Lots of people who are seeing top-level postings about Hexbear. Net are probably confused about what has been going on and I want to give an SRD-style overview of the whole thing.
Note: As a user of Blahaj.Zone, I am not a neutral party in this and I do not pretend to be. This is how the whole thing has played out from my perspective.
Hexbear. Net is another Lemmy instance that had relatively recently started to federate with Blahaj.Zone and other Lemmy instances. It had previously been known as Chapo.Chat because it began as an instance for fans of the podcast ChapoTrapHouse.
Recently users from Blahaj.Zone (as well as other Lemmy instances) began to complain about the behavior of Hexbear users. The complaints were about rude, obnoxious behavior: Hexbear users calling people "libs" as an insult, denying crimes of Russia and China, denying the crimes of Stalin,...
Such behavior was not necessarily forbidden on Blahaj.Zone, but certain sub-Lemmys had their own rules on these subjects.
One of the threads about Hexbear: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/1854795?scrollToComments=true
After an ever increasing number of users calling for defederating from Hexbear. Net, Ada (admin of Blahaj.Zone) opened a thread to talk about it. The thread was quickly inundated with Hexbear users, complaining in turn about being called out in this way. Though many of their comments exploited a current bug in the Lemmy code which resulted in emoji's being embedded as pictures which results in lots of image spam.
Ada responded by removing top-level comments in the thread which were not from Blahaj.Zone's users, because she wanted to get the feedback of her own community, not from anybody else.
This happened originally in this thread: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/1959801
The discussion on Blahaj.Zone was a back and forth: Lots of people calling for "leftist and queer unity", others complaining about getting harassed by Hexbear users.
Meanwhile, elsewhere: Lemm.ee, a Lemmy instance operated and managed by someone from Estonia, also opened a discussion about Hexbear - at least partially motivated by the admin's increasing unease of the rampant denial of soviet atrocities and the occupation of Estonia by the Soviet Union. Russian propaganda in regards to the war in Ukraine was also an issue.
Lemm.ee was largely encountering similar problems as Blahaj.Zone, though the Lemme.ee admin admitted that the Hexbear admin was generally responsive to reports and complaints.
The thread on Lemm.ee: https://lemm.ee/post/4543536
The thread was also flooded with comments from Hexbear users. The admin of Lemm.ee also responded by hiding most of the comments from Hexbear.
https://mastodon.social/@brooklynman/110911292961470110
Back on Blahaj.Zone, a tangent opens up: A Hexbear user complains about c/196, the new home of Reddit's r/196 which had relocated to Blahaj.Zone and has been its biggest community ever since. The Hexbear user complains about their comments being removed, comments that called out the use of the r-word and other call-outs. The user posts pictures of the removal notices.
Blahaj.Zone's admin Ada steps in and intervenes on behalf of the Hexbear user, having a stern word with the c/196 mod responsible for the removal of the comments.
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2136643
A Hexbear admin also gets involved and sends a message to the mods of c/196 demanding the removal of the sub-Lemmy's banner, because it contains "fuck tankies²", arguing that tankies is a slur. The c/196 mod refuses and publishes their message.
[²"Tankies" is a pejorative term for authoritarian socialists in the vein of Stalin and/or Mao.]
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/1961004
While the discussion if Blahaj.Zone should defederate from Hexbear is still ongoing, the Hexbear admins defederated from Blahaj.Zone without warning from their side, because of...
unaddressed ableist removals from the /c/196 moderators, defense of chasers, no-quarter rules regarding our users, leakage of good-faith DMs from our admin team, and a general lack of initiative to punish these behavior
In her a response to these events, Ada points out in a comment that she never had the chance to adress the ableist incident (she was in bed) while other issues had happened in the past and had been adressed at the time. Thus she could not react before Hexbear defederated.
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2135406
TL;dr: Blahaj.Zone's users complain about ill behavior of users on Hexbear. Net. A discussion about defederation begins on Blahaj.Zone. Meanwhile Hexbear users complain about Blahaj.Zone in turn and Hexbear. Net defederates instantly and without warning.
I was absolutely against defederating and am only poking my head in every once in a while now.
The redditors that I left that site for are still here and they're concentrated in 196. I'm disgusted that we're okay with cis people telling trans people what is and isn't transphobic, I'm sick of chasers being normalized, I'm done with people having bad faith interpretations of my arguments and claiming I can't be from poverty or a POC just because I want real change in my country and for smaller countries around the world. (Which is the dumbest fucking possible interpretation)
On that last point:
Fuck the stupid ass respectability politics people play here, the next time some cumbrained fuck goes out of his way to let me or another trans person know he won't fuck us because of our genitals (Genital preferences exist and are valid yes, but I don't give a shit I will never fuck a cis man that trips over himself to let trans people know he doesn't want to have sex with them at any opportunity) I will say whatever I need to even if it gets me banned.
It's absolutely ridiculously hilarious that 196 is so against "tankies" yet their top posts frequently have anti-capitalist, anti-cop, pro-communism content on top of content that signals the desire for real system change, yet the one instance full of people that pose the idea that maybe sitting around posting memes all day isn't going to cause change instantly gets marked as "tankies" and "alt-rightoids posing as leftists". Disgusting.
As a communist, who does hold the desires you just drscrubed, there are often significant disagreements between what I desire politically and what someone who might be called a "tankie" desire. Generally around the application of political violence. Doesn't help that many Hexbears will make obtuse jokes that will go over my head or are only funny to those who get the reference.
Your complaints are valid and I agree. I think you're even referencing a comment I made in response to that guy saying he's not a chaser. I wanted to give him just enough rope... as I'm not sure yet, but if he is a chaser he will soon reveal it again. Hexbear has done good to point out potential issues in blahaj zone, so thank you.
I hate this post and poster you've screenshotted. I'm a vaush fan. He's priveleged as all fuck. I'm privileged. And yet, white people with free time are an asset to the cause.
Do you consider Malcom X a tankie? Che Guevara? The Zapatistas? Is anyone that takes the steps required to see real change outside of the accepted avenues of democracy (Voting and hoping your representatives enact the change you desire) a tankie?
Also please please please do some self-reflection regarding your approval of Vaush.
What are your thoughts on horses?
Another reason I dislike Vaush and vaushites, you guys are incapable of real discussions of him.
I swear you're a troll. You unironically m'lady someone the other day like a creep
That was a joke thread, that m'lady was drenched in irony. Yes, Vaush fans are leftists.
With all respect, most of the users on Mastadon and the Fediverse are white, same as what was on Reddit. When you look at the entire picture and all you see is white celebrity worship and white icons and white idols with no one of color being represented anywhere then you know you're in a white space, not a diverse one.
Plus it's always been rather odd to me that whenever people of color show up in anything, especially entertainment related, there's always major criticism and scandal, but white people apparently are untouchable and can do no wrong and are 100% innocent, 100% charitable, 100% good little angels who are a benefit to mankind while people of color are just a nuisance I guess, no matter what we do it's never good enough
And regarding the tankie thing, that's just nazi garbage coming over from reddit which is what I was talking about in my other post, they're fine with mass murdering innocent people with drones but then when you give them a taste back they call you a "tankie" because they're just fascists at the end of the day and hate being talked back to. Best to ignore people like that because they have no real beliefs
Please learn what tankies and communism are and why comparing them to fascists is disingenuous and dangerous rhetoric. I lean closer to anarchist, but I understand the goals of MLs and their ilk. If any one group that isn't part of the right side of the american political spectrum (because duh) is going to be compared to fascists, it's the american liberals as libertarianism and its branches ultimately serve to enable the rise of fascism.
Is there a reason an account made during peak hexbear drama is suddenly commenting on all my recent posts regarding hexbear? Is this gasp brigading?
Also way to completely leave everything in my comment unaddressed, that takes real skill.
Yeah real convenient that your very first comment on this instance was regarding hexbear.
You're brigading because you commented on three of my posts in a row in a short time period across multiple different threads.
So you discovered us because of a topic that doesn't concern you and you took it upon yourself to bestow us with your much needed input. And you don't see that as brigading... (Don't answer that I already know you were never arguing in good faith)
These two things don't mesh. You were not a community member before deciding to involve yourself.
There was not a single point in which you were debating me. Please tell me, in which ways am I a tankie?
You’re clearly not following me here, and I don’t feel like spelling it out again.. believe what you want, I really don’t care.
Let’s just disengage, cause we’re clearly not going to get anywhere productive.
Have a nice day
Typical of someone who doesn't actually believe in anything.
This whole situation is fascinating because there's about twenty different sides and none of them are even close to being reasonable or consistent.
Everyone is convinced they have the only 100% ideologically pure and correct opinion while also being staunch in their belief that everyone without that exact opinion is ontological evil.
I guess it's the result of echo chambers which is why everyone is so desperate to keep the lid on theirs.
I fully agree which is why i stopped getting invested in mainstream narratives fed to people through news and media. (not to say I'm fully tuned out, I pay attention to things that should be known but i take them with a grain of salt)
Unfortunately this also means that I hold a base level of disdain for the things that most people enjoy so I have to try to avoid looking like a buzzkill.