Lots of people who are seeing top-level postings about Hexbear. Net are probably confused about what has been going on and I want to give an SRD-style overview of the whole thing.
Note: As a user of Blahaj.Zone, I am not a neutral party in this and I do not pretend to be. This is how the whole thing has played out from my perspective.
Hexbear. Net is another Lemmy instance that had relatively recently started to federate with Blahaj.Zone and other Lemmy instances. It had previously been known as Chapo.Chat because it began as an instance for fans of the podcast ChapoTrapHouse.
Recently users from Blahaj.Zone (as well as other Lemmy instances) began to complain about the behavior of Hexbear users. The complaints were about rude, obnoxious behavior: Hexbear users calling people “libs” as an insult, denying crimes of Russia and China, denying the crimes of Stalin,…
Such behavior was not necessarily forbidden on Blahaj.Zone, but certain sub-Lemmys had their own rules on these subjects.
One of the threads about Hexbear: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/1854795?scrollToComments=true
After an ever increasing number of users calling for defederating from Hexbear. Net, Ada (admin of Blahaj.Zone) opened a thread to talk about it. The thread was quickly inundated with Hexbear users, complaining in turn about being called out in this way. Though many of their comments exploited a current bug in the Lemmy code which resulted in emoji’s being embedded as pictures which results in lots of image spam.
Ada responded by removing top-level comments in the thread which were not from Blahaj.Zone’s users, because she wanted to get the feedback of her own community, not from anybody else.
This happened originally in this thread: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/1959801
The discussion on Blahaj.Zone was a back and forth: Lots of people calling for “leftist and queer unity”, others complaining about getting harassed by Hexbear users.
Meanwhile, elsewhere: Lemm.ee, a Lemmy instance operated and managed by someone from Estonia, also opened a discussion about Hexbear - at least partially motivated by the admin’s increasing unease of the rampant denial of soviet atrocities and the occupation of Estonia by the Soviet Union. Russian propaganda in regards to the war in Ukraine was also an issue.
Lemm.ee was largely encountering similar problems as Blahaj.Zone, though the Lemme.ee admin admitted that the Hexbear admin was generally responsive to reports and complaints.
The thread on Lemm.ee: https://lemm.ee/post/4543536
The thread was also flooded with comments from Hexbear users. The admin of Lemm.ee also responded by hiding most of the comments from Hexbear.
https://mastodon.social/@brooklynman/110911292961470110
Back on Blahaj.Zone, a tangent opens up: A Hexbear user complains about c/196, the new home of Reddit’s r/196 which had relocated to Blahaj.Zone and has been its biggest community ever since. The Hexbear user complains about their comments being removed, comments that called out the use of the r-word and other call-outs. The user posts pictures of the removal notices.
Blahaj.Zone’s admin Ada steps in and intervenes on behalf of the Hexbear user, having a stern word with the c/196 mod responsible for the removal of the comments.
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2136643
A Hexbear admin also gets involved and sends a message to the mods of c/196 demanding the removal of the sub-Lemmy’s banner, because it contains “fuck tankies²”, arguing that tankies is a slur. The c/196 mod refuses and publishes their message.
[²"Tankies" is a pejorative term for authoritarian socialists in the vein of Stalin and/or Mao.]
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/1961004
While the discussion if Blahaj.Zone should defederate from Hexbear is still ongoing, the Hexbear admins defederated from Blahaj.Zone without warning from their side, because of…
unaddressed ableist removals from the /c/196 moderators, defense of chasers, no-quarter rules regarding our users, leakage of good-faith DMs from our admin team, and a general lack of initiative to punish these behavior
In her a response to these events, Ada points out in a comment that she never had the chance to adress the ableist incident (she was in bed) while other issues had happened in the past and had been adressed at the time. Thus she could not react before Hexbear defederated.
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2135406
TL;dr: Blahaj.Zone’s users complain about ill behavior of users on Hexbear. Net. A discussion about defederation begins on Blahaj.Zone. Meanwhile Hexbear users complain about Blahaj.Zone in turn and Hexbear. Net defederates instantly and without warning.
I’ve had two major issues with these guys. While not necessarily worth defederating everyone, I really don’t want to deal with hexbear because:
- ALL of their content is political. When they first showed up on my feed, I watched what posts/communities came up and how their users interacted on non hexbear posts. I’ve done my best to remove all politics from my social media. These guys only talked about politics and would go to other communities to turn a normal conversation political.
- Everything was extreme and obnoxious. I don’t understand why everyone keeps calling them polite. There was a constant “you’re with us or you’re against us”/“my beliefs are always right” behavior that was really annoying, especially in a public space that wasn’t polarized before they got there. It reminded me of this one girl from middle school who would walk into a room and loudly talk about whatever she wanted until all the other conversations petered out.
They’re more than welcome to behave like that in their home, but they can’t go to a public space and expect everyone to cater to their beliefs.
Not a part of blahaj, but the impression I’ve gotten from what I’ve seen (primarily in the lemm.ee megathread) is that for better or worse hexbear takes the concept of radical transparency and debate to its fullest extreme. For the better, it can produce some intensely thought provoking discussions–I’ve had to reevaluate and reconsider my own personal ethics more in the past week or so than I have in the past few years.
But the downside is that it’s Just. So. Exhausting. I fully agree that everything they discuss has a political undertone to it in some way. It feels like they just cannot turn off, and I always have to be on my guard when they get involved in any discussion, even if it’s nominally about a completely non-political topic. Even when they’re making high effort posts instead of spamming emojis and pig poop balls, every discussion feels like a minefield, where the slightest misstep gets you punished with a “here’s a response that implies/outright states you’re woefully misinformed at best and a protofascist nazi at worst, here’s a link to an obscure book written by a communist scholar 50 years ago that you should read before even trying to discuss this topic.” Hexbear getting involved in a discussion is the discourse equivalent of a group playing 4-player FFA Smash Bros. with items on and someone rolls up and demands 1v1, no items, tournament ruleset only.
I feel like I just cannot relax when hexbear is active in a discussion, and it’s not even like I really disagree with their points–yes, the US is too powerful, yes, capitalism is bad–but I strongly disagree with their conclusions (supporting China and Russia because it weakens the US is the equivalent of voting for Trump because Biden/Hillary isn’t liberal enough.) It’s just that they are so laser-focused on debate and so ready to believe the worst in everyone (they called using “top kek” a holocaust denier dogwhistle FFS, that shit originated from freaking world of warcraft, and was popularized on 4chan back when it was just a shithole instead of a racist shithole! I occasionally use it because I’m an elder millennial and I like making dated references!) that even if you support their overall goals and philosophy, you still walk away mentally exhausted because of how carefully you had to parse your words to avoid stepping on a landmine.
I just don’t understand the defense of Soviet Union and China. Just because western civilization committed atrocities doesn’t make “communist” ones any better. “We’re” suppose to be better than that. Actual communism wouldn’t need to commit atrocities
It’s an interesting one, I find myself defending China a lot because people just say the wildest stuff without the slightest context - I defend America in conversations with people from around the world who irrationally hate everything American too.
I can really see how someone would get caught up in the trap of realising that China is nothing like how it’s presented in Western media then take that too far to overlook the genuine problems there. A big part of it is intent, it’s easy to overlook bombing a baby milk factory when it’s ‘your’ people doing it as you KNOW that they’re just normal good folk like you and me so anything bad was an accident or mistake but when a sinister foreigner does something then you can imagine it like a comic book where it’s part of an evil plot just for the sake of being cruel.
(And yes I know they purposefully and knowingly bombed the baby milk factory to cause economic and social unrest, that it was an illigal war of aggression predicated on lies and used to enrich a few very powerful people, etc**)
When someone starts yelling about how terrible china is and that don’t have any concept of how their elections work, how their media works, how their social systems work, the geography, culture, history, or anything else at all beside the handful of shocking stories they’ve had pushed on them by a very biased media then it’s annoying as hell. Especially when offering the slightest bit of context gets you labelled as a fascist tankie demon - nuance is incredibly complex and even more incredibly important in actually understanding things.
I think a lot of younger people are unaware the US bombed the only baby formula factory in Iraq and claimed it was a chemical weapons factory (it wasn’t), I think many Americans in general are unaware the bombing of the Amiriyah shelter that killed between 400 and 1500 sleeping civilians, mainly women and children, who were incinerated or boiled alive, because of an antenna 300 yards away. BBC journalist John Simpson’s description of the aftermath would make anybody retch.
Hell how many Americans even remember what happened at Abu Ghraib? That got memory holed awfully quickly after pinning it all on one PFC.
Very well put, mirrors my feelings quite a bit.
Tbh I thought the admins of Lemmy.World were being overzealous when they preemptively defederated from HexBear before we even had a chance to see what federating with them would be like, but from where it stands now I think they made the right call. It doesn’t seem like anything of value was lost.
Despite apparent assurances from the HB admin team that their users are to be on their best behavior outside of their echo chamber, it seems they just can’t help themselves.
Zookeeper insists the elephants will behave outside their enclosure
Hexbear is what happens when kids (I hope they’re all in their early 20s or teens, because otherwise this gets much sadder) spend years reading on leftist theory but have zero real world experience. They get intense, volatile, argumentative and have no idea how those points reflect on themselves and in reality. This is why they go around prancing those absurd beliefs and fencing anyone who disagrees out, while also dogpilling and swarming communities that don’t agree: They only know what its like to be leftists in theory.
The one person who made the “”“”““peace””“”“” thread had an earlier post here in Blahaj saying that since working under capitalism is coercion then everyone who solicits sex workers is a rapist, and that’s basically the level of being disconnected from reality that they operate in. Unfortunately for them, their echo chamber is going to go on and be the equivalent of a left wing /pol/. For us - and hopefully all other major instances - its a relief to be rid of such crowd.
Hexbear is what happens when kids (I hope they’re all in their early 20s or teens, because otherwise this gets much sadder) spend years reading on leftist theory but have zero real world experience.
Unfortunately that does not match my experience. Because Hexbear was a ChapoTrapHouse fan instance in the beginning (and still its largest community), most of these people are likely in their late 20s and older, because that is most of Chapo’s fanbase (which rose to prominence in 2016).
It somewhat reflects who the ChapoTrapHouse hosts are: They are all “nepo babies”, a bunch of people who came from relatively wealthy or at least well off backgrounds. They are all white people from the upper crusty suburbs who love to tell you what they think socialism is supposed to be. And their audience isn’t much different from them.
I came from wealth. It certainly didn’t make me a communist. What did that, was the years I spent working in healthcare in various developing countries, and watching people die because they couldn’t afford proper treatment. Although I suppose thinking about where I came from also helped.
Good for you and all the props for you that you decided to go out there. The problem with the Chapo bros is: They really did not. They had not-particularly-successful careers as comedians prior to starting their podcast. Whatever your impression of them may be, I think it’s hard to argue that they have a particular insight into poor people’s lives or working class politics.
It really feels like the people who grew up on 4chan and later came out as queer, but never learned how toxic that was
Not entirely true, before the defederation I browsed their communities and I’ve seen casual threads about manga, recovery from Alcoholism, talking about insects… and everyone was polite there.
It’s just that when it comes to politics they get EXTREMELY loud, and everything else is drown out.
Honestly, where I’ve seen the flooding of politics is outside of their own communities. Their instance is already an echo chamber, so there’s no need to spread propaganda. But as soon as they venture to other instances, they need to make sure everyone knows how they feel, and if you disagree or just don’t want to talk about it, they instantly turn to personal attacks
Everything is political. Not taking sides here, just confused that you don’t like politics. If you’ve removed politics from your feed doesn’t that mean you’ve removed all content?
…what? I think we are in two very different corners of the internet. I follow animal groups, hobbies, work related stuff, and art. None of that should have people screaming about politicians or voting or laws or anything related to politics. I can get all of that from informed sources like AP or Reuters, and when I’m done with the news for the day I’m done. My social media feeds have zero politics, which is why I didn’t like hexbear users - they were injecting politics into my non political spaces.
I’ll vote when I can and protest when I can, but I don’t want to doomscroll through a bunch of angry people when interacting with them has no personal or social benefit.
Animal groups, hobbies, work, and art are political. Art is the best example: artists are often said to hold a mirror up to society. Work’s conditions are dictated by the conditions of capitalism and the entire act of work is an endeavour in practicing capitalism under the direction of a boss who can control you at the office. Animal rights issues are also obviously political, and hobbies is a really vague umbrella term but there’s a whole lot of politics under that umbrella.
Politics is defined by nearly all dictionaries as the field concerning power and decision making in groups. Everything relates to that. I don’t understand what these “non-political” spaces you’re talking about are like. Do you mean being alone? Because if you’re not in a group, then you’re right there wouldn’t be any participation in group decision making. Is that what you mean? That you like your solitude?
You’re talking about an ideal, a theoretical idea of what politics is.
Abigail is talking about her ability to use social media without being drowned out by transphobia and other awful events.
It’s not 100% achievable, but we can work towards the experience we want. Abigail has made her preferences clear, and this space exists specifically for that reason. There will be no “what aboutism” or “just asking questions” style of transphobia. Anything like that gets banned/blocked immediately. Shitty stuff happens, everyone in this discussion is aware of it. We do our best to make sure those conversations are opt in instead of opt out though.
Everything is influenced by politics, but not every discussion is about those politics. So no, in this space, not everything is political, except in an abstract sense.
If you’re looking for a different experience to that, you may struggle with the moderation policies of this instance.
I’m trans and I’ve spent my whole life being told my gender is political. I believe that.
I’m gay and I’ve been told me whole life my sexuality is political. I believe that.
I’m pagan and since I became religious, I’ve been told that’s political. I believe that.
I’m neurodivergent and I’ve been told asking to not be the victim of hate speech is political. I believe that.
Patriarchal society says everything good and decent in my life is political. I believe that. Everything good is political, and politics is awesome.
My whole life people who talk like Abigail have told me that apoliticism means they get to be transphobic. Homophobic. Sexist. Neuronormative. Ableist. Religiously intolerant.
I don’t want people to talk like Abigail anymore. People who talk like that are mean. I want a safe space with lots of politics and trans people and gays and pagans and NDs and disabled people.
What are my options here? I could act like Abigail. I could use the language of my oppressor and say I hate politics, and redefine politics into whatever I don’t like. I could implicitly accept the control of the ruling class and use their words to try and defend myself and the rest of the trans community. I could try to make my identity palatable to capitalism. “I’m not political, I promise. I won’t disrupt the status quo”
Or I could say screw that, I’m political and I’m proud. I could reject the premise of the game that capital plays with my life. I could say the things they’re doing are wrong, and I won’t participate. I could use words as I see fit, and use them to protect myself and the community. I could construct a worldview that makes sense and doesn’t oppress anyone.
And that worldview says: everyone loves politics. You’re human beings, and that’s a political identity.
lemmy.blahaj.zone/u/ada
You can be an advocate, you can be visible and loud and queer. But what you can’t do is insist that everyone else has to do the same.
I’m like you in that I’m openly, loudly and proudly trans and queer. I do advocacy work, community building, public speaking, I’ve done queer community radio and will likely do so again in the future.
But for my own mental health, I sometimes need spaces where my life isn’t that. Where I can browse and engage and talk about stuff in a light hearted way, without having my guard up all the time.
What I would suggest is that you take it to cis people, and you take it to gender diverse folk who are looking for those discussions. What you shouldn’t be doing though is pushing politics on trans folk who, like you, have to navigate the reality of anti trans politics already in their daily life. Give them space to recover spoons and exist without the doomscrolling.
My dude, no. You completely twisted around my words and made a strawman. And your comment proves my point - this is exactly the type of behavior I was seeing from hexbear users. Following a community where people post pictures of their pets has nothing to do with animal rights/activism. I do not want to talk about animal rights, I want to see cute puppy pics and talk about how cute said puppy is. Ditto for all of your other slippery slope arguments.
All groups are inherently political? Please touch grass.
Removed by mod
I agree with the sentiment on your breakdown, but it’s important to recognize the distinction between the technical definition of politics, and the colloquial one: most people mean partisan, mainstream, and/or heated discussion of government policy that’s highly controversial. If you stretch that colloquial definition just a tiny bit, once any discussion gets contentious, groups start to form, and they start adopting talking points that fall on deaf ears to the other side, that’s when you could get the average person to consider it a “political” subject.
The person you responded to pretty clearly was operating under the popular meaning of the term. I’ve given people similar spiels to your own, but there’s a thing people mean when they refer to something as political or apolitical, and while there’s theory and textbook definitions to draw upon, there’s also value in getting to the crux what they’re trying to say even if they don’t use important words in the same you do. There should probably be a succinct disambiguation, is it lowercase p politics as in the workplace latter of office politics, or is it the uppercase P Politics where the discussion is over society-level legislation and policies? Ubiquitous politics vs niche politics? Perhaps there’s a book someone wrote on the subject 50 years ago that we can use as gospel on the correct way to refer to these different concepts.
There’s a certain level of (near) unanimous group cohesion that doesn’t feel political to participate in because everyone present seems to be in agreement to keep the peace. Without a political “other” being formed for each side to mock and deride, disagreements are relegated to personal taste matters that people can just agree to disagree and still allow each other in the same space. I think the key is when people start strategizing how to get more people “on their side”, because one of the goals of political action is to rally other people onto a cause. The dynamic is markedly different, with a shared group purpose with the future at stake.
There are times when a subject is worth bringing issues to light to spark politics within a “non political” group. To give an example, I’m really glad that the ethics of designer dog breeding has been called into question and heavily criticized, because some really fucked up things have been done to the genomes and resulting quality of life of countless dogs. I’m sure there were plenty of people who bemoaned the Animal Rights Activists coming in and “bringing politics” into the prestigious activity of seeing whose dog with a genetically squashed-in nose could run the farthest despite its impaired respiratory system. In situations of that vein, where harm is being actively done and bringing attention inspires positive change, the naysayers can cry harder and deal with it. I’m not a vegan but I can get behind the cause especially on a policy level to end meat subsidies and even outright ban factory farms.
But there are plenty of situations where a big-P Political topic doesn’t need to be brought up, especially if it’s almost entirely tangential (and especially if it goes beyond one or two relevant threads under an innocuous post). If there’s an ethical problem, a bad actor, or some other injustice, by all means: speak up. Otherwise, it’s best to respect people just having a chat over a hobby or admiring art; not every comment section needs to be railroaded into the same tired talking points about how everything is degraded under capitalism and the climate is being destroyed (points I’d almost certainly agree with you on, by the way). They have their place and they shouldn’t be pushed aside entirely, but that place isn’t anywhere and everywhere.
There is value in having spaces where people do not have to be reminded of stressful things; we have enough of those already. The mental health benefits alone to not having 24/7 doom spiral content can’t be overstated.
At the same time I do think people need to just be okay with ignoring, hiding, or manually filtering out content they don’t want to see, because at the end of the day it will pop up in unexpected places from time to time. There are plenty of ways to do that on Lemmy, I know Sync has some pretty good filtering features for those who want them. I would encourage people to make use of said filters as needed, even if just to improve the overall experience and reduce spam that would show up in their feed.
I appreciate you trying to educate this guy, but it’s a two day old troll account. They’re intentionally being pedantic.
Y’know what, that’s a pretty good observation and I feel like I spent way too long on my response either way
You’re right that when most people say politics, they mean “opinions I disagree with”. But if someone hates hearing differing opinions, they should say that instead of saying they hate politics. And the reason for that is that our belief that politics is disagreement with the status quo is propaganda. The ruling class wants us to hate it when people disagree with the status quo, so they find a name for it and tell us it’s bad.
I’ve spoken to dozens of people who “hated politics”, and 90% of them couldn’t even define what politics is. Probably because they didn’t want to admit that what they hated is differing opinions. The word politics as it exists in propaganda is a thought terminating cliche. It destroys introspection, critical thinking, and rational decision making.
The truth is, human beings are given at birth a tremendous love for politics. Humans are a social species, and politics is the building of society. Humans love that shit, they can’t get enough of it. That’s why all the best books and movies are political. That’s why Disney is “woke”. Politics sells because everyone loves it.
I’m not of the mind to bow down to this thought terminating cliche and let people walk around demanding things with no critical thinking. If someone wants to tell me that politics is bad, they better have thought it through, or I’m going to make a fool of them until they stop making a fool of themselves. They better bring a definition to the table, because I’ve got a definition and it says everyone loves politics. If someone can’t define what they hate, then they obviously have no idea what they’re talking about and I’m not going to go along with their cliche. They’re going to have to explain what they mean and say “I want to stop everyone on the internet from disagreeing with me”.
Haha… They can deal out the punishment but they can’t take it themselves… Thought so. Never in my life have I been called a slavery apologist, but 10 mins in hexbear was all I needed.
Yeah, they’ve created their own little echo chamber of propaganda + bots and lost touch with the real world.
It’s beyond an echo chamber in there.
It feels sort of like an isolated village of eldritch abomination worshippers in a Lovecraftian horror story.
Blahaj isn’t exactly frugal with defederation either. Or is an echochamber better if you call it “safe space”?
I think you’re focusing on the wrong part.
The problem is the propaganda and bots.
An echo chamber of hugs and shorks rules.
I love me some shorks; especially dorky ones like in the picture. I still think blahaj is defederating overzealously.
Wait, I thought hex defederated from us?
They did, but they were basically on notice. With the behavior we’ve seen there’s no way they would have survived the vote in two weeks.
Fair. I did see the discussion yesterday. On that note I’m really new here, has blahaj def often before?
Only because they were quicker.
Ha ya someone else said they walk away first so they could feel superior about themselves. Thats a bit sad if true. They where a bit prickly but like a cute hedgehog.
tolerance is a social contract, not a principle.
Smort comments are common, smart comments are rare.
Mosh pits are fun. So are hugs.
Sometimes I want/need to go hang out in a hug box/safe space/echo chamber. If that means there’s less content there, that’s a tradeoff I’m fine with.
That’s a fair choice; you do you. For me it felt weird that feddit.de chose what I could see and what not and I found it outright disturbing when I noticed I couldn’t see half the comments in some discussions. So I went for a tiny instance that defederates from nothing. I block some communities so I don’t see their content in the all feed. I like it much better that way: me choosing what I see and what not. But I guess that’s part of the charm of lemmy with all its (de-)federation: There’s a nook for each and everyone of us.
Yes, actually we are. Our community took the risk of federating with them under the guise of trans community unification. Hexbear defederated with our community first. We noticed their bullshit and harassment, said we’d give it a full week, and then have votes and discussion on it.
We signed up for that rocky situation, we don’t need a “safe space” - we had a goal and we tried to accomplish it with that community.
Any level of nuance or logic is frown upon. Did you not make sure to say how evil America was in your post? That normally calms them down.
Fuckin tankies, man…
Fuck 'em.
Fuck tankies.
reminder:
left-unity means authoritarian entryism
tolerance must function as a social contract, or not at all.
reject auth apologists.
Authoritarian is a made up concept in order to make communism and fascism the same thing.
the neck cares not the color of the boot
This is the craziest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.
No. I thought Hexbear was right wing at first because they were irrelevantly complaining about Hillary Clinton, using the word “lib” disparagingly (such as “dunking on libs”), and telling those that disagree with them to “get up against the wall”.
All authoritarian echo chambers sound the same.
It’s kinda funny but a lot of modern leftist spaces use the word “liberal” disparagingly, even anarchists and the non-authoritarian. Leftism is radical and niche enough that most people associate the hatred of liberals with the right, but on the left it’s just used to refer to the center who still support capitalism and the status quo.
That’s such a hot fucking take
hot garbage
All political systems exist on some type of multi-dimensional spectrum. Left-right is just one axis, and kind of a made up one where they mean different things sometimes. The authoritarian axis is a real one, and fascism sits on the same end of that axis as so-called “communism”. This doesn’t make them equivalent, but it does mean that they both have some characteristics which are the same and bad. I’m fact, one could argue that their position on the authoritarian axis is all that you need to argue they are bad because authoritarianism is in itself the cause of so much human suffering.
What no theory does to a mfer
If you knew any theory, you’d know that communism is anarchist.
Oh damn, I can’t find any followers of Marx that say so?
That’s ridiculous, because communism is the opposite of authoritarianism. Communism is defined by Marx as classless and stateless. Whatever you think is just as authoritarian as fascism, it’s not communism. Maybe you think state capitalism is communist and that’s why you’re confused.
Hey, fun fact, “communist” states never existed, because they were socialist, or as Marx would call them, lower communist. They were the transition point Marx talked about to higher communism.
I agree. In fact, communism is defined as stateless, so “communist state” is as much an oxymoron as “dry water”. However, communist societies did exist in North America and Australia prior to colonisation
Thanks
hey, I read this, and then I went out and engaged anyway, and I regret it. so thank you again for warning me
I agree, this “left unity” BS is propaganda and it’s wrong. True unity means making a space welcoming to everyone by kicking out intolerance. Left unity is created by deplatforming authoritarians and transphobes, and building systems that provide justice to the marginalised. Welcoming fascists and bigots means disunity, as much as they love to scream otherwise.
Reminds me of the often-told story of the punk bar bartender and nazis
based on @iamragesparkle;s tweets
I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, “no. get out.”
And the dude next to me says, “hey i’m not doing anything, i’m a paying customer.” and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, “out. now.” and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed
Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, “you didn’t see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them.”
And i was like, oh,ok and he continues.
"you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it’s always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don’t want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.
And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it’s too late because they’re entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.
And i was like, ‘oh damn.’ and he said “yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people.”
And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven’t forgotten that at all.
That may be the best story I read all week. Thanks. Ha “and then he went back to ignoring me.”
I have been so glad that Sync allows instance blocking at a client level. I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, but after seeing 4 posts from their instance that were just in bad faith “but it’s a joke”. I went ahead and filtered them and luckily haven’t had to see it.
When I first saw some of their posts I thought that we’d federated with a right wing instance tbh.
It really was incredible. I blocked and unblocked the instance three times, each time thinking I was overreacting, but finally just left it. There were some interesting discussions but it was absolutely drowned out each time by attention-seeking edge lords.
I just blocked the communities as I saw shittiness from them.
Ya. Took me really sifting though posts to realize it wasn’t right-wing. I came to the conclusion it was all trolls. Trolls I can ignore if it’s silly fun like there pig poop thing but they where a bit much with the owning libs part. But then they where super defensive with their queer members so… I just left them be and laughed at their antics. Guess it’s quiter round here now.
Yes. They’re right wing. Don’t believe them when they say they’re left wing. They’re not.
They may be left wing ideologically but they’re just strait anti-west mob mentality on anything. Super toxic and contradictory constantly. It’s a really weird combo and just makes them come off like angry trumpers.
Actions speak louder than words, and words speak louder than thoughts. If they aren’t acting on left wing ideology, then they’re not left wing ideologically. They’re just liars.
I never met anyone in my life who didn’t act on their beliefs. I met plenty of hypocrites, people who said they believed different than they acted, and usually their professed beliefs were better than their actions. But those weren’t their beliefs, they were just liars. There’s no such thing as a person who doesn’t believe in their actions.
That helps, but it still doesn’t block hexbear users from polluting threads on other instances.
ok il note to add fuck tankies to the sign on of a social home instance
Certainly a vibe
Fuck hexbear. I don’t know if they just didn’t try to federate with pawb.social or if they got preemptively blocked (or maybe they went, “ew furries” and nothing of value was lost), but I’m very glad they aren’t federated here. It means I only get exposed to them via comments, and the ones I tend to see don’t shine a good light on the community, especially when they brigade instance meta posts.
I switched from using Sync back to the Connect app because it allows blocking of entire instances. I got more than sick of the hexbear spam.
Sync also has instance blocking feature. Though it’s not perfect since it only blocks posts, you can still see comments from filtered instances. Hopefully it will improve in future
Originally I thought this was a good thing, but my opinion quickly shifted after seeing a lot of non-hexbear posts getting a lot of hexbear spam instead of healthy discussions like I was expecting
I saw on [email protected] (viewed on lemmy.ml not federated because this instance is defederated from Hexbear) someone made a meme and Hexbear users were spamming the PPB emojis and embedded pictures in threads. Seemed very toxic, I don’t blame anyone for defederating them for that, they only do it outside of their instance, never to themselves so it feels like they’re attacking everyone.
Drama is so exhausting.
My best wishes to the Admins, the whole thing must have been exhausting and depressing. I purposefully stayed out of the entire discussion since I’m not a member of Blahaj. I think it’s for the better, because I have read a lot in hexbear and the people there are absolute toxic and unhinged. The mentioned Lemm.ee thread was absolutely swarmed with people from hexbear. Like, 3/4 of the comments must have been them. Anyway, wish you all the best.
I ended up filtering the whole instance. The users there are just so obnoxious
“you can’t fire me, I quit!”
“I’m leaving and you can’t stop me!”
“ok that was always allowed”
I made an account on blahaj zone a while back. seeing hexbear posts on the all feed (coming from lemmy.world, they’re nowhere) with a load of troll and straight up unhinged commenters was really off putting :/
I have to be honest here, I’ve done a lot of my casual browsing the past week on my Lemmy.world account because of this. A lot of communities were just awash in the same three talking points that read like straight off Sputnik.
I like hexbear, but i suppose it comes down to a rather … “abnormal” type of “liking”.
There is definitely a pattern of asshole behavior from hexbear users, but they’re fun to verbally spar with and they make Lemmy feel lively.
In the same way that capsaicin causes spicy food to be spicy by stimulating nerves that are intended to warn us of pain and injury while in fact it’s actually harmless, I find hexbear’s vociferous users to be endearingly abrasive.
Because turnabout is fair play, they’re fair game to be rude to. By choosing to interact in a hostile nature, they are consenting to receive hostility. It’s only fair. If they can’t handle it, then they shouldn’t be dishing it out. However, the exchange must be proportional and bigotry can not be allowed.
“Tankie” is not a slur any more than “Lib” is. If they honestly believe that it’s socially acceptable to use “Lib” as an insult, then it’s sheer hypocrisy to object to “Tankie”. But all other known slurs, ableist slurs, sexist slurs, racial and ethnic slurs, are out of bounds and should be reported, and offenders ignored.
If they don’t like this arrangement, then they have no business acting like they do outside of their instance and defederation may in fact be necessary.
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I actually left lemm.ee because the sentiment there was anti-defederation. I don’t regret it, my experience here has been far better without them.
I just started using my .world alt for the same reason when my lemm.ee account use to be my main. Hexbear just made lemmy unusable for me. If I wanted to wade through Russian apologia and genocide denial I’d be on twitter.
This is a healthy and reasonable take. Its 100% a design feature to change instances if you find one that aligns better with your preferences.
Once you can pivot all your account preferences with a built in tool, along with instance blocking at a user level, I think lemmy is going be in a fantastic place.
I don’t think anti-defederation is a bad sentiment. Defederating is something that should be taken very seriously because it affects everyone in that instance. If it were up to me Hexbear would be defederated but Lemm.ee has users who, for whatever reason, want content from Hexbear. It wouldn’t be fair for them to lose access just because I personally don’t like them. Considering the functionality for users to block instances is already in the works I don’t think defederating is necessary. It’s annoying but I can suffer Hexbear a while longer until I can personally block the instance. I have them blocked in Connect for Lemmy so I already have the option to ignore them.
