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.
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.
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.
In this case, it was very much a “bat signal”. They posted about it and linked straight to my post in their “dunk on a lib” community
Ada in another post:
That’s the issue I raised with their admin. The admin deleted the post in question and made changes to stop it happening again.
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.
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.
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?
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.
They’re not “trying to make” anything, Hexbear is one of the oldest and most established Lemmy servers out there. They’ve been around longer than either of our instances.
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.
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?
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?
The users of hexbear just are very bitter that we didn’t adore their aggressive comments on the last post. I really just have a hard time seeing anything good coming of remaining federated.
They just call everyone who doesn’t like their behavior a whiny liberal.
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.
Do you really think they identify as authoritarians? I’m guessing from their perspective, it is often a matter of a lesser of two evils question or trying to separate and acknowledge the good in some governments in addition to decrying the bad. Many of them are proponents of critical support of existing socialist movements—meaning support plus criticism. It is a practice of empathy and materialism rather than idealistic good vs. evil thinking.
Side note, how is anyone supposed to know what people mean by Russian/Chinese propaganda when US liberals label anything that isn’t on the official US Democratic Party approved list of acceptable thought as Russian/Chinese propaganda?
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 dont think they defederated; i still see hexbear in the linked instances section. You can see it at the bottom of the page in the browser if you click the ‘instances’ link.
That’s just my observation, ideology does come into play in some kind of way. What I meant by passing a line(in my POV to note) is just to me it rubs the wrong way to defederate with them upon the principles calling them “tankies”(tho, that’s not as clear) and their behaviour being assholery(that’s a bit justified on the part of the mods if I am being honest, but it could have been handled differently and with open discussion between both the mods and communities of each instance). Other than, it is just how I felt on that part.
I tried my best to explain my view, so if you have any criticism go ahead tell.
