791
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by lwadmin@lemmy.world to c/lemmyworld@lemmy.world

Update:
The comments from this post will not be removed as to preserve the discussion around the announcement. Any continued discussions outside of this thread that violate server rules will be removed. We feel that everyone that has an opinion, and wanted to vent, has been heard.

————-

Original post:
Yesterday, we received information about the planned federation by Hexbear. The announcement thread can be found here: https://www.hexbear.net/post/280770. After reviewing the thread and the comments, it became evident that allowing Hexbear to federate would violate our rules.

Our code of conduct and server rules can be found here.

The announcement included several concerning statements, as highlighted below:

  • “Please try to keep the dirtbag lib-dunking to hexbear itself. Do not follow the Chapo Rules of Posting, instead try to engage utilizing informed rhetoric with sources to dismantle western propaganda. Posting the western atrocity propaganda and pig poop balls is hilarious but will pretty quickly get you banned and if enough of us do it defederated.”
  • “The West's role in the world, through organizations such as NATO, the IMF, and the World Bank - among many others - are deeply harmful to the billions of people living both inside and outside of their imperial core.”
  • “These organizations constitute the modern imperial order, with the United States at its heart - we are not fooled by the term "rules-based international order." It is in the Left's interest for these organizations to be demolished. When and how this will occur, and what precisely comes after, is the cause of great debate and discussion on this site, but it is necessary for a better world.”

The rhetoric and goal of Hexbar are clear based on their announcement: to "dismantle western propaganda" and "demolish organizations such as NATO” shows that Hexbar has no intention of "respecting the rules of the community instance in which they are posting/commenting.” It’s to push their beliefs and ideology.

In addition, several comments from a Hexbear admin, demonstrate that instance rules will not be respected.

Here are some examples:

“I can assure you there will be no lemmygrad brigades, that energy would be better funneled into the current war against liberalism on the wider fediverse.”

“All loyal, honest, active and upright Communists must unite to oppose the liberal tendencies shown by certain people among us, and set them on the right path. This is one of the tasks on our ideological front.”

Overall community comments:

To clarify, for those who have inquired about why Hexbear versus Lemmygrad, it should be noted that we are currently exploring the possibility of defederating from Lemmygrad as well based on similar comments Hexbear has made.

Defederation should only be considered as a last resort. However, based on their comments and behavior, no positive outcomes can be expected.

We made the decision to preemptively defederate from Hexbear for these reasons. While we understand that not everyone may agree with our decision, we believe it is important to prioritize the best interests of our community.

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[-] regalia@literature.cafe 23 points 1 year ago

Oooh let the spicy fedi instance drama begin. The best part of decentralization!

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[-] Fizz@lemmy.nz 23 points 1 year ago

People are way too quick to defederate. Let the users use the platform and ban them if they break rules. Arguing isn't against the rules as far as I'm aware as long as it's in the right threads. You think this is going to keep users out? No its just going to drive then to another instance

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[-] forked_bytes@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago

Your bias is showing. Why is dismantling western propaganda a bad thing?

Defederation should only be considered as a last resort.

Clearly you are not following your own advice here.

The whole reason I joined lemmy.world is that it was a general instance that federated with lemmygrad. Oh well, enjoy your liberal echo chamber as it devolves into reddit-level groupthink and "fuck china" spam.

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[-] dottedgreenline@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago

I guess lemmy.world really is like reddit.

[-] Dankry@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This makes me feel pretty good about my decision to choose lemmy.world as my first instance. There is zero reason to believe Hexbear users will engage in good faith, in fact, the evidence presented in this statement clearly illustrates that they intend to troll and generally derail discussions. Preemptive defederation in this case is the prudent move. Keep up the good work, Admins.

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[-] Metal_Zealot@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago

Oh boy, less than 1 month here and my first lemmy-verse drama.

Only thing different is, anyone that doesn't agree with it can literally just.... Fuck off to wherever they want

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[-] markr@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

Ok. It’s been nice. I’ll find a new instance.

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[-] taiyang@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

I read this mostly like "they seem like a bunch of assholes so we're defederating so we don't have to interact with a bunch of assholes". Cause the folks on Hexbear seem intense compared to lemmygrad, etc. I know it's really the anti-NATO stuff, but eh.

I don't like not getting content though, so I'm really not in favor of this move. But I'm also an ex-redditor who liked to lurk communities I don't agree with since it's not like the comments are going to jump out and get you. (Of course, as an American I think I get hit by more far right than far left, though they agree on some of the weirdest conspiracy shit sometimes).

Also it's not like I can't have multiple accounts across the fediverse, lol.

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[-] nils@feddit.de 20 points 1 year ago

I appreciate the thought that went into this decision and I think this is an example of defederating being a good idea.

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[-] zouhair@lemmy.ca 20 points 1 year ago

“The West’s role in the world, through organizations such as NATO, the IMF, and the World Bank - among many others - are deeply harmful to the billions of people living both inside and outside of their imperial core.”

“These organizations constitute the modern imperial order, with the United States at its heart - we are not fooled by the term “rules-based international order.” It is in the Left’s interest for these organizations to be demolished. When and how this will occur, and what precisely comes after, is the cause of great debate and discussion on this site, but it is necessary for a better world.”

Well these are totally true and the decision quite disappointing.

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[-] maegul@lemmy.ml 20 points 1 year ago

Not a lemmy.world user, so just sharing my thoughts/ideas on this at a general level

  1. Mutual Respect Pacts

Could instances not federate by agreeing to moderate their own users that breach the other instance's CoCs/rules? For example. Lemmy.world finds a hexbear user to have breached lemmy.world rules. Temporarily bans them from the community and reports it to hexbear. Hexbear are expected to act against this user (either with a warning, temporary ban etc). And of course vice versa. Obviously, should the situation become unworkable, more drastic action can take place, but it seems like a reasonable approach to trying to retain federation between groups that might not see eye to eye but want to work out a way to remain civil with each other. 2. Foyers for engagement


Some here seem to have problems with the loss of lemmy.world's apparent "neutrality" in defederating from hexbear. However one feels about lemmy.world ... having a space in which ideologically opposed people can engage in civil and well moderated interaction is still valuable. Maybe an instance dedicated to politically/ideologically diverse/broad federation but strict civility requirements would be valuable. A kind of foyer or public square in which you can seek out diverse and controversial opinions. Lemmy.world doesn't need to be that for it to exist on the fediverse. And such a space living on a dedicated instance with its own approach to (de-)federation would probably make sense. 3. Community management as a user


While defederation is part of life on the fediverse, the management of communities as a user does get somewhat more complex with more fracturing. The platform can probably help, with user defined multi-communities and sorting algorithms that surface posts from smaller communities. 4. Self hosting


Self hosting is the direct way to opt-out of another person's admin choices. Spacehost is providing managed hosting for lemmy (and soon many other fediverse platforms) (see also the core dev's mastodon account). Generally, IMO, single-user entities will make more sense over time on the fediverse. Of course, if you have the skills, you can just do it yourself.

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[-] ExtremeSoup@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Loving all the hexbear alt-accounts in the comments here ❤

Btw, if people didnt understand this. I AM being ironical...

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[-] Angry_Maple@sh.itjust.works 20 points 1 year ago

These comments are wild. At the end of the day, if we really dislike the actions of our instance, we can just change to a different one, or self host. Does it suck? Yes.

I don't think I can reasonably expect someone else to tailor their own instance that they created and paid for to my specific interests. A previous instance wasn't to my liking, so I just made a new account somewhere else. Isn't that supposed to be the whole point?

"If everyone defederates with everyone there will be no content". Well, it's a good thing that it's not everyone defederating with everyone.

I think that maybe the people who are really upset about defederating should try to host their own instances and act as admins for those instances. I totally understand wanting to do your own thing with the amount of time and effort that stuff requires.

Personally? I'm still pleasantly suprised/happy that so many people have created instances that they opened to the world. I also feel lucky that people are putting in a lot of effort to make places that anyone -even complete strangers- could join. I'm happy that there are a wide variety of instances.

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[-] gabe@literature.cafe 18 points 1 year ago

I think it's important to make note of the fact that they were banned on Reddit for good reason. As a community, they have always been toxic and would consistently brigade and harass other communities on Reddit that even remotely disagreed with them on anything. There was a consistent issue in Jewish focused Reddit subs with users of theirs starting fights about Zionism on random Jewish posts and generally harassing to random people that would be remotely critical of communism. They would behave in a similar way to how exploding-heads did prior to being mass defederated, specifically going into threads and brigading/downvoting and attempting to sway discussions in their favor in bad faith.

[-] ImOnADiet@lemmygrad.ml 24 points 1 year ago

wtf, they banned them for the John Brown posting, not brigading. Also CTH was full of bernie bros, are you thinking of MoretankieChapo?

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this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
791 points (80.4% liked)

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