This is an admin post, intended for blahaj lemmy users. Top level posts from members of other instances will be removed.
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Edit - Hexbear announced plans to deferedate from us.
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After recent events, it feels to me that sentiment has shifted and more people are asking for defederation of hexbear than previously
I've been doing my best to try and mend bridges and keep us connected, as it's my hope that we can maintain trans solidarity and work with them, despite the friction, however, ultimately, I feel that this is an issue for the blahaj lemmy community to decide, not the admins alone
So here's what we're going to do
We're going to leave things as they are for a week. That will give time for things to calm down whilst we see if we can work together. After a week, I'll put up a vote and get a feel for where the community is at in regards to our continued federation with hexbear. That poll will run for a week. If there is a strong will to defederate (a clear majority), then that's what we will do
I honestly think the hate toward hexbear is mostly manufactured. A lot of the people complaining are the same ones erroneously comparing them to places like exploding heads, claiming they're nazi trolls, that they go on downvoting raids (they can't even downvote btw), accusing them of terrible things, but then don't (or won't) provide any proof of them acting this way. And when people like me who aren't on hexbear question it, we get accused of being a "hexbear in disguise" and ignored. It all feels very dramatic and reddit, and I thought the point of lemmy was to not be like reddit. Defederating from problematic instances I get, but defederating because you hate tankies or because of a few bad members seems more of an 'echo chamber' choice than a 'keep the community safe' choice to me.
Have you really not seen any threads on stuff like Russia's war? There's liberal literal defense of genocide coming from there. They swarm threads, in a way that looks somewhat coordinated.
Defederating them doesn't create an echo chamber. Keeping them around is giving them permission to build their own echo chamber in your spaces by chasing away everybody else who want a chill space to hang out in.
This exactly! In posts about defederating, they're commenting like war documents and saying that if you live in the US you're in support of them commiting genocide. And the amount of comments I've seen with nearly identical wording about how Cuba is the most LGBTQ+ friendly country in the world.
Like ok, yeah, the US is a horrible country that's committed war crimes, and maybe Cuba is LGBTQ+ friendly, I don't really know, but that has absolutely nothing to do with defederating from an internet forum. They have a very holier than thou vibe.
Have I seen individuals say shitty things? Of course, but I don't assume every person on hexbear is an enemy. For instance, over on lemm.ee I just had a convo with someone who was vehemently pro-landlord and hated "communism" while admitting they've never read any communist literature. Should I assume this is what everyone on lemm.ee is like? I've run across a TON of trolls and anti-leftists on lemmy.world... should I assume everyone on lemmy.world is a troll? Lemmynsfw is constantly throwing up communities that somehow bypass the nsfw filters. Should I make assumptions about everyone on lemmynsfw too now? That is a slippery slope into an echo chamber imho.
Give users the ability to block whole instances, and only defederate when a WHOLE instance is geared towards disruption, like explodingheads. I wandered around hexbear yesterday looking through their communites and posts, and there's definitely some opinions I don't agree with, but I'm not seeing calls to flood posts on other instances like people are claiming. All I'm seeing is a lot of in-jokes, memes, and civil discussions.
It's not just singular anecdotes. It's the proportion of users who are like that. A huge fraction of the activity from that server is specifically this type of horrible replies, and their admins aren't doing anything about it. They absolutely flood many threads with trash and make many conversations entirely unreadable. At that point when you do nothing about filtering out that trash then you're inviting them to hijack your community.
Show me where "a huge fraction" of them are doing that NOT IN RESPONSE to people badmouthing them and accusing them of shit, but for no reason. Show me these hijacked communities you keep mentioning. Show me these many conversations that are "entirely unreadable". Show me anti-trans rhetoric that isn't swiftly dealt with by their admins.
Defederating isn't the answer, giving individuals the ability to block whole instances on every platform they use is the answer.
Everyone of them defend Russian war crimes, pretend Russia is not the aggressor, and pretend self defense is deeply immoral, they pretend Russia's provocation propaganda is valid to give their hatered false moral cover.
These people are not your allies.
These are amoral opportunistic assholes using the same kind of logic as trumpists to justify hate against their own approved targets.
You fundamentally can not trust people who support hatred against all members of an entire group based on reasons which do not define the whole group (because that's literally prejudice), like in their case defending torture of the people because they don't like who the people's government is associated with.
They aren't speaking out against specific bad behavior. They're not targeting individuals who are doing bad things. They're targeting entire groups based on nationality with guilt by association logic.
I repeat, these people are not your allies. If they think it's acceptable to attack them and defend violence against them, knowingly using fabricated evidence to support their hate, then they can turn against you too. And they will turn against you whenever that becomes more convenient to them than trying to get your support.
I'm pretty sure most of them also aren't part of the minorities they claim, just like the astroturfing by the trump campaign.
They swarm threads, in a way that looks somewhat coordinated.
They are not subtle. If you check their post history you can see the communities where they coordinate.
Now, I get pointing terrible posts and laughing at them. I’m ex-SRS. But you gotta show some restraint when you post in the threads or people will end up hating your guts.
Then what was your point?? Cause it sounded like you're implying that hexbears don't have the right to vote on comments. And if that's what you meant, thats kinda messed up honestly.
It's the top comment on a post where users from other instances are not allowed to make top comment posts, the OP specified the thread was for Blahaj users specifically, so I think that's relevant information to put up front