~500 comments about our instance and admins in the past week. Talk about needing to touch some grass…
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What do you expect? There’s a reason everyone who has a desire to maintain their sanity has defederated from them.
There’s some good peeps there and they help in keeping the crypto-fash in check. But their clannishness is unchecked.
they help in keeping the crypto-fash in check
Unless your users at large are crypto fascists I don’t think you need crypto authoritarians to keep crypto fascists in check.
Well their criticism of the current system is on-point, and they can help counter pro-capitalism ideologues. It’s just that their praxis tends to be shite when they try to be all “vanguard of the proletariat” or overuse their “bullying” as a tactic.
they can help counter pro-capitalism ideologues
Only with authoritarian ideals, and while supporting places like China and N. Korea, giving capitalists every reason to mock what the tankies falsely present as communism.
Like, you do you, but personally simply having anti-capitalism in common isn’t enough to overlook the oppressive ideas they preach and support (even if indirectly, by using that instance specifically, they actively endorse and condone those ideals), just like having anti-stateism in common isn’t enough to overlook the oppressive ideas "an"caps preach and support.
They’re telling you who they are, the best thing you can do is listen (and if any of these users really are that chill and not at all tankies like you give them credit for, they should understand why being affiliated with authoritarians is a red flag to most users, and have no problem creating an account on another instance that isn’t bringing mass defederation on to itself by brigading and harassing anyone who doesn’t agree with their oppressive views)
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Thanks, you too…
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Do we really need their help keeping fascists in check? Problem is hexbears consider everyone who’s not on ml or hexbear to be an ipso facto fascist, and act accordingly. There’s zero room in their ideology for anyone with more moderate political views. I’d say the majority of our users are probably left leaning, but unless they happen to want the violent destruction of the western liberal democracies, then they just aren’t left enough for hexbears to accept.
Having said all that, I feel like we’ve managed to successfully remove most of the overt political trolling from hexbear on our instance lately, so our own communities aren’t too affected. But they really hate the fact we’ve been clamping down on them.
I’ll also acknowledge the majority of hexbear’s users don’t go trolling. They seem to have a bunch of well meaning people who are focussed on community building, a bunch of political history/theory enthusiasts, and a bunch of awful trolls who are just there for the lulz. You can see in their own modlogs that there’s tensions within their instance between those groups.
So, it’s a complicated situation to deal with, and depending which groups you interact with, you might have a very different experience. From my own experience I’d say the bad far outweighs the good though.
I think it’s because you and me face the brunt of their ire for trying to defend our instance inside their toxic comms, and that colors our perspective. But I try to step out of this and see things less personally when it affects more than just me. Just my take. I generally appreciate having the chance to be challenged from the left on occasion. None of us is perfect at the end of the day.
but unless they happen to want the violent destruction of the western liberal democracies
Btw, I think we also need to be cognizant when they exaggerate, but then again, a lot of their users will be the first to say “Lol, they think we exaggerate” so it’s not always clear since they’re too many levels deep in irony, which has it’s own impact on their userbase’s mentality. Similar statements generally require discussion and deconstruction before one can decide if that person deserves some sort of sanction.
I think we just need to take what they say at face value, because it’s all to easy for problematic users to pivot to “just joking” when they get called out.
Yeah I couldn’t agree more, they’ve caused enough issues to prove that it really isn’t and hasn’t been a joke for a long time.
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Hexbear and lemmygrad are the only instances I blocked in-client, and it was a drastic instant improvement.
Hey db0 and mods!
Since you’re just humans and we never know if the insults are slowly getting to you or you’re just having doubts, I want to give a voice to the lurkers in here and reiterate one thing: I feel exceptionally well taken care of in this instance! I’m extremely happy to be a part of it, I don’t even know what a downtime is and I don’t see much drama or toxicity if any at all. I’m simply loving Lemmy (yes, seriously!), I’m loving my time on it and I can just focus on following the communities I’m passionate in, which is the main point of Lemmy. I’m also aware that this does not happen without considerable hard work from the people behind it. So while I’m sure most of it goes unnoticed, I hope to at least convey with this that it’s not taken for granted or unappreciated in the slightest bit. A very big thanks to you all (and I try to donate where I can) <3
As for my personal experience, whenever a hexbear post makes it into my feed it’s mostly an overly aggressive political take or straight up trolling. It reminds me of the League of Legends kind of humour: It’s supposed to be a joke, but it’s not explicitly spelled out that it’s a joke and it attacks the individual. It’s a mix of aggressive trolling and just straight up toxicity. You just never know if you’re supposed to take it serious or not. But I personally like to have a choice if I eventually want to block them or not, and I feel like having a choice is one of the common threads between FOSS, Linux, the fediverse, self-hosting, piracy and so on.
But, while I do appreciate this, it isn’t crucial to my experience on Lemmy. So, if at any time this balance is taking too much of a toll on you guys, it wouldn’t be a big deal for me if we would “lose contact” with hexbear. Last thing I want is to slowly cook your sanity bit by bit, with each passing day a bit more, over something that is frankly not that important. I’d rather prefer you focus on what you love doing, be that doing technical stuff, improving the instance, memeing around, learning new stuff or simply discussing things with other people in peace. Life is much too short to argue with people, and over the internet it’s even worse!
Hey matey. Your comment is much appreciated! Thanks for taking the time.
Feels really good to read that. Thank you!
I don’t think they cook our sanity bit by bit. We all are pretty resilient and take a good chuckle whenever something like this happens.
Those of us in the DB absolutely love you guys. You’ve got our support. Normally I’m against defederation as much as possible, but I know you guys will make the right choice and do what is best for our instance.
Give ‘em hell.
even if these posts were “grilling the admins” it’s literally your instance, you don’t have to listen to anybody lol.
this instance is by far one of my favored instances though. So i’ll continue to use it regardless, and if it does go to shit, i’ll just jump ship lol. Freedom to surf is part of federation after all.
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Lol edit your shitty takes away. There is no acid strong enough to resurface your tarnished reputation.
Oh so I’m not the only one. The users on Hexbear are always angry for some reason.
That’s because it’s a toxic community
Not from what I’ve seen, it’s just not tolerant of liberalism.
Not from what I’ve seen, it’s just not tolerant
of liberalism.There, I fixed it for you.
Not in my experience, they are very tolerant towards Marxists, Anarchists, trans people, etc. Liberalism is bannable, though.
Well yes they just label anyone who they want to be removed a “liberal”, like they did with me.
Take it as a badge of honor. All clowns over there… First instance I blocked, and it reduced the toxicity on Lemmy by 70% on the spot.
I’ve read the things you have posted, and IMHO you were banned for being a loud dumbass
Sure, whatever. That’s their prerogative. But if you also insult me and delete my comments explaining our position so as to allow your disinfo the fester all the better, I might just call you a disingenuous pos
Edit to say, that being a loud mouth is not a “liberal” or “reactionary” either 😁
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What do you mean? Lemmy itself was made by Communists along Communist principles, people usually defederate from Hexbear because they are rowdy.
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I believed that, myself, for quite some time. I ended up blocking them, however, despite being an anarcho-syndicalist. The instance has very much cultivated a toxic and anti-social culture where the most active users are climbing over eachother for a chance to “dunk” on someone.
Just like right-wingers abuse outrage to get a rush some of the polygonimals clearly have become addicted to aggressive behaviors, with the rush from bullying and dunking being rather apparently more important than leftism. It’s a problem.
Additionally, their claims of anti-sectarianism and dialectics do not hold water when they are quick to label dissenting leftists as libs so that they can justify bans for those who don’t toe the line.
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I think they want the drama/attention
I don’t know who you mean by ‘they’ here (Hexbears? Db0? Mods?), but don’t give it to them. Ez.
Edit: FYI the guy below who got banned and his comment removed was saying the admin of db0 wanted attention btw. My roflcopter goes soi soi soi.
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Drama like this is exactly why I laugh when people say its better on lemmy than reddit, its just a different flavor of the same shit when you’re on All.
But no ads tho.
I use adblock :/
you put a whole two people in a room and you’ll get drama sooner or later. In this regard every place will be the same. At least we more actual people to have drama with, with reddit getting closer and closer to the dead Internet uh, practice (no longer a theory)
Yes well turns out it is an innate part of those kind of forums. The more specialised the topic the less drama generally. There is very few places with no drama whatsoever on the web.
Sorry actually it’s quite old post I should stop commenting on old comments truly
Eh, within a day or two is normal to respond imo, not everyone sees the post immediately.
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It’s funny how butthurt they always get about the simplest shit. It’s kinda hilarious.
Their instance has always been blocked on my end since the second lemmy added the instance block feature, but since that only gets rid of posts, my individual user block list has grown to about 40 hb users by now. Life gets better every time I add one to it. I hopped over there for a second and saw them gloating about banning you from their instance like it was some huge win. And then shitting on db0 because they’re “not real pirates” because they… don’t support dictatorships or something? Lol wtf?
Do not ever try to reason with them because you are burning your breath. I am surprised you have tolerated them this long. Quite literally, the only thing that can ever be done with hardcore radical trolls is blocking or defederating. Removing their voice always hurts them the most, because their only source of energy is controversy.
I think the rest of us reasonable folk really love what you do here db0. This has been by far the most stable, cleanest instance I’ve been on so far, and i’ve tried 3 or 4 of them. don’t let the assholes try and pull you down for not kowtowing to their weird ideology. Keep it up!
Edit: And as expected, the downvote brigade is monitoring this post, lol.
Would be a great feature if we could block all users of an instance.
And then shitting on db0 because they’re “not real pirates” because they… don’t support dictatorships or something? Lol wtf?
the dbzer0 shitpost was funny lmao. Cry harder next time.
dbzer0 is honestly one the better instances out here (though im biased obviously)
It’s honestly sad, almost to the point where defederating from them would be better
But I’m sure we’d be loosing good people from hexbear too
Eh, I don’t plan on defederating over such drama. They see some value in some of our users and we see some value in some of their users and we can ban the red-fash apologists and disinfo peddlers if they become a problem.
I’ve never had a positive interaction with anyone on that instance.
I’ve had, but it’s mostly outside of their areas, or with people who are not immediately closing ranks and arguing in bad faith. Just before I got banned I had someone praise me for being chill, so 🤷
Most people on hexbear with any desire to participate in good faith will have other accounts elsewhere, Hexbear is already isolated as can be so multiple accounts is basically required for them to participate on the rest of the Fediverse. Shouldn’t feel too bad about cutting off their Hexbear accounts since they almost certainly have others.
My instance is defederated with them, and most of the (politically) negative interactions I’ve had with people from other instances, I check hexbear, and so far 100% of the time they have an account with the same name there
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This user is saying they are a dumbfuck baby that cant use their words
I had to join a defederated server after the mods sent hexbear users my way to harass he after a I reported users for harassment…
As someone no longer part of their drama, yall should defederate.
I thought users could individually block comms now. For example i tried blocking lemmy.world and while that was in place i didn’t see comments from there. Is this not the case for you?
You can block an instance, but not all users from that instance. It’s essentially a “don’t see this instances posts” option.
Oh. I saw a ton of hidden comments i could not view when i blocked .world (cuz of facebook, not the lovely commenters). I thought that was because i blocked the comm they were coming from.
Could be your client doing that actually, but it’s not a Lemmy feature.
I just use a browser. I dunno if it varies by insurance but it is a Lemmy feature not client-side
Sorry, to be clear I meant “block this instance” is a Lemmy feature, but “block users from a blocked instance” is likely client side. And to be clear, the web front ends are also clients. Many of them are non standard.
If you look at the description of the instance blocking, it says it doesn’t block users.
Didn’t mean to confuse things, I should have been more clear.
It definitly wasnt at the time
I think it is a recent development, in the last few months. Have a look in your settings if you haven’t yet, should be an option now
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We’ve been at the point where defederating would have been better for months.
But I’m sure we’d be loosing good people from hexbear too
Not really, the good people will just make accounts elsewhere and start using those accounts to interact here and on the rest of the fediverse, most of the good ones already do that because hexbear is already very isolated by virtue of the fact they’re using whitelist federation and also the fact that they already have been defederated for the spam, trolling, and harassment their less savory members bring about (and more importantly the fact that it is unpunished by their instance’s moderators if not encouraged).
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Yeah they’re posting from a lemmy.world account, Lemmy.world doesn’t tolerate spammers, which is what this guy is. He is posting emoji spam.
I’ve blocked, like, 5 HexBear users and then haven’t seen a single shitty post or comment from that instance since. Either they are all banned from the other instances/communities, or it’s really only 5 dickheads.
There are a lot of dickheads, but a lot fewer of them intentionally reach outside their instance to harass other people. The problem arises when the originating instance’s mods/admins take no action to control their brigadiers.
I’m literally getting pinged from inside hexbear after being banned, from people cackling that I can’t respond.
I had to clean up a bunch of obvious bot spam from FoodPorn yesterday when I noticed it all after accidentally clicking into the community and leaving my all feed. I am now not sure if the report feature works; all the posts had tons of down votes but my report inbox has never had anything in it.
If other mods are relying on the report feature and it’s broken, it would explain why even the active mods are slow to react to things.
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I literally reported posts publicly for rule 7 violation, at which point I got abused for saying that. To my knowledge none of the people who did this were sanctioned.
Also, I’m not particularly interested in training your cops. It’s your whole culture that created 10 different posts shitting on our instance and our admins and that is not fixed by more prompt reporting.
Say what you will about random people complaining about hexbear, it’s individuals here and there. if you had threads upon threads dedicated to flinging insults and disinfo about your instance and your admins, I suspect you might want to defend yourself sometime, like you felt compelled to do just now.
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Commenting is not the same as the report function
I’m not the kind of person who goes to some other’s community and starts hitting the report buttons because someone insulted me (although I am fairly sure I did that as well when I reported the rule 7 violation once?). I would assume your own established people who do that themselves instead of attacking me for reminding them their own comm rules. Surely you don’t think that it’s my responsibility to police your comms and report whenever I see yet another thread attacking our admins and instance? For me, this is a culture issue.
if I may what is the db0 process for handling disputes for mod actions?
We haven’t had to establish any particular process. We have an appeals matrix channel if needed, but we haven’t had anyone disputing our mod actions yet.
Do you think that if one of your moderators was sent a direct message calling them a piece of shit, you would act differently?
Yes! In fact, I have had some of your users PM me before because I banned them from a community because they were harassing random people. I just laughed at them and then reported and blocked them on the second PM I also receive mention pings from your comms which is how I sometimes find these threads after they’ve been going on for a while. Lately I’ve been sometimes searching my alias, since new threads kept popping up so often.
Question: Is there no nuance in your world? Am I some random troll? No, you know very well who I am and why I reacted the way I did, or if you can’t possibly understand why I would react so badly and out of character for me, did it not strike you as something that would require some clarification before acting? Because from where I’m standing, you were just looking for an excuse to ban me. Much like that mod who admitted they were just looking for any excuse to ban me from their comm because I annoyed them with my mere existence.
And fair’s fair, you can ban whoever you want, but if you do a) don’t act like this was some neutral decision and b) don’t spread disinfo that I “harassed your admins” because I justifiably insulted one of them, once, after they insulted me first and deleted all my non-rule breaking comments trying to defend our instance from disinfo.
I dispute the accusation that there were 10 different posts, rather there were three that are removed. If there are others, please send me the link so that they can be addressed.
Historically, ever since I upset hexbears by rejecting left-unity, 10 sounds about right. Just off the top of my head there’s the one about the removed post where I was banned. The one where they attacked unruffled. The one where they attacked my pfp. The one where they attacked me for posting a meme in /c/anarchism. The three you removed after my meme. I am not keeping links mate, this is not so important to me. But the constant hate trend is undeniable, let’s not kid ourselves.
I think you will find there are many threads flinging insults and disinfo about us and I would say that I don’t feel the need to defend, in fact had you or Unruffled heeded my advice about making a non-admin account to comment/post on we would not be in this situation.
How can I possibly comment about the rationale for removing a post in /c/piracy with a pseudonymous account?
As strange as it sounds, I commented inside hexbear threads because I still see some value in your opinions of us. I wouldn’t go to a fascist instance to defend myself (I would just defed them). But in order to have any chance to do that inside hexbear, I need an extremely hard shell around me because of the massive toxicity and bad faith I have to face, toxicity which gets thicker and thicker with every new thread about us allowing to fester. So I am compelled to defend my instance as myself when I see disinfo about how we’re “defending corporations” or some other typical uncharitable shit. In the last thread, I tried to do this as calmly as humanly possibly while one of your peeps threw ableism in my face, and even that wasn’t enough.
Likewise, you don’t go to defend yourselves in every reactionary comm because you don’t care about their opinions, but you came in this thread to do so, even using an alt to do so,for similar drive to myself. You intuitively understand why I do what I do.
Is it fair to expect the admins to individually review over 3 million comments without having reports to guide us to those made in violation of rules?
Maybe not, it’s also not fair to expect us to act as the hexbear police. Your own community should be self-reporting as needed instead of turning a blind eye when it’s someone they love to hate.
After all this, I still don’t have any hate in my heart for hexbear and I’m probably the only reason we haven’t de-federated you. However I don’t think it’s true for you peeps and I think that’s sad that so many in your community are so hell bent on burning this bridge because they can’t tolerate me being against “left unity” or being cowered by the constant bullying.
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You are completely delusional if you think the hexbear admins have any interest in Lemmy beyond trolling and sophomoric information warfare. They very clearly do not care about engaging outside of their community in good faith.
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I’ve reviewed the past week of reports and literally see 0 made by you.
If the report function doesn’t work (or isn’t federated when made by users not on your own instance) then that would be consistent.
It was more like a few dozen for me, but same experience.
to be honest: hexbear is an awful instance, and to me absolutely nothing would be lost if we just defederated from them. they are a constant source of drama, are awfully quick with the banhammer if they get criticized, and have cultivated an echo chamber that makes any meaningful discussions with them impossible. comparing them to lemmygrad is more than valid, and noone bats an eye when someone defederates from that cesspool.
i’m really for keeping as many doors as possible open, but the big question is if we really want the door open to an openly authoritarian and for the most part radicalized community. looking at the comments here, i can see that i am not the only one who thinks this way.
let’s also not forget that they tend to infect all other connected instances too, there’s a high number on .ml that are basically Hexbear satellite offices where almost every single commenter is a hb user.
you can always refederate after the fact if you want to, It’s not like a fusible cpu in an xbox 360 or something lol.
Preach
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Can’t represent the users adequately if you’re not one of them.
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I’m glad that v19 of Lemmy introduced user-facing instance block settings. Just block hexbear and move on.
Funny, in this ‘drama’ hex voted against defederation and voiced support for dbzer0 users. The bans from hex admins seemed reasonable if you look at the event history.
Prefacing with the TL;DR since I went much longer than I meant to and don’t feel like deleting lol. But I thank you for seeing that most HB users (that voted) value keeping federation with dbzer0. The rest of my reply might be pointless nonsense, so fell free to stop here.
I also have a HB account in addition to my lemmy.ml I am obviously replying to you now with. I also voted that we should stay federated along with many others (which as you saw was a large majority). While there are real moments of hard trolling that I see, the shit happens with lots of other instances that aren’t .ml, lemmygrad, or HB. It is something that happens no matter old internet, new internet, federated, mega social media sites. One person’s troll is another’s friend depending on so many factors. Some of which is even misunderstandings turning into people just all jumping in all due to said misunderstandings. While others are intentional, but might not be malicious and just taken the wrong way (completely text-based communications are constantly taken wrong).
For example (in my case) I might take a post or comment differently depending on which account I am using. But not notice right away that the source is from an instance that I don’t have an account on. So I might comment with a take thinking of the instance I am on (and therefore a different understanding of the regular vibes) and be taken much much differently than I mean. Sometimes I delete a reply right after posting when I see it is not from the instance I am using.
I personally get taken wrong by people IRL when I am fucking around due to strong sarcasm and sometimes lack of expression on my face. My main point is that a lot of people on HB, Lemmygrad, and .ml actually like lots of the boards on dbzer0. I personally make sure to subscribe to the same boards from dbzer0 on my different accounts just to make sure I see the information, guides, and news no matter which I am signed into.
And like many (if not most) of the comments in the vote on HB to stay federated or not (and some folks from dbzer0 in this thread), people do find the exposure to other instances to be of value. We can learn lots of things that we might never have if not faced with such exposures and interactions. There will always be people that make problems that really aren’t helpful. But it really doesn’t help to make sure everything is reduced to pure echo chambers and just “other” everyone else. It guaranties that hate grows as the “others” are just spoken badly of and enforces not bothering to try to interact. It allows lies about the “others” to not be questioned.
HB doesn’t want to defederate because they lose more of their power as trolls and propagandists if they do.
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Really wish people would take the time to learn how the options work and not just assume they work a certain way, instance blocks are just for communities and not the users on the instance:
Users can now block instances. Similar to community blocks, it means that any posts from communities which are hosted on that instance are hidden. However the block doesn’t affect users from the blocked instance, their posts and comments can still be seen normally in other communities.
When people frame this option as if it’s an alternative to defederation it is both deceptive and dishonest because it does not help with the current issues instances like hexbear bring to the table, it just blocks the communities of that instance.
Blocking certain instances improves the experience by a huge amount, but it really isn’t sufficient. I don’t really need to encounter edgy teens saying that they hope America collapses and everyone inside gets murdered.
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Also the Lemmy.ml admins when you call Hexbear accounts tankies
Or lemmy.ml mods when you say something mildly critical of China or Russia.
I don’t see them. I’ve blocked them all several months ago. Thankfully.
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Is this getting brigaded? Lmao the downvotes
Have you read the comments? Plenty of people think this is silly evidently, it’s not brigading when a lot of dbz users are hexbear users also
Upvoted comment here:
I don’t care for the drama on Hexbear. And I don’t care for it here either. This post is drama baiting.
That’s a reasonable sentiment to me
It is a reasonable sentiment, but unfortunately it has to be dealt with if hb is gonna keep triggering said drama, because it’s a common recurring theme across multiple instances.
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Yes, definitely not hexbear users gaslighting the crap out of you.
But honey, you love getting gaslit!
You don’t have to be from hexbear to feel like this drama was played out days ago.
I think a lot of our users on dbzero are genuinely confused why our admin keeps posting about this, ngl. They’re also talking smack on their Matrix channel for some reason despite saying that they think more about us than vice-versa.
It honestly looks like he wants/likes the drama to me.
Wait what do you you mean “keeps posting”? This is the only thing I’ve posted about hexbear for months!
Posting rent-free in his mind
We’re confused? Why do you talk for other people like that’s somehow authorative ngl. Not a great thing to insult the intelligence of a whole group with the ‘I think’ line.
Not really sure what you mean here tbh. Plenty of people seemed to be downvoting his stance on the matter. I imagine we share a lot of users with hex, so poking the bear seemed like an odd choice.
There you go again dropping huge reaches as if they were facts. Doubt many people here give two flying shits about hexbear.
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The fact we stay federated with them is disgraceful.
Nah, life is all about meeting people with different opinions
No, it’s about talking with reasonable people with different experiences. Hexbear users aren’t reasonable, and largely nowadays, neither are those on .ml; trolls need victims, so they moved over.
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I have them blocked personally, awful server
You may want to remember that blocking servers in lemmy only really targets the communities and doesn’t target users from the instance. So in these situations it kinda doesn’t do anything. It’s a common misconception that instance blocking in Lemmy is stronger than it actually is and many people think it does things that it doesn’t actually do.
Users can now block instances. Similar to community blocks, it means that any posts from communities which are hosted on that instance are hidden. However the block doesn’t affect users from the blocked instance, their posts and comments can still be seen normally in other communities.
then defederate?
hexbear and lemmygrad should burn in hell, they’re one of the worst places on the internetOnly instance admins can do that though lol
That’s what he is
You’re either confusing me with someone else or whatever app you’re using is broken because I am not an instance admin here.
Also even if I was it still wouldn’t be my decision alone and would be up to the rest of the team to decide, because that’s how a large instance is run, you don’t just go do big things like that randomly without having a discussion about it first.
I see nothing indicating that but it’s not like there’s an “INSTANCE ADMIN” flag lol.
