Update:
The comments from this post will not be removed as to preserve the discussion around the announcement. Any continued discussions outside of this thread that violate server rules will be removed. We feel that everyone that has an opinion, and wanted to vent, has been heard.
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Original post:
Yesterday, we received information about the planned federation by Hexbear. The announcement thread can be found here: https://www.hexbear.net/post/280770. After reviewing the thread and the comments, it became evident that allowing Hexbear to federate would violate our rules.
Our code of conduct and server rules can be found here.
The announcement included several concerning statements, as highlighted below:
- “Please try to keep the dirtbag lib-dunking to hexbear itself. Do not follow the Chapo Rules of Posting, instead try to engage utilizing informed rhetoric with sources to dismantle western propaganda. Posting the western atrocity propaganda and pig poop balls is hilarious but will pretty quickly get you banned and if enough of us do it defederated.”
- “The West’s role in the world, through organizations such as NATO, the IMF, and the World Bank - among many others - are deeply harmful to the billions of people living both inside and outside of their imperial core.”
- “These organizations constitute the modern imperial order, with the United States at its heart - we are not fooled by the term “rules-based international order.” It is in the Left’s interest for these organizations to be demolished. When and how this will occur, and what precisely comes after, is the cause of great debate and discussion on this site, but it is necessary for a better world.”
The rhetoric and goal of Hexbar are clear based on their announcement: to “dismantle western propaganda” and "demolish organizations such as NATO” shows that Hexbar has no intention of "respecting the rules of the community instance in which they are posting/commenting.” It’s to push their beliefs and ideology.
In addition, several comments from a Hexbear admin, demonstrate that instance rules will not be respected.
Here are some examples:
“I can assure you there will be no lemmygrad brigades, that energy would be better funneled into the current war against liberalism on the wider fediverse.”
“All loyal, honest, active and upright Communists must unite to oppose the liberal tendencies shown by certain people among us, and set them on the right path. This is one of the tasks on our ideological front.”
- https://lemmy.world/comment/121850
- https://lemmy.world/comment/1487168
- https://lemmy.world/comment/1476084
- https://lemmy.world/comment/171595
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3648500
Overall community comments:
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3526128
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3526086
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3652828
To clarify, for those who have inquired about why Hexbear versus Lemmygrad, it should be noted that we are currently exploring the possibility of defederating from Lemmygrad as well based on similar comments Hexbear has made.
- https://lemmygrad.ml/post/158656
- https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/882559
- https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/540170
- https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/446529
Defederation should only be considered as a last resort. However, based on their comments and behavior, no positive outcomes can be expected.
We made the decision to preemptively defederate from Hexbear for these reasons. While we understand that not everyone may agree with our decision, we believe it is important to prioritize the best interests of our community.
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I definitely appreciate the hesitation in defederation, but I’m in favor of defeding with both hexbear and lemmygrad.
I’ve seen more than enough “Stalin did nothing wrong posts” to know that discussions are pointless and would lead me only to frustration and a desire to drink.
I had enough of people like you, but you don’t see me asking that we defederate you.
I was demonstrating a point.
just admit you were wrong. It’s ok.
?
you high?
Honestly the hardcore tankies initially soured me from joining the fediverse at first, until I understood how the fediverse functioned and realized it was just a loud minority that held extreme views. It’s still disturbing to read genocide denialism while openly supporting things such as authoritarianism and Russian imperialism.
Are you the PoppinKREAM from reddit?
Yes I am, hello o/
Tankies are souring a lot of people from joining in my subjective experience. One of my friends questioned the presence of them and the views of the developers (and also why the “main” (not accurate but they haven’t even joined, so) instance lemmy.ml had the .ml domain to begin with) and I couldn’t give a satisfactory answer at the time, as I didn’t know enough about the place yet.
Upstanding instances should do their part to defederate from any tankie or fascist instances, so we can all distance ourselves from extremist rhetoric and make it seem like an actually OK place to hang out.
I moderate 8 subreddits with a combined userbase of 4.2million subscribers. And a bunch of small ones.
Originally I intended to bring those userbases over here. But the way this instance has been run and the interactions I and other mods have had with the team over PM trying to resolve various issues resulted in each and every one of the modteams I’m in saying “yeah fuck that” over time and getting to know the place. This would have resulted in stickyposts and bringing over thousands, perhaps 10s of thousands, in extremely enthusiastic waves. And this didn’t just affect the teams I’m part of, because everyone on those teams also shares links to many many other teams through all the backrooms.
Communists aren’t the problem. This instance’s policies - which started out looking incredibly promising and had everyone highly optimistic - has singlehandedly killed the interest of dozens and dozens of modteams and by extension the opportunity to bring across massively more people.
You do realize that you don’t need to join Lemmy.world, right? There’s plenty of other instances with different moderation policies that might suit you, or you could just make your own instance. That’s kind of the whole point of the fediverse. The reason why there’s so much contention around this post is because the people who have accounts here are somewhat stuck until account migration is added.
Of course I do have you read my username?
Apologies, I did not.
Freedom of speech does not constitute an obligation to listen.
Good for you!
What gives you the right to constrain what other people see? Just go ahead and ban them yourself if they offend you so.
I just created this new account because people like you see in themselves the right to constrain what I see.
The people who own a lemmy instance have the right to associate (federate) with whatever other instances meet their guidelines.
If you don’t agree, then you are free to join a different lemmy instance that is federated with objectionable material.
You don’t have the right to demand that lemmy.one meets your standards. You don’t own it.
If you find that no other instance federates with what you want, you’re free to make your own, with blackjack, and hookers.
that is exactly what I did. I would much rather not associate with people like you. You appear to be horrible people.
My only regret is that I donated to this server.
Exactly. Freedom of speech != Freedom from social consequences
Well, in a truly “free” society, yes freedom of speech would constitute freedom from “social consequences.” However, the United States, and in fact, no Earth government, is a truly free society. There are rules and laws that exist, thus restricting freedoms. However, specifically regarding freedom of speech as it is mentioned in US law, it specifically is a protection for citizens from retaliation by the US government, and does not cover interactions between citizens.
So I wouldn’t say “freedom of speech doesnt mean freedom from social consequences,” but rather “freedom of speech does not include a requirement that others listen.” There are laws with regards to how other citizens can respond, including laws against assault and libel and such. But there is no law that says anyone must to listen to what you have to say simply because you have the freedom to say it. Thats quite a preposterous idea.
At least in the US, each citizen has the right to say what they choose within the constraints established by law, and to choose who they will listen to.
Well, in a truly “free” society, yes freedom of speech would constitute freedom from “social consequences.”
Just as people can refuse to listen, they also can refuse to interact with persons that say things that upset them. This is a social consequence, and one that would be still be present in a “truly free society”.
A truly free society would have no consequences, laws, or restraints on behaviour.
You can see a very obvious reason why that would be very bad. Thus there is no society on Earth that is truly free. Restrictions exist to protect people, that is the nature of things.
I think you’ve managed to define an oxymoron of a society.
Society does not exist without consequences. That’s what laws/rules/agreements are necessitated on. As in, a society with no consequences is not a society. I’d go so far to say that society is a system of consequences.
Even in a “lawless societies” hierarchies form, and then agreements turn to rules turn to defacto law.
This is like saying “I can never truly be free because gravity binds me to the ground”. Like, ok, sure, but you had to define freedom in a non-standard way to get to that conclusion (I’m trying make this make sense, is it landing well?)
What the fuck?
I was assured by this server that it has no problem with socialists. This is worse than I expected it to be, I expected a half-hearted attempt to justify this action through means other than “they’re socialists and hold socialist views”.
To the three points here:
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“Western propaganda” - Is capitalist propaganda. Of course socialists oppose it, we oppose capitalism.
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“Nato” - An anti-nato position is held by literally every single socialist organisation in Europe. You will not find a socialist org with a pro-nato position. Ffs just look at DiEM25’s position on this, it’s probably the most well known cross-nation alliance of socialist groups and parties in europe including people like Yanis Varoufakis, Jeremy Corbyn and Zizek to name a few but that really doesn’t do the size of the DiEM organising alliance justice. Even Noam Chomsky is anti-nato ffs. What the fuck are you doing acting like this is a fringe position not held by a huge number of people over here in Europe and at the forefront of leftist politics on the continent? Taking the position “you’re not allowed to be anti-nato” is blatant american imperialism.
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“It is in the Left’s interest for these organizations to be demolished.” - Duh? What the fuck do the liberals running this instance think socialists believe exactly? When Marx calls for revolution do you think that we mean to continue the organisations that existed prior? No, we seek to abolish them and create new socialist organisations that serve the new socialist state we seek to create.
Absolutely mindblowing that this instance ever pretended it was going to play nicely with socialists. I’m disgusted.
Every single take above is also the take you will get from every single socialist community over on reddit. The anarchist communities will also even have an anti-nato position. Like jesus christ. I expected this post to be bad but I didn’t expect it to be “Yeah fuck socialists, oh and fuck what anarchists believe too”.
I’m flabbergasted that @ruud@lemmy.world just completely lied about not intending to block based on ideology, and it’s extremely telling that Hexbear gets a pre-emptive defederation for this shit while literal actual nazis were a chore to get defederated.
Absolutely mindblowing that this instance ever pretended it was going to play nicely with socialists.
There’s folks from lemmygrad.ml and lemmy.ml all over in here which is empirical proof that lemmy.world will “play nice” with Socialists. They’ll even play nice with Communists. What they’re objecting too is the Tankie Army assembling over at hexbear and their stated intention of propagandizing every instance in the fediverse.
If you don’t like it that’s cool. Spin up an account on another instance and go on with your day. This isn’t your instance and no one here owes you anything.
Hexbear stated explicitly their intent to [allow only specific narratives (explicitly anti-free speech), they openly stated their intention to engage in content manipulation tactics and pushing propoganda, and they have a delusional take on russia’s aggression and atrocities.
You all talk about this decision being against free speech when hexbear doesn’t even permit it! So hypocritical… Even if most users on hexbear have good intentions, it doesn’t justify the nefarious means that they openly plan to engage in. If hexbear wants open discussion, then they would permit topic criticism of communism; not suppress dissenting information/discussion.
I don’t care if it’s left, right, independent, apolitical… Instances like this create echo-chamers which leads to extreme views and unhealthy communities. They shouldn’t be given an audience to try to gaslight and astroturf. And if you don’t like this decision to defederate, you can join another instance.
Saying lemmy.world is anti-free speech for this is a joke. Lemmy.world doesn’t have rules disallowing criticism of governing styles or specific governments. Hexbear does… If you all want to criticize NATO and capitalism on lemmy.world, go for it! That discussion is healthy. An instance like hexbear which only allows specific narratives and encourages nefarious practices is not a healthy instance…
An instance can behave like a sub or community if they wish to, assuming what you said is even true. Iirc the entire point of the fediverse is to allow groups of users to be free from spez like ban-happy/profiteering behaviour. Lemmy doesn’t exist to make you personally happy. Hexbear has its own rules for its own instance and if their community is happy with it it’ll survive and thrive.
Lemmy dot world’s decision is disappointing because they seemed open and neutral politically. But are seemingly very much not neutral and damaging for Lemmy.
Lemmy dot world’s decision is disappointing because they seemed open and neutral politically.
Bah. There’s plenty of users in here from Lemmy.ml, lemmygrad.ml, and other leftists instances. It’s quite clear that the lemmy.world is pretty darn open ideologically. Hexbear is getting ban hammered because they’ve made it very clear that they aim to misbehave.
Bye Felicia
Going nowhere fashy fash
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okay this is freaking wild:
We need a sub dedicated to bot building, trolling and brigading effectively. Screw morals, or decency. They’re tools that maintain the status quo.
Not in favour of this.
I chose Lemmy.world because I wanted an instance that would federate even with people I might disagree with. If it’s illegal and abusive, sure. But to defederate on ideological grounds? I was planning a recurring donation but this makes me consider setting up my own instance.
They’re welcome to whatever discussions they want to have on their instance. As long as they respect the rules of other instances when they’re here, then everybody wins.
As for their point about dismantling western propaganda - if they have documented sources then let’s have a conversation. It’s not like there isn’t western propaganda
Personally, I’d rather just block the stuff I don’t like rather than have lemmy.world trying to decide “who’s worthy of federation”.
I have no idea who Hexbear is, but it’s well documented how th IMF and World Bank work to endebt developing countries to the US’s corporate rule and then steal all their resources… Are we… Not allowed to talk about that here?
