Hey folks
I have been receiving a lot of messages every single day about federation with hexbear. Some of our users are vehemently against it, others are in full support. The conversation does not seem to be dying down, rather, the volume of messages I receive about it seems to be increasing, so I am opening this public space where we can openly discuss the topic.
I am going to write a wall of text about my own thoughts on the situation, I’m sorry, but no tl;dr this time, and I ask anybody participating in this thread to first read through this post before commenting.
Before I go any further, I want to be clear that for anybody who participates here, it is required to focus on the quality of your posts. That means:
- Be kind to each other, even if you disagree
- Use arguments rather than calling people names
- Realize that this is a divisive topic, so your comments should be even more thoughtful than usual
With that out of the way, there are a few things I want to cover.
On defederation in general
First of all, I am a firm believer that defederation must be reserved only for cases where all other methods have failed. If defederation is used liberally, then a small group of malicious users can effectively completely shut down the federated network, by simply creating the type of drama between instances which would inevitably result in defederation. In my view, federation is the biggest strength of Lemmy compared to any centralized discussion forum, so naturally I think maintaining federation by default is an important goal in general.
I am also a believer in the value of deplatforming hateful content, but I think defederation is not the best way to do this. Banning individual users, banning communities and establishing a culture of mutual support between mods and admins of different instances should be the first line of defense against such content. There are some further steps that can be taken before defederation as well, but these are not really documented anywhere (in order to prevent circumvention). The point is: for myself, defederation is the absolute last resort, only to be used when it is completely clear that other methods are ineffective.
Finally, I am wary of creating a false expectation among lemm.ee users that lemm.ee admins endorse all users and communities and content on instances we are federated with. Here at lemm.ee, we use a blocklist for federation, which means our default apporach is to federate with all new instances. We do not have the resources (manpower, skills and knowledge) necessary to pass judgement on all instances which exist out there, as a result, users on lemm.ee are expected to curate their own content to quite a high degree. In addition to downvoting and/or reporting as necessary, individual lemm.ee users are also able to block specific users and communities, and the ability to block entire instances is coming very soon as well.
Having said all that, in a situation where all other methods do indeed fail, defederation is not out of the question. Making such a call is up to the discretion of lemm.ee admins, and doing it as a last resort is completely in line with our federation policy.
Regarding hexbear
Hexbear is an established Lemmy instance, focused on many flavors of leftism. They have quite a large userbase who are very active on Lemmy (often so active that they leave the impression brigading all popular Lemmy posts). One important thing to note is that while some forms of bigotry seem to be quite accepted by many hexbear users (but seemingly not by mods - more on that below), they at least are very protective of LGBT rights (and yes, I am quite certain that they are not just pretending to do this, as many users seem to believe). Additionally, while I have noticed quite high quality posts from hexbear users, there are also several users there who seem to really enjoy trolling and baiting (very reminiscent of 4chan-type “for the lulz” posting), and it’s important to note that this kind of posting is in general allowed on hexbear itself.
The reason this whole topic is important to so many people right now (despite hexbear being a relatively old instance), is that hexbear only recently enabled federation. A combination of their volume of posts, their strong convictions, the excitement about federation, and the aforementioned trolling has made them very visible to almost all Lemmy users, and this has sparked discussions about the value of federation with hexbear on a lot of Lemmy instances.
My own experience with hexbear
I want to write down my own experience with interacting with hexbear users, mods, and admins over the past few days. I believe this experience will highlight why I am hesitant to advocate for immediate full defederation from hexbear at this point in time, and am for now still more in favor of taking action on a more individual user basis. Please read and see how you feel about the situation afterwards.
Background
My first real contact with hexbear users was in the comments section of a post in this meta community requesting defederation from hexbear by @glimpythegoblin@lemm.ee. That post is now locked, because several hexbear users very quickly started doing the aforementioned “for the lulz” type spamming of meme images in the comments (these are actually just emojis, but they are rendered as full-size images on all instances other than the source instance, due to a current Lemmy bug).
I did not want to take further actions in that thread in general (for archival purposes), but I did take one action, which in retrospect was a mistake: I removed a comment which contained the hammer and sickle symbol. I ignorantly associated this symbolism with Kremlin propaganda, and the atrocities my own people suffered at the hands of the soviet union during the previous century. Many users (including hexbear users) correctly (and politely) pointed out to me in DMs that the symbol has a much broader use than just as the symbol of the USSR, and people elsewhere in the world may not associate it with the USSR at all. I am grateful for users who pointed this out to me without resorting to personal attacks.
Let me be clear here: while I do not have anything against leftism or communist ideas in general (in fact in today’s world, I think discussion of such ideas is quite necessary), Kremlin propaganda has no place on lemm.ee. Any dehumanizing talking points of the Kremlin on lemm.ee are treated as any other bigotry, and if communist symbolism is used in context of Kremlin propaganda (that is the context in which I have been exposed to it throughout my whole life), then it will still be removed. But there is no blanket ban on communist symbolism in general on lemm.ee, and discussing and advocating for leftist and communist topics (as distinct from the imperialist and dehumanizing policies of the Kremlin) is certainly allowed on lemm.ee.
Hexbear user response
Coming back to the events of the past few days: soon after my removal of the comment containing the symbol from the meta thread, two posts popped up on hexbear. One was focused on insulting and spreading lies about me personally. Another was focused on diminishing the horrors of the soviet occupation in my country. In the comments under both of these posts (and in a few other threads on hexbear), I noticed some seriously disturbing bigotry against my people. There were comments which reflected the anti-Estonian propaganda of the current Russian state, things like:
- Suggesting that my people has no right to exist
- Stating that my people (and other Baltic nations) are subhuman
- Claiming that anybody critical of both nazi and soviet occupations is themselves a nazi and a holocaust denier
I expect to hear such statements from the Russian state - here in Estonia, we are subjected to this and other kinds of bigotry constantly from Russian media - but to see it spread openly in non-Russian channels is extremely disturbing. Such bigotry is completely against lemm.ee rules in general. Additionally, my identity is public information, because I feel it’s important for the integrity of lemm.ee that I don’t hide behind anonymity. Considering this, I’m sure you can understand why I am very worried about my own safety when people leave comments in many unrelated threads (where my original posts are not even visible), baselessly calling me a nazi and a holocaust denier.
Note that the goal of this post is not to start a new debate in the comments about the the repressions of the soviet union in Estonia or other occupied territories, but if the topic interests any users, I can recommend the 2006 documentary The Singing Revolution (imdb). The trailer is a bit cheesy, but the actual film contains lots of historical footage from the soviet occupation, and also many interviews with people who experienced it, who share stories which are deeply familiar to all Estonians. If anybody is interested in further discussion, then I suggest making a post about it in the Estonian community here: !eesti@lemm.ee.
Hexbear admin response
After the above events had played out, I reached out to hexbear admins for clarification on their moderation policies and how they handle such cases. I was actually very happy with their response:
- They immediately removed the personal attacks and dehumanizing comments containing Kremlin propaganda from Hexbear, and assured me that such content is always handled by mods
- They told me that while there are all kinds of leftists on hexbear, Russian disinformation is generally either refuted in comments or removed by mods
- They implemented some additional rules on hexbear to try and reduce the trolling experienced by many other instances, including ours: https://hexbear.net/post/352119
My personal take-aways
Let me play the devil’s advocate here and employ some “self-whataboutism”: among all users that have been banned on lemm.ee for bigotry, the majority were actually not users from other instances, and in fact people with lemm.ee accounts. 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. Just as we remove bigoted content from lemm.ee, I have also witnessed bigoted content being removed from hexbear.
At the same time, I am aware of some internal conflict between hexbear users over the more strict moderation they are now starting to employ, and I am definitely keeping an eye on that situation and how admins handle it.
I am also still quite worried about the amount of distinct users on hexbear who have posted Kremlin propaganda. I so far don’t have reason to believe that these users are employed by the Russian state, but the fact that they are spreading the same hateful content which can be seen on Russian television seems problematic to say the least, and it remains to be seen if moderators can truly keep up with such content.
Where thing stand right now
I am not convinced that we are currently at a point where the “last resort” of defederation is necessary. This is based on the presumption that our moderation workload at lemm.ee will not get out of hand just due to users from that particular instance. My current expectation is that as the excitement of federation calms down (and as new rules on hexbear go into effect), the currently relatively high volume of low effort trolling will be replaced by more thoughtful posts. If this is not the case then we will certainly need to re-evaluate things.
Additionally, nothing is changing about our own rules regarding bigotry. Especially relevant in the context of Kremlin propaganda, I want to say that dehumanizing anybody is not allowed on lemm.ee (hopefully I do not have to spell it out, but this of course includes Ukrainians, LGBT folks, and others that the Kremlin despises), and action will be taken against any users who do this, regardless of what instance they are posting from.
Finally, I am very interested to hear thoughts and responses from our own users. I am super grateful to anybody who actually took the time to read through this massive dump of my own thoughts, and I am very interested to get a proper understanding of how our users feel about what I’ve written here. Please share any thoughts in the comments.
Stating that my people (and other Baltic nations) are subhuman
As a member of Hexbear for 3+ years I just want to say that this isn’t acceptable over here and would land people with a very serious reprimand or a permaban if they don’t admit to being in the wrong for this. The use of “subhuman” in particular is fascist behaviour and I’d assume it is wreckers rather than longstanding members, it’s not language that socialists are fond of.
The only other thing I will say is that I genuinely appreciate that you’re building this community with your userbase and having these conversations, it’s the correct way to create a unique community culture and have people care about the space.
The use of “subhuman” in particular is fascist behaviour and I’d assume it is wreckers rather than longstanding members, it’s not language that socialists are fond of.
That’s not true at all. Look at any post about landlords or Zelenskyy or “bourgeoisie”. Count the number of pictures or references to guillotines.
I’ve already personally blocked the whole instance because it’s not worth arguing with people over and over.
Edit: you can see from the comments below what I’m talking about. I don’t care who these people think “deserve” the label of “subhuman”. I don’t want to interact with people who talk like that or think like that. That’s why I block them all.
I don’t know if defederation is the answer, but this instance is clearly a haven for these people. So I have already taken action.
There is a difference between calling someone subhuman which is the rhetoric of people that believe that various races of humanity are more human than others(fascist master race rhetoric) vs calls to eat the rich through the use of guillotine memes. The latter is just radical and militant activism. The former is fascist rhetoric. The latter also has a place in mainstream society already as something that is regularly the centerpiece of art.
It appears posting memes about assassinating people for ideology is something that both extreme left and extreme right tend to do, and that’s something that non-extreme people, unsurprisingly, don’t seem to be fond of.
What are you talking about? Liberals post about the people they want to die all the time, you’ve just normalised them. Go mention homeless people in the San Francisco subreddit and watch all the liberals turn into hitler in seconds. Don’t get me started on what happens when you mention Roma people to european liberals. Or what happens in literally every single thread on China.
Besides, we’re not talking about assassinating people. We’ll put the billionaires through our courts beforehand just like you guys put poor people through your courts don’t worry.
In addition to doing hate speech against protected minority groups such as landlords and factory owners we also discriminate against other minority groups such as: war criminals, slave owners, Nazis, and fascist paramilitaries
dont forget about the most oppressed minority, gamers 😥
Awoo has already noted some important refutations, but I want to unpack something here.
Landlords and Bourgeoisie are class identities. Importantly, these are not the result of things outside of your control (i.e. ethnic origin, nation, etc.) but instead determined by actions in the world. While one can’t say that one is subhuman because of where they are from, isn’t being a landlord (and thus extracting rent from people for shelter) a behavior? A series of actions and choices? And can’t we characterize a behavior or action as evil/immoral? Basically, when I say “landlords are evil and deserve to die or surrender their assets to the collective” what I’m describing is a particular set of actions. It’s not different from having an opinion on if murderers deserve capital punishment.
Btw, I believe in rehabilitative punishment. However, if we’re going to talk about people who deserve to die, I think capitalists and landlords are up there. A person who kills someone else – either due to mental illness or a crime of passion – is far less damaging to our social fabric than people who, through institutions, contribute to the death of our world and the immiseration of many. For instance, how many unhoused people have gone hungry/died because of the executives at Starbucks who decide that food thrown out should be covered in coffee grounds to be inedible? We don’t have the numbers, but shouldn’t we call this behavior subhuman/evil? I think you’re missing the distinction between saying the executive who designed that policy deserves the gulag – a specific inhuman action that deserves a specific response – and calling all insert ethnicity/nationality here subhuman.
This is the kind of thing I really hate to see. It’s the reason I’m going to be leaving. You guys make a blanket statement like all landlords are evil because they extract rent for shelter. You don’t give any further reasoning. I’m sure you’ve collectively decided that through some illogical conversations on your home instance but you fail to make a valid point in the wild.
For example:
where are you expecting people to live?
These homes are owned by someone- they worked/paid/built them themselves.
Why do you think these people who have toiled for 40+years should just give you there invested money/work for free?
Why are they evil for using something they have worked for to help themselves?
Inevitably someone like you comes along and just shitposts this same rhetoric you just did with no logical backing behind it other than “evil landlords must die and be redistributed”
How is a house different from a farm? Or a rail system? Or a insert anything created by someone and used for personal gain?
Why don’t you go build your own house? Why aren’t you giving these unfortunate souls your own place?
To cap it all- you follow each other around in groups and rather than actually discussing you strawman, point people to communist propaganda, and generally troll anyone who disagrees with you. No one wants to join your club, no one wants to read your Marxism books etc. If you have a point- state it. Don’t point elsewhere and act like you won because we arent interested in your echochamber
This is the kind of thing I really hate to see. It’s the reason I’m going to be leaving
I’m sorry. I do hope you come around to at least tolerating leftist perspectives before you leave for an echo chamber. That all wealth is created by labor is one of the core leftist beliefs, you’ll find anarchists, communists, democratic socialists, etc all agree on that.
where are you expecting people to live?
In houses. There’s dozens of vacant homes for every homeless person. Just as capitalism requires some people be hungry to maximize profit of food, it requires some people be homeless to maximize profit of landlords.
These homes are owned by someone- they worked/paid/built them themselves.
The people who build houses deserve to be compensated for their labor. Owning a house on the other hand, is not labor.
Why do you think these people who have toiled for 40+years should just give you there invested money/work for free?
Rent isn’t compensation for the construction of a home, otherwise the renter would own the home after 20 years of renting paid off the mortgage.
Why are they evil for using something they have worked for to help themselves?
I’d categorize the parasitic relationship as evil, but as for judging individual people for the poverty and homelessness caused by that relationship, it’s more complicated as we live under capitalism.
Inevitably someone like you comes along and just shitposts this same rhetoric you just did with no logical backing behind it other than “evil landlords must die and be redistributed”
Are you talking about the description of the cultural revolution in that one province in China people post? In the context of generations of peasants seeing their children die of starvation-related disease or conscripted never to return, the people were more merciful and practical than just. It’s easy to criticize any change if you ignore the violence of the status quo. To quote Mark Twain:
THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
How is a house different from a farm? Or a rail system? Or a insert anything created by someone and used for personal gain?
It’s not.
This is a good post, but I think the person you’re replying to is trying to bait a ton of belief statements out of you so that they can then piss you off by contradicting each one with effortless status-quo normalizing, and use that as a justification to defederate Hexbear. That, or they’re just going to dig their heels in and you’ll have wasted your time.
Buddy I’m replying to the things he’s saying. If it hurts your brain that I’m detailing why the things he say make no sense that’s on you. If hexbear is all people like you- that’s on them.
I am new to lemmy and would prefer actual discussion- if certain groups brigade and shitpost in lieu of discussing- that’s on them.
I could give you the benefice of the doubt. However, this is the calibre of argument you’re throwing at us :
Did you pay half the down payment? Did you pay half the mortgage and interest to the bank? Did you pay half the property taxes? Did you pay half the maintenance?
The obvious answer is that yes, the tenant pays for all these things, because that’s why the landlord charges rent to begin with. This is such an obvious thing, irrespective of any political beliefs, that the mere fact of you having asked it makes you suspect. I’m not even trying to be mean to you here, I’m just describing the situation as I see it.
I’m not leaving for an echo chamber. I’m just leaving. It’s your echo chambers I’m exiting.
All these empty houses aren’t producing rent are they? You can go buy one and give it away if you want. Oh what’s that? You don’t want to do that?
What’s the difference if I hammered the nail myself to build the house or if I buy it from the guy who did the hammering. This is the insanity that permeates your argument. I’ve done both by the way- either way that home is owned by someone and rented to someone else.
When did I say rent was compensation for building a home? You say that- and you are wrong for bringing it up. I built a thing- someone wants to use said thing- we make an agreement that we both agree to.
I characterize this insane rationality as evil. You want a thing to be given away for free without compensation. It’s crazy to think this investment I’ve made is somehow going to magically fix something if I just transform it into some other thing you aren’t all brigading over. If it wasn’t a house- it’d be a restaurant, or a clothing business, or whatever. And you’d eventually get up in arms about that too. What you really want is others to give you an equal share even though you haven’t done anything to earn it and I fucking have.
All these empty houses aren’t producing rent are they? You can go buy one and give it away if you want. Oh what’s that? You don’t want to do that?
Personal charity is not a solution to a systemic problem! This will not actually get rid of the problem, it will palliate it! Also, I literally can’t because I personally don’t have the money that would be needed to buy a rental property off of someone who can afford to leave such properties empty, since if we assume they are willing to sell, it’s a high price, but more likely they just won’t because an apartment on the fourth floor of an eight-floor complex being someone else’s property seems like a litigation nightmare if there’s literally any type of water damage or anything of the sort that occurs after the sale.
killing someone does not remove their humanity
Is there a way to block instances as a user now?
Soon™ It is being worked on.
🥰
Thanks for that very thoughtful statement. I am fine with keeping them federated and letting individual users block what they don’t want to see. I find it interesting to see what different communities have to say, even if I find it abhorrent.
And that should be golden rule. We’re not kindergarten anymore.
Should it?
The overwhelming majority of mass shooters currently plaguing America are young, male and far-right. They didn’t just wake up one morning as extremists.
The story always reads basically the same. Loneliness, frustration and/or disillusionment made them vulnerable, they stumbled upon the far-right claiming they had answers and were lead down the path of extremism by memes, algorithms and social media groups.
Given that, why should they be platformed at all? Why make the default “if you don’t like it, just block it” rather than “if you want to read it, join their shithole servers”?
While we might not be “kindergarten” any more, there’s definitely users who are in early highschool and users who are vulnerable to cults.
That said, I don’t see hexbear being nearly as dangerous because unlike neo-nazis, state violence isn’t the goal.
Take the murder and enslavement out of modern Nazism and there’s nothing left, because murder and enslavement was the point. Take the murder out of communism and socialism and you’ve got a fairer, less exploitative society because a fairer, less exploitative society was the point.
I was about to say, Hexbear is very against stochastic violence, which on the left is called “Propaganda of the Deed” after a failed activist “experiment” to do just that. We reject it as a type of adventurism, i.e. doing something for kicks that isn’t actually politically useful (and in fact is usually wildly detrimental).
🥰
Hexbear is very against stochastic violence, which on the left is called “Propaganda of the Deed”
I thought propaganda of the deed was that anarchist thing where they’d do soup kitchens or do cool shit in hopes that the people they help out would become leftists eventually lol
I think it was a number of different things but if you are organized enough to run a soup kitchen, you are probably above the critique that I mentioned.
And we are very much not straight white men. User survey said it’s like 1/3 trans people which is more than any non exclusivly trans space I’ve seen.
I feel a little sorry for the Lemm.ee users here that came to make measured, personal posts specific to the annoucement. There’s a fair amount of long off-topic arguements happening in bits of the thread now and that probably makes it harder to read and manage.
This is something that’s often been pointed to as a pure result of Hexbear users or federation with Hexbear and given rise to accusations of ‘brigading here and in the past’. While I don’t think every segue into debate has been useful here, and have also told comrades that I didn’t think this was the place for specific comments (which they removed) I also think there’s some important context to point out - and I hope it helps lemm.ee users wondering about all this traffic not to fall into the trap of assuming the worst based on a couple of comments:
- Hexbear is a very big and very active instance. A very small proportion of users posting in a thread (especially one explicitly about them) can seem like a lot to a lot of instances.
- Hexbear doesn’t have downvotes and Hexbear users do not have the ability to downvote posts or comments on other instances. This creates a culture where if people disagree, they tend to reply, not downvote instead. Another reason we’re very active.
- This thread has constantly been at the top of people’s feeds on Hexbear. if they’re not only set to ‘local’.
- Finally - and I say this fully acknowledging and appriciating the many ordinary, good faith, pleasant lemm.ee commenters that I’ve enjoyed reading and talking too even when I totally disagreed with them - a lot of these off-topic arguements and more heated comments do not come from nowhere. While not at all the majority, I do see a pretty shocking amount of actively hostile, hateful, and insulting behaviour here. Sadly, quite a bit of it would be banned under Hexbear’s moderation policy against things like slurs and hate speech too.
So try to keep in mind if you see salty Hexbear users replying to people that, just in reading through this thread myself, I’ve the following instances of abuse or smears against my comrades (and they continue popping up). So I absolutely support them defending themselves (as long as they stay within the rules here):
- Dimissal as the pejorative “tankie” - 4 times (although we actually think this one is pretty funny usually)
- Users stating that Hexbear users are propagandists - 8 times
- Stating that people from Hexbear are specifically paid Russian/Chinese bots/propagandists - 10 times
- Direct equivalences of Hexbear posters to Nazis or just straight up calling us Nazis/fascists - 7 times
- Insults regarding mental health or IQ that would be classed as ablism on Hexbear - 8 times
- Dismissing users as children - 2 times
- Claiming Hexbear users are using vote-manipulation (impossible, as explained above) - 4 times
- Accusations of deliberate brigading rather than just commenting, being active - 11 times
I’ve tried not to count repeated instances from the same users. But sadly that’s not all. Just a handful of the following are comments that have been made against Hexbear users in this thread, without any kind of equal hostility. As far as I can tell they all still remain:
- “You guys are like cancer”
- “Braindead fucking tankies”
- “Get fucked”
- “Asshole” (multiple)
- That our beliefs are “moralistic bullshut”
- That some of our beliefs are “a criminal ideology”
- A comment that simply states “No Russians”
- That we’re “evil” (multiple times)
- An elaborate comparison to us “vandalising a Jewish graveyard” and other Nazi equivalences
- And of course a comment that explictly minimised the Nazi death toll with glee, seeming to imply they should have killed more. On the subject of disagreeing with equating the hammer and sickle to the swastika (hidden with spoiler tag, for those who don’t want to see it repeated)…
spoiler
“you are right, it is nor really fair to nazis, who killed measly 17 million people, compared to impressive 100 million killed by communists.”
There’s also been numerious instances of users misgendering Hexbear users. I’m not going to put all of these down to malice, but at Hexbear we display our pronouns for a reason - we love our trans comrades! You don’t have to, but could you please at least respect them and not misgender them?
Again, this isn’t the majority, but it’s honestly disappointing and worth keeping in mind amongst some of the louder, minority yells of ‘brigading’ etc.
tbh idk how people can complain about off-topic conversations. Just collapse the thread, fam. It really is that easy 🤷🏽♀️
That has been a nice addition recently.
The thing about civility and good-faith conversations is that street runs both ways. I’m glad to see a lot of that happening here, but I’m also seeing some folks who seem to think civility means “I can say whatever I want but a hint of anger on your part is a bannable offense.”
😤
You’re living in a fantasy world
I’m curious what aspects of that comment you thought were fantastical. Will you elaborate and be specific?
No you aren’t.
You just want me to say more so you can pick it apart, fight, and troll. That’s what you guys do and that’s the exact behavior at issue in this thread. There is discourse with you and that’s the exact problem. There seems to be n such thing as a good faith discussion with members of your instance. That’s why you’ve already been defederated from multiple instances and you’re about to be again.
You just want me to say more so you can pick it apart, fight, and troll.
If you know what you’re saying is pulled out of… thin air, then of course the fear of it getting picked apart is understandably there. You know in advance that you will basically have to go into an argument (“fight”) and then, because the fighting aka not writing the check for your claims is making it obvious to everyone else that you indeed pull stuff out of thin air, you get trolled as a consequence.
The very comment I’m replying to is a good example:
You made a vague comment (“You’re living in a fantasy world”) and got asked for clarification. You get defensive without providing clarification, and justify it by accusing the enquirer of bad faith. You dont even use some personal anecdotal evidence, but with another vague accusation. The fact that you’re not amusing yourself to actually give a good faith answer, but make such baseless accustion you end up communicating bad faith on your part.
I find it really hard to not troll you now
This is the thing about people that aren’t used to engaging with hexbear - they aren’t used to holding minority viewpoints. They liked that on other platforms (and IRL) they could just throw around the weight of institutional orthodoxy and “common sense” and be validated by crowd affirmation without having to really explain themselves, so when they’re made to show their work, their argumentation really pales in comparison to users on hexbear who have spent years arguing in favor of some the most suppressed political ideologies in the West.
Oh damn, it’s tech CEO Rachel Jake! Big Fan!
This is the kind of good, well thought out response we’ll use as a Gold standard then+
Jesus was a socialist
MolotovHalfEmpty: presents empirical evidence.
You: fake news
You should engage someone you reply to, someone who takes the time to write a long thoughtful post, in good faith.
😔
I’ve seen the hexbears at work and don’t doubt that they’d class some of my views as woefully liberal but in the main I am enjoying being on a site where the left is so unapologetic, doesn’t go for all this centrist bollocks and is unafraid to call out bullshit.
Having seen the Overton window constantly shifted to a narrower aspect ratio and then shifted rightwards on reddit was a very disheartening experience and I think seeing active hexbears on all threads will be useful in stopping the uptight right when they inevitably decide that that the fediverse needs shifting towards their own Volkish views.
Very much my opinion on the matter. Or at least my hope that the politics of reaction will be curbed on Lemmy.
Much appreciate this perspective, friend.
Steady, I’m not used to people being nice to me on the internet ;)
It’s ok, you’re not on reddit now.
I’d like to stay federated with hexbear. They bring important information to conversation that people are otherwise not exposed to. American school-taught history is NOT the gold standard in truth.
There are already plenty of leftist in the non left-centric instances. Hell, if you really want a far-left perspective, there are others which doesn’t consider obnoxiousness a virtue, which seems to be a core tenant of Hexbear.
I’m firmly against defederating anyone. It’s sad that so many just want to remove voices they don’t like from a public forum. I believe that we should avoid defederating at all costs, it should be the absolute last measure contemplated after everything else fails. I didn’t like their posts for a couple of weeks doesn’t even come close to being a good reason IMO.
And I’m against giving fascist lunatics a voice. Defederate them now.
If you defederate you’d embolden actual fascist lunatics. And be careful equating the long and varied policies of the SU (who had various leaders over that time) with a short stint that Adolf had in eliminationism.
I understand the tension between the communists and the anti-communists here (and that’s not going to be resolved in this thread), but the most baffling perspective in this thread are the people just wanting instance blocking. Why are you browsing
Alland then being upset that it’s full of posts from outside your normal bubble? Lemmy’sAllfilter is just liker/all: a mess of wildly different people, interests, and viewpoints. That’s kinda the point, isn’t it?Lemmy provides subscriptions to specific communities based on your personal interests. That’s going to have the most relevance to you. Settings in every app allow you to pick it as the default view. Use the community explorer to find new communities that actually interest you.
In either case, the focus on instance seems weird. Lemmy is deliberately built around communities. It shouldn’t matter where your Lemmy account is hosted: you can subscribe/lurk/participate/ignore any community regardless. It seems like instances are more of an implementation/infrastructure detail. Anytime we start deliberately filtering/censoring/breaking the infrastructure, the more useless it becomes. Defederation actively undermines the network effect that makes Lemmy compelling.
update 19/8/2023: i have first heard about hexbear 1 day before this thread, i really didn’t give care about them before
after they did an excellent job to introduce themselves in this thread, i’d like to change my stance to DEFEDERATE NOW! 😆
Many users (including hexbear users) correctly (and politely) pointed out to me in DMs that the symbol has a much broader use than just as the symbol of the USSR, and people elsewhere in the world may not associate it with the USSR at all
imagine i vandalize jewish graveyard, put swastikas all over the place and my defense is “man, swastikas were used all around the word through history, they don’t just belong to nazi germany, you know?” is your reaction going to be “well, you raise some interesting points”?
i doubt that.
“argument” like that is just an asshole trying to obfuscate the facts and delay the consequences of their own action, it is classic propaganda method.
Hexbear admin response After the above events had played out, I reached out to hexbear admins for clarification on their moderation policies and how they handle such cases. I was actually very happy with their response:
do you feel that response is actually going to change something and it is sincere, not just an effort to obfuscate the reality in the line with what i said above?
or is it like this?
the comrade below actually suggests that there is a time and place for such rhetoric, it is just not right here, right now. you have to think politically and wait for our moment, comrade!
i generally agree with your liberal approach to federation, unfortunately sometimes the reality forces you to take some pragmatic steps and i don’t think anyone would blame you if you took the easy solution, you are not obligated to dig through pile of shit.
i am also not a fan of pseudoliberalism in the style of “just let everyone make their own decision”. it is like saying we don’t need police, lets just let everyone to deal with the world themselves. it is obvious nonsense, most people just want to go about their business and they appreciate the fact there is relatively safe environment behind their apartment door.
For the record, I think the time and place for such rhetoric would be exclusively within the Hexbear instance, against agitators who are deliberately being hostile towards us. Outside of Hexbear, and with users who are at least trying to engage in good faith, I agree that Hexbear users are often too impulsive with escalating directly to dunks and spamming PPB. In this case, I thought the user was way out of line and I politely told them so. Apparently they agreed and deleted their own comment.
I know Hexbear users can be a bit much, but I think we’re capable of having level-headed conversations with other instances about toning it down whenever we step outside our own hive.
For the record, I think the time and place for such rhetoric would be exclusively within the Hexbear instance,
for the record, the time and place for such discussion is never and nowhere. the fact you think that only problem is that it leaked “to the general public” just shows how insane you are.
I understand that users outside of Hexbear might be offended by it, and that’s entirely understandable and I absolutely agree we should behave ourselves outside of our own instance. But respectfully it isn’t your place to tell us how to conduct ourselves within our own instance.
Can @Awoo@hexbear.net or another Hexbear user confirm that the comment referenced above is common and acceptable within Hexbear’s CoC?
I think we’re capable of having level-headed conversations with other instances about toning it down whenever we step outside our own hive.
Clearly some of you are having a very difficult time with that simple expectation.
I think this view is commonplace here.
There is a problem with Lemmy itself that several of us have been discussing, and it’s that it’s hard to tell when you’re on someone else’s instance sometimes.
This is caused by a few factors, for one other instances look identical to your own instance when viewed via your own instance, no unique customisations tends to lead people to not even realising they’re in a different space.
And the second problem is that if you engage in a different instance, but then respond via your inbox, it’s easy to forget that those inbox messages are a different instance and not your own.
These two problems are longer-term problems in user behaviour that lemmy should look into designing around. I think what we need is something like reddit’s old custom css, allowing communities to feel more unique and giving visual identifiers to users so that they IMMEDIATELY realise they’re in a different space and get the mental prompt to code-switch to the behaviour relevant to that particular community. I don’t behave the same on Hexbear as I behave on some other lgbt spaces for example, I code-switch in those spaces. I’m sure absolutely none of us behave the same way we behave online as we do in the workplace, we code-switch. Finding ways to get people to code-switch better between their home instance and a foreign-federated-instance should be a priority. It will help promote better federation harmony.
I think that the same is true in the opposite direction too though. I think several users complaining about Hexbear behaviour have stepped into Hexbear’s instance, received the full Hexbear experience, and then talk about it as if it wasn’t something that they opted into by coming onto Hexbear. This is again an issue with identifiability of being on Hexbear itself, it works in both directions.
At the end of the day Hexbear users are VERY reasonable if you’re talking to people from Hexbear in good-faith. The key is that term though, real good-faith engagement is rewarded with good-faith behaviour discussion. Sometimes you’ll get someone in a shit mood perhaps, but people are human and understanding that this happens is very important to cultivating the longterm happiness of small communities. People have to learn to let certain things go like when others have had a shit day or whatever and not hold that against an entire instance. This goes for Hexbear users when criticising Lemm.ee too, I’ve seen some unfair characterisations of everyone on lemm.ee as racist and I don’t think that’s true, just that there are some racists and some transphobes and so on who will need to be culled over time as the community develops and matures. Hexbear itself has had years to mature as a community and get rid of those problems, so Hexbear users can be a little uncharitable when it comes to other servers that haven’t had the kind of events that solved these problems for us years ago.
I don’t speak for Hexbear though. I am not an admin, just a long time user with a lot of trust in our team and a lot of love for our userbase.
I hope you understand that I singled you out as you seem to be in conversation with Sun. And this is unfortunate to read.
Sunaurus is standing up for staying federated with Hexbear. That’s about as good faith as it gets. To then be attacked in such a vile and repugnant way is totally inexcusable.
I find your explanation and your excuses about technical limitations to be pretty lame. I seem to be able to go about my online life without telling people that their grandparents deserve(d) their deaths. I don’t need CSS to help me act like a civilized individual.
Sorry what? Vile and repugnant? Attacked? I just wrote out a very long and thought out response on what the issues are with lemmy’s design that are causing this. Nobody was attacked in my response, nor was it vile or repugnant. You are assuming the worst of me here and then trying to make something of it instead of responding to my actual words. I don’t usually make this request because usually people respond to me in good-faith, but if you’re going to respond to me please quote me and respond in-line to my actual words, or don’t respond to me at all. I see this as the only way to get you to speak to my actual words rather than to whatever it is you’re making up in your head about me.
Sorry for the misunderstanding. No, you did not make the attack.
However, it seems that things like “Your kulak grandparents deserved to die” are accepted and supported on Hexbear, as long as it doesn’t draw undue attention. Except your user forget their “time and place” for airing the dirty laundry. This garbage is not a free exchange of ideas; this a few steps away from actually beheading the non-believers. Just as I would support defederating from other extermist hate instances, Hexbear needs to go.
And then to just throw in another comment:
ChestRockwell: when I say “landlords are evil and deserve to die or surrender their assets to the collective” what I’m describing is a particular set of actions. It’s not different from having an opinion on if murderers deserve capital punishment.
I see absolutely zero value in this “other viewpoint”. There is really no legitimate debate here.
Sorry for the misunderstanding. No, you did not make the attack.
However, it seems that things like “Your kulak grandparents deserved to die” are accepted and supported on Hexbear, as long as it doesn’t draw undue attention. Except your user forget their “time and place” for airing the dirty laundry. This garbage is not a free exchange of ideas; this a few steps away from actually beheading the non-believers. Just as I would support defederating from other extermist hate instances, Hexbear needs to go.
Generally speaking yes. The Kulaks hoarded grain for their profit causing massive famines that killed millions of people. The important thing to understand here is that “Kulak” is not a race, it means wealthy farm owner, they were rich owners of large amounts of farmland that hoarded grain resulting in what was a overly forceful collectivisation process, BUT this process is often defended by socialists because (and I’m speaking generally) that most of the kulaks hoarded grain and were certainly responsible for people starving to death. Not all of them, but most.
It’s a statement that you need to understand quite a lot of different things to properly parse.
ChestRockwell: when I say “landlords are evil and deserve to die or surrender their assets to the collective” what I’m describing is a particular set of actions. It’s not different from having an opinion on if murderers deserve capital punishment.
I see absolutely zero value in this “other viewpoint”. There is really no legitimate debate here.
I’m not sure what problem you have here. The state says “hand it over” and if the property isn’t handed over willingly then the state uses guns to force it to happen. We already do this, it’s called expropriation. The population of Berlin recently voted to expropriate all property from landlords. What is the problem here?? If the landlords of Berlin do not hand over that property then they will be taken by people with guns. That’s how states work.
I understand that you might not have seen it put in this kind of extremely blunt words before. But that comment is literally just saying “they can hand it over or they can die” which is frankly no different to how states operate currently. If these landlords in Berlin don’t hand it over they will be beaten into a pulp by police, and if they continue to resist they will be killed in the process. This is a blunt and explicitly accurate description of the process of property expropriation.
I think the difference between socialists and liberals here is that we speak of these mechanism in very blunt terms, whereas liberals have normalised hiding the violence of the state behind layers of extrapolation. This makes what socialists describe bluntly sound different to what liberals are used to, even when it is a violent act that liberal states carry out all regularly. We simply don’t shy away from describing these mechanisms accurately, they should be described accurately, the violence of the state should not be hidden, especially because our goal is to eventually eliminate states altogether BECAUSE they commit such terrible violence.
Let me put this another way. What happens when you default on payments for your home? The bank shows up with the cops. You are forced to hand over your property, and if you refuse then the state gets violent with you. Same story except in reverse - in service of capital instead of the collective.
imagine i vandalize jewish graveyard, put swastikas all over the place and my defense is “man, swastikas were used all around the word through history, they don’t just belong to nazi germany, you know?”
This is a bizarre and perhaps manipulative comparison. What is the Jewish graveyard in this context? Because the vandalizing a Jewish graveyard part does a lot to provide context to the action in your hypothetical where you provide no such context for the hammer and sickle’s use.
Furthermore, it’s a bizarre comparison because most of us are white or Hispanic rather than Indian (being a mostly American website), which means that we generally have no connection to the swastika in its original use but some connection to the Nazi use, whereas the uses of the hammer and sickle by other parties in Europe, Latin America, tbe US, and elsewhere are ones that we could plausibly have actual connections to.
Mind you, I disagree with the equating of the hammer and sickle to the swastika to start with, I think it’s a disgusting “both sides”-ing that Nazi sympathizers love to promote. I just also dislike faulty arguments.
no such context for the hammer and sickle’s use
here is your context. your comrades advocating for class war and killing people for crime of having more money than you
However, if we’re going to talk about people who deserve to die, I think capitalists and landlords are up there
most of us are white or Hispanic rather than Indian (being a mostly American website), which means that we generally
i have no idea how you had arrived to this conclusion or why you think it is relevant
have no connection to the swastika in its original use but some connection to the Nazi use, whereas the uses of the hammer and sickle by other parties in Europe, Latin America, tbe US, and elsewhere are ones that we could plausibly have actual connections to.
i live in a country that was under both nazi and russian occupation. people were killed in the name of swastika. and later people were killed in the name hammer and sickle. they were shot on the borders for the crime of attempting to leave the communist paradise and there kids wouldn’t be allowed to school for not having correct political profile.
so trust me, we have quite strong “actual connection” here. just because you are uneducated american, doesn’t mean that everyone else is.
I disagree with the equating of the hammer and sickle to the swastika to start with
you are right, it is nor really fair to nazis, who killed measly 17 million people, compared to impressive 100 million killed by communists.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism
- https://www.statista.com/chart/24024/number-of-victims-nazi-regime/
you are on my blocklist now, so don’t bother with another pile of your communist bullshit, i am not interested.
i live in a country that was under both nazi and russian occupation.
Oh, gotcha. Your family deserved it.
reported for absolutely disgusting Holocaust minimisation, jesus christ
Symbol of the Nazi party, famous for rounding up and systematically exterminating millions of jews, black people, leftists, anarchists, etc and attempting to conquer all of europe is exactly the same as the main symbol of an ideology which advocates for workers collectively owning the means of production?
I understand what you mean but the hammer and sickle is the symbol of communism, not belonging to one country. the hammer and sickle did not originate with what happened in estonia.
ideology which advocates for workers collectively owning the means of production?
Not to defend nazis, but are you really going to ignore the deaths under communism or how communist dictators persecuted people?
Well, we either ignore deaths or we don’t. The United States of America ran the largest slave trade in history and nearly wiped out the native population of an entire continent, nuked two cities, overthrew countless democracies, and bankrolled/trained fascist and/or religious fundamentalist militias all over the world. This is all historical fact.
But it also represents one of the strongest cultures in history, as well historical advancements in science, technology, civics, etc. Just like the USSR. Whereas the Nazis only represent industrialized genocide, eugenics and fascist oppression, the Soviet Union and the USA represent both the good and bad of humanity in extreme amounts. Their evils can be denounced just as much as their successes can be celebrated, and more usefully both can and should be studied and not completely discarded on weak ideological grounds. That’s why they’re both admissible in civil discussion.
Hexbear is very into counter-narrative, and I’m guessing a lot of them would disagree with my take here, but I think that if liberals and communists can’t find middle ground in that then liberals are simply not representing themselves honestly.
Small caveat: the United States dropped two nuclear weapons to end a fascist dictatorship in Japan that ran a war of oppression against over a billion people. Including countless warcrimes and crimes against humanity that killed millions of people in occupied countries.
I think that point just reinforces your argument.
the United States dropped two nuclear weapons to end a fascist dictatorship
This is propaganda. I am not claiming you are aware of this or are intentionally spreading it, but it’s propaganda all the same. It was invented to whitewash the mass, unnecessary, indiscriminate killing of Japanese civilians by the U.S.
When you read about Hexbear users getting a little chippy, this is the type of thing they are generally getting chippy about: propaganda that excuses great evils.
Noted commie rag Foreign Policy: The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan. Stalin Did.
The United States Strategic Bombing Survey:
The report also concluded that: “Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”
Good response, thank you for being civil
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sowwy
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every system has had deaths under it. for example, i could say: not to defend nazis, but are you really going to ignore the deaths under capitalism or the bodo league massacre, the vietnam war crimes, agent orange, the laos bombings, the civilian killings in iraq, the drone strikes that killed civilians all across the middle east, slavery, all of the deaths causes by poverty, etc.
Obviously it has happened under communism as well but nowhere near to the scale under capitalism (for the most part, see Pol Pot, the Red Terror, Holodomor)
Are you equating the USSR and Nazi Germany? I don’t get your point whatsoever. The symbol of the Sickle and Hammer isn’t a genocidal symbol.
As a Hexbear user and one of the people your mod and OP interacted with in that thread, I find a good chunk of this post concerning and often spurious.
First, personally, I am one of the people who accused him of engaging in behaviour that was tantamount to Holocaust denial. I did so after his repeated, blunt, assertions of false equivalency between the undisputed horrors of Nazi Germany and those - some true, many disputed, some outright refuted - of the Soviet Union. I explained that this practice is known as the ‘Double Genocide Theory’ and even linked to articles by Jewish historians and Holocaust academics that explained the issues with the theory and the history of its official use to whitewash far-right movements, particularly in post-Soviet states. Instead of receiving a modicum of serious engagement he instead deliberately and grossly misrepresented and dismissed not only my point but the work of the Jewish academics I linked before leaving with an insult.
Secondly, what exactly constitutes Kremlin propaganda? This is a usually completely baseless claim that is thrown constantly at Hexbear uses, but also almost any marginally left or anti-war figure on the internet. A small but vocal group of cynical users that cannot and will not tolerate opposing viewpoints use it to shut down debate and to smear people. As your mod/OP stated, Hexbear does both refute and ban clear instances of actual Russian (or other) state propaganda when it’s demonstrably untrue or breaks our very strict rules on bigotry of any kind. But much of what was smeared as Kremlin propaganda was not, because it was not.
Your very own mod/OP engaged in a version of that in the thread on Hexbear and when pushed on what it meant variably either ignored the question or cast the net as wide as anything Russia (state, politicians, or media) have ever said. Several people made the point that a Russian source can say can say something that’s factual, or identify something true and use that as part of a political narrative. Does that objective truth suddenly because false as soon as it’s spoken by Russian lips? These questions were ignored.
Personally, I’d prefer that there isn’t defederation, that the bad feeling that’s undoubtedly been created by members from both instances, is moved on from, and to explore and engage with more of lemm.ee afresh. I also recognise and respect that decision as being lemm.ee’s to make, but felt that users deserve to hear some of the other perspective. Especially when I do not believe your mod/OP is either willing or able to be clear eyed or act in good faith around contentious issues like those highlighted in this thread. Which of course is also to be considered, and decided by, users of Lemm.ee.
What are you talking about dude?
Stalin killed way more people than the Nazis did. Nazis and Satlin were both horrid and evil. Don’t even pretend that there’s any redeeming qualities of Stalinism.
Doing Holocaust denial to own the commies.
Just out of curiosity, how many people do you believe the nazis killed?
I’m sure there’s some debate on the exact number but around 17 million is the typical number.
If you only look at the Soviet Union, the nazis killed more than 25 million.
Then add onto that everyone killed in all the other countries they invaded, everyone killed in the deathcamps, everyone killed by deathsquads, every allied soldier and partisan killed in the European theatre, and all the Germans forced into the wehrmacht against their will.
Your estimate of 17 million is so far off the mark that I have to wonder if your parents and teachers failed you, or if you’re a fascist apologist deliberatly trying to downplay the death toll of the German nazis. So which is it?
I just want to second your comment - I agree with everything. I would also add that I read through the OP and was at first heartened by what seemed like a fairly reasonable, even-handed approach, then surprised and disappointed by the progression into reactionary anti-Soviet tropes. Calling anything posted to Hexbear “bigoted” is truly staggering - I challenge anyone to find a space on the internet that is less bigoted than Hexbear. It has shaped and improved me personally through my interaction over its existence. I am a better, less bigoted person today because of Hexbear.
At first I thought the accusations of bigotry were because of the jokes we make about Italians or our criticisms of the state of Israel. Turns out that wasn’t it.
Currently I’m still very confused, because it seems like any positive claim about the USSR or any discussion of Russia outside of a pro-NATO lens can be considered bigotry. This is where I’m lost, because I truly don’t get it.
I’m welcome to temper how much I talk about China and Russia on other instances, because I realize they’re contentious topics and honestly I’d much rather discuss political stuff closer to me anyway. But I really don’t understand how I’m supposed to discuss things that fall outside of a typical western perception of socialist countries, or anti-imperialism, or modern Russia. Should I just avoid those topics entirely? Should I not say anything unless I’m saying the consensus western liberal opinion? Because that doesn’t feel right.
First, personally, I am one of the people who accused him of engaging in behaviour that was tantamount to Holocaust denial. I did so after his repeated, blunt, assertions of false equivalency between the undisputed horrors of Nazi Germany and those - some true, many disputed, some outright refuted - of the Soviet Union. I explained that this practice is known as the ‘Double Genocide Theory’ and even linked to articles by Jewish historians and Holocaust academics that explained the issues with the theory and the history of its official use to whitewash far-right movements, particularly in post-Soviet states. Instead of receiving a modicum of serious engagement he instead deliberately and grossly misrepresented and dismissed not only my point but the work of the Jewish academics I linked before leaving with an insult.
Your position is impossible to argue against in good faith when you start with “any Estonian who is critical of both of their occupiers is a holocaust denier”.
Let me also say for the record that I have not once, in any of my posts, attempted to compare the “level” of evil of the soviets and the nazis. If by “assertions of false equivalency” you are referring to the fact that both the nazis and soviets did indeed occupy my country and commit crimes against humanity here, then sure, that is something I have been asserting. Still, I have never tried to downplay the horrors the nazis committed, I have only condemned them in the strongest possible terms. I am asking to please include this context about me if you ever feel the need to call me a holocaust denier. Please also remember that I am a real human with a public identity, and words you post on the internet can have a real effect on my life.
As for “leaving with an insult”, I do not believe I have written a single insult to anybody on hexbear (or elsewhere on Lemmy), but I’m sorry if you feel like I was rude at any point. I was simply trying to disengage, because it was clear that the more I interacted on hexbear, the more personal attacks I was receiving.
Secondly, what exactly constitutes Kremlin propaganda?
I think this question is bait, but I will answer in good faith with an example to hopefully drive the point home.
Posting “[hammer and sickle] 10 reasons why we need communism…” is clearly not Kremlin propaganda. Posting “[hammer and sickle] Ukraine shouldn’t even exist, long live CCCP” is clearly Kremlin propanda.
“Ukraine shouldn’t even exist, long live CCCP”
That doesn’t sound like something that would be posted on Hexbear, except in The Dunk Tank.
It’s the kind of concern a nationalist would feel, Leftists don’t typically ascribe human traits to states, rather they’re evaluated by how the affect the people within. When we say Israel shouldn’t exist, we’re not talking about the land or the people, we’re talking about the state keeping over half the population disenfranchised and in inhuman conditions.
Not spending any more blood to enrich Raytheon’s shareholders and strip the copper out of Ukraine’s walls is infinitely greater concern than what flag flies over Kiev to us.
is infinitely greater concern than what flag flies over Kiev to us.
Ah so you guys don’t care about imperialism or colonialism? Or is it only bad when the US does it?
Dude did you not just read any of the post you are replying to? We care deeply about the people and we don’t care much which nation controls the borders but about the material conditions of the people therein.
they’re evaluated by how the affect the people within
I usually enjoy the conversations they create, could do less with the poopy pig but that’s not a big deal enough to defederate IMO.
What is the deal with that pig anyway? I’m out of the loop, but I’ve seen it a few times.
It was a shock reaction image that became popular on r/cth and kind of became a mascot for the sub & then later for chapo.chat/hexbear.
Honestly, we all got so used to it that it became a nothingburger internally, just a way to tell someone to eff off. I was surprised to see it actually affecting people post-federation, but that’s also attributable to the emoji bug.
This. It was basically a ‘we’re not going to dignify that with an answer’ shorthand for abusive or obviously trolling posts.
I am also still quite worried about the amount of distinct users on hexbear who have posted Kremlin propaganda. I so far don’t have reason to believe that these users are employed by the Russian state, but the fact that they are spreading the same hateful content which can be seen on Russian television seems problematic to say the least, and it remains to be seen if moderators can truly keep up with such content.
This was why my eyebrows raised when I saw the Hexbear admin response when they claim that “Russian disinformation is generally either refuted in comments or removed by mods”. Kremlin propaganda is rife in communities like chapotraphouse, and it certainly seems like the mods there let anything slide as long as it is isn’t outright incitement to violence.
I challenged claims made in a couple of different anti-Ukraine posts and despite the fact there were maybe one or two users whose responses were thoughtful, the majority were outright calling me an idiot and a
removed liberal(edit: correction; dumb fuck)So far, my impression of HB’s userbase is pretty negative because the posts on there that make the front page here tend to be the more shit-posty ones.
That said, I appreciate @sunaurus for the stance he’s taking. There is some positive and thoughtful content on HB - you just have to block the noisier and more idiotic communities so it doesn’t get drowned out.
and a removed liberal
We didn’t call you that because there is an incredibly strong site culture against using ableist slurs and anybody who comes into our instance and says that slur is banned on the spot. I literally can’t even see it because the hexbear instance automatically changes it to say removed instead. I would encourage you not to sling around ableist slurs in future.
removed liberal
I don’t know what word is supposed to be there, but we can’t have called you that because it is literally not allowed by our instance.
I was paraphrasing, but yes you’re right.
On review, the actual phrase they used was “dumb fuck”.
So you use slurs that are banned on our instance and act like we’re the ones not being civil? Real self aware you are.
I’ve seen that or worse thrown around on pretty much every internet community I’ve ever seen. The only difference is whether it is popular/ever removed by mods. On literally every internet community I’ve seen or heard of, there are insults that crop up with the same amount of intended impact, even if they are less profane (think of all the snarky comments or outright diatribes you’ve seen about how ignorant or wrong someone is). And profanity is not some exceptional line, either.
I think they’re alright. I don’t think they’re brigading, it may feel that way because leftists are used to discussing ideas, it’s done all the time between the different branches, so they go full debatelord when they find easy pickings, users not used to their party line getting challenged with competence and end up resorting to name calling and X-badisms.
There is an 800 comments difference when you look at this thread from an instance that is defederated with them.
We have a 20k user base, and we are the most active instance on Lemmy. This post popped up on my all screen just like everyone else’s.
Defederating is the wrong move.
At 21 hours old, this lemm.ee meta post has 1123 comments and 3/4ths of the comments are from hexbear users. They brigade every thread with their non sense and it is impacting lemmy in a very negative way. We wouldn’t be having this discussion if it wasn’t. I don’t really like defederation if it was a tool to silence ideology but what hexbear users do is not really debate ideology and more aggressive in your face bad faith argument trolling. This is a spam instance that should be treated as such. Block it.
brigade
It’s not brigading, this is the top thread on both of our instances and the admin OK’d our input. blahaj had 2 Hexbear federation threads, one including everyone and one just for blahaj users.
Also hexbear doesn’t have downvotes, so we have a culture of responding to add or refute information.
debate ideology
We’re pretty disdainful of debate culture. A discussion where both people are trying to appeal to a third party instead of have a genuine discussion is inherently in bad faith.
Can you explain what the difference is between ‘brigading’ and just users posting? How can a community that’s been the or one of the most active for over 3 years when it wasn’t federeated or connected with anyone, be a “spam instance”?
It’s bad faith trolling to defend ourselves? It’s not our fault you don’t understand how federation works. Go back to reddit if you want your enforced echo chamber back.
If those long threads were mostly on topic (about federation), that would at least be something. They present interesting view points but at all the wrong times and in huge numbers. This post is about examining their behavior and their effect on conversations. I think they’ve shown it to us.
This is at least a two way street. People from Hexbear have a right to defend themselves when you call them Nazis and compare them to ISIS like you have elsewhere in this thread.
To avoid misrepresentation, I’ll quote my original proposition:
It was not to compare ideologies but the end result of extremism and radicalization. Words become violent action and a willingness to forego peaceful change.
The casual introduction and acceptance of capital punishment and “useful” applications of police brutality, as if they were common tools in a political toolbox, is a mark of the beginning of that very shift.
Anyway, I’ve spent far too much time in here so I’m trying to put this whole post behind me. My own personal “disengage”, I guess? I just didn’t want to leave while being lumped in with the other people leaving crude, shallow dismissals as Russian tankies/bots/shills/trolls/whatever. I entered these conversations with a neutral viewpoint on Hexbear, not even in favor of defederation, but that has sadly changed quite a bit.
You added that rationalization ten hours later and still compared us to Nazis.
Views on capital punishment vary across Hexbear, but in general I’d argue we’re generally anti. The idea we’re a pro-police brutality sub is absurd, given that ACAB and the police being the violent oppressive shock troops of capital are one of the the only views that’s basically agreed upon across Hexbear.
You seem to be misrepresenting the fact that while most communists (and not all of our users are communists) dislike, but understand the sad necessity of some degree of state violence in order to protect itself from hostile forces like coups and terrorism. All states believe this, it’s known as ‘the monopoly on violence’ but communists broadly want to achieve global revolution in order to move past the need for the destructive elements of the state (although I admit this is a pretty utopian, very long term goal). I’d be happy to send you some reading or video lectures on the subject if you’d like, but it sounds like you’re not interested.
And just a note in case you do pop over to Hexbear in the future, the disengagement rule we have isn’t a tool to send a long post and have the final word. But I’m also not interested in hounding you if you just want to move on. Hope you enjoy the rest of your day.
I’m not going to engage with you on anything other than the “disengage”, but part of our “disengage” rule is that you absolutely cannot dump a bunch of text in an argument and end it with “disengage”. You need to actually disengage when you say “disengage”.
What are you talking about? Political ‘moderates’ introduce and accept capital punishment and useful applications of brutality all the time.
I really have no problem with communist or leftist views, but some of those guys need to take a chill pill. I’m cool with bashing the fash and social welfare programs, I’m not cool with basically talking about how everyone to the right of Stalin needs to die or how Tianenmen Square was a wholesale fabrication by the west. I typically just roll my eyes, block the bullshit and move on with life, but it’s been really dragging down my lemmy experience.
Tianenmen Square
Perhaps if you can’t even spell the name of the place right then you have no business talking about it and your opinions are worthless noise. Also you know the guy who wrote the lemmy software agrees with us on this topic and writes about it on his github right? Perhaps reddit is a better place for you if you want your echo chamber back.
Well, then it’s a good thing you used improper capitalization of proper nouns, or your opinion might mean something.
woosh.
Look, dude. I don’t have beef with you, and I can’t fathom that you really have beef with me, we’re just randos on the internet. I misspelled it, and I’m not proud of that, but this kind of interaction is what I’m talking about when I say “need to take a chill pill”.
Maybe shut the fuck up about political events that happened 40 years ago on the other side of the planet in a country you know so little about you can’t spell any proper nouns from their language right.
You seem upset.
“Tianenmen Square was a wholesale fabrication by the west”
No one on Hexbear claims that and if they did they’d be thoroughly ridiculed for it. I was active in that thread, the spread of opinion was pretty wide, but no one advocates anything close to what you posted above.
Wasnt there literally a huge thread on hexbear about Tiennamen just the other day? It was incredibly nuanced and far from whatever this dude is summarizing it as.
Yes and yes.
I mean, arguing about whether I really read what I claim to have read is going to be about as productive as shouting at clouds. I’m pretty sure I read it, and I honestly thought it was satire at first, but the comments changed my mind. Idk, maybe I ate the onion on that one.
The point is that I feel that that’s an (admittedly extreme) sample of the kind of content I’ve been getting through Hexbear.
I’m not trying to argue with you (and here wouldn’t be the place to get into it) but that characterisation is false and I stated such for the benefit of other readers, not specifically to try and change your mind.
This post may be what they were referring to. There is at least one highly upvoted comment saying no one died, and several saying it was a western fabrication.
I know what you’re talking about and you’ve misread the context to mean nothing happened at all and no one died, but I’m trying to help keep this thread on topic for the benefits of the mods and lemm.ee users. So if you want a clarification go there and ask, debate it, or feel free to start a new post with a good faith request for what we think.
There is at least one highly upvoted comment saying no one died
Just flipped through all the top-level comments and most of the thread and did not see one. Could you link to it?
