Blahaj Lemmy Meta @lemmy.blahaj.zone Gormadt @lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 yr. ago

We're federated with Hexbear again?

Recently I was browsing some communities I typically hang out in and I started noticing Hexbear accounts being... well their typical selves.

Which made me check which account I was on because I've got a few, and when I noticed I was on my Blahaj account I had to check and it looks like we're federated again?

Why?

49 comments

Hey, sorry about the way this unfolded.

I removed hexbear from the blocklist, as they are defederated from us, and I was unaware that it would mean that hexbear users and blahaj users would be able to interact on 3rd party instances. I'll add them back for now.

Ultimately, the reason I removed them from the list now is that once we have the ability to let users block instances on a per user level, I am open to the idea of refederating with hexbear, because I am aware that many of their trans and gender diverse users want the ability to connect with our trans communities, and trans solidarity is something that I hold to be very important. Enough that I am willing to give this all another go.

However, it was only meant to happen after blahaj users had the option to opt out of interacting with hexbear users, and after I had made an announcement letting people know it was coming. I apologise for the screw up leading to a mini refederation before I gave people a heads up and before the tools were in place to let people choose whether they engage with hexbear users.
- I will warn you right now: regardless of their claims to be LGBTQ+ inclusive, they mercilessly harass users and fracture communities. I have left a couple other instances over their federation with them because of the constant harassment for any kind of perceived slight (I was accosted because they thought I had implied something about autistic folks? When in fact I was trying to make myself understood as an autistic person!).
  
  You are making a huge mistake with this decision. But, obviously, as a user, I can only wish you well if this is the direction you choose. You will be making so much more work for yourself by doing this and putting a lot of stress on users who did not sign up for what is to come.
  
  Best of luck.
  
  I will warn you right now: regardless of their claims to be LGBTQ+ inclusive, they mercilessly harass users and fracture communities. I have left a couple other instances over their federation with them because of the constant harassment for any kind of perceived slight
  
  I am not saying we will stay federated and that's the end of it. What I'm saying is that with the goal of trans solidarity, and more refined blocking tools, I'm willing to give it another try.
  
  If it ends up causing more harm than benefit, then we'll shut the doors again.
  
  I am very keen to try and make this work, but if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.
  
  constant harassment for any kind of perceived slight (I was accosted because they thought I had implied something about autistic folks?
  
  I have very similar experiences. My impression is that the goal is stirring shit and making trouble and “owning libs”. They use traditional leftist topics to do it, but that’s the means, not the end.
- It should be noted that Lemmy's blocking function is more for "things you don't want to see" and is next to useless for users that are actually harmful because it does not restrict access to the person it is used on, it only hides their content from you (great for people who you "disagree with" but insufficient for legitimately/objectively harmful users).
  
  Instances like Hexbear post large amounts of spam and spread objectively harmful ideology and misinformation. They aren't merely "things you don't want to see". Their defederation should be done to maintain the health and safety of the instance due to the severity of some of their offenses.
Jesus Christ. Fuck Tankies. Defedefate. We never wanted them back.
I didn’t realize either until I wandered into one of their posts. I am newer to lemme and I thought the general vibe was "leftist=good, atrocities=bad" but these dudes were all about Russia being good dudes and Ukraine being bad. I asked what was up with that and everyone shit on me. I even got some NK style propaganda thrown at me. Apparently NK is a lovely place to live and they are just being sanctioned to death bc they resist American imperialism.

It really threw me for a loop. I spent some time trying to figure out wtf a hexbear is. The general consensus is that they’re tankies and that’s bad.
- They're tankies. That is, they're auth facists with a leftist mask slightly obscuring their face.
- What is beyond me is the why. A really sad existence maybe? But somehow I fear it is much more planned and organised with a really sinister motif obscured in the background? I decided to not waste anymore energy though and go someplace where I can just block them and forget about it.
  
  I think the real problem is more simple, there is no trust in the media anymore, and for good reason, and as a result, peoples beliefs are guided less and less by facts and more by their own confirmation biases.
  
  And this is a problem on both sides of every political issue these days, I don't trust any sources anymore, I live in the US and the only way I know china and NK are evil is because they are authoritarian, so they are bad by default, the history of the US is so bad that I obviously can't trust western media, some might not realize eastern media is just as bad after hearing european atrocities.
Kbin would be great without them. They really do spoil it for me and for some obscure reason you can't block anything hexbear. I really can't understand why we're federated.
- We were defederated from them months ago but for some reason we appear to be federated with them again
  
  There didn't look to be any announcement or anything in this community here on Blahaj about it so that's why I made the post
- hexbear has a deal with the lemmy developers to prevent users from avoiding their content
  
  Wouldn't surprise me given the overlap in their... let's call it thinking. Still, there's nothing to suggest that e.g. Ernest from kbin is a tankie dipshit, so it's still weird we also have to deal with it.
  
  Instance blocking, in the absence of people doing their job, needs to arrive last month.
  
  No way lmao, how though?
  
  Permanently Deleted
- You can block an entire domain, but the functionality is currently broken. It will hide entire comment sections from you if you do it.
  
  However, based on recent posts at /m/kbinmeta it sounds like updates should start rolling out before too much longer, and I expect that will eventually be one of the the things that gets fixed.
  
  That is good news indeed.
If I remember correctly, we didn't defederate from them. They came, they threw shit around, and they defederated soon after for a bonus superiority boner. So hexbear is defederated from us, but we are not from them.
- No we did defed them
- After they left we made it mutual to prevent exactly this situation we’re in now.
User level instance blocks when

I keep blocking hexbear shit but there's always more
- The problem with instance block on a user basis is that points still get federated over
  
  So even if you block the instance then the community can still be influenced by the other community without you ever seeing their accounts
  
  Hexbear has downvotes disabled, so unless you are concerned about their rogue upvotes you will be ok.
  
  Maybe that's a problem but personally I disable vote scores and read all the comments anyway so I don't care that much what people vote. I don't think my instance is going to defederate hexbear so I'm looking forward to it.
  
  @Gormadt depends where you are. Kbin doesn't federate downvotes, for example.
- You still get inundated by “akshually this is about status imperialism” posts on every thread.
Semi related daily reminder that blahaj defederated from lemmynsfw because they asked for the closure of /c/adorableporn claiming it was CSAM, and they refused 😐

I moved to iusearchlinux.fyi to be re-federated with everyone and honestly even the tankies, 99% of what reaches the front page is pretty bearable and you guys miss out on mostly good posts. I saw some guardian articles about palestine civilian deaths today for example and realized it was in the lemmygrad worldnews only when I scrolled past it a second time
- For point #1 - good riddance. That kind of porn is super creepy regardless of whether or not it is true CSAM.
  
  For point #2 - I might just be getting old, but I don't have time to wade through a "bearable" feed when I can get all the best posts through someone else's hard work. I am glad to have mods that reflect my approximate values and defederate where reasonable.
  
  I will appreciate when people like you repost/link the rare piece of good content that I miss out on though. I welcome views counter to my own, if well thought out or sanely provocative, but sometimes you gotta filter out trolls and creeps.
  
  I can say that I feel comfortable recommending my instance to people I meet IRL, and that counts for a lot with me.
  
  It does make the site harder to navigate for new users and I wish the defederation had alternatives like an instance default blocklist.
- I moved to iusearchlinux.fyi to be re-federated with everyone
  
  Good. Everyone wins. Now let’s re-defederate PRONTO.
  
  Just join a different instance
- Me, omw to register iusearchlinuxtesting.fyi
While we're at it can we please defed from sh.itjust.works? I swear more users have been 4chan levels of mask on fascist troll than any other instance
- sh.itjust.works
  
  Danke
- Erm, I'm not buuut yeah there's a lot of shit there. The most popular community there is gym memes :-/
Ada is a wonderful person, easily top 5 lemmy admins
@Ada can we please defederate from Hexbear fully?

Or perhaps can you comment on why we're federated again?
Sounds like someone wanted to spook y'all for Halloween 👻👻.

Also, I don't see shit from blahaj on my hexbear account so idk what's going on with this.
- I’m guessing we pull from them but they don’t pull from us. Which is kinda the worst both worlds.
  
  Oh yeah, they defederated us too! That’s why it’s so janked
So @Ada, is something being done about this or what?
Hope this is actually a Halloween joke yea.

Someone makes a post about Hexbear and instantly all of the familiar faces are here telling ua the same lies as always 🤠 Second thought just got removed from Nebula for saying he was glad for Israeli deaths. Never forget what Hexbear is.
- The spectre of hexbear hangs over blahaj
How did you see this?
- By going to here
  
  There's a link on (I believe) every instance's desktop site that leads to a list of all instances they're federated with
  
  Only reason I even went there was because I started seeing Hexbear comments on other threads again and I was curious as to why
Funny, I can see comments on hexbear user profiles that are off-hexbear. And I can see Hexbear communities and posts. But those posts don’t have any comments at all on them.
[I got a bot to automatically delete all my comments over 1 month old so you can’t see this comment anymore]

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