I think a little clarification is needed. No. I don’t actually think everyone there is insane. I don’t care about the bans so stop trying to use that. HB enthusiasts coming here and trying to call me out achieves nothing besides proving my point
Edit: Feel free to keep trying to brigade me. It’s not going to scare me to take this down
I think HB and some of the other groups are mostly trolls or Russian, Chinese, Iranian, North Korean, or aligned operatives trying to gas up trolls or wannabe trolls.
There are definitely some well meaning Americans and others who get suckered into the bullshit tornado that is those sites. They are definitely worth saving if we can. But it’s hard. They ban and block anyone with a dissenting voice no matter how calmly presented.
Do you have any evidence of that at all? Why would Hexbear remain as an isolated instance for 4 years then, only beginning federation in the last year?
Is your question why a propaganda operation focused on disrupting or presidential elections would “go live” 18-ish months before the presidential election?
And are you asking if I have specific evidence that they’re trolls? Or that the governments I’ve listed have troll farms? Or that specifically HB is specifically rife with trolls from this governments’ farms? Because I definitely don’t have specific evidence. Just the historical evidence of (attempted) general interference from those countries in our previous elections.
If your assumption that Hexbear is just bots and propaganda was true, why would it remain isolated for 4 years, with posters talking only to each other? 4 years of training? And, correction on your part, it started federating 10 months ago, not 18.
It makes more sense for these to be people with genuine views and aligned interests.
So you don’t, you’re just accusing people you disagree with of being propaganda agents and bots, despite them existing for 4 years in pure isolation. That’s silly.
Those poor people spending time only on HB for four years, never going anywhere else, never finding 4/8chan, never even finding reddit…
I see it as the neonazi movement in the US in late 90s and early 2000s. They want to be edgy, but don’t have a significant structure to actually do anything important. Around 2006 I ended up stealing a knife from a neonazi that came in to the restaurant that I worked at. It was a Mexican restaurant btw lol