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.”

Overall community comments:

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.

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.

  • BarterClubEnglish
    66•1 year ago

    I don’t mind what the servers admins need to do. But please don’t take quotes out of context.

    “With the cumulative updates Users may show/hide avatars, show/hide scores, show/hide NSFW content, show/hide read posts, show/hide notifications for new posts, block users, block communities, report direct messages, mods can distinguish a comment to sticky it to the top of a post. Users may set their feed in their account settings to determine if the default feed is local (hexbear.net only), subscribed (user subscribed communities only), or all (all posts on unblocked communities on federated instances).

    Hello users of Hexbear in the next couple of weeks (exact date will most likely be somewhere around the 5th of August) we will be taking the site down for approximately three hours to update to lemmy 0.18.3 and begin federation., as we prepare for federation we wanted to create a primer for etiquette when engaging in the fediverse.

    Please read and respect the rules of the community instance in which you are posting/commenting. 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. Realize that you are a representative of the hexbear instance when you post on other instances.

    Know that your posts, comments, and DMs involving communities/users of other instances are stored on those instances databases, while delete requests are sent there is no guarantee they will be honored, especially if a different platform is involved (mastodon, etc).

    In addition, a reminder that you may set your feed or search to local/subscribed/all and block users/communities to have a greater control over what content you have. Local is Hexbear only, subscribed is communities from hexbear and federated instances that you have specifically subscribed to, and All is hexbear + all federated instances. There will be a pinned post in the !hexbear community where you can nominate instances for our allow-list or block-list.

    In closing, I want to remind everyone that the moderation policy of Hexbear communities will not change and will be strictly applied to any users from a federated instance. While we are not responsible for moderation policy of remote communities our admins do see reports you make of posts/comments on federated instances, and we are able to remove them, while not actually deleting the post/comment it does hide it so Hexbear users cannot see/interact with it.”

      • Sentrovasi
        5•1 year ago

        instead try to engage utilizing informed rhetoric with sources to dismantle western propaganda

        I think it really depends on whether you consider this line to mean engaging in good faith discussion or sealioning with alternative facts.

        • @[email protected]
          40•1 year ago

          If they engage with sources to back things up, then that sounds like a discussion to me. I’d rather be the judge of a discussion then some moderator that doesn’t think I need to hear it.

          • Sentrovasi
            -4•1 year ago

            The concern is rarely the people who are engaging and discussing with a critical mind, but the silent majority that consume with less time for criticality. As we’ve seen on Reddit, hive opinions end up prevailing on any site that is algorithmically sorted, and if one side has the numbers and dogged persistence to filibuster harder, it doesn’t matter if there is intellectual pushback; a culture war can be won on memes alone.

            I think that’s generally the danger with allowing all “facts” in the name of critical discussion. Jokes are funny until suddenly they aren’t jokes anymore, and implications are debatable until a consensus, rather than independent analysis, declares them fact. That’s pretty much the internet.

        • ImOnADiet🇵🇸 (He/Him)
          16•1 year ago

          hexbear users from the news megathreads, who that’s most directed towards really, are normally extremely well sourced using both western and Russian propaganda