My thoughts on Hexbear. Posting as the megathread was locked.

An album to outline a few comments I have received within the past 3 days: (content warning: extremely toxic and sour comments, genocide denial)
https://imgur.com/a/d63ohQM
(yes, I cherry picked the ones that are either rude or in denial of genocide. I had to, or else the list would have gotten too long. If you want to see the entirety of their replies, you should check out my comment history and click on each link to see their replies.)

TL;DR: Hexbears deny the genocide against Uyghurs in China. They laugh at and dismiss the idea that China is a dictatorship. Having those opinions is fine, but they personally insult the people with whom they don't agree using annoying emojis and terms like troll, shit, shithead, Nazi apologist, colonial comprador, freak, rabid imperialist westerners, condescending dickbag, disingenuous idiot, unimaginative impotent weasel, losers, etc. They say that other people's claims are rooted in dishonest bullshit. One of them even said, "nothing you say has any value, and you deserve no regard." I would say about 33% of them are overly pugnacious and feed on the misery of others. Federating with them brings us more trouble than benefits. The sheer number of other instances that chose to block them is more than enough to prove this.

As the recent discussion about Hexbear unfold and with the megathread locked, I figured I should make a post detailing my experience I've had recently with Hexbears and why I believe that defederation from them is better for lemm.ee.

Denial of the persecution of Uyghurs in China

Many Hexbears (see the linked album for screenshots of their comments) reject the idea that there is such an atrocity going on in their ideal country (China). They describe such a claim as preposterous. They say that me "lying about the genocide" is the holocaust denial I'm being accused of. Their excuses are basically always one of the following:

1. Andrian Zenz, a Nazi apologist, claimed that there is. He is a nazi apologist thus his claims must be false. Therefore there is no genocide in Xinjiang. (More on this later.)
2. You can't provide any proof so there must be no genocide. (I can understand not accepting things without proof. I do that often, too. But they are simply not even open to the idea that there might be such a thing happening.)
3. A UN fact finding mission once claimed that there is no such thing happening in Xinjiang. Therefore the persecution must be fabricated.

One person admitted that there are vocational schools (more commonly known as re-education camps) but that their purpose are to lift people out of poverty. They also claimed that the large number of women who use IUDs are due to them becoming more educated and they voluntarily to implant such devices to not be used as slaves by men. Totally not forced by the government. Another user even attacked my claims by saying that my claims are based on "racism."

I believe that their idea that the UN does not support the claims of the oppression in Xinjiang is outdated. I strongly recommend Hexbears read this report (at least the overall assessment on page 43) by The UN human rights office (OHCHR) addressing the human rights concerns in Xinjiang from 2022-08-31: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/2022-08-31/22-08-31-final-assesment.pdf. A quote from its overall assessment, page 43: (emphasis mine)

Serious human rights violations have been committed in XUAR [Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region] in the context of the Government’s application of counter-terrorism and counter-“extremism” strategies. The implementation of these strategies, and associated policies in XUAR has led to interlocking patterns of severe and undue restrictions on a wide range of human rights. These patterns of restrictions are characterized by a discriminatory component, as the underlying acts often directly or indirectly affect Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim communities.

I am looking forward to hearing what explanations Hexbears will come up with to prove that this report by the UN, the UN that you once cited, is fabricated and that China is treating its Uyghurs well.

Enough debate about whether the persecution is true. I don't want this post about Hexbear to devolve into an argument about whether the Uyghurs in China are being oppressed.

Ignorance of the fact that China is a dictatorship

Several Hexbears have attacked me for calling China a dictatorship. They label China democratic and willing to listen to the people's voices. They do lots of PR for China. How do they even believe that there is any degree of democracy in a country that regular silences topics on its social network? I have, really, nothing against communism, but I do have a lot against dictatorships, and China is a prime example of a dictatorship. They control what their citizens can see on the Internet, monitor every communication happening through their messaging apps, and often detains, without trial, dissidents who dare to call out the government for its wrongdoings. It's literally 1984. (I actually have read that book, and I am using this phrase in a non-ironic manner.) Yet Hexbears are completely unwilling to accept this fact solely because China happens to fit into the socialist ideal that Hexbears covet.

Ad hominem attacks

Another thing people often dislike about Hexbears is that they often resort to ad hominem attacks when they can't win an argument. Just in the last 3 days, I have heard the following terms thrown at me: troll, shit, shithead, baby brain, Nazi apologist, colonial comprador, freak, nerd, rabid imperialist westerners, condescending dickbag, disingenuous idiot, and unimaginative impotent weasel. They love calling people names.

In addition, one user repeatedly claim that my comments are made "deliberately to start shit." Another said that "my opinions does not deserve to be heard" in response to me saying that my reason for leaving so many comments is just to voice my opinions. One even said, "Nothing you say has any value, and you deserve no regard."

At least 20% of Hexbears are immediately hostile and condescending toward people of different opinions. This behavior is unacceptable, and I'm pretty sure that it breaks almost every Lemmy instance rules ever, as well as Hexbear's Code of Conduct: (emphasis mine)

We will ban you if you insult, demean or harass anyone. That is not welcome behavior.

(I am also certain that this is a violation of two lemm.ee's rules: no abusive language and no bigotry. Just in case you didn't know (because I didn't know either), the definition of "bigot" is "one who is strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ." (emphasis mine))

Nevertheless, I have yet to see mods removing those insults, much less banning anyone. I have reported some of the provocative comments, yet none of them seems to have been removed. It seems like the mods does not really care whether anyone outside Hexbear or those whose ideologies they don't agree with is insulted. I guess that anyone only includes Hexbears. I also invite people to view my comment history to judge whether what I said deserved mistreatment like this. I would say no, but don't take my word for it. Please, do check it out yourself.

To quote our admin @sunaurus@lemm.ee:

Just as we remove bigoted content from lemm.ee, I have also witnessed bigoted content being removed from hexbear.

I don't think that the bigoted content on Hexbear are being removed quickly enough, if at all.

False Nazi apologist labeling

In my recent exchanges with Hexbears, I have also been called a Nazi apologist numerous times. This is a really serious allegation, so serious that I felt the need to give it a section of itself in this post. For what I have been called a Nazi apologist? A quote from one of my comments (note that it was not edited):

[Zenz] is a liar and Nazi sympathiser

I just clicked that link and, wow, that tweet was quite stupid. He should not have said that. What the Nazis did was unexcusable. However, please keep this in mind - that being a Nazi sympathizer does not automatically invalidate one's opinions on other topics.

Basically, what happened was that the post I linked to for the purpose of backing up my claim that there were genocide happening in Xinjiang, happened to heavily cite Andrian Zenz. At the time of writing that comment, I did not know that Zenz was a Nazi sympathizer. After a few hours, some Hexbears pointed it out, and I sent the comment quoted above as my reply. I think I have made it pretty clear that while I condemn Zenz fatuous remarks on Nazis, I still believe that his observations about Xinjiang are not necessarily incorrect. However, numerous Hexbears gripped on to this point and repeatedly attacked and slandered me for defending Nazi apologia or outright claiming that I am a Nazi apologist.

I did not defend Nazi apologia or Nazi apologists. All I did was defend the claim that there is genocide going on in Xinjiang. Yet Hexbears seemed to very much swallowed the disinformation that their fellow comrades were spreading.

"Nazi apologist" is a really serious accusation and should not have been used so rashily by those Hexbears. The fact that they even had the audacity to claim such a thing before reading my original comment is another sign that Hexbears are generally too eager to argue. I strongly condemn their behavior and facetious remarks.

If this doesn't sufficiently prove that a sizable portion of Hexbear is aggressively toxic, I don't know what will. Therefore, I am in full support of defederation from Hexbears. (I was once actually against this (just 10 days ago), but guess what changed my mind?) The admins of Hexbear have shown little to no interest in removing hate speech on their platform. (I believe that they removed the hate speech targeting our admin mostly for show.) Sure, there are some thoughtful users there, but I am afraid that they will have to ask their admins to solve the problem at hand—toxicity toward others. When the admins one day succeed in putting a stop to the burning hate speech there or when Lemmy devs add the feature for blocking entire instances a feature to users (whichever comes first), maybe we can then consider refederation.

If anyone actually read through the entirety of my long ass post, thank you.

Response to the Hexbear Federation Megathread

To our dear admin Sunaurus,

First, I want to thank you for your dedication and effort you have spent on this instance. I appreciate how much you have contributed to the community without expecting much in return.

I have read through the entire post titled Hexbear Federation Megathread (not including the comments obviously). I understand that you want to keep a freer federation policy and do not want to defederate from anyone easily. However, I still believe that the benefits of federating with them does not outweigh the hate speech they bring.

If we judge any larger instance only by bigoted posts that some of its users make, then we might as well declare all instances as cesspools and close down Lemmy completely. I believe it’s far more useful to judge instances based on moderation in response to such content.

I would argue that the percentage of bigoted posts on Hexbear is significantly larger than any Lemmy instance, including lemmygrad.ml. Take these two instances as a comparison. They share pretty much the same ideology, but people on lemmygrad.ml are generally more kind to other people. Let's look at an example. @johndoe@lemm.ee leaves a comment "oh no they are increasing the tax rate? what are they even using my money for?" on some post. The typical lemmygrad.ml response would detail why they are increasing tax rates. The typical hexbear.net response, though, would sharply criticize @johndoe@lemm.ee's comment and use needless, rude questions to point out that of course the government needs more tax.

This is also why defederation from Hexbear would not "result in the flattening of opinions" on news communities, as some have suggested. We still have lemmygrad.ml.

As you too have seen, there were 1906 comments on that megathread before you locked it and deleted some (36) comments. By viewing the same thread on another instance that has defederated from Hexbear, we can know that there are approximately 1400 of those being from Hexbear. Don't you think that this is a bit ridiculous? That a post on lemm.ee has more comments from another instance? You probably locked the thread for the same reason.

As to the Kremlin propaganda, I agree with your concerns about it. In a way, this is just like me worrying about the Chinese propaganda that China is very democratic, so I can fully understand your feelings. They just keep insisting that those countries are fine because they are socialist. If this isn't bigotry, what is?

However you decide to approach this sticky problem with Hexbears, I want you to know that I am very appreciative of your work.

Edit 1: at time of writing a user also posted the following remarks:

Edit 2: some people don't seem to know what "megathread" I was referring to. Here is a link: https://lemm.ee/post/4543536

Edit 3: as I kind of have expected, Hexbear users are casually ignoring the proof they have been asking for the whole time of the persecution toward Uyghurs in Xinjiang. In case anyone missed it in the post, here it is again: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/2022-08-31/22-08-31-final-assesment.pdf.

Edit 4: some Hexbears noticed my proof. And now they are attacking the fact that I am calling it "genocide" but the report did not. You are talking as if you always knew that there were persecution against them in the first place but you chose to turn a blind eye to it.

Edit 5: In reply to Edit 4, I just realized that the group of people who acknowledged the proof I provided did not refute my claims of the persecution in Xinjiang in the first place. Sorry.

Edit 6: At 2023-08-28 14:20 (UTC) an admin decided to lock this post due to the increasing number of reports. In general I am glad about this because this spares me from the hundreds of replies that I probably will get in my inbox tomorrow morning if it were not locked.

Edit 7: As @impiri@lemm.ee pointed out, there was an unpaired parenthesis in my post. I just fixed it. Looking back at that sentence reminds me of Lisp code.

Edit 8: To anyone who didn't know what Hexbear: if you judge them to be not that toxic after reading the comments on this post, please keep in mind that the admins of lemm.ee have removed some of them.

Edit 9: Fixed a grammar error.

Edit 10: Look at Hexbears making fun of 9/11: https://hexbear.net/post/567620