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.”
- https://lemmy.world/comment/121850
- https://lemmy.world/comment/1487168
- https://lemmy.world/comment/1476084
- https://lemmy.world/comment/171595
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3648500
Overall community comments:
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3526128
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3526086
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3652828
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.
- https://lemmygrad.ml/post/158656
- https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/882559
- https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/540170
- https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/446529
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.
You must log in or register to comment.
I definitely appreciate the hesitation in defederation, but I’m in favor of defeding with both hexbear and lemmygrad.
I’ve seen more than enough “Stalin did nothing wrong posts” to know that discussions are pointless and would lead me only to frustration and a desire to drink.
Honestly the hardcore tankies initially soured me from joining the fediverse at first, until I understood how the fediverse functioned and realized it was just a loud minority that held extreme views. It’s still disturbing to read genocide denialism while openly supporting things such as authoritarianism and Russian imperialism.
Tankies are souring a lot of people from joining in my subjective experience. One of my friends questioned the presence of them and the views of the developers (and also why the “main” (not accurate but they haven’t even joined, so) instance lemmy.ml had the .ml domain to begin with) and I couldn’t give a satisfactory answer at the time, as I didn’t know enough about the place yet.
Upstanding instances should do their part to defederate from any tankie or fascist instances, so we can all distance ourselves from extremist rhetoric and make it seem like an actually OK place to hang out.
Yeah, I checked out Lemmy some time ago and noped out pretty quick after seeing it was mostly just Lemmygrad at the time. Happy to be here now that there’s a lot more going on and not super keen on that face of Lemmy gaining a bigger presence again.
Are you the PoppinKREAM from reddit?
Yes I am, hello o/
“Stalin did nothing wrong” posts. Where are those, exactly?
We criticize Stalin plenty. We just don’t buy that he ate babies and murdered innocent farmers with his bare hands.
I had enough of people like you, but you don’t see me asking that we defederate you.
I was demonstrating a point.
just admit you were wrong. It’s ok.
It’s because as a solid minority. That is often hated in the places they once had jurisdiction for good reason. You generally don’t get the chance. Or if you did, it would close you off in a tiny little Echo chamber that’s already far too strong. And I say this as someone who is supportive and open towards communism and abolishing Concepts such as private property and replacing with personal property. But I am sanctially against ml communism.
I absolutely think there can be a discussion about whether or not Vladimir Lenin’s Legacy on the whole was neutral. He definitely did some good things for russia. Though those same things were happening around the world regardless. So it is impossible to say that they wouldn’t have happened without him. But it is possible to say absolutely that a lot of death destruction and brutality were enabled by him. And his ideology single-handedly setback discussions of all left-wing Economic Development for a century or so. Those defending Stalin Mao or even Xi today. Well I don’t have anything diplomatic to say about them.
Freedom of speech does not constitute an obligation to listen.
Good for you!
Exactly. Freedom of speech != Freedom from social consequences
Well, in a truly “free” society, yes freedom of speech would constitute freedom from “social consequences.” However, the United States, and in fact, no Earth government, is a truly free society. There are rules and laws that exist, thus restricting freedoms. However, specifically regarding freedom of speech as it is mentioned in US law, it specifically is a protection for citizens from retaliation by the US government, and does not cover interactions between citizens.
So I wouldn’t say “freedom of speech doesnt mean freedom from social consequences,” but rather “freedom of speech does not include a requirement that others listen.” There are laws with regards to how other citizens can respond, including laws against assault and libel and such. But there is no law that says anyone must to listen to what you have to say simply because you have the freedom to say it. Thats quite a preposterous idea.
At least in the US, each citizen has the right to say what they choose within the constraints established by law, and to choose who they will listen to.
Well, in a truly “free” society, yes freedom of speech would constitute freedom from “social consequences.”
Just as people can refuse to listen, they also can refuse to interact with persons that say things that upset them. This is a social consequence, and one that would be still be present in a “truly free society”.
A truly free society would have no consequences, laws, or restraints on behaviour.
You can see a very obvious reason why that would be very bad. Thus there is no society on Earth that is truly free. Restrictions exist to protect people, that is the nature of things.
I think you’ve managed to define an oxymoron of a society.
Society does not exist without consequences. That’s what laws/rules/agreements are necessitated on. As in, a society with no consequences is not a society. I’d go so far to say that society is a system of consequences.
Even in a “lawless societies” hierarchies form, and then agreements turn to rules turn to defacto law.
This is like saying “I can never truly be free because gravity binds me to the ground”. Like, ok, sure, but you had to define freedom in a non-standard way to get to that conclusion (I’m trying make this make sense, is it landing well?)
Well, in a truly “free” society, yes freedom of speech would constitute freedom from “social consequences.”
No? That would imply it’s not free, as the receivers aren’t free to act upon the given information freely?
If the society is truly “free”, as in, absolutist free, then if someone said something you didn’t like, you could just punch them in the face without consequence. But that means the original speech had a consequence based on the social interaction with you!
Now if only everyone would be so quick to defederate preemptively from Nazi instances.
What a great sentence, well said. I’m going to use that in the future.
I usually support that sentiment, but it only applies when it is in your hands whether we listen or not. In this case, the admins singlehandedly decided that none of us can. This is pretty much a form of censorship IMO
The admins don’t control you. You can have an account anywhere else you want to. So unless you’re paying for the servers here, you can deal with the Terms of Service or not use it.
As I said in another reply:
The people who own a lemmy instance have the right to associate (federate) with whatever other instances meet their guidelines.
If you don’t agree, then you are free to join a different lemmy instance that is federated with objectionable material.
You don’t have the right to demand that lemmy.one meets your standards. You don’t own it.
If you find that no other instance federates with what you want, you’re free to make your own, with blackjack, and hookers.
For example I don’t want to listen to you. Go away. Defederate yourself.
You totally have that ability… it’s under “Block User”.
What gives you the right to constrain what other people see? Just go ahead and ban them yourself if they offend you so.
I just created this new account because people like you see in themselves the right to constrain what I see.
The people who own a lemmy instance have the right to associate (federate) with whatever other instances meet their guidelines.
If you don’t agree, then you are free to join a different lemmy instance that is federated with objectionable material.
You don’t have the right to demand that lemmy.one meets your standards. You don’t own it.
If you find that no other instance federates with what you want, you’re free to make your own, with blackjack, and hookers.
that is exactly what I did. I would much rather not associate with people like you. You appear to be horrible people.
My only regret is that I donated to this server.
I have no idea who Hexbear is, but it’s well documented how th IMF and World Bank work to endebt developing countries to the US’s corporate rule and then steal all their resources… Are we… Not allowed to talk about that here?
Of course you are. There’s nothing wrong with defending your beliefs, or advocating for them in the right context. Especially if they have sound arguments to back them up. (Also, I don’t see any indication why that wouldn’t be allowed based on this post, or the rules of conduct)
But pushing your beliefs is different. It’s about foregoing actually convincing people and instead using underhanded tactics such as propaganda, brigading, or botting to make an opinion seem more sound than it really is. (Not saying your opinion necessarily is, by the way.)
I would like to second this. The OP reeks of opinionated bullshit. Being against NATO and a western hegemony in the world is absolutely a legitimate political opinion, whether you agree with it or not.
The opinion of Hexbear doesn’t seem to be the problem, and because of certain ideological overlap to users here that should be quite obvious in my opinion. You seem to have focused on the wrong part of the OP.
The problem is that they are presenting themselves as an ideological army. And especially that the admins of Hexbear seem to support this position, rather than it just being some rogue users.
Imagine if a Lemmy instance opened up for a specific religion and their whole point was to inject themselves into as many discussions as possible to push information favorable to their religion. The problem isn’t that they believe in their religion, or even that they want to make the best case possible for it. It’s the fact that they are trying to wield open discussions as a sword to convert people regardless of relevance or appropriateness.
I echo the dissatisfaction people have with this and won’t be donating again. This is Lemmy.world not Lemmy.(we need a safe space from the communists)
The fact you were upset about Beehaw’s defederation but then turn around and do this is massive hypocrisy.
This is you imposing your personal ideology on your users. The fact you lead with those 3 “concerning statements” tells us everything. You only like free speech when it aligns with your own beliefs.
Shame.
What a disappointingly reactionary approach to federation.
Right, so because a community has different views than the leftists you all think it’s your place to “protect” users preemptively without discussion or reason, basically fucking worse than Reddit?
You’d better think long and hard on that.
You guys really just want people who think the same way as you on your instance. You should clearly state that instead of letting people waste their time here.
Good. I commented earlier about how horrible hexbear was. I signed up for hexbear, hoping to meet leftists, but these are not leftists. They just parrot Chinese/Russian propaganda. They have no original takes, no critical thinking. Call me whatever, but, I’m pro NATO. I don’t give a shit about what bullshit propaganda you show me from a totalitarian regime. If the U.S. is bad, then the CCP is pure evil.
This is not a pissing contest on whose propaganda you like better. The US, Russia & China international politics have all been evil throughout history, and the only reason other nations don’t stand out as much is because they are currently not world powers. You only like NATO because you prefer their propaganda - and possibly because the p.o.s. Putler unknowingly was baited into the greatest NATO PR campaign of all times in Ukraine. Nevertheless, defederating from servers who are making statements against NATO and the western world order is a very brainwashed and dumb move.
If you want to meet leftist, you will meet people who are against NATO and who know all the evil the USA has done. Those are entities that have spent the last 100 years genociding left leaning people with the help of fascist groups all around the world, so of course we aren’t friendly to them. If you aren’t aware of that, you may be from Europe, so I suggest you research Operation Gladio to have an example of what they did here, to their supposed allied countries.
If you’re not open to those ideas, I really don’t understand why you were hoping to meet leftists.
Being against NATO is concisely being Pro-Russian. You cannot separate the two as NATO only continues to exist as a counter to Russian nuclear imperial ambitions.
It is possible to be critical of the US without pro-Russian stances.
what? lmao you can absolutely be against NATO and not be hollering and hooting for Russia. This isn’t a Marvel movie, you can have nuanced takes with what is a proxy world war decades in the making
Not really. NATO only has a single purpose: Containing Russia’s imperial ambitions. No NATO, Russia goes whole hog reclaiming the land they consider “theirs” as we are currently seeing in Ukraine.
It is like saying “I can support worker’s rights but I’m against unions”
If you take away the protection the imperialists will do the imperialism thing.
- bombing yugoslavia famously because Hillary Clinton requested the bombing and Bill relented that was the first time she talked to him in 8 months after the Lewinsky scandal
- bombing kosovo creating more death and destruction than the conflict had until that point
- funding stay behind missions in europe like Operation Gladio
- Hiring wehrmacht generals as 3 star NATO generals (Hans Speidel and Adolf Heusinger)
- economically crushing the poorer countries within the EU with loaded IMF loans
are weird ways to contain russia’s ambitions
it’s also really weird to refuse several offers of peace from russia in the last 20 years and instead march aggressively towards them, going back on every agreement back dating back to Yeltsin (really, further back than that but we’re talking Russia post-USSR here). seems like those leftists might have something of a decent critique around an organisation doing those things since its inception
Ah here goes the fun one where you explicitly support a genocide, confuse NATO with the IMF, and regurgitate Russian propaganda that countries that feared Russia blackmailing the US to join NATO was a “march on Russia”
This is why I said what I said, and stand by what I said: Anti-NATO is literally Russian propaganda dressed up.
i don’t know what you’re talking about with the genocide comment edit: oh you think because i criticized NATO bombing civilians, i’m pro-genocide. incredible
Greece had to take the IMF loans to continue being in NATO and the EU, that was part of the agreement
i don’t know what you’re talking about with Russian blackmailing, I was referring to the 00s expansions of NATO that violated the agreement between Russia/NATO to stop expanding
lmao you can absolutely be against NATO and not be hollering and hooting for Russia.
Sure, I don’t think anyone is really arguing against that. However when you’re against NATO right now when most, if not all, of its members are currently helping Ukraine against Russia and you are coming from an over-the-top Communist instance like hexbear it looks like nothing more than Tankies being Tankies.
the person i replied to said that you cannot be anti-NATO and anti-Russia, that is what i was responding to
What does it even mean to be “against NATO”? Is it, like, saying “the NATO alliance ought to disband because the terms of the alliance are bad for my country actually”? Is it like “I hope NATO countries lose all their wars”? Or like “NATO is a dangerous thing to exist because it allows an invasion of Country X, which is likely to happen, to result in a global thermonuclear war”?
A bunch of countries could be arming Ukraine without the sort of all-for-one, one-for-all terms of NATO specifically that make it likely to figure prominently in any explanation for why we have all died of nuclear weapons.
Critical thinking is when you believe US antiChina propaganda.
Being in favor or support of the status quo is also pushing an ideology.
I don’t mind what the servers admins need to do. But please don’t take quotes out of context.
“With the cumulative updates Users may show/hide avatars, show/hide scores, show/hide NSFW content, show/hide read posts, show/hide notifications for new posts, block users, block communities, report direct messages, mods can distinguish a comment to sticky it to the top of a post. Users may set their feed in their account settings to determine if the default feed is local (hexbear.net only), subscribed (user subscribed communities only), or all (all posts on unblocked communities on federated instances).
Hello users of Hexbear in the next couple of weeks (exact date will most likely be somewhere around the 5th of August) we will be taking the site down for approximately three hours to update to lemmy 0.18.3 and begin federation., as we prepare for federation we wanted to create a primer for etiquette when engaging in the fediverse.
Please read and respect the rules of the community instance in which you are posting/commenting. 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. Realize that you are a representative of the hexbear instance when you post on other instances.
Know that your posts, comments, and DMs involving communities/users of other instances are stored on those instances databases, while delete requests are sent there is no guarantee they will be honored, especially if a different platform is involved (mastodon, etc).
In addition, a reminder that you may set your feed or search to local/subscribed/all and block users/communities to have a greater control over what content you have. Local is Hexbear only, subscribed is communities from hexbear and federated instances that you have specifically subscribed to, and All is hexbear + all federated instances. There will be a pinned post in the !hexbear community where you can nominate instances for our allow-list or block-list.
In closing, I want to remind everyone that the moderation policy of Hexbear communities will not change and will be strictly applied to any users from a federated instance. While we are not responsible for moderation policy of remote communities our admins do see reports you make of posts/comments on federated instances, and we are able to remove them, while not actually deleting the post/comment it does hide it so Hexbear users cannot see/interact with it.”
This completely changes the context of those snippets thank you
Sorry, but talking against NATO means violating lemmy.world rules? What the hell, I’m out of here.
Adios.
I’m some sort of Classical / Moderate Liberal and occasionally “talk against” NATO but there’s a wide difference between that and actively pushing to see it disbanded which is tantamount to Pro-Russian propaganda…especially right now.
If you can’t handle a rule preventing you from trying to remove a bastion of Western European freedom then I guess you’ll move to a new instance.
I’m some sort of Classical / Moderate Liberal and occasionally “talk against” NATO but there’s a wide difference between that and actively pushing to see it disbanded which is tantamount to Pro-Russian propaganda…especially right now.
You see, the problem is that I disagree that it is a bastion of Western European freedom. I do think that the West, and NATO, have played a negative role in recent history (or the history of many countries in the world). And, by the way, so have Russia and the USSR.
But this is beyond the topic. Which is the rule of lemmy.world that protects NATO as a bastion of Western European freedom? And, if such rule exists, is it a fair one? Are political discussions beyond centrism banned on lemmy.world?
And I will switch instance. Unfortunately Lemmy doesn’t make it as easy as Mastodon to switch account. I’ll gather a list of the communities I follow, and then eventually switch. I won’t go to Hexbear or similar instances, as I don’t want to be on instances that are ONLY about politics. But I’ll certainly look for one whose admins are calmer.
Peace!
Which is the rule of lemmy.world that protects NATO as a bastion of Western European freedom?
There isn’t one and there’s plenty of anti-NATO / anti-western / anti-capitalist sentiment here on lemmy.world.
Are political discussions beyond centrism banned on lemmy.world?
Obviously not, we’re still federated with lemmygrad and lemmy.ml.
Feel free to do what you feel is best for yourself but I think this situation with hexbear is being blown way out of proportion, mostly by people who seem to have a vested interest in that instance being able to participate here but not the other way around.
I’m not in favour of pre-emptive defederating. It feels like censorship doing so and that bothers me.
-
Their note to their users specifically says to keep their anti establishment opinions and trolling to their own communities and don’t spread it further for fear of defederation. It hardly sounds threatening to us.
-
Defederating can happen at any point, and I think would be better kept as a reactive response and last resort rather than proactive.
-
The more our large instances start fracturing and closing off from one another the less useful Lemmy will become. You’re hardly blocking out an idealogy, if hexbear users wanted in they could just sign up and that would make it harder to find them. At least having them federated makes it easy to filter out @hexbear if we wanted.
-
Practicing tolerance goes both ways. Calling communities ‘them’ vs ‘us’ and judging a group based on the noise of the few doesn’t seem like the right approach. If hexbear became a problem and moderators complained of hate speech and conflict then absolutely we use the tools we have to keep things functioning, but filtering out groups because we don’t like ‘their’ belief systems will make us judgemental and biased as a result. This is a platform to promote discussion not an echo chamber to gather like minded opinions and bounce them off each other in perpetuity.
I’m not in favour of pre-emptive defederating.
I agree, though I hesitate to call it “pre-emptive defederating”. But I can see the viewpoint.
To me, pre-emptive defederating is what was done by most Mastodon instances with Threads. Or how mastodon.art defederated from BBC. There was nothing to judge there. There was no content. Nobody could have said what kind of content would be seen on threads or the BBC instance. You could guess, sure. But you had absolutely no way of knowing.
With hexbear, there is plenty content there to judge, and historically federated influence has always been the same as local, that is, the behavior of a fediverse community is not meaningfully different outside of their own instance. As a result, the admins of instance Y can judge what federation with instance X would look like, there is data there to look at.
Pre-emptive to me would mean having no community content to judge at all, like the Threads and BBC examples.
The more our large instances start fracturing and closing off from one another the less useful Lemmy will become.
I will add that this is in the nature of the fediverse. It is inherently not useful as a replacement to social media centers such as Reddit, because it’s decentralized nature implies the fracturization has to happen, and social media works best when everyone is in one giant garden party for chance meetings and spontaneous interactions.
That’s not necessarily a doom&gloom thing, it just means that by its very nature, software such as Lemmy cannot be useful to users who are seeking to replace Reddit. It can be Lemmy. Which is something else, albeit superficially similar in some regards.
(edit)
However, in general I do agree that they should probably have been allowed to federate and then re-evaluate based on how it works out. If their posts average X% downvotes, if Y% of local users end up filtering them or if a large portions of moderator actions are just from having to manage those users, they can still defederate.
I looked over the instance, and I cannot see anything I’m missing out on, but I can understand why others would want to at least give them one chance.
-
I’m gonna come out and say, even with the statement, I’m not in favor of preemptive defederation like this.
I know the admins of an instance are hosting us basically out of the goodness of their own hearts, and I appreciate that. And I understand they can do whatever they want, and we can move to a different instance if we want. I get it.
But I joined .world because I wanted a neutral instance that would connect with pretty much everyone unless they were particularly problematic. Could hexbear be particularly problematic? Sure, maybe. But I think there’s a big difference between defederating in response to a problem and defederating in anticipation of a potential problem, especially since the users aren’t given a chance to discuss it. Like, I know we’re not technically entitled to give our input if we’re not admins, but I think it would be nice, y’know?
If it was just some small instance of trolls that’s one thing, but hexbear is actually quite a big instance, so this is a very impactful decision. I don’t like it being made preemptively behind the scenes like this.
You don’t welcome cancer in to your body because you support all life.
Nazis and Russian trolls are not here to debate or inform. Their sole purpose is to degrade trust in democracy, spread propaganda, and other heinous shit.
Defederation is our only defense and we owe it to users to fight hate and lies.
The thing is that kind of example assumes that it is cancer. Which is something I’m not happy assuming yet, especially without discussion.
Hexbear has over 20k users. I find it hard to believe they’re all Russian trolls, or even that most of them are.
Your desire to “connect with pretty much everyone unless they were particularly problematic” is admirable,. Just remember, please, that the wider the gates are opened, the more idiots wander in and the more work for mods and admins.
After dealing with the first thousand or so idiots, you can smell 'em coming. I’m with the admins on this.
They specifically said they’re being trolls and going to brigade tbf.
That first bullet is saying “don’t do stuff that’s going to get us defederated” to their users, no? It’s a bit tongue in cheek but I feel like it’s not as aggressive as some people are describing. The whole server came from a subreddit that was very memey/shitpost.
I think their admins are doing an honest job trying to put out reminders for good behavior (**edit: I hadn’t originally followed the links to the admin’s comments elsewhere, I no longer think they’re doing an honest job), the problem is that the sub they grew from never heeded similar admonishments and their federation post explicitly says they will not be moderated for activity outside of hexbear, so it’s really just a suggestion, not a rule.
I don’t agree with anti-western ideology being a good reason for defederation, but I do expect hexbear to be a major source of trolling from past experience with r/CTH. Reddit post-Donald and post-CTH bans was a noticeably less trolly (NOT saying they’re even remotely equivalent, just both were sources of trolling and were banned at the same time).
Loving all the hexbear alt-accounts in the comments here ❤
Btw, if people didnt understand this. I AM being ironical…
okay this is freaking wild:
We need a sub dedicated to bot building, trolling and brigading effectively. Screw morals, or decency. They’re tools that maintain the status quo.
Your comment’s intent is rather dubious – why post a quote from Lemmygrad, when the original post was talking about Hexbear? I encourage you to state that your quote is from Lemmygrad within the comment itself, instead of hiding it behind a link.
