Recently I was asked if we’d be willing to reconsider federation with Hexbear, followed by CARCOSA reaching out to me to see if it was something we’d be open to.

They made a post asking if their community was interested in refederating with us, similarly I’d like the opinion of our local users.

Why refederate?

Hexbear has a decent number of sizable active communities:

These all seem fairly well moderated, giving us access to more diverse posts and viewpoints. A lot of our feed right now is dominated by US centric communities, and it’d be nice to get some more variety.

Why not?

They love trolling and I don’t expect them to follow our rules when commenting (primarily “be civil”).

Just looking at their thread about us, there’s a significant number of immature replies slandering us / Canada. I’m not confident their users will engage in actual discussion in our threads, rather than just showing up to throw out insults and memes.

We can try to handle this by banning users / blocking specific communities, but that’s going to increase moderation workload for both admins and mods. Hexbear is self admittedly quick to ban users on their side, but they also don’t mind ban evasion - not ideal for us.

So what’s next?

This is where we solicit your opinions, how does our community feel?

Edit: Well, it looks like the community is overwhelmingly against refederation. Decision made, thanks everyone for your feedback!

      • ShadowOPMAEnglish
        13·
        2 months ago

        Beaver has been a long time contributing user to lemmy.ca, not everyone you disagree with is a hexbear alt.

        • GBU_28@lemm.eeEnglish
          6·
          2 months ago

          What just happened to you wasn’t a disagreement, that was a hair trigger to a dunk, hex or not

          • m-p{3}AEnglish
            3·
            2 months ago

            Beaver has been here for a while and contributes often, I trust her and she simply wanted an answer to a misunderstanding on a subject she cares about deeply.

            • GBU_28@lemm.eeEnglish
              6·
              2 months ago

              Totally fine but the words used were very toxic and aggressive. Had shadow been away and not replied promptly, a whole chain of events, built of an assumption would have been rolling, and shadows good name brought into question. Jumping to a conclusion with a threat locked and loaded. When clarified the threat retracted with imperious attitude.

              I make no comment on the history of the user or the instance, and imply no alting. but the behavior displayed was very alike that of hex.

              • m-p{3}AEnglish
                3·
                2 months ago

                It felt indeed a but agressive, but the cause of veganism and animal defense is deep to her heart so I kinda get where it came from.

                • GBU_28@lemm.eeEnglish
                  6·
                  2 months ago

                  I get that, and respect that. If it’s as you say and they are a leading voice in this space, I leave with this statement:

                  Leadership is a burden, and reasonable, measured action is how it’s carried.

                  A very smart wildland fire crewboss told me something close to that once when I made squaddie.

                  • m-p{3}AEnglish
                    5·
                    2 months ago

                    Wise advice, thanks for sharing :)