this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2025
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MeanwhileOnGrad

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"Oh, this is calamity! Calamity! Oh no, he's on the floor!"

Welcome to MoG!


Meanwhile On Grad


Documenting hate speech, conspiracy theories, apologia/revisionism, and general tankie behaviour across the fediverse. Memes are welcome!


What is a Tankie?


Alternatively, a detailed blog post about Tankies.

(caution of biased source)


Basic Rules:

Sh.itjust.works Instance rules apply! If you are from other instances, please be mindful of the rules. — Basically, don't be a dick.

Hate-Speech — You should be familiar with this one already; practically all instances have the same rules on hate speech.

Apologia(Using the Modern terminology for Apologia) No Defending, Denying, Justifying, Bolstering, or Differentiating authoritarian acts or endeavours, whether be a Pro-CCP viewpoint, Stalinism, Islamic Terrorism or any variation of Tankie Ideology.

Revisionism — No downplaying or denying atrocities past and present. Calling Tankies shills, foreign/federal agents, or bots also falls under this rule. Extremists exist. They are real. Do not call them shills or fake users as it handwaves their extremism.

Tankies can explain their views but may be criticised or attacked for them. Any slight infraction on the rules above will immediately earn a warning and possibly a ban.

Off-topic Discussion — Do not discuss unrelated topics to the point of derailing the thread. Stay focused on the direct content of the post as opposed to arguing.

You'll be warned if you're violating the instance and community rules. Continuing poor behaviour after being warned will result in a ban or removal of your comments. Bans typically only last 24 hours, but each subsequent infraction will double the amount. Depending on the content, the ban time may be increased. You may request an unban at any time.


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Excuse me while I go donate even more money to PieFed

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[–] rimu@piefed.social 221 points 3 days ago (14 children)

PieFed dev here.

The screenshotted post is very misleading. As you'd expect from a hexbearian. It is not a baked-in ban.

Hexbear is mentioned in the PieFed source code, as an initial default value for the defederation list. That list is quite long and includes various instances that have been a source of trolls, CSAM and spam in the past (mostly Mastodon instances). As part of the normal setup process it is assumed that instance admins will review that list and alter it as they see fit. They can change it any time by going to instance.tld/admin/federation.

Do not take anything a hexbearian says at face value.

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 55 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

That's exactly what this is, an initial defed list. Even the way they present this is disingenous as fuck, calling it a "one way federation, silencing our voices" or some other weird phrasing, making it sound like some underhanded/hidden hardcoded piece just for them, when it's just a boring-ass defederation with one instance among many others. How difficult is it to say "piefed software defederates hexbear by default"? Everyone knows what that fucking means!

I honestly don't understand why everything has to be taken so goddamn uncharitably by the regulars on that instance. It blows my mind how they manage to always act in bad faith. Always.

[–] nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org 25 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I honestly don't understand why everything has to be taken so goddamn uncharitably by the regulars on that instance. It blows my mind how they manage to always act in bad faith. Always.

It's pretty straightforward, imo, they built a feedback loop into their instance culture that encouraged social dopamine junkies to participate in toxic behaviors, valuing things like "dunking", othering, and dehumanizing the out group (non-hexies) over things like factuality, good faith, and not being dicks.

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Thank you for your good work, whats the funding status been like for you lately?

[–] rimu@piefed.social 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The per-user donations for PieFed are half that of Lemmy (and the number of users are 5% of Lemmy). More is always welcome.

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Sent you a little tip. Ever consider setting up a KoFi?

[–] rimu@piefed.social 3 points 1 day ago

Thanks! Will look into KoFi, it seems popular...

[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 10 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this also wouldn't mean "one way federation" right? There would just be no synching at all.

[–] rimu@piefed.social 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'm not sure what they mean by that. But v1.2, to be released very soon, has strengthened the effectiveness of defederation so pretty soon hexbear will see even less PieFed content. They'll twist that into something bad too.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 days ago

They defederated now anyway

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[–] Blaze@lemmy.zip 28 points 3 days ago

Thank you for jumping in.

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[–] ozymandias@lemmy.dbzer0.com 46 points 3 days ago (1 children)

we need a fediverse-wide boycott of hexbear

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 40 points 3 days ago (14 children)
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[–] TheFrirish@jlai.lu 35 points 3 days ago

It's just a default block on grad and hex when creating a new instance which can be toggled off. Keep coming crying with your ALTs Tankies no one wants to deal with your incessant propaganda.

[–] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

I'd say don't block anything at the top and let users filter their own feed as they see fit, except blocking communities is not very effective, in my experience.

More robust filtering and sorting for the user would be welcome. For instance, Reddit Enhancement Suite lets me hover over a name that has an "ignore" button for users, and a "filter" button for subs. That's very user-friendly and effective there. The same here would be a good addition.

I understand that the structure of Fediverse makes this more challenging.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago

There is no real top, though. If you really want to see hexbear, you can move off world to some other place they're not blocked (most other servers than lemmy.world) . I was on .world from the api rexit and hexbear trolling was hitting world pretty damned hard when they banned them. I feel the general consensus back then was for the love of god yes, block them.

I'm on zip now and have honestly had more bad experiences locally with .world trolls than hexbear people. But based on how bad they were being, I can't say they didn't bring it on themselves back then.

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 3 points 1 day ago

You can see which instances are blocked by your instance here (go to the Blocked Instances tab).

Looking at some on mine, I'm glad there's a default block list. I'm not even going to visit them with names like that. I'm not going on a nonce watchlist.

[–] Ofiuco@piefed.ca 10 points 2 days ago (10 children)

Piefed, what you are describing is Piefed.
Make the jump, it's honestly the best move you can do, having a working block/filter system does wonders for your experience.

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[–] ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com 42 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (25 children)

Not sure I dig baking it into the code, that starts walking into the broken by design space. Feasibly the tankies developing Lemmy could do the same to any instance not painted the right shade of red.

I might propose instead a step in setup, or on demand, to select major instances to allow/deny federation from with a description of them. Impossible to keep a list of every new instance up to date, but catching the major hubs shouldn't be impossible.

Edit: For all those who replied along the lines of it being optional not a hard coded block, point noted. I should expect no less misleading a post from a pool of people prone to leaving out vital facts.

My understanding as it being an opt-out default defederation is still a bit grating since I tend to think of software as a neutral tool rather than promoting specific ideals, but it's far better than a fixed in state and does serve some purpose to shield new users from some of the most egregiously bad actors.

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