This is an admin post, intended for blahaj lemmy users. Top level posts from members of other instances will be removed.
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Edit - Hexbear announced plans to deferedate from us.
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After recent events, it feels to me that sentiment has shifted and more people are asking for defederation of hexbear than previously
I’ve been doing my best to try and mend bridges and keep us connected, as it’s my hope that we can maintain trans solidarity and work with them, despite the friction, however, ultimately, I feel that this is an issue for the blahaj lemmy community to decide, not the admins alone
So here’s what we’re going to do
We’re going to leave things as they are for a week. That will give time for things to calm down whilst we see if we can work together. After a week, I’ll put up a vote and get a feel for where the community is at in regards to our continued federation with hexbear. That poll will run for a week. If there is a strong will to defederate (a clear majority), then that’s what we will do
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I really really really dislike how fast so many people here are to discount their members and clamor for defederation. Queer solidarity, Trans solidarity, and Left solidarity is important. The people from hexbear aren’t an “other” we’re all in the same boat, it just happens that people from hexbear tend to be more jaded with the systems that a lot of us are slaves to in the west and in first world countries. Every single one of us is one little disillusionment away from holding the same or similar views as any person from hexbear, (I was already moving in that direction and have already made my own account there, though I started my lemmy usage here on Blahaj.)
Can they be a little overwhelming? Sure. But again, their users trend towards individuals fed up with the systems in place and are past the point of engaging in ways that look “respectable” or in their words, “liberal.”
Edit: It’s also kinda insane how they’re being treated by certain mods even when they argue in good faith. image
Queer solidarity, Trans solidarity, and Left solidarity is important.
Solidarity is not a one-way street though. You cannot expect one group to always tolerate all behavior of another, without the other group acting in the same way. Both groups have to agree that the members of the other one deserve respect and should stand up for one another. If solidarity is demanded, but not returned, then it’s just empty words.
In the same vein “Being fed up with the system” is no excuse for taking out one’s anger on anybody who is also suffering under the same system. That’s just abuse.
To bring it back to the current discussion: Members of Hexbear have to make an honest effort and demonstrate that they willing to treat members of Blahaj.Zone with the same kind of respect that they are expecting to be met with. Constantly dunking on people and being obnixious and rude isn’t that.
I’ve tried pretty hard to just talk with people, but probably 80% of the time I am put in a position where nothing I say is right, including multiple users coopting therapeutic language around abusive relationships to personally accuse me of using such tactics (with no substantiation), along with endless “red fash” type remarks. None of that is your fault, but remember that some people on our side also get attacks we did nothing to deserve.
I don’t think federation can work because one of your larger communities is obsessed with hating people like us, to the point of the mod just using private attempts at diplomacy for more drama fuel, but I still support it because I think it is worth it for all of us to see how it goes.
I completely agree with your comment. I followed CTH back when it was on reddit, because it was a refreshingly queer space. Whilst I didn’t always agree completely with the politics, I wanted to learn more about the way they see the world.
They only just federated, after being isolated for three years. I think they’re still figuring out how to be part of a wider community again and they deserve patience while they do.
Queer solidarity, Trans solidarity, and Left solidarity is important.
I hope Hexbear users realise this as well after everything that’s happened in the past few days. I want to be federated with them a lot. But I was really disappointed when I saw people from Hexbear attacking our admin. They just paid a huge amount of money out of their own pockets when traffic increased sharply, because they care about us users a lot. Then spent a bunch of labour hours migrating to new providers to keep things sustainable. I hope this is a wake up call that we’re their comrades too.
Some of us experienced the harassment personally and are not eager to allow those people free reign over our spaces.
Every single one of us is one little disillusionment away from holding the same or similar views as any person from hexbear
Uh, no. What a strange general statement.
Happy for your comfortable existence, thanks for the input 💕
Ah yes, anyone who does not agree with you must never have suffered or experienced real life. Get back on your hex bear alt.
Don’t threaten me with a good time
Not siding with radicals = “comfortable existence”
Make it make sense
Yes, if radicals want to challenge the status quo, then by definition if you are content with the status quo… you are comfortable with your current situation.
Not being an extremist doesn’t immediately mean you’re just fine with the status quo… what kinda logical long jump are you practicing?
So we’re moving the goalposts from radicals to extremists now?
Sorry, I meant to say delusionists
Every single one of us is one little disillusionment away from holding the same or similar views as any person from Hexbear
This seems silly to me. The opinions held by Hexbear at large are very specific, and one little disillusionment doesn’t suddenly make you a communist. Just because your views line up with Hexbear already and you feel like you are on the precipice of going “full leftist” doesn’t mean everyone is. Hexbear isn’t the Joker, there’s no “one bad day” that will make you into a hexbear.
Each of us has the potential to become radicalized once disillusioned and failed by the systems in power
Happy?
I was half asleep when i wrote the original.
The views held by people on Hexbear are not “very specific” and you would understand that if you actually actively engaged with the ideas.
Maybe I phrased it badly too. I’m sorry for the way I engaged. I was just trying to say that they’re specific as in not generic. There’s specific theory there, and I thought you were saying that being disillusioned makes one see things that Hexbear folks do immediately, and I was trying to say that there’s an intermediate step of theory and radicalization, but it seems we’re on the same page on that and I spoke too quickly.
There is no left solidarity with red fascists. And there shouldn’t be any other kind of solidarity either.
Preach
I don’t agree on defederating on principle (I think it should be more a user level decision to mute communities/servers) but I also think identity politics like this is harmful; especially with how much disagreement on OTHER political issues we have with them, solidarity means you are okay with some of the more insane stances they have over other equally important human rights issues
Speak for yourself, queer spaces tend to run socialist, communist and anarchist
not a blahaj user
personally, i feel like a significant portion of hexbear has more of an interest in signaling an interest in solidarity than having that solidarity
for a good chunk of them, solidarity doesnt seem to be as high of a priority as instance-based tribalism, finding libs to dunk on or promoting russia and/or china
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i think im an ecofashist
…
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That will solve so many problems!
Oh and I had a suggestion. If you’re able to, look at the poll figures for accounts created after this announcement vs the figures for pre-existing accounts. There may be evidence of people attempting to steer the results one way or another.
Yep, that’s the way I’m leaning
The Android app “Connect” does instance blocking and it’s so useful!
It’s too bad that it doesn’t also block comments from users of blocked instances. Isn’t there a uBlock Origin cosmetic filter that does that? Does anybody remember what that was?
Also, does anybody know of a way to browse two instances as one feed, and easily switch between users? I swore I heard there was some way to do that, but I don’t remember the details.
It’s too bad that it doesn’t also block comments from users of blocked instances.
That is indeed my main concern.
The communities they host may not be my cup of tea (although many are) but I curate my home feed and I’m prepared for literally anything when I browse all.
The problem is that a number of accounts on that instance seem to have a serious case of “fite me bro” they take into the rest of the system.
Also, does anybody know of a way to browse two instances as one feed, and easily switch between users?
I’ve heard the Liftoff app allows that but I’ve stuck to the webpage installed as an app on my phone so I can’t check to confirm.
Thanks, I’ll look into that.
I’m not a GitHub user, although I’ve done some browsing of open issues. Am I seeing that this feature has been coded (or is actively being coded) or am I just seeing that people are still discussing the issue?
I ask because last time I looked (probably 2-4 weeks ago), I saw some discussion on the issue dating back to over a year ago, but nothing that looked like actual traction on it getting implemented.
Its a pull request so its probably at least mostly complete
Thanks for that. Looking again, I see now at the top that I’m looking at pull requests and not “issues”. And because I don’t really know, I just looked up what pull requests are:
Pull requests let you tell others about changes you’ve pushed to a branch in a repository on GitHub. Once a pull request is opened, you can discuss and review the potential changes with collaborators and add follow-up commits before your changes are merged into the base branch.
So that means that code has been written and requested to be merged into the main branch. Does that mean it’s already been tested in a non-main branch and is (hopefully) ready for prime time after some final review?
Yeah, assuming the code is ready (im not very good at programming so idk) the owners of the repository just have to merge those commits and the feature will end up in a subsequent release
I’m super disappointed in the reaction of a lot of blahaj users to hexbear. Sure they were out of line in the initial post in Blahaj Lemmy Meta but they have breathed new life into to fediverse left (if you don’t like the left, what the heck are you doing on a queer instance). They are also significantly queer in numbers and have done a lot of work in terms of their rules and Lemmy customization (like forcing pronouns on all display names) to make their instance as LGBT friendly as possible. The rest of the fediverse could stand to learn a thing or two from that.
They have the potential to be our good friends as we all face the same oppression and share in the same struggles. How about we take a step towards queer unity and left unity in the Lemmy fediverse and not be so trigger-happy with the defederation.
They have the potential to be our good friends as we all face the same oppression and share in the same struggles. How about we take a step towards queer unity and left unity in the Lemmy fediverse and not be so trigger-happy with the defederation.
Yes, this! This is exactly what I hope we get out of it.
This is a dressed up version of their “You should be grateful we brigaded you” argument. And its just as bad. Being pro-LGBT does not give you a pass to ignore genocides, and harass people. Maybe they are ahead in a few places, but behind in a significant amount of it. Making conversations with them reductive
It is in fact not that at all
I have been watching my love tie herself in knots over the last several days, having to deal with the drama that has been brought on, trying her best to bring everyone back together.
There’s been bad behaviour from both sides, and I’m really disappointed to see that some of the worst of it came from our users, who didn’t keep to the moral high ground, disregarded our instance rules and stoopped to levels of behaviour worse than that leveled against them.
There have been accusations against us (or Ada specifically) that we are a safe harbour for bad behaviour and cause harm to trans people through our inaction.
This is perhaps the cruelest accusation they could have leveled at Ada, as she works tirelessly to maintain a safe space for our community, and while I was hoping, for all the effort that she was investing into this issue, that she could make it work despite my own reservations, this last attack on her impeccable morality has made me very angry.
I’m sorry for those that wanted to remain federated, sorry that it came to this, but I am glad it’s over now, purely for the mental health of my precious beloved.
Hope you’re okay. You guys are great. I totally understand the desire to have more people who say they want trans solidarity (yet support authoritarian regimes that hate trans people). The following really showcases the pathology of tankies.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ziq-tankies-and-the-left-unity-scam
Any attempt at comradeship with a tankie is doomed to fail. Regardless of what they claim, tankies aren’t interested in any form of debate, compromise, or exchange of ideas with anarchists or socialists. Their only goal is to give their dangerous ideology an appearance of legitimacy.
They latch onto our movements and gradually corrupt them with their reactionary rhetoric and divide-and-conquer tactics. Their goals aren’t even slightly aligned with ours, but they use entryism, shame and cries of victimization to squirrel themselves into our spaces. Their demands for ‘left unity’ and an end to ‘divisiveness’ and ‘sectarianism’ are obvious wolves in sheep’s clothing and should be rejected outright.
Their only purpose in engaging you is to normalize their toxic beliefs and make us accepting of their presence in radical groups so they can grow their ranks. If you welcome tankies into your spaces, if you engage tankies in civil discourse, if you entertain their repugnant ideas or buy into their absurd notions of “left unity” and enable their attempts to create divisions between anarchists and sow discord, then they have already succeeded in poisoning your movement and rendering it useless.
Definitely the place for this. Holy cow.
I hope she is doing okay. I have been very critical of this community, here and in other threads, but I want to make it clear that I have not had anything but respect for her and I know none of this was intended or deserved. She didn’t fan the flames. I have been very disappointed some of the users here who went out of their way to do so, and were much more interested in fighting tankies than just… not.
Lot of people said they threw off the vibe here. It seems like a lot of people here are perfectly capable of doing that themselves. I moved here because it was a small little friendly place with chill management who did what needed done but wasn’t heavy handed. I appreciate that she tried to maintain that even when people wanted a war.
:(
I think not much value would be lost by defederating.
They are denying genocides, they are supporting regimes which are not compatible with LGBT+, they don’t discuss in good faith, there is a lot of whataboutism. They want to dunk people and be right and not have their view challenged.
Unfortunately they have so radical ideas about it all (mostly US centric whataboutism as far as I can tell). They fall into fascist/authoritarian traps where they can’t even recognize they are fighting against people like me or us. They dehumanize people.
I don’t think their views are compatible with LGBT+ spaces and values even though they claim to be one while cheering for the people who would remove them from existence the first chance they would get.
Some people are moderate over there and that were the only pleasant interactions I had with them. I can’t tell if the radicals are a loud minority or the majority. They poison the well though.
Even after all that said I don’t know if defederation is the right choice. I mean they provide some good content and in the end they are a big community. On the other hand I have already blocked the instance using the Connect app and my experience improved a lot.
I think in summary they create a hostile space for all people. Even left leaning people are not safe due to their radicalized views and it is exhausting to have every thread derailed with some unrelated rant by them.
I don’t believe anyone on hexbear is actually cheering for people who would remove us from existence. I’m LGBT+ myself, and a huge part of why I’m against the current capitalist system we live under is that I see it as incredibly harmful for people like me. There are numerous examples, such as anti-trans laws in the US, the extreme anti-trans rhetoric in the UK, the American funding of draconian anti-LGBT+ laws in African countries. I also truly don’t value people in western countries higher than people in the rest of the world, so when I see the death toll from our military interventions and siege warfare in the form of sanctions, it makes my blood boil. 100s of thousands of people were killed by the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan alone; statistically thousands of them were LGBT+. This means the coalition forces killed more queer people than the countries that have actual death penalties for homosexuality.
I don’t love Russia, they’re a capitalist country with terrible laws and a regressive culture, but Ukraine isn’t really any better. They’ve elevated right wing militias which have targeted people like me and banned trans women from leaving the country.
China is behind on LGBT+ rights, but seem to be moving in the right direction. Cuba has the most progressive LGBT+ laws in the world. Vietnam is moving in the right direction pretty rapidly as well.
I hope this helps you understand why at least one of our users thoughts on these issues. I don’t speak for anyone but myself, but I feel certain my views are quite close to the majority of hexbears.
I don’t love Russia, they’re a capitalist country with terrible laws and a regressive culture, but Ukraine isn’t really any better.
Fuck off with this bothsides bullshit. Russia did literally outlaw offering gender affirming treatment to trans people last month. Ukraine is far, far behind what should be acceptable both legally and socially, but you can receive gender affirming treatment and change your legal documents. One country is actively regressing in human rights in an attempt to distance themselves from everything they consider “The West”, while the other is doing the very opposite.
It’s still a shithole of a country, but equating them is an insult to all trans people living in Russia and you only felt you had the need to do it because of the never ending struggle of some miopic political factions to instill anti-interventionism sentiment when a country edging on the border of fascism has invaded their neighbours.
At least half of it is reasonable and I would fully agree with it. Unfortunately then it went of the rails.
I read the same argument the other day with the US/NATO wars/invasions and equated to the persecution of other countries and that’s just ridiculous. If they were sent there and died because they were queer it would be a whole other story, but if they were there because they were equal to their comrades then it was the actual equality we strive for. Not that I support any wars or any military, but that rhetoric is just dumb. Also guess what this is true for any military ever. Queer people exist even if they don’t have the freedom to live their lives in the open.
Regarding Ukraine it doesn’t really matter. Russia is the agressor here. There is no way Ukraine was ever a threat to Russia yet here we are. It is a developing souvereign (!) country with many problems they try to solve one step at a time. Russia is actively working against everything we fight for. Whatever you believe Ukraine is the situation got only worse due to Russia and there is no way the invasion should ever be glorified by any sane queer person at all.
Funny you mentioned Cuba. Cuba still has major problems with corruption and all the LGBT+ laws are very, very recent additions. I want it to be a success story probably for the same reasons as you, but let’s wait and see for a few more years or decades. I dearly hope they manage and so far it looks better than ever, but unfortunately that’s not great yet.
Anyway this post is also a great example for the US centric whataboutism I talked about in my initial post.
I’m very confused by what you mean about sending people to die? I’m talking about civilian deaths due to invasions and sanctions. I don’t believe you can actually be supporting queer people while bombing them and/or starving them with sanctions.
I also don’t fully agree that my arguments are us-centric. I focus on the US and UK because I am Anglo and so am more aware of the role they play in the world.
Wars are all the same. The argument is just dumb. Either queer people are targeted specifically or it is irrelevant to any discussion about queer persecution.
I had not thought about the similarities between sanctions and siege warfare, that is an excellent observation
Sanctions are only meant to hurt people, not leaders. In fact, they politically weaken poorer people who end up trying to stay alive over trying to overthrow the government.
Yes I know it’s just the specific point about it being modern day siege warfare is new to me
It’s not an original observation, but it was something that once I was aware of really made me question why sanctions are so normalized.
If you’d like a better explanation from people who are much smarter than me I recommend the podcast Citations Needed. They’ve got an episode that goes into the harm sanctions cause, especially to the most vulnerable people in the target country.
The following link has both the podcast and a transcript if you prefer reading over listening:
https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-106-the-sanitization-of-sanctions-56f976af6019
Thank you! I will give it a listen/read
Thank you for the link!
Are you familiar with the concept of atrocity propaganda? Like, for example, the Nayirah Testimony?
As I was telling someone else, it is very difficult to discuss the criticisms of us without talking about political issues because those criticisms are predicated on political claims, such as what you accuse us of here.
Of course there is some propaganda around. That’s nothing new, never was. Stop the notion that you are somehow enlightened or have any information others don’t have. It is ridiculous.
The thing is big lies historically never lasted long if many people are involved. With digital communication around it has become even easier to receive first party accounts of events.
I honestly don’t know what in particular you are hinting at here. None of the things I mentioned would even be terrible if they were lies or have otherwise a huge ilnegative impact. With all the information around it is unlikely that anything is completely untrue though. Not recognizing any of the atrocities and ignoring the situation is seriously terrible though.
Always keep in mind the same argument is also used to deny the Holocaust, other genocides and massacres to this day. It’s a huge gamble all for the sake of dunking whoever…
I’m happy to remain federated; I think the communities, mods and the instance admins (thanks!) do a good job of curating the community, and by and large hexbear users interacting with us on this instance seem to do so in good faith.
That being said, I would make the observation that, from my perspective at least, there seem to be more than a few hexbear users that are apologists for authoritarian regimes. I want to preface this by saying that I am of an anarchist bent, so am not exactly enamoured with ‘Western’ political systems either, but this should not preclude criticism of (bringing up the most often contested examples) the USSR or China.
That being said, discussion of these things are important and differing views should be seen, as I have often found enlightening articles or overlooked areas of history through reading these kinds of discussion.
Bottom line: I would remain federated, but ensure we maintain the character of our instance.
Yeah. I certainly do not like the support for authoritarian regimes. Like, sorry if I don’t like the idea of putting my trust and life in the hands of some small handful of people in power. No matter whether they are the capitalist owner class or dictators. We don’t need to apologize for Russia or China to oppose and criticize the west.
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Holy shit, shut the fuck up. You don’t understand socialism or neoliberalism well enough to speak for either if you think the George Floyd murder was “democracy at work”. Delete the comment and maybe your account.
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Very similar thoughts, also consider myself to have an anarchist bend.
When I moved from Reddit to Lemmy, I made an account on blahaj.zone because I wanted to be on an instance that’s run by progressive trans people. Being able to trust that the admins will run an instance that’s actually protective of its members is such a relief, especially coming from Reddit.
Experiencing Lemmy for the first time was an adjustment. I was using “all” when I normally don’t, and that brought a lot of new things, good and bad, into my feed. There were some posts and comments that I found gross, but the things were dealt with or not so bad.
I started noticing a lot of NSFW posts from lemmynsfw with women that looked very young, and I found myself thinking about whether or not to report the content and how the moderators were verifying content. As young looking as possible while being legal and without getting banned was obviously the purpose. I was relieved when defederation happened. All of a sudden my feed was still diverse content, just minus jailbait-simulator. I missed the A+ posts by some of the guys, an Adonis or three, but I survived.
Things were great, then I started noticing the “fuck Ukraine, NATO is evil” posts along with “Tianamen square deaths are CIA propaganda”. That’s when hexbear federated. Lemmy.ml brought different perspectives, and they were valuable regardless of me agreeing or not. Hexbear is different.
Touting LGBT rights in Cuba, that’s great, and I didn’t know about the the changes in 2022. TIL. That’s my entire list of positive hexbear posts I’ve seen so far. I’m sure there’s more, but the community doesn’t seem to prioritize showing that. “Dunking” and snark are not valuable contributions, and the simping for Putin is straight up evil.
Ada and other admins/mods, thank you so much for your thoughtful consideration, your work, and everything you give to make this community run. I’m just a lurker, but I appreciate you all so much.
Personally I don’t agree with the decision to stay federated with them given the kind of community they foster. A great example is that the top post on the thread where they announced the rules change that was enough to remain federated a little longer is straight up abuser language.
I’d recommend checking out the thread and sorting by top to see what the most popular sentiments among the users over there is in regards to other instances.
Don’t participate, but it’s fairly eye opening.
I do hope that when you run the poll you have a way of ensuring that only people in our community can vote on it because given that they have a community on their instance dedicated to dogpiling and brigading I don’t trust them to not interfere with it.
I was fairly neutral after my first post and the admin response until I read that post. There are hexbear folks in that post explicitly saying “the whole point of federation is to dunk on people on other instances”. Also saying things like “you can’t have civil discussion with libs, you have to dunk on them”. Like they’re saying “we’re federated to be assholes to people who disagree with us”, which is a hard pass from me.
To be clear, it has nothing to to with being leftist. It has nothing to do with being trans. It has everything to do with them wanting to be assholes.
Hopefully their mods can reign stuff in to prevent that kind of behavior.
saying things like “you can’t have civil discussion with libs, you have to dunk on them”
Tbf, this is pretty consistent with my experience engaging with liberals on the fediverse. They almost invariably treat leftists like we’re naively ignorant of how political systems work while never entertaining the possibility they might be wrong.
Yea, I get that. At the same time, you can’t go in with immediate disrespect. I completely agree with responding to disrespect with an equal rebuff of disrespect. That is not what’s being done from what I saw and experienced in my interactions with several folks on hexbear.
That being said, it seems to be a small, but significant, minority of hexbear users that are engaging in this way.
You were hardly neutral when you made the request in the first place.
Correct, I was not. Ada’s response moved me to neutral because it brought understanding to why we federated in the first place, and I was ok just blocking their communities and moving on with my life.
And then their users started in on the thread.
As could very easily be expected. As has happened before and likely will again. Judging anything based on people upset when you bring up an inflammatory topic about them is no basis for a sound judgement.
We’ve had two other threads that they can easily see and they have not touched (except voting, presumably). That seems like the particular problem was solved.
As I said previously, if they wanted to defend themselves they were free to do so. But they instead attacked our admins and the instance as a whole.
Plus if they bothered to read, they’d have seen Ada saying defederation wouldn’t happen
That post doesn’t bother me at all. Someone talked some shit on their instance in the midst of some drama yesterday, seems like something they should be able to do on their own instance. I do not support defederating over that.
It’s just more about the whole attitude not inspiring much hope for me. I don’t really expect them to operate on good faith when they act like that.
They were acting like that in response to a thread where someone asked to defederate with them for petty reasons and their impression that our admin was upset that they’re anti-NATO (a mischaracterization). I’d probably be mad too. I disagree with a knee jerk reaction to a clash of cultures.
While, sure, saying we were “whining and crying” and stuff like that is just really off-putting to me.
It’s one thing to be upset and respond to it, it’s another to pretty much go straight into insulting. Like, yeah, sure, give them a chance, but I really don’t want that kinda stuff around.
If they keep it to just their instance but otherwise don’t change their behaviour, I will probably just end up blocking their stuff, as it just makes me mad, and call it a day. For now though I’m still reading their posts… even if they do make me mad, to judge for myself.
Most people didn’t go straight to insulting, they’re a pretty big instance and we would definitely know if they did. One of the reasons we have defederated people before is lack of moderator action, but their mods seem to be pretty on the ball. I’m more offended that Gormandt has posted the same picture several times all over the place as some kind of evidence of a mass issue, than some people being rude on an instance with 25,000.
It very much seemed like acceptable culture/behavior to me
Yeah, we have a way of making sure the results are representative
hexbear users are trying to stir so much shit, we’re better off without them
they honestly just seem like reactionary kids no different than the maga kids who only want to show up and argue and there’s really no chance in getting positive contributions from them. 🤷♀️
my kingdom for a user level instance block function from lemmy
Two years ago a Hexbear mod (transcomrade69) harassed me (by calling out my username among many) into reading Leslie Feinberg’s Trans Liberation : Beyond Blue and Pink.
Possibly one of the most significant events in altering the trajectory of my entire life.
Yes, we can be too rambunctious at times. Yes I view present politics and past history through a lens of dialectical and historical materialism.
Yes we will likely have significant contradictions on many issues which are impossible to resolve through the Internet where we’ve already entrenched our positions. But were you on my verandah with a good duriff maybe we’d get somewhere.
I think both communities will regret this and broadly the future looks bleak for everyone, but extra bleak for Trans and Non-binary folk everywhere.
Leslie Feinberg also wrote a very good book on Cuba, ranging from pre-colonial history to the early 20th century, to the revolution, the UMAP camps, the HIV crisis and the rough present it’s free to read here
after I saw the first 2 posts about hexbear i actively searched for posts and comments from hexbear users to get an idea how big of a problem it really was and I found very little. I think defederation should always be the last resort. as long as there is no coordinated brigading and the admins can bereasonedd with to sanction the worst behaving users I simply see no need for it.
I honestly think the hate toward hexbear is mostly manufactured. A lot of the people complaining are the same ones erroneously comparing them to places like exploding heads, claiming they’re nazi trolls, that they go on downvoting raids (they can’t even downvote btw), accusing them of terrible things, but then don’t (or won’t) provide any proof of them acting this way. And when people like me who aren’t on hexbear question it, we get accused of being a “hexbear in disguise” and ignored. It all feels very dramatic and reddit, and I thought the point of lemmy was to not be like reddit. Defederating from problematic instances I get, but defederating because you hate tankies or because of a few bad members seems more of an ‘echo chamber’ choice than a ‘keep the community safe’ choice to me.
Have you really not seen any threads on stuff like Russia’s war? There’s
liberalliteral defense of genocide coming from there. They swarm threads, in a way that looks somewhat coordinated.Defederating them doesn’t create an echo chamber. Keeping them around is giving them permission to build their own echo chamber in your spaces by chasing away everybody else who want a chill space to hang out in.
This exactly! In posts about defederating, they’re commenting like war documents and saying that if you live in the US you’re in support of them commiting genocide. And the amount of comments I’ve seen with nearly identical wording about how Cuba is the most LGBTQ+ friendly country in the world.
Like ok, yeah, the US is a horrible country that’s committed war crimes, and maybe Cuba is LGBTQ+ friendly, I don’t really know, but that has absolutely nothing to do with defederating from an internet forum. They have a very holier than thou vibe.
Have I seen individuals say shitty things? Of course, but I don’t assume every person on hexbear is an enemy. For instance, over on lemm.ee I just had a convo with someone who was vehemently pro-landlord and hated “communism” while admitting they’ve never read any communist literature. Should I assume this is what everyone on lemm.ee is like? I’ve run across a TON of trolls and anti-leftists on lemmy.world… should I assume everyone on lemmy.world is a troll? Lemmynsfw is constantly throwing up communities that somehow bypass the nsfw filters. Should I make assumptions about everyone on lemmynsfw too now? That is a slippery slope into an echo chamber imho.
Give users the ability to block whole instances, and only defederate when a WHOLE instance is geared towards disruption, like explodingheads. I wandered around hexbear yesterday looking through their communites and posts, and there’s definitely some opinions I don’t agree with, but I’m not seeing calls to flood posts on other instances like people are claiming. All I’m seeing is a lot of in-jokes, memes, and civil discussions.
It’s not just singular anecdotes. It’s the proportion of users who are like that. A huge fraction of the activity from that server is specifically this type of horrible replies, and their admins aren’t doing anything about it. They absolutely flood many threads with trash and make many conversations entirely unreadable. At that point when you do nothing about filtering out that trash then you’re inviting them to hijack your community.
Show me where “a huge fraction” of them are doing that NOT IN RESPONSE to people badmouthing them and accusing them of shit, but for no reason. Show me these hijacked communities you keep mentioning. Show me these many conversations that are “entirely unreadable”. Show me anti-trans rhetoric that isn’t swiftly dealt with by their admins.
Defederating isn’t the answer, giving individuals the ability to block whole instances on every platform they use is the answer.
Removed by mod
Is this link supposed to be something other then a yahoo finance article with no comments
They swarm threads, in a way that looks somewhat coordinated.
They are not subtle. If you check their post history you can see the communities where they coordinate.
Now, I get pointing terrible posts and laughing at them. I’m ex-SRS. But you gotta show some restraint when you post in the threads or people will end up hating your guts.
17 of the favorites on this comment are from hexbear users
I’m sorry are you trying to imply that not all lemmy users should get the right to vote on comments?
??? No?
Then what was your point?? Cause it sounded like you’re implying that hexbears don’t have the right to vote on comments. And if that’s what you meant, thats kinda messed up honestly.
It’s the top comment on a post where users from other instances are not allowed to make top comment posts, the OP specified the thread was for Blahaj users specifically, so I think that’s relevant information to put up front
users from other instances are not allowed to make top comment posts
but I’m from this instance??
It was inevitable after their atrocious behavior. It sounds horrible to be caught in such a crossfire as an instance admin. Especially because they used their queerness as a weapon to paint us as the bad ones for splitting the community. A painful reminder that not all queer people are necessarily good people.
Thank you for dealing with this situation and making this instance a safer place.
Straight up, who you choose to associate with says a lot about a person
I’ve known plenty of people in my life who turned out to be shitty people who I stopped associating with due to them being shitty people.
Hell one of my former friends was pan and non-binary. I stopped associating with them due to various personal and political reasons but the straw that broke the camel’s back was them insisting that, “being bi was transphobic,” a few months after they came out to me as non-binary. (I had come out as bi almost a year before they came out to me as non-binary.)
I was friends with them for 6 years, yeah it hurt at first but the bliss that came from stopping to associate with them was nice.
Being able to cut shitty people out of your life is something more people need to find the strength to do.
I really don’t understand the hate towards Hexbear – sure, some users may be problematically argumentative, but that seems to be true of many instances. Meanwhile, as a trans person, Hexbear was actually one of the first places I felt safe when I started looking for a reddit alternative, and, to me, that means a lot. I’m glad I eventually found Blahaj Zone (both the lemmy and hajkey instances), but Hexbear really does feel like a good, queer-friendly, solidly leftist space, which we need more of on the internet, imo.
Like, we may disagree with their politics at points, but I’ve seen conservative and neoliberal users from other instances being awful to Hexbear users far more often than the other way around. I also think it speaks heavily in favor of Hexbear that some of the anti-Hexbear comments on the previous meta thread were from transphobic users from other instances.
Thanks for this! I personally find most of Hexbear annoying on a personal level, but that’s a problem I can personally solve with community blocking (and I mostly surf my subbed communities anyway). The way the original metathread devolved put them on thin fucking ice as far as federation is concerned. They seem to have a large proportion of people who are assholes for assholes sakes and haven’t learned that just because you believe you’re right about something doesn’t mean you have a pre-ordained right to be a fucking asshole. Or at least I’ve seen a lot of those folks, which has left a bad taste in my mouth.
Hexbear is a bare-knuckle community that encourages group think and hair trigger mockery (“LIB!” and variations). In general, they bring that mentality wherever they go. It reminds me of the Goons from SomethingAwful in that way: you could spot a group of Goons regardless of the game, site, whatever.
Those communities can be fun (a supporters section at a football match, for example), but you have to go in ready to take a stray punch or two.
I have an account on another instance for when I want to be out in the world and suffer the slings and arrows and look at shitposts on !chapotraphouse. Sometimes I’m in the mood.
But I think part of the intended vibe of blahaj.zone is that it’s somewhere that as highly marginalized people we can come and not expect to have slurs thrown around, 0-100 name calling criticism, etc.
The culture of hexbear is the opposite of that; it’s not about not subscribing to !chapotraphouse, it’s about how the instance approaches the whole idea of online interaction.
The comparison to SomethingAwful is extremely on point, as that’s the exact way they behave. Frankly, I think that type of volatile internet space should be left behind, and that’s as a former goon. They’re just ultimately shallow people who argue for the sake of arguing and bring nothing but discomfort to others.
not expect to have slurs thrown around,
Are you suggesting that you expect to be called slurs by the overwhelmingly queer users of Hexbear, who swiftly ban anyone using basically any kind of slur, and whose mods have recently had comments removed for calling out users on this instance for using slurs???
Also, that particular incident is a prime example of the problem.
Here, we’re used to de-escalate and talk about stuff. That poster has started at least three threads just escalating and escalating.
We’re just not compatible.
Yes, honestly, since we’ve seen the moderation is subpar
Hexbear users are literally not capable of throwing slurs at people since the fork hexbear runs on has a slur filter hard coded into it
The hell? I do not understand why anyone would remove the first of those comments, and the second is a bit abrasive but still not moderation-worthy, imo.
