I figured since their admin has asked them to stop participating over here it may be worthwhile to get a new discussion going that is primarily blahaj. I’m almost certain they’ll still be upvoting so keep that in mind as that may skew things. Worthwhile to check in from instances that have already defederated them. The previous thread definitely left a bad taste in my mouth but what do y’all think?
Old thread can be found here
EDIT: With regards to the post on new federation guidelines here: https://hexbear.net/post/352119
The current top comment is:
Every instance that has talked shit and got dogpiled should be thanking us for breathing some life into their dead and boring ass websites.
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The last thread was incredibly toxic thanks to hexbear users. If that is what they do on discussions about them then they are in effect nothing more than trolls. We should Defederate.
I agree with defederation based solely on the fact that nothing can be argued without it developing into an utter shit-fest with them. They only have memes and a spectrum of weird to abhorrent takes politically to give.
What, overall would we be losing vs gaining the ability to use the rest of Lemmy in peace?
This is exactly how I see it
Honestly I find them more toxic than the people over at Lemmygrad and that is by no means a support of those people either, they’re both shit.
Exactly. I’ve been on boards, communities, channels and networks on dozens of different variations of internet based communication for more than two decades now. I’ve dealt with these types longer and more often than I’m proud to admit. It doesn’t matter how well spoken or well intentioned a few of them are, the people making the most noise on their behalf are shitheel trolls who aren’t worth engagement.
Mark my words, they’re trying to make a leftist version of The_Donald.
It’s up to us to call them on their bullshit before it really takes hold.
They’re not “trying to make” anything, Hexbear is one of the oldest and most established Lemmy servers out there. They’ve been around longer than either of our instances.
So?
I think what the other person was saying is that they’ve already created the lefty version of The_Donald and honestly I have to agree with take
They’re so good damn toxic that I’ve literally blocked more of them in the last 48 than I’ve blocked people in general since I moved over to Lemmy
Not quite what I mean. I don’t think Hexbear is comparable to the Donald at all. They may be rude, but they’re a hell of a lot less hateful. I was just saying that they already are what they are, whatever you consider that to be.
They don’t need to be hateful to be counterproductive. Even if they are legit, their methods aren’t helpful.
I just thought it was weird that you were saying “they’re trying to make a leftist version of the Donald” and “we have to call them out before it takes hold” like they’re not already here and in force. The problems we’re having right now descend from the just how established they are as a community, and the Federation isn’t as established yet, so there’s a lot of friction and no one quite knows how to handle the other.
There’s no conspiracy here, it’s just culture shock.
Fair enough. I’m not suggesting it’s a conspiracy. Just that we shouldn’t let ourselves become complacent to their shit-slinging.
No one took the subreddit of shitheel meme slingers seriously in 2015 either. We tried to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Look where we are now.
Hexbear is… a lot. It really does feel like they swarmed the last thread. I wish there were a way to lock threads to the local instance.
They seem to really take glee in harassment of “liberals”. Their justification of “if we are harassing you you deserve it” doesn’t hold a lot of water for me, because they seem to harass anyone who doesn’t think the exact same way as them. I certainly get the hostility towards liberals, but while that’s all well and good in their little quarantine zone over there now that they’re in the larger Threadiverse their whole “dunking on libs” thing just makes lemmy an exhausting place to be.
And then they turn around and mock everyone for being bothered by their hostility. I want to like Hexbear, but I’m not sure whether they’re good federationmates.
I hope we don’t have to defed, but if Ada decides to it’ll certainly be earned.
When I heard that hexbear was a lefty instance that was federating I was initially a bit excited
Then I went to hexbear to check it out and saying it’s a lot is an understatement
The one’s I’ve encountered here and only other instances on some of my alt accounts have some pretty shit views in regards to some current events
Their (at least every single one I’ve encountered) strong stance on letting Ukraine get steam rolled because “No war but class war,” is definitely one that rubs me the wrong way. Considering how much that statement used in that regard missing the very idea of defending one’s self.
Basically the ones I’ve encountered are straight up tankies, yeah they seem to support trans rights and other queer folk but it’s definitely hard to associate with them when their political views or so shit on other regards.
If we defederated from them I’d support it, though I think that perhaps encountering more people outside of their echo chamber they’ve been living in for years might dampen some of their shittier views a bit.
But god damn are they fucking hostile to anyone in the out group.
Also the “No war but class war” part means they don’t actually support LGBTQ+ people when the chips are down. They will absolutely throw “identity politics” under the bus if it benefits them to do so.
Yeah I’ve already seen one refer to culture war and identity politics as something to abandon in favor of class war as something that “Dems need to do” so I’d say it’s not even a stretch just them needing to receive enough push to say the quiet part out loud.
Of course now that I’m trying to find the comment I’m referencing it looks like it’s been removed as I’ve checked my alts and can’t seem to find it.
Hell I can’t even find the post though that’s not surprising as it was (I think) a US news story in one of the World News communities about a pro LGBTQ+ teacher being forced to flee their state or something.
I’m a leftist. Not a Leninist or hexxbear or whatever. I am very for supporting everyone generally. Lgbtqia+mnop absolutely as well. But I think point of the phrase despite them being horrible at articulating it. If you look at the people spreading culture War, sparking the reflexive response of identity politics in return. They are typically members of wealthy powerful classes. Or the rubes they manipulate. By castrating said classes or even abolishing them. We could largely crash culture wars and the perceived need for identity politics in return. That shouldn’t mean we stop supporting the people who need it however.
The people funding and pushing the culture War want their minions to be attacked with identity politics in return. It polarizes and separates both groups. And keeps them from realizing their common interests. Such as abolishing the ownership and Leisure Class. Re-investing in society and average everyday working people.
The question is how do we respond? We cannot abandon those being attacked. But we’d be more successful if we found a way not to alienate those whose Minds have been poisoned by the culture War bullshit. Unfortunately trying to reason with a culture warbot is like trying to squeeze IQ points from a turnip. You’d be more likely to get blood. It’s honestly just easier to argue with them and increase the Divide.
I wish there were a way to lock threads to the local instance.
Might be worth putting this feature in an automod bot in the long term.
could making a community like Blahaj.meta and only federating with Blajhaj.zone be a workaroud?
This is pretty slick. Should work as far as I can tell. Maybe an outsized amount of work to host another instance though.
*not from blahaj
it wouldnt show up in local, so you might miss some folks that stick exclusively to blahaj
crossposting with a local post would fix it somewhat though i guess
I feel like every time I see a comment from hexbear, it’s a tankie with the most insane take possible. I often see them use their emotes/memes not to add to a conversation, but to deflect or avoid directly responding to criticism. I also keep seeing entire comment threads taken over by hexbear as soon as one of them replies to someone. Almost like a bat signal goes out to call in reinforcements. I’m sure that’s mostly a product of them being terminally online and not necessarily malicious, but I have to block like ten hexbear users for every one I come across that isn’t like that.
It’s worth noting that most of the hexbear users I see are under politics stuff posted on large instances like .world and .ml, so these issues may be less prevalent or even non-existent on posts hosted on blahaj.zone. But fuck I really hate the energy they bring on. Honest to god I almost stopped using lemmy altogether because of how bad it gets under most of the posts I come across. I’m sure a lot of hexbear users are fine, but I don’t like constantly blocking half of a comment section because the tankies came out of the woodworks to say some dumb shit about Ukraine or whatever. I doubt I’m the only one constantly blocking tankies from hexbear.
I’m mostly posting this to see if others feel the same way or have had similar experiences. I’ve searched for posts about hexbear a couple times over the past week and haven’t seen one until here right now. I’m going through the first post from two days ago and it seems like I might just be coming across a very loud minority from their instance. If that’s the case, then defederating seems extreme and unnecessary. But if this is just what most of hexbear is like, I’d prefer to defederate and let the non-tankies make a new account here or on another instance that we federate with.
Update after two days: I’m officially casting my vote as “defederate from hexbear please god,” final answer. The tankies and trolls are exhausting and I’m sick and tired of dealing with them. Either they can’t be reigned in or they simply aren’t. It’s not even just their politics. Now that I’ve been thinking consciously “is this comment’s bad politics indicative of the whole instance” I’ve noticed that a lot of people from hexbear are kind of just assholes. I don’t want to deal with them anymore. “The good ones” can make another account here or somewhere that we federate with. But honest to god, most of their instance is a drain on my mental health and I can see that I’m not the only one from blahaj zone that feels that way.
I know they come off as trans-friendly, but they also let tankies run defense for authoritarian countries that don’t treat queer people like me well. If hexbear keeps up like this I’m just gonna stop using lemmy altogether. Logging on isn’t worth the excruciation of dealing with their instance. I know Ada wants solidarity with other trans-friendly instances, but I don’t think the tankies and trolls at hexbear care about that, and I don’t think the rest of their instance cares enough to get them to chill out. It feels like they’re taking advantage of blahaj zone’s charitability to keep vomiting authoritarian apologetics and brigading any comments or posts that call out that behavior. Dealing with that isn’t what I signed up for.
In the interest of transparency, this comment was at 38 upvotes when I added this update.
Almost like a bat signal goes out to call in reinforcements. I’m sure that’s mostly a product of them being terminally online and not necessarily malicious
In the case of the last defed thread, it was because someone posted a link to one of my posts in their “dunk on libs with shit takes” community.
That’s the issue I raised with their admin. The admin deleted the post in question and made changes to stop it happening again.
Going forward, it’s going to come down to this. If they dogpile on any blahaj lemmy community, or any external queer or trans communities frequented by our users and impact the ability of blahaj members to use those spaces, we’ll be talking defederation again. I’m hopeful that it won’t come to that though
I’d be suspicious of drawing those kinds of subtle lines in the sand. Malicious groups savor those kinds of guidelines so they can dance around them and test their firmness.
The spirit of their dialogue is designed to be disarming, giving them a foothold in this community. Their chosen behaviors and methods of influence are not what I want to see in a virtuous fediverse.
Maybe this is because I have a guarded heart after being burned a lot, but if you’re giving someone “one more chance”, that’s a good sign you’ve given them too many chances already.
That explains why I saw a bunch of them commenting on a few random posts over the last few days. Randomly a comment had a reply from a hexbear account and then over a dozen replies in a comment chain of mostly just hexbear users.
I thought it was just luck that they all saw each other to meme together, but them having a community for posting comment links makes sense.
almost stopped using lemmy altogether
I definitely empathize with this
I’m not from this instance, but I know exactly what you’re talking about and had the exact same experience. I had to block over 20 accounts per thread when they’d flood in to spread their nonsense and harass people, and it almost made me quit the site entirely. They’re like a horde. When my instance defederated with them, it was a night and day difference for how much better the site is to use. Comment sections are actually usable and you can discuss China/Russia/Ukraine without them flooding in and disrupting everything. As someone from a defederated instance, I believe it is a good idea for you guys to do the same.
It’s not a bat signal, likely the thread popped up into their “all” feed and a bunch see it at once.
Some of the stuff is because they were already a very established community with their own culture, who has only just recently federated with others. They are bringing their culture, which is full of memes and shitposting, out to where a good portion of normal Lemmy users don’t even know how to post a picture, and it is a lot all at once. It does seem that their admins want to have relatively good citizens, and it seems like most of what Blahaj really cares about is compatible (they are possibly even more extreme with caring about it). Being disruptive in political threads does not seem like a good reason to defederate an instance.
In this case, it was very much a “bat signal”. They posted about it and linked straight to my post in their “dunk on a lib” community
Ada in another post:
That’s the issue I raised with their admin. The admin deleted the post in question and made changes to stop it happening again.
Yep, they did. Which is why I’m pushing to remain federated. They took action and addressed the issue. But there very much was an issue before they did
I’ve said almost all I care to on this matter except to point out that it has taken less than a day for a Ukrainian war related post to appear on 196 and for hexbear “Marxist Leninists” to start proudly proclaiming their pro Russia opinions. You give these people a platform by staying federated and they will do this, and whether or not you consider their opinions to be offensive is somewhat subjective (I do) they are at the very least a major vibe killer. Anyways, I was right and if this shit keeps popping up in my feed I’m out, peace.
Yeah I’m a strong supporter of Ukraine in that conflict not just for political reasons.
I know 3 people who’s lives have been massively impacted by it; a friend who went home to defend his home who has been unreachable for a year, a friend who lost his whole family less than a month into the conflict, and a friend who now has his parents and younger brothers living with him because they fled Russia when it all kicked off.
To say I have strong opinions about the conflict is a bit of an understatement.
I’m so sorry about your friends. At this point the admin has made it clear they have no problem with this behaviour. Literally making excuses for and handwaving a cryptofascist state ravaging one of its smaller neighbours doesn’t constitute harassment.
It doesn’t seem possible to me that you can maintain a safe and inclusive space for all queer people while allowing a minority to engage in war apologism and all other manner of Soviet themed, larper bullshit. I really don’t want to actually try to address why what they’re doing is inexcusable because frankly they live for that kind of engagement, but its fucking shameful that this has become an issue at all, let alone a permanent feature of the community.
I really hope that your friends stay safe.
Hexbear literally has a community for organizing dogpiling and brigading (even Ada mentioned it) and Ada’s only problem was when it was used on them and their community†.
That’s not behavior that should be condoned by our community.
By not condemning it it makes us look like we support that idea, which could easily lead us to being defederated by choosing to associate with Hexbear still.
I don’t want to see our friendly instance get defederated because our admin won’t defederate from an openly abusive instance.
Edit: † By community here I mean specifically the meta post, and if it’s used in other spaces frequented by queer folk against queer folk.
I’d honestly still prefer defederation. If they were malignant on their own instance that’s one thing, but they made this instance feel pretty unwelcome to me, and I’ve seen way too many red flags to be able to be comfortable having them around. Trans solidarity is no reason to put up with abuse. I know I’m not really an active participant here so this is more or less meaningless to most, but I’d rather leave and go through my transition alone than to stay and have to deal with their terminally online behavior. I don’t think it should be our responsibility to rehabilitate them, nor do I think that’s possible given the relative size of our instances.
Edit: I also feel it’s worth pointing out that they’ve been defederated from several other instances for malignant behavior and I’ve seen all of that here.
Edit 2: Just saw we’re staying federated with them, so it looks like this is my stop. To all of the fine people here at blåhaj.zone, thanks so much for being a bunch of cool people, I never really chimed in but you all just living your lives helped me figure out a lot of stuff about myself, and I wish you all nothing but the best! I can’t stay a member of an instance that welcomes tankies though, so happy trails.
Understandable. I might also stop using Blahaj because of this. Have a good one
After speaking to one of their admins and seeing the change in the rules on hexbear, I’m happy enough with the outcome.
Trans solidarity is incredibly important. It’s the reason this instance exists. I prioritise that.
Hexbear (and Beehaw) is one of the only Lemmy instances that genuinely prioritise the protection of their gender diverse users, and honestly, if for nothing else, I believe it’s worth a bit of discomfort to find a way of staying connected.
And what’s your opinion on this admins take from their post on their recent rule change?
It’s one of the highest upvoted comments on the thread.
Or the highest upvoted comment in that thread that’s pretty blatant on how they feel about coming over to the rest of Lemmy?
Which one is the admin in that post?
That would be Carcosa
Here’s the same image but with the admins name uncensored.
Im very saddened to hear this. Sounds like staying in an abusive relationship because “They have good times too”. I hope you rethink this decision, or myself and atleast a few others will stop using this instance
All I can say though is the reason I am making the choice not to defederate now is because I believe that this is the best chance of developing a large positive trans userbase on the lemmyverse. At the moment, unlike the broader fediverse, lemmy and kbin are quite hostile or indifferent to trans folk. Despite hexbears bullshit, one thing they are, is strongly supportive of trans rights. And if the bullshit is kept to their own instance, then we can benefit from the voices of their trans users.
If they can’t keep their bullshit under control, then we’ll cut them off.
Why not give it a chance and see how it goes?
The users of hexbear just are very bitter that we didn’t adore their aggressive comments on the last post. I really just have a hard time seeing anything good coming of remaining federated.
They just call everyone who doesn’t like their behavior a whiny liberal.
Keep in mind they have been in an echo chamber for three years. It’s not a surprise that there may be an adjustment period where they work on their culture and come out better.
When I think of all the times that I’ve marveled at the person I’ve become (through working on myself), I’m really impressed that I got where I am. People change and grow and adapt and evolve. So do communities.
I like that Blahaj wants to try to find solidarity. I hope for this to be the attitude on as many instances as possible.
Why should we have to suffer for their inability to socialize positively outside of their bubble?
Because we’re hoping for something awesome long term, not because we want utopia right-this-minute.
Another positive is that their feistiness will be directed at any transphobic bullshit in the wider fediverse
Trans solidarity isn’t beneficial when they’re also brigading, harassing and abusing people, and disrupting threads constantly. They might be allies in terms of LGBTQ, but they are actively harmful in every other way.
I think they need to be defederated. Many users over there seem to be very edgy and tankie. I also saw too many very upvoted posts from this instance with bad faith arguments, idiotic takes and strawmen, with lots of users supporting this crap
Where in the blahaj rules does it state that you must be squishy and also be a supporter of the deadliest, most antisocial and most destructive economic system humanity has ever seen
Are you trying to argue in bad faith on purpose? StarMage’s post mentioned nothing about being pro-capitalist or anti-communist.
Well they seem clearly anticommunist
Tankies are authoritarians. You know what they meant.
Tankies are whatever the user or the word wants it to mean. Plenty of liberals use it to mean anyone left of Bernie (although I’ve even seen it used about Bernie for his comments on Cuba and because he visited the USSR). So no I don’t.
I also find the word authoritarian to be unhelpful and nonspecific in many of the instances it’s used when referring to communists
Tankie has a definition and we’ve been using the term in line with that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie#:~:text=Tankie is a pejorative label,Leninism%2C whether contemporary or historical.
I hadn’t noticed an issue with hexbear until the recent post. They definitely gave me a bad impression of their whole instance with their behavior.
I definitely think defederation is in order. Unless I’m mistaken, the most their admins have done to stop the brigading has been a comment on the post saying to stop interacting. No post on hexbear, nothing.
They seem like a bunch of shitty trolls. Acceptance of trans people aside, there’s not really a reason to continue to federate with an instance like that.
EDIT: they just added to their code of conduct disallowing the kind of behavior we saw yesterday. Still unsure if remaining federated is a good idea
Yeah I’d say we can expect more as an admin clarified it’s just for other instances meta posts. In the same post where they updated their rules.
I’d recommend checking the thread and sorting it by top. it’s pretty telling what they support.
First comment for me, but I’ve been a blahaj member since the migration. When I learned about hexbear, I was really excited because I lurked r/cth back in the day and always liked their content a lot. I’m a GenX queer anarcho-syndicalist who is terminally irony poisoned and moderately online, so it’s basically my people.
So I spent a bit of time looking at what they’ve built over the last 3 years and it was impressive. The reasons behind the mandatory pronouns are fantastic. As a cis person (sorry), whenever I specify my pronouns, it’s an attempt to normalize specifying them so that it isn’t just for trans people. That’s why they added them in hexbear, and when they did that, it outed a whole bunch of transphobes and shitty people, who were then removed from the instance. Sounds like good praxis to me. Seeing cynical interpretations of that sucks.
They also don’t allow downvoting, same as us, for many of the same reasons.
What we’re seeing right now is a culture shock because they’ve only been loose in the fediverse for a week, and the folx over at hexbear are having a struggle session about it. They’ve been in a bubble for a while and they seem to know it They didn’t know their emojis were so big, they’re working out guidelines for engagement, they’re trying to rein in the users who are getting too aggressive (including admins and mods DMing people).
It would be really cool if we at least gave them a couple more weeks to get the hang of things. Their communities are easy to block and the instance as a whole is very value aligned with blahaj. Queer and leftist unity is important.
Being harassed and called a lib for criticizing their dogpiling doesn’t feel like unity to me.
Not minimizing that at all, a lot of that wasn’t cool, but it was a handful of users from a very large instance, so it wasn’t necessarily the fault of the whole instance. They’re having internal arguments about that last thread, and many of them feel gross about it (notice they aren’t here this time). They’re also gonna have some new users who are too eager to dunk on libs to think about it for 5 seconds - a human problem, not an instance one.
Editing to add this link https://hexbear.net/post/353633 Wherein hexbear tells us all their universal safe word, and links to their code of conduct.
Safewords are agreed by participants ahead of time, happening to know their magic word isn’t the same thing.
There’s a big difference between not bowing to respectability politics and respecting the culture of other instances.
I’d be willing to see if they improve but they’ve got a fair bit to make up for after that last thread.
I’m with you and feel the same way. I think that many of them came in really hot and somewhat misdirected. I think with the chance the good will outweigh the bad.
I’m also a former /r/cth poster though too, and while I’m not a ML, I’m also not repulsed by the general flavor presented by the average poster there. That’s said my impression is that the average hexbear user was more of the moretankiechapo type than the Bernie supporter type. Not a problem for me but I can see why there would be culture shock.
Either way I’m glad this is the direction Blahaj is taking if only so I can doomscroll more leftist shitposts without changing instances.
That is a fair point, though, as a Catalan anarchist, as much as I believe in the unity of the left, I cannot and will not collaborate or tolerate tankies, history knows we tried that in times of need and it did not work out.
I’ve never heard of them until now, but nothing I’m seeing makes me feel like I’d miss anything if blahaj defederated from them.
Straight up I’ve blocked more people from hexbear than anywhere else
At this point I’m looking forward to defederating from them due to how toxic they are
I switched from Infinity, the client I’ve been using for years since Reddit and love dearly, to Sync, just so I could block the entire instance. The only people I’ve blocked on Lemmy are Hexbear users because all they do is spam anti American, anti capitalist takes everywhere they can and spam comment sections with essays denying the wrongdoings of any nation that is nominally communist. They’re more preachy and aggressive than street preachers, and my experience on Lemmy has been significantly more relaxed with them blocked
I commented before on that thread (before hexbear members got to weigh in) and today I still don’t think permanent defederation is warranted.
Hexbear absolutely needs to do better and some of the issue could also be with Lemmy’s technical limitations. For example, Hexbear emotes are bugged on other instances and also the fact that hexbear and other instances were able to comment on that thread which muddled the objective of the post. Only blahaj members should have participated and we know that for the better.
Defederation to me means complete erasure of an instance that threatens the integrity of the host. I joined Blahaj to be express my queerness on lemmy and Hexbear isn’t taking that away from me. Nor do I believe (imo) there was evidence of that in the 1st thread.
If it’s too inconclusive then I’d say not to defederate and instead focus on making sure Lemmy as a whole can be improved for its users.
Why would anybody thank them for doing nothing but spam propaganda and huge emojis and brigading? Absolutely delusional. The instance I’m from defederated from them and it’s been a night and day difference. You guys should do the same.
My opinion is please defederate, thank you
It would be a shame to defederate them. While they can be abrasive and a bit trolly at times, I think they add very diverse opinions and insights compared to the rest of the community. The most thought provoking comments I’ve read during my time here have come from hexbear users, even if I think it’s a nonsensical take it’s at least unique to me.
The brigading in the other post probably pissed a bunch of people off, but I couldn’t help but find humour in that whole situation. It didn’t seem too bad, just mildly annoying. It doesn’t feel like it’s a widespread enough issue to warrant defederating, but only time will tell I guess.
This was essentially how I felt about them before, I had nearly made the first comment in the original thread to say something like “sometimes annoying but their code of conduct seems pretty compatible” - I don’t agree with the original proposal.
I wasn’t impressed by the response from them, although it did seem to be a few users and I’m not sure if we shouldn’t just write it off to the heat of the moment.
Also one of them in the original thread suggested an interesting history podcast about US imperialism (Blowback), the bashing of which I am totally down with.
