this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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Blåhaj Lemmy is a Lemmy instance attached to blahaj.zone. This is a group for questions or discussions relevant to either instance.
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I will summarize my views that I left on the first thread:
I will also state that I am biased in my views due to the fact that I am an anarchist who doesn't use the word "tankie", I am very strongly opposed to respectability/civility politics, and I am very careful about SIFTing every bit of news that appears on my feed. For these reasons, my experiences with Hexbear and its users will be markedly different from those with differing views or social media practices, a number of whom report experiencing "harassment, brigading, disinformation, and bad faith arguments". I am sure that these people are being honest, but I can only speak from my own experience.
Lastly, I would like to note that I read that a number of Hexbear users were opposed to federation to begin with, due to the potential disruption this could be for the site's culture, and as Hexbear's culture (e.g. emojis, which improperly scale on other instances) are taken to other sites. It is therefore my conjecture that some fraction of Hexbear users may be intentionally going against their admins' words and being annoying on other instances specifically in order to get Hexbear defederated. I do not fully understand Hexbear's culture or site politics, so I would prefer to hear from Hexbear users on this matter: since this thread is local-only, Hexbear users may wish to send me a DM explaining the controversy on their site regarding federation, and if my conjecture has any merit.
I may edit this comment with other thoughts as they come to me.
Edit: I received this DM from a Hexbear user regarding federation politics on the site. I am sharing this with his permission. I will create an audio version upon request.
Relevant links in the DM:
@JohnBrownsBussy2@hexbear.net also sent me a message reading, "[...] Also, it looks like our admins have posted new rules concerning federated conduct. Some people are being grouchy about it, but I do think moderation is going to improve: https://hexbear.net/post/352119?scrollToComments=false"
Top comment on this post is
https://hexbear.net/comment/3744380
The top comment is that, and the rest of the comments are saying what...?
Primarily deflection and shitposting. I see exactly ONE comment in praise of the new rules.
The top-level comments I see in order are,
A lot of shitposting, sure, but I don't see how you can really call any of that "deflection".
The comments I consider deflection:
Ultimately the tone of the instance and its infectious nature on the fediverse are the issue. Particularly as it does not seem that the admins/mods truly have the ability to reign in their users.
Also, their admin telling them not to participate in this thread seems to have worked, so maybe they have more of an ability to reign in their users than it seems? It might be best to wait a while to see the impact of their rule change before defederating.
I figured it was those comments you were referring to, and I can sort of see where you're coming from now that I think about it, since it should be on the users to behave even without changing Lemmy's features. Still, I don't think it's particularly malicious to discuss how to improve the site, and how they could've approached federation differently. I think that functionality shapes behavior, so these are the types of things that should be discussed.
Edit: And regarding "most instances do not have these sorts of problems" — I don't think it's good to treat the majority experience as the universal experience.
Don't get me wrong hexbear is absolutely anomalous. I do not think that is an argument in favor of federating with them.
I don't think them being anomalous is an argument in favor of not federating with them, either.
Them not jiving with the broader threadiverse is absolutely reason to defederate. They should probably be in their own network of leftist shitposting and trolling instances. Places with similar tone and customs around dogpiling.
I still think it's too early to reach a verdict.