idea of federated social media.

I've seen the hexbears at work and don't doubt that they'd class some of my views as woefully liberal but in the main I am enjoying being on a site where the left is so unapologetic, doesn't go for all this centrist bollocks and is unafraid to call out bullshit.

Having seen the Overton window constantly shifted to a narrower aspect ratio and then shifted rightwards on reddit was a very disheartening experience and I think seeing active hexbears on all threads will be useful in stopping the uptight right when they inevitably decide that that the fediverse needs shifting towards their own Volkish views.

I'd like to stay federated with hexbear. They bring important information to conversation that people are otherwise not exposed to. American school-taught history is NOT the gold standard in truth.

I've seen more posts complaining about Hexbear than actual objectionable things they've done. Maybe that's a sign of effective moderation, but in general I agree that defederation should always be a very last resort, and it doesn't feel like we're even close.

Also, with the ability for users to block instances coming soon, I think everyone will be happy then. At least, users anyway, it will still be down to the admin team to determine if the moderation workload is excessive and act accordingly - but that decision is and should be up to you.

Hexbear has been around for three years, all the while dealing with a constant stream of bad faith wreckers and doxxers from 4chan and the like. Ultimately our goal is to foster a broad-tent leftist culture, with primary focus on LGBTQ+ and anti-US-imperialism. Within those two focuses we have a wide range of leftist tendencies, from anarchist (syndicalist, ancom, etc) to Marxist (trotskyist, leftcom, ML, etc). We, I personally, see good-faith disagreement as tremendously valuable and necessary for growth of ideas. We do our best to discourage sectarianism (within the bounds of anti-imperialist, pro-LGBTQ+ leftism) while encouraging discussion.

I really dislike the idea of defederating for difference in political opinions. That kind of thing merely recreats the kind of echo chambers found on corporate social media. I believe Lemmy has potential to be better than that. Differences in philosophy and politics and culture should be moderated at the community and personal level rather than broadly sweeping instance blocks. This leaves the agency up to communities to set rules and define their cultures, banning people as needed at this level rather than simply cutting off entire communities. It also gives users the agency to choose whether to block instances, communities, or users they'd rather not interact with (instance blocking on a user level is coming soon I believe).

The other reasons people give for defederating us (although I believe politics is primary) are spamming and brigading. The former is due to: the oversized emoji bug in Lemmy (we're sorry for this, on our side the emojis are normal sized so we don't even realize they're spamming) as well as the novelty of federation and lack of clear delineation between local and federated posts. The emoji bug will be fixed, and in the mean time we're on notice to try and avoid using them while on other instances. The novelty will quickly wear off. As for delineation between local and federated, this is a mistake that's gone both ways: lemm.ee users stumbling upon a hexbear post and not understanding why they're being responded to differently, as well as hexbear users stumbling upon a lemm.ee post and commenting/meming as if they're on their home turf. In either case, the rules of the given instance and community should be followed and enforced through bans rather than defederation, and ideally there'd be some CSS to make it obvious when someone's on another instance to make it easier to follow said rules. Defederating because of this happening would be like a person on Reddit posting their /r/NSFW stuff on /r/awww by mistake, and /r/awww unilaterally blocking all /r/NSFW users, as if there's no overlapping userbase.

As for brigading, by and large I think people are overreacting because they're used to the walled garden Reddit has become in its profit-seeking attempts to ban wrongthink. Keep in mind that Hexbear users have no ability to downvote (literally removed from the site for other reasons a while ago), so at most a "brigade" (or most often simply seeing a post on our front page) will be a bunch of (soon-to-be normal-sized) emojis and opinions you may disagree with. If a user is breaking a comm or instance rule they can be banned. If they're engaging in bad faith or spamming they can be blocked. Hell, even if they're engaging in good faith they can be blocked if a person simply doesn't want to see takes they disagree with. But ultimately it seems like a non-issue to me. Allow those of us that want to engage with diverse opinions to do so, and allow the rest to block as they see fit.

i don't have anything in particular to add, I just want to repeat that clicking on "all" isn't brigading.

I generally agree. I thought hexbear was fine until I saw some of the spam/trolling you mentioned, and then the genocide denial... That got me to start blocking communities there.

With that said I think exploding heads is probably just as bad, if not worse since the mods aren't against the content posted there. I know you said you didn't want to defederate and I kind of understand why, but at least keeping a close eye on the users there would be appreciated.

Hexbear is making Lemmy unbearable for me. There's no function for a user to block everything from a server. I don't want to see their communities, their users, their posts, their messages, or their votes showing up.

I block communities as they come up, I block individuals as they post, but it's never ending.

Every popular post is over-run with tankies shitposting, grinding real conversation to a halt.

They're not people open to having a conversation in good faith. They're ChapoTrapHouse shitposters who got kicked off reddit for being pro-violence shitposters.

Their Moderation Policy is incompatible with ours, as they allow hate speech as long as it's directed towards the "right" people.

A first timer looking would see 90% tankie crap and would leave and not come back.

I've contributed less since they were joined simply because I don't want a herd of tankies yelling at me with nobody else even reading it.

Until such a time that I, as a user, can bock everything from a server I support defederation. Or at the very least put a giant poop emoji next to everything from that server so it's easier to skip. They seem to like poop.

My view is that this federation of theirs is just sketchy. Their announcement post reads as some barely veiled call to propagandize the Fediverse, and the instance itself seems almost proud in a way to have developed their particular methods in their isolation. Though from what I've seen, those methods are mostly just whataboutism and "just asking questions", not anything particularly novel.

If there was much content or interaction from them that was just neutral, it'd be much easier to swallow, but everything they post or comment always seems be a dog whistle at minimum. And maybe I'm just not noticing all the users not doing that, but the ones I do notice are all over.

All in all, I'd be more in favor of defederation. I've seen enough of this from the right already to have an idea of where this is going, and barring a larger effort from the instance to change, would rather it just got nipped in the bud.

as a lemmy.world user, I can’t tell you all enough about how much our quality of life has improved since we defederated form hexbear.net. far less moderation is necessary and general browsing is far more pleasant not having to constantly be bombarded by those awful stickers and brigades of trolls with their endless baiting and attacks.

why should users and mods be constantly burdened day I and day out with users from an instance whose entire ethos is that of shitposting trolls? if lemm.ee is supposed to be a nice place, why would you intentionally let in a group of people you know have zero intention of comporting to your expected code of conduct and have a well-established pattern of behavior that’s hostile, combative, and toxic towards a large portion of your user base?

yes, defederation is a last-resort option, but what other choices do you have when current user and mod options simply aren’t sufficient? defederation isn’t permanent, and if, by some miracle, hexbear users suddenly become well-behaved, lemm.ee can always re-federate with them. if they weren’t the titanic problem they genuinely are, several other instances wouldn’t also be currently discussing defederation in addition to those which already have.

I’m reminded of an old post I once saw about a bartender who kicks out any Nazi who enters his bar, even if they're well-mannered and isn’t bothering other patrons. Even though they may be polite and bothering nobody, eventually, they come back with a friend, then another, then then 10 others, and then BOOM, you’e a Nazi bar.

Don’t make lemm.ee a toxic, hostile, toll-filled hexbear bar. keep it nice. keep it safe. ❤️

I'm firmly in the "tone it down" camp on Hexbear (especially on other instances) and I appreciate people's patience and I'm glad that some people have gotten past our rough exterior. I'm hoping things will quiet down and stabilize before we burn our bridges. I'm glad to hear that your experience with our mods was positive and that you're focusing more on that, over the years I've come to trust our mods and I believe they're committed to making this work.

As has already been mentioned and acknowledged, clarification on Kremlin propaganda would be appreciated. I agree with removing false information, but I'm of the belief that it's important to understand the positions and perspective of every nation, especially those considered enemies, for the sake of peace. I do not trust any source from any state implicitly, but rather I believe in gathering information from a variety of sources and critically examining each. I grew up in a "post 9/11 world" and in that context, any attempt to understand the motivations or historical context behind that event, beyond "They hate us for our freedom," was treated with suspicion, along with all sorts of lies about Muslims in general. Since then, I don't go along with hating who I'm told to hate, at least until I feel I've investigated the matter fully. To that end, I think there is value in listening critically to state-affiliated sources, from every side.

I look forward to having productive discussions in the future.

I really have no problem with communist or leftist views, but some of those guys need to take a chill pill. I'm cool with bashing the fash and social welfare programs, I'm not cool with basically talking about how everyone to the right of Stalin needs to die or how Tianenmen Square was a wholesale fabrication by the west. I typically just roll my eyes, block the bullshit and move on with life, but it's been really dragging down my lemmy experience.

I'm a fan of hexbear and like being a lemm.ee user. Hopefully things work out.

For anyone keeping count, I've switched to my lemmy.world account (which has defederated from Hexbear) and the comments on this thread are at 209. When I logged out of my Lemm.ee account there were over 800, so that means roughly 600 of the comments on a meta thread for the lemme.ee instance are from Hexbear users, or in threads started by them.

Edited to remove some slightly frustrated and possibly less than civil comments.

Well written. We’re luck to have you.

Banning state propaganda is great, but why limit that ban to Kremlin propaganda? US propaganda is just as, if not more, prevelent and toxic. The narrative surrounding the destruction of the Nord Stream is a good example:

American corporate media and government officials were calling for its destruction and outright threatening to blow it up for months prior to the actual attack. Immediately after its destruction, the corporate news outlets and government officials that had been calling for that very action acted as though they had never done so and presented a unified front that blamed Russia for the attack. Doing some critical thinking and realizing that Russia had neither the opportunity nor the motive to blow up their own pipeline is not Kremlin propaganda. Continuing that critical thinking and realizing that the US had both motive and opportunity, and was a likely culprit because they had repeatedly threatened to blow up the pipeline is not Kremlin propaganda. Shutting down all discussion critical of the US by dismissing it as Russian bots is US propaganda.

Many users (including hexbear users) correctly (and politely) pointed out to me in DMs that the symbol has a much broader use than just as the symbol of the USSR, and people elsewhere in the world may not associate it with the USSR at all

imagine i vandalize jewish graveyard, put swastikas all over the place and my defense is "man, swastikas were used all around the word through history, they don't just belong to nazi germany, you know?" is your reaction going to be "well, you raise some interesting points"?

i doubt that.

"argument" like that is just an asshole trying to obfuscate the facts and delay the consequences of their own action, it is classic propaganda method.

Hexbear admin response After the above events had played out, I reached out to hexbear admins for clarification on their moderation policies and how they handle such cases. I was actually very happy with their response:

do you feel that response is actually going to change something and it is sincere, not just an effort to obfuscate the reality in the line with what i said above?

or is it like this?

the comrade below actually suggests that there is a time and place for such rhetoric, it is just not right here, right now. you have to think politically and wait for our moment, comrade!

i generally agree with your liberal approach to federation, unfortunately sometimes the reality forces you to take some pragmatic steps and i don't think anyone would blame you if you took the easy solution, you are not obligated to dig through pile of shit.

i am also not a fan of pseudoliberalism in the style of "just let everyone make their own decision". it is like saying we don't need police, lets just let everyone to deal with the world themselves. it is obvious nonsense, most people just want to go about their business and they appreciate the fact there is relatively safe environment behind their apartment door.

Please don't defederate unless moderation becomes impossible. People should curate what they want to see on their own. Part of why I joined lemm.ee was that the content is not pre-curated, but I have a wide selection to choose from myself.

First of all I would like to offer my support to Sunaurus for this post. I thank him for raising this issue to our instance and for continuing to be discussion led and transparent. I also ask that we discuss this so we are best informed on the Hexbear subject.

I also agree what Sunaurus is saying but would add;

We try to encourage people to engage in a healthy way here on Lemm.ee. Also looking throughout the Fediverse which is growing at the moment we look to encourage that same engagement. This will ensure it’s long term success and resilience. I believe that healthy discussion promotes new ideas, innovation and learning. I do not believe that any abuse, victimisation, harassment or active discrimination has a place.

In the recent days I have seen increased reports coming from content or comments made by Hexbear users. However from what I am seeing although there is a lot, mostly they do not cross the line for significant action although a minority do. So at this time from what I have seen Defederation is not obvious a decision to me. I am expecting the behaviour and style of comments to calm once the excitement of Federating passes. I am also encouraged by the positive steps of the Hexbear admins.

Sorry for interloping as a new lemmy.ml user -- I wanted to share my perspective because I was one of the very early adopters of hexbear (then called chapo.chat) after the ChapoTrapHouse subreddit got banned. I no longer have an account there because despite the mods best efforts to uphold "left unity", I at best felt tolerated as an anarchist and just stopped browsing eventually. The reddit strike coinciding with hexbear federating convinced me to create a lemmy account to maybe reconnect with some of the communities there.

The great strength of the old subreddit was that it was a safe haven for leftists of all flavors, practically the first of its kind as comparable places like /r/DankLeft did not exist yet. After a few years of relative isolation, I think it's fair to say that hexbear has become more staunchly ideological (and I'm sure some would say for better) and at least to me it lost some of its more broad appeal. My hope for federation was to see some of the more calcified beliefs over there shaken up a bit with an influx of new users. I guess it's also fair to say that that hasn't happened yet, but it's only been a few days so far.

My hope is still twofold: for Lemmy as a whole, I think it's good that there is a strong leftist presence somewhere to avoid the complete flattening of opinion one can experience on, say, /r/worldnews or /r/politics. I'd hope to see more voices that are critical for example of US hegemony, the two-party system and capital as a whole compared to reddit. And for hexbear I still hope that they can reclaim some of their former big tent appeal, they have always advertised themselves as welcoming to everyone broadly on the left and despite my many criticisms, I do think the mods there do indeed stand by that. These hopes may all be a bit naïve, but I do believe defederating from the biggest leftist instance that (at least in theory) is non-sectarian will only lead to more calcified beliefs on both sides. A lot of that is also for hexbear to decide though, they will have to choose what role they want to play in the fediverse.

I think we need to stay federated. This is not a kindergarten and people can chose what to read and what not.

If we start de-federating every time someone gets offended and set precedent, we will end up de-federating from everything eventually because guess what: there is always someone getting offended for whatever reason. This is internet, grow up.

The neutral stance is the main reason I joined this instance. The moment this changes - I am out.

Good, I like having them around. They give the fediverse the spice of life that prevents it from becoming just another necrotic pool of internet backwash filled with stale memes and pandering comments like what late Digg became and what reddit has been turning into.

Hexbear user here so I've no say in whether you defed or not.

Just wanted to say, I appreciate how level headed you've been in this post and with defederation as a whole even though your previous interaction with Hexbear users has made you the target of comments that were heated (to say the least).

Defederating from Hexbear would be a hugely disappointing move. They have a lot of insightful posts that I want to see interleaved with my other subscriptions. It would be a true shame to defederate from them because a subset of their users are immature/shitposters (where isn't that the case?). The point of federation was to not require every user to have N separate accounts on every forum. They show up in everyone's feed because they have a lot of users and activity. That's a ~~feature, not a bug~~ success!

I usually enjoy the conversations they create, could do less with the poopy pig but that's not a big deal enough to defederate IMO.