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 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 !transenby_liberation@hexbear.net, 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:
@JohnBrownsBussy2@hexbear.net 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.”
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.
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.
overly concerned with civility or respectability
I for one do not mind admins that are concerned with civility or respectability. Forums should be about talking to people and I will always prefer to talk to people with civility and respect.
not from blahaj, but considering your concerns about federating with illegal content i feel like its important to note that calling for violence against or deaths of people or groups of people is illegal in large parts of the world, especially those that federation users will be from
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.
Primarily deflection and shitposting. I see exactly ONE comment in praise of the new rules.
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.
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.
Honestly that just seems like people reading too much into things
That’s what this whole thing has been, beginning to end. Sometimes deliberately so.
It’s not ok to wish death on people. It is ok to wish for the downfall of oppressive organisations. Some people believe the latter is only achievable through the former, and use “motte and bailey” ambiguity to say the latter but mean the former.
That line is the point of disagreement, and because I do disagree, people used the often deliberate ambiguity to paint me as ignorant.
The truth is, it doesn’t matter what I said, because that ambiguity (by design) makes it impossible to navigate without meaning getting lost. And because of the nature of hexbear, as soon as I was seen as even implicitly “defending NATO”, it was open season
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.
I wish there were a way to lock threads to the local instance.
Might be worth putting this feature in an automod bot in the long term.
could making a community like Blahaj.meta and only federating with Blajhaj.zone be a workaroud?
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.
Also the “No war but class war” part means they don’t actually support LGBTQ+ people when the chips are down. They will absolutely throw “identity politics” under the bus if it benefits them to do so.
Yeah I’ve already seen one refer to culture war and identity politics as something to abandon in favor of class war as something that “Dems need to do” so I’d say it’s not even a stretch just them needing to receive enough push to say the quiet part out loud.
Of course now that I’m trying to find the comment I’m referencing it looks like it’s been removed as I’ve checked my alts and can’t seem to find it.
Hell I can’t even find the post though that’s not surprising as it was (I think) a US news story in one of the World News communities about a pro LGBTQ+ teacher being forced to flee their state or something.
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?
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.
