this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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Lemmy.World Announcements

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Update:
The comments from this post will not be removed as to preserve the discussion around the announcement. Any continued discussions outside of this thread that violate server rules will be removed. We feel that everyone that has an opinion, and wanted to vent, has been heard.

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Original post:
Yesterday, we received information about the planned federation by Hexbear. The announcement thread can be found here: https://www.hexbear.net/post/280770. After reviewing the thread and the comments, it became evident that allowing Hexbear to federate would violate our rules.

Our code of conduct and server rules can be found here.

The announcement included several concerning statements, as highlighted below:

  • “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.”
  • “The West's role in the world, through organizations such as NATO, the IMF, and the World Bank - among many others - are deeply harmful to the billions of people living both inside and outside of their imperial core.”
  • “These organizations constitute the modern imperial order, with the United States at its heart - we are not fooled by the term "rules-based international order." It is in the Left's interest for these organizations to be demolished. When and how this will occur, and what precisely comes after, is the cause of great debate and discussion on this site, but it is necessary for a better world.”

The rhetoric and goal of Hexbar are clear based on their announcement: to "dismantle western propaganda" and "demolish organizations such as NATO” shows that Hexbar has no intention of "respecting the rules of the community instance in which they are posting/commenting.” It’s to push their beliefs and ideology.

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.”

Overall community comments:

To clarify, for those who have inquired about why Hexbear versus Lemmygrad, it should be noted that we are currently exploring the possibility of defederating from Lemmygrad as well based on similar comments Hexbear has made.

Defederation should only be considered as a last resort. However, based on their comments and behavior, no positive outcomes can be expected.

We made the decision to preemptively defederate from Hexbear for these reasons. While we understand that not everyone may agree with our decision, we believe it is important to prioritize the best interests of our community.

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[–] yuumei@lemmy.world 33 points 1 year ago (5 children)

This is really worrying. De-federating should be the last resort, I'm leaving

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[–] Dankry@lemmy.world 33 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This makes me feel pretty good about my decision to choose lemmy.world as my first instance. There is zero reason to believe Hexbear users will engage in good faith, in fact, the evidence presented in this statement clearly illustrates that they intend to troll and generally derail discussions. Preemptive defederation in this case is the prudent move. Keep up the good work, Admins.

[–] AngrilyEatingMuffins@kbin.social 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The statement literally says, “follow the rules of the instance you’re in.”

This reaction is very weird.

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[–] SiliconDon@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago

What a disappointingly reactionary approach to federation.

[–] shufflerofrocks@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] gobbling871@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago (24 children)

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??

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[–] Ysysel@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I'm a bit new to the fediverse and I came to lemmy.world because it's one of the big ones and thought it would be "neutral". But nothing quoted in this post seems dangerous or against the rules ? You don't even explain what rules they are supposedly breaking ? It's weird that the admins posted this thinking "people will understand". All you are saying is "these people are from the left", we don't like them.

You should clearly states in your rules/description that you are a neoliberal instance and contradictory opinions will be squashed.

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[–] Thwompthwomp@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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 🤷‍♂️

[–] TheSpookiestUser@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Personally I would not want to engage with any community that shares opinions like "the Russian invasion of Ukraine actually may be a good thing".

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[–] nils@feddit.de 29 points 1 year ago (9 children)

I appreciate the thought that went into this decision and I think this is an example of defederating being a good idea.

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[–] NewDark@lemmy.world 28 points 1 year ago

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

[–] gabe@literature.cafe 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think it's important to make note of the fact that they were banned on Reddit for good reason. As a community, they have always been toxic and would consistently brigade and harass other communities on Reddit that even remotely disagreed with them on anything. There was a consistent issue in Jewish focused Reddit subs with users of theirs starting fights about Zionism on random Jewish posts and generally harassing to random people that would be remotely critical of communism. They would behave in a similar way to how exploding-heads did prior to being mass defederated, specifically going into threads and brigading/downvoting and attempting to sway discussions in their favor in bad faith.

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[–] necrxfagivs@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago

So preemptively defederating from Meta (literally Evil Corp, that backed genocide and fascism) is not okey, but doing the same with communists is.

I'm starting to get a feel of what Lemmy World really is.

[–] Faresh@lemmy.ml 26 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I'm from lemmy.ml, so I shouldn't really have a say in this matter, but I just wanted to give some of my thoughts.

There's no problem in defederating from instances. However, I'm a bit confused by the reasoning given for the defederation. The points highlighted appear to simply be some normal leftist and anti-imperialist ideas, and I fail to see how it signifies intent to violate the rules of the lemmy.world instance (besides maybe point 7, if we were to consider supporting governments deemed "authoritarian" by the west as also being the same as calling for the opression for the people those governments are accused of oppressing (Which I don't believe is valid reason since that's simply not the case. For example, people who reject the idea that there is a campaign against the uyghur ethnic group in China, generally don't do so because they hate that ethnic group, but because they believe the claims are false)).

If leftist instances such as hexbear are problematic, I don't see why instances like lemmy.ml aren't, whose description some time ago was the following:

A community of leftist privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers

Some time ago they removed the word «leftist» in the description, but very much still allow people who hold similar beliefs as the ones you highlighted to use the instance and to express themselves.

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[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If this was a specific-purpose non-politics instance like many are, I'd say power to you. But for an general-purpose instance that advertises itself as being:

A generic Lemmy server for everyone to use.

Lemmy.world is a general-purpose Lemmy instance of various topics, for the entire world to use.

...then there's a need for some serious self-examination. Preemptively blocking thousands of users, and talking about blocking another long-lasting substantial community because some other community made comments about them? This is disappointing, this does not sound properly thought-out.

You're right, defederation should only be considered as a last resort. Not as a broad-spectrum discriminatory first action.

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[–] Aux@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago (5 children)

As you know, I'm anti-defed. But in this instance I'm with admins. Hexbear is a cesspool for genocidal lunatics.

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[–] Kiki@feddit.nl 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

How is the second statement problematic? It is a fact, that is largely documented in academia and many movements everywhere in the world. Disappointing decision....

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[–] NAS89@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago

Not a big fan of cherry-picking posts and comments to pre-emptively defederate because of opposing ideals.

This opinion comes from knowing nothing at all about hexbear prior to this post.

[–] bionicspud@lemmyverse.org 23 points 1 year ago (3 children)

As an instance owner myself some of this is concerning. I understand why lemmy.world would want to defederate from them. I won't defederate on my instance at this point, but if personal attacks start to happen or rules get broken, then it will be considered.

[–] AnonymousLlama@kbin.social 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This i feel is the best take for most instance owners. Wait, watch and react. Good to keep federation going until you actually observe them participating in bad faith

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[–] Angry_Maple@sh.itjust.works 23 points 1 year ago (2 children)

These comments are wild. At the end of the day, if we really dislike the actions of our instance, we can just change to a different one, or self host. Does it suck? Yes.

I don't think I can reasonably expect someone else to tailor their own instance that they created and paid for to my specific interests. A previous instance wasn't to my liking, so I just made a new account somewhere else. Isn't that supposed to be the whole point?

"If everyone defederates with everyone there will be no content". Well, it's a good thing that it's not everyone defederating with everyone.

I think that maybe the people who are really upset about defederating should try to host their own instances and act as admins for those instances. I totally understand wanting to do your own thing with the amount of time and effort that stuff requires.

Personally? I'm still pleasantly suprised/happy that so many people have created instances that they opened to the world. I also feel lucky that people are putting in a lot of effort to make places that anyone -even complete strangers- could join. I'm happy that there are a wide variety of instances.

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[–] ExtremeSoup@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (12 children)

Loving all the hexbear alt-accounts in the comments here ❤

Btw, if people didnt understand this. I AM being ironical...

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[–] regalia@literature.cafe 22 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Oooh let the spicy fedi instance drama begin. The best part of decentralization!

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[–] Metal_Zealot@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Oh boy, less than 1 month here and my first lemmy-verse drama.

Only thing different is, anyone that doesn't agree with it can literally just.... Fuck off to wherever they want

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[–] Historical_General@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Well this is unfortunate. Seems like a mistake tbh. 20k people is a huge loss.

I'll have to make alt accounts soon if account migration isn't a feature.

edit: This is reminding me of when people were calling Lemmy Devs 'tankues'. Are we being sabotaged again?

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[–] taiyang@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I read this mostly like "they seem like a bunch of assholes so we're defederating so we don't have to interact with a bunch of assholes". Cause the folks on Hexbear seem intense compared to lemmygrad, etc. I know it's really the anti-NATO stuff, but eh.

I don't like not getting content though, so I'm really not in favor of this move. But I'm also an ex-redditor who liked to lurk communities I don't agree with since it's not like the comments are going to jump out and get you. (Of course, as an American I think I get hit by more far right than far left, though they agree on some of the weirdest conspiracy shit sometimes).

Also it's not like I can't have multiple accounts across the fediverse, lol.

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[–] poopsmith@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Honestly, I don't mind this considering the examples given.

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