Lemmy.World Announcements

I definitely appreciate the hesitation in defederation, but I'm in favor of defeding with both hexbear and lemmygrad.

I've seen more than enough "Stalin did nothing wrong posts" to know that discussions are pointless and would lead me only to frustration and a desire to drink.

Freedom of speech does not constitute an obligation to listen.

Good for you!

I'm not in favour of pre-emptive defederating. It feels like censorship doing so and that bothers me.

1. Their note to their users specifically says to keep their anti establishment opinions and trolling to their own communities and don't spread it further for fear of defederation. It hardly sounds threatening to us.

2. Defederating can happen at any point, and I think would be better kept as a reactive response and last resort rather than proactive.

3. The more our large instances start fracturing and closing off from one another the less useful Lemmy will become. You're hardly blocking out an idealogy, if hexbear users wanted in they could just sign up and that would make it harder to find them. At least having them federated makes it easy to filter out @hexbear if we wanted.

4. Practicing tolerance goes both ways. Calling communities 'them' vs 'us' and judging a group based on the noise of the few doesn't seem like the right approach. If hexbear became a problem and moderators complained of hate speech and conflict then absolutely we use the tools we have to keep things functioning, but filtering out groups because we don't like 'their' belief systems will make us judgemental and biased as a result. This is a platform to promote discussion not an echo chamber to gather like minded opinions and bounce them off each other in perpetuity.

I have lurked here for a long time, but I just don't understand the logic here. I read the statement that was linked here, and it just seemed like they were saying that they should be respectful and follow our rules? ... Isn't dismantling propaganda... through "informed rhetoric" a good thing? Why are NATO, the IMF or World Bank automatically good? ... Aren't we just creating a bubble by preemptively blocking a large lemmy instance just because we don't like their political speech? As far as I can tell they aren't promoting racism or bigotry. Has lemmy.world preemptively banned nazi or right-wing instances?

I have no idea who Hexbear is, but it's well documented how th IMF and World Bank work to endebt developing countries to the US's corporate rule and then steal all their resources... Are we... Not allowed to talk about that here?

Not in favour of this.

I chose Lemmy.world because I wanted an instance that would federate even with people I might disagree with. If it's illegal and abusive, sure. But to defederate on ideological grounds? I was planning a recurring donation but this makes me consider setting up my own instance.

They're welcome to whatever discussions they want to have on their instance. As long as they respect the rules of other instances when they're here, then everybody wins.

As for their point about dismantling western propaganda - if they have documented sources then let's have a conversation. It's not like there isn't western propaganda

okay this is freaking wild:

We need a sub dedicated to bot building, trolling and brigading effectively. Screw morals, or decency. They’re tools that maintain the status quo.

I'm gonna come out and say, even with the statement, I'm not in favor of preemptive defederation like this.

I know the admins of an instance are hosting us basically out of the goodness of their own hearts, and I appreciate that. And I understand they can do whatever they want, and we can move to a different instance if we want. I get it.

But I joined .world because I wanted a neutral instance that would connect with pretty much everyone unless they were particularly problematic. Could hexbear be particularly problematic? Sure, maybe. But I think there's a big difference between defederating in response to a problem and defederating in anticipation of a potential problem, especially since the users aren't given a chance to discuss it. Like, I know we're not technically entitled to give our input if we're not admins, but I think it would be nice, y'know?

If it was just some small instance of trolls that's one thing, but hexbear is actually quite a big instance, so this is a very impactful decision. I don't like it being made preemptively behind the scenes like this.

What the fuck?

I was assured by this server that it has no problem with socialists. This is worse than I expected it to be, I expected a half-hearted attempt to justify this action through means other than "they're socialists and hold socialist views".

To the three points here:

1. "Western propaganda" - Is capitalist propaganda. Of course socialists oppose it, we oppose capitalism.

2. "Nato" - An anti-nato position is held by literally every single socialist organisation in Europe. You will not find a socialist org with a pro-nato position. Ffs just look at DiEM25's position on this, it's probably the most well known cross-nation alliance of socialist groups and parties in europe including people like Yanis Varoufakis, Jeremy Corbyn and Zizek to name a few but that really doesn't do the size of the DiEM organising alliance justice. Even Noam Chomsky is anti-nato ffs. What the fuck are you doing acting like this is a fringe position not held by a huge number of people over here in Europe and at the forefront of leftist politics on the continent? Taking the position "you're not allowed to be anti-nato" is blatant american imperialism.

3. "It is in the Left’s interest for these organizations to be demolished." - Duh? What the fuck do the liberals running this instance think socialists believe exactly? When Marx calls for revolution do you think that we mean to continue the organisations that existed prior? No, we seek to abolish them and create new socialist organisations that serve the new socialist state we seek to create.

Absolutely mindblowing that this instance ever pretended it was going to play nicely with socialists. I'm disgusted.

Every single take above is also the take you will get from every single socialist community over on reddit. The anarchist communities will also even have an anti-nato position. Like jesus christ. I expected this post to be bad but I didn't expect it to be "Yeah fuck socialists, oh and fuck what anarchists believe too".

I'm flabbergasted that @[email protected] just completely lied about not intending to block based on ideology, and it's extremely telling that Hexbear gets a pre-emptive defederation for this shit while literal actual nazis were a chore to get defederated.

Why is it wrong to be critical of western propaganda?

Gotta say, pre-emptive defederation seems like a bit of an over reaction. There's plenty of leftists in other instances, not just hexbear and lemmygrad. Hell, I'm an anarchist that regularly comments on political/social threads in this instance, it doesn't seem to be an issue. Lemmy in general is pretty obviously far left leaning. I don't see the harm in federating with hexbear, unless they show themselves to be actively harassing or trolling. But you'd have to federate first to find out if they will

Personally, I'd rather just block the stuff I don't like rather than have lemmy.world trying to decide "who's worthy of federation".

What have they actually done?

I'm all for defederating from instances that cause problems but all the quotes above basically seem to say, "I know you want a revolution but you still gotta follow the rules of whatever instance you're posting on."

It's your server so your under no obligation to provide a reason for defederating beyond disagreeing with them but it leaves me wondering if there's anything else or if it's just a matter of disliking them?

Good. I commented earlier about how horrible hexbear was. I signed up for hexbear, hoping to meet leftists, but these are not leftists. They just parrot Chinese/Russian propaganda. They have no original takes, no critical thinking. Call me whatever, but, I'm pro NATO. I don't give a shit about what bullshit propaganda you show me from a totalitarian regime. If the U.S. is bad, then the CCP is pure evil.

last resort

preemptive

??

I just think it's funny how exploding heads took lots of polling and hand wringing before defederation and socialists get defederated on sight. I also think we should add "This is an expressly pro-NATO instance" to the front page, so people realize this before they make an account here.

As a leftist can I just say how cringe it is to treat "fighting liberalism on the fediverse" like it's activism? Go outside.

Too bad this instance won't approach federation with Threads in the same manner; I don't think any positive outcomes could be expected from their behavior either.

I don't mind what the servers admins need to do. But please don't take quotes out of context.

“With the cumulative updates Users may show/hide avatars, show/hide scores, show/hide NSFW content, show/hide read posts, show/hide notifications for new posts, block users, block communities, report direct messages, mods can distinguish a comment to sticky it to the top of a post. Users may set their feed in their account settings to determine if the default feed is local (hexbear.net only), subscribed (user subscribed communities only), or all (all posts on unblocked communities on federated instances).

Hello users of Hexbear in the next couple of weeks (exact date will most likely be somewhere around the 5th of August) we will be taking the site down for approximately three hours to update to lemmy 0.18.3 and begin federation., as we prepare for federation we wanted to create a primer for etiquette when engaging in the fediverse.

Please read and respect the rules of the community instance in which you are posting/commenting. Please try to keep the dirtbag lib-dunking to hexbear itself. Do not follow the Chapo Rules of Posting, instead try to engage utilizing informed rhetoric with sources to dismantle western propaganda. Posting the western atrocity propaganda and pig poop balls is hilarious but will pretty quickly get you banned and if enough of us do it defederated. Realize that you are a representative of the hexbear instance when you post on other instances.

Know that your posts, comments, and DMs involving communities/users of other instances are stored on those instances databases, while delete requests are sent there is no guarantee they will be honored, especially if a different platform is involved (mastodon, etc).

In addition, a reminder that you may set your feed or search to local/subscribed/all and block users/communities to have a greater control over what content you have. Local is Hexbear only, subscribed is communities from hexbear and federated instances that you have specifically subscribed to, and All is hexbear + all federated instances. There will be a pinned post in the !hexbear community where you can nominate instances for our allow-list or block-list.

In closing, I want to remind everyone that the moderation policy of Hexbear communities will not change and will be strictly applied to any users from a federated instance. While we are not responsible for moderation policy of remote communities our admins do see reports you make of posts/comments on federated instances, and we are able to remove them, while not actually deleting the post/comment it does hide it so Hexbear users cannot see/interact with it.”

IDK, I don't think this is the right move at all... The announcement post and the comments you pointed out were cherry-picked and misinterpreted. They are an ideological instance. You wouldn't say blahaj.zone is trying to "spread" LGBTQ+ "ideas". They're just a specifically queer instance.

Everything Hexbear said was, the way I read it, in the direction of "let's behave and be good with the federation". I think you're just confounding your own ideologies, and the way you think things should be done, with what the community at large wants.

That being said, IDC that much, but I do disagree.

PS: Posting from my lemm.ee account because this post doesn't show up on my lemmy.world account for some reason.

it became evident that allowing Hexbear to federate would violate our rules.

For the sake of absolute transparency, and clarity, would you mind specifying exactly what rules would be violated if Hexbear were to be allowed to federate with Lemmy.world?

Hexbar has no intention of "respecting the rules of the community instance in which they are posting/commenting.”

This is a rather assumptive statement. You can only guess that this would happen, and have no tangible proof that it actually would -- the previous quotes that you provided outline your ideological differences, and not proof of conspiracy. You leave out the fact that in the Hexbear post that you linked they are telling their users to behave on other instances. In the quotes that you provided, you, quite conveniently, left out some important contextual information which changes the perceived intent -- the full version of the quotes that you pulled is as follows:

Please read and respect the rules of the community instance in which you are posting/commenting. Please try to keep the dirtbag lib-dunking to hexbear itself. Do not follow the Chapo Rules of Posting, instead try to engage utilizing informed rhetoric with sources to dismantle western propaganda. Posting the western atrocity propaganda and pig poop balls is hilarious but will pretty quickly get you banned and if enough of us do it defederated. Realize that you are a representative of the hexbear instance when you post on other instances.

While, yes, I agree that this is a rather uncouth way to word an official statement to the members of an instance, it shows quite the opposite for intent to spread harm to other instances.

In addition, several comments from a Hexbear admin, demonstrate that instance rules will not be respected.

Here are some examples:

“I can assure you there will be no lemmygrad brigades, that energy would be better funneled into the current war against liberalism on the wider fediverse.”

“All loyal, honest, active and upright Communists must unite to oppose the liberal tendencies shown by certain people among us, and set them on the right path. This is one of the tasks on our ideological front.”

Your point here makes little sense to me. If anything, the examples that you just provided state otherwise. These quotes do not prove intent to cause harm on other instances through rule breaking. Your argument seems to be founded purely on an ideological difference.

I have no issue at all with defederating with an instance if they are obviously harmful to the fediverse on the whole -- instances that promote spam, trolling, brigading, etc; however, hexbear, from what I see in the linked official post, shows no evidence of such intent. All I see is difference in ideology.

Defederating instances on ideological grounds isn't a bad idea IMHO, and I can see why people might not want their feeds to end up full of people who just sort of assume that what we're here to do is use facts and logic to destroy western propaganda, with the goal of bringing about the downfall of the International Monetary Fund. That sounds like an extremely tiring project to be involved in; you wouldn't want to hang out with somebody who does that in every thread.

But I think it's important for the reason here to be that Hexbear is embarking on a project of ideological warfare. Not that the community consensus there is that the IMF is a bad idea. A load of communists is probably fine, while a load of evangelical communists determined to exactly follow the letter of every rule while maximizing the amount that they can evangelize is probably not fine.

This is entirely reasonable to me. I don't believe there is any good reason to federate with instances that are intending to astroturf, censore dissenting information, and peddle propoganda. You can see their vote brigading in a post on c/fediverse discussing this situation.

Federating with such instances does more harm than good, providing an audience for propoganda aimed at fomenting extreme perspectives thru deviant misinformation and content/narrative control.

Creating those kind of fringe echo-chamer instances is how we end up with toxic and extreme groups like SRS and incels or the donald (on reddit). They can even start out as satire and then quickly devolve into toxic hate.

The argument that we want a diverse fediverse doesn't mean that we should federate with toxic instances with bad intentions. That's not the kind of diversity that we should be promoting. That's the kind of toxic userbase that should be quarantined...

I'm not going to pretend to be unbiased, being a poster over on chapo.chat (or Hexbear as it's now [embarrassingly] called), but I hope those of you who support decision can at least understand how frustrating the purported justification is. The notion that hexbear has a consistent ideology to push beyond general amorphic leftism doesn't stand up to any scrutiny, so in the end the decision to defederate just comes down to "these people have opinions".

I echo the dissatisfaction people have with this and won't be donating again. This is Lemmy.world not Lemmy.(we need a safe space from the communists)

The fact you were upset about Beehaw's defederation but then turn around and do this is massive hypocrisy.

This is you imposing your personal ideology on your users. The fact you lead with those 3 "concerning statements" tells us everything. You only like free speech when it aligns with your own beliefs.

Shame.

I don't have any idea of who they are, but I don't get it: we're not preemptively defederating from Meta because it would be closed minded to do so (as per your admin decision), while Meta bad behavior is well documented (they've been fined by EU several times already), and we want to preemptively defederate from these people without even knowing how they will actually behave? Why? Shouldn't they be "innocent until proven guilty"?

Sorry, but talking against NATO means violating lemmy.world rules? What the hell, I’m out of here.

wait, so it really is just ideological? Like, y'all don't ban users who come into lemmygrad to specifically troll communists on ideological grounds, but when hexbear tells its users to engage in good faith you defed them? what the hell?

Edit: Like honestly this is kinda gross, they specifcally try and smooth things out and make things easier for your admins so you don't have to deal with a flood of hexbear users spamming PPB everywhere and you just use it as evidence to defederate lol

I don’t really have a problem with the main post you linked to. Are we a strictly pro-NATO server or something? I think I’m missing exactly what the issue is 🤷‍♂️

Disappointing as fuck. You're defedarating based on ideological differences and a guess that they won't engage in good faith? And you're reaching that paltry conclusion after cherry picking posts?

Not to mention the posts you've shared aren't bad at all? They're literally asking their users to engage properly in a civil manner.

Big yikes man.

So communists are not welcome on lemmy.world or what? What even is a Hexbear? How different is this move from when Elon decided to reinstate every banned account apart from Alex Jones'? How thin is the skin of lemmy.world mods? What's the point of censorship on this platform? I can go to Reddit and Twitter if I want protection from communist ideologies??

Being in favor or support of the status quo is also pushing an ideology.