Hello Users of Hexbear I wanted to have a featured post discussing the next
steps for federation. We have discussed this at length among the mod team, and
it is pretty much evenly split between federating based on a "block-list" or
federating based on an "allow-list". While the mod team slightly skewed in favor
of federating using a block-list, meaning that any instance not specifically
blocked will be able to link with hexbear.net, we will be starting with an
allow-list. What this means is that only instances specifically on our
allow-list will be able to link with us, there are a few reasons for this. We
wanted to slowly integrate into the fediverse to see what it would mean for
hexbear.net's culture as well as how we fit into the wider fediverse. We also
wanted to ensure that we did not link with any instance that does not block
threads, or does not block the reactionary/fash/pedo instances.
I was honestly suprised to discover that most lemmy instances block lemmygrad.ml
but do not block the reactionary/pedo instances, sad. Here is a tenative list of
what our allow-list would look like: https://pathofexile-discuss.com/instances ,
https://possumpat.io/instances , https://lemmy.ml/instances ,
https://sopuli.xyz/instances , https://discuss.tchncs.de/instances ,
https://lemmygrad.ml/instances , https://mander.xyz/ , https://lemm.ee/ ,
toots.matapocos.dog a block-list would be massive and exhaustive to ensure that
we do not federate with any pornographic, reactionary, fascist, racist,
homophobic, transphobic, or csam-adjacent instances. We will be creating a
pinned post in c/hexbear where additional instances can be nominated for
addition to the allow-list. https://www.hexbear.net/post/277506 Please see these
previous posts by Nagarjuna regarding federation:
https://www.hexbear.net/post/273407 and https://www.hexbear.net/post/273404 If
you would like to officially put down your opinion on federation, please make a
comment with a ⬛️ if you'd like to federate based on a block-list, a ⬜️ if you'd
like to federate based on an allow-list, or a 🚫 if you do not with to federate
at all. Thank you and as usual off-topic comments will be removed.
Hexbear is far more likely to have users entering and using our comms, being another large socialist instance, albeit dedicated to left unity rather than Marxism like ourselves. I think there is enough of a culture change that we need to have a pinned post for hexbear users coming here explaining what kind of content/attitudes they might see here/what different rules to follow
There should also be a section dedicated to explaining to lemmygrad users to respect hexbear comm rules and what to expect from their users etc.
I think this would help ease any potential cross site struggle sessions
The biggest part is probably site culture. Lemmygrad is a mixture of people who fled here from genzedong, the original people who started this place, and the newest influx of r*dditors. Hexbear came from when r/chapotraphouse banned, and I believe had several other of its own off site influxes). This obviously has led to different memes, posting cultures etc. I think an example of the site culture differences is that because Hexbear came from r/chapotraphouse, it’s far more shiposty than lemmygrad. Not to say that we don’t shitpost, or they don’t effortpost, but our shitposts are mostly confined to comms like !shitposting@lemmygrad.ml etc. Their shitposts are also far more unhinged sometimes, I have seen some insane shit in hexbear even having only been there a month.
Another big part is the site rules (which also contributes to some of the site culutre differences). For instance, you can’t shit on anarchists as hard or in the same way on hexbear as here, it will get you banned. There are no downvotes on hexbear, so as well as having more users than us they also have more struggle sessions in that the only way to express any disagreement is to leave a comment, here if you dislike a comment you can just downvote and move on (This is just my opinion and only part of it, there are other reasons they have more active comment threads).
The downvotes thing is funny because that’s a UI change if I’m not mistaken. So if I’m browsing from a mobile app I’m fairly certain I can downvote. There’s nothing about their back end to my understanding (which is limited) that prevents downvotes from being federated or being calculated in their algorithm rank.
I wonder if they’re even aware that could be a possibility. Would they really want to federate if it meant that other instances could come in and download their threads and comments when they can’t?
Unless I’m wildly off base here this would extend to federated communities. Meaning they wouldn’t be able to vote down content that is appearing in federated communities from other federated instances via their UI?
I am incorrect, the server will reject downvotes with this setting enabled! Carry on!
The biggest part is probably site culture. Lemmygrad is a mixture of people who fled here from genzedong, the original people who started this place, and the newest influx of r*dditors. Hexbear came from when r/chapotraphouse banned, and I believe had several other of its own off site influxes). This obviously has led to different memes, posting cultures etc. I think an example of the site culture differences is that because Hexbear came from r/chapotraphouse, it’s far more shiposty than lemmygrad. Not to say that we don’t shitpost, or they don’t effortpost, but our shitposts are mostly confined to comms like !shitposting@lemmygrad.ml etc. Their shitposts are also far more unhinged sometimes, I have seen some insane shit in hexbear even having only been there a month.
Another big part is the site rules (which also contributes to some of the site culutre differences). For instance, you can’t shit on anarchists as hard or in the same way on hexbear as here, it will get you banned. There are no downvotes on hexbear, so as well as having more users than us they also have more struggle sessions in that the only way to express any disagreement is to leave a comment, here if you dislike a comment you can just downvote and move on (This is just my opinion and only part of it, there are other reasons they have more active comment threads).
The downvotes thing is funny because that’s a UI change if I’m not mistaken. So if I’m browsing from a mobile app I’m fairly certain I can downvote. There’s nothing about their back end to my understanding (which is limited) that prevents downvotes from being federated or being calculated in their algorithm rank.I wonder if they’re even aware that could be a possibility. Would they really want to federate if it meant that other instances could come in and download their threads and comments when they can’t?Unless I’m wildly off base here this would extend to federated communities. Meaning they wouldn’t be able to vote down content that is appearing in federated communities from other federated instances via their UI?I am incorrect, the server will reject downvotes with this setting enabled! Carry on!
I think I’ve seen dessalines somewhere writing that it is a part of the setting on that instance, so it isn’t just UI change.
I don’t think that’s how it works actually, they should have it turned off entirely, even if they get downvotes their backend will discard them.
Ah ok, interesting! Did a little more digging and that does appear to be the case. Disregard!