Also having to have “the talk” so they don’t get freaked out when they first see those instances.
I love that you can just interact with people who’ve been brainwashed by different propaganda from yourself on here. It can give you perspective on your own inherent biases, even if they’re not as severe as giving the ML Pass to dictators who are not even vaguely communist.
Blocking hexbear has nothing to do with a difference in ideas. Hexbear gets blocked because it hosts communities of some of the most obnoxious, unrepentant trolls known to the internet. Lemmygrad and .ml get blocked because said trolls made alts when instances got fed up and defederated from hexbear.
It’s like the Khmer Rouge’s version of 2004s era /b/. There is nothing to be gained from interacting with those people.
100% agree. I really bought into decentralized networks and first got on the fediverse fifteen years ago (diaspora network), but I did not forsee how absurdly stupid instance drama would get. I haven't posted on hexbear comms with my ml account for a year or two now because it's so emotionally draining to post what you think is a crystal-clear joke and people default to bad-faith.
Most newcomers will not know where to start with picking an instance and this shit will absolutely drive away people who would fit in fine. Several big instances will not be open to that idea (hiding each poster's instance) but we could definitely do that on our end.
edit: Actually we essentially can't because only hexbear having mandatory pronouns means 99% of posters from outside instances will be immediately identified as such :/