All are welcome in this discussion but this is really more focused on local users of literature.cafe, I'll leave this post up and pin it for a few days just to get some feedback. Insight from others on other instances are welcome, but please realize that this is a discussion focused on users who use literature.cafe
Our community may be small, but I do want to know peoples thoughts before anything.
For those who do not already know, hexbear is on our defederation list.
With that being said there's another thing that some might not already know. I am a practicing reform Jew. I am by no means a perfectly observant Jewish man but I am quite a lot more religious than most I think. I wear a kippah, try my best to keep kosher, and participate in the religious rites of Judaism as well as participate in prayers and community events. It is primarily why I started this instance as reading and books are a core cultural aspect in being Jewish. Knowledge is power, and we aren't called the people of the book for nothing. As well, I am extremely involved in the Jewish community and know many Jewish leaders across the country and the world due to my stints of working as a "Jewish professional."
Being a practicing Jew in a culture with rapidly rising antisemitism is extremely exhausting both in real life and online, and unfortunately that exhaustion was maximized on Reddit at times in regards to interacting with specific communities. One such community that I had pretty bad experiences with the specific subreddit that hexbear spawned from. Right now I'm pretty reserved about talking about Judaism and my faith as there isn't a Jewish focused community on here, but when (not if) one comes I will very much be active there.
And this leads into the elephant in the room that always is brought whenever I bring my Jewishness up: I am not Israeli, nor have I ever been to Israel but I have worked with Israelis and am friends with quite a few Israeli Jews. I rarely if ever discuss the topic of Israel & Palestine even within my own community because of how charged it tends to be, but especially online it is a topic I actively avoid due to the stress and antisemitism I have faced over it. My ideals and opinions in regards to that can pretty much summed up "fuck fascists" and "I pray for peace."
I have more opinions on the matter, specifically on my very direct hatred of Netanyahu as well as more detailed knowledge of just how completely fucked the Knesset is and how bad things really are there. I speak a bit of a Hebrew, and know some of the political stuff that goes on there. Things are bad, and are likely only going to get worse there not just for Palestinians but for that entire region as a whole due to the war mongering nature of the new government there.
Criticizing Israel and it's current fucked up fascist government is not antisemitic, but holding all Jews accountable for the crimes of the Israeli state absolutely is. Immediately asking a random Jewish person about their feelings on Israel isn't inherently antisemitic but it feels extremely hostile and often contributes to an environment of generally feeling unsafe as a Jewish person especially in left leaning spaces. It feels as if you're trying to pin down whether or not we're a "good jew" or a "bad jew."
When the community hexbear spawned from existed on reddit, the antisemitism I witnessed during brigades were some of the most egregious on the site outside of r/conspiracy. That is why I blocked that instance per-emptively, as I felt the antisemitism I directly experienced in that community would follow here if federation was enabled.
I had a pretty productive discussion with an admin from hexbear in a matrix chat, and to be quite honest it made me realize my bias towards the entire community wasn't probably the most fair. The team is different there than the subreddit, and the admin made it clear antisemitism is not tolerated.
I know the community is controversial across the lemmyverse, but I am willing to attempt federation. The admin offered to add our instance to their allowlist and refederate, and if there's issues that arise we can just reblock.
I'm curious of peoples thoughts on the matter. Overall this instance isn't politically focused, but books in large part do have a political nature to them. It's hard to deny that authoritarianism and the free consumption of literature is fundamentally incompatible.
Man, this is a hard call. In a former life, I was one of the last journalists trained to unquestioningly respect free speech within the necessary limits to keep it from causing societal breakdown (clear and present danger doctrine and imminent lawless action test). I was also trained that "balanced" doesn't mean every viewpoint gets an equal number of words on the page or number of minutes of airtime. I rather firmly believe that Justice Holmes had it right: “If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us, but freedom for the thought that we hate.”
That said, I also don't care to drown in a sea of hate and obnoxiousness. I honestly don't know what to expect from Hexbear. From the fragments that I've personally seen, their admin seem to be trying to fit in and participate civilly in the fediverse. Whether their users will behave is yet to be seen. I might personally choose to give benefit of the doubt and take an "innocent until proven guilty" approach, but I'm not sure that it would be the right choice.
And @gabe, at the end of the day, while all of us appreciate your asking our opinions and being open about your own thoughts, it has to be your decision. You're the one keeping the lights on, and you shouldn't allow bad actors to disrupt the community you're building here. I hope I speak for more than myself in saying that we'll support whatever you decide. If you want to give them a chance and defederate again if things go sideways, that seems like a good idea. If you don't want to take the chance, that's also reasonable given their genesis.
I very much don't know what to expect either with them. Their community seems fundamentally different in comparison to their subreddit, and that makes it super unpredictable to consider how things will go. I do foresee as this community grows, more questions of this nature will present itself and even though I am the server owner, this is just as much yalls instance as it is mine. I appreciate the insight overall.
Overall I am curious about how things might go. Curious, but very cautious. Another factor is that I plan on starting an art focused instance next week, and I don't know if it would be smart to test the waters with that if I am building that as well. I can dedicate the time to both here and an art instance, but if I have to clean active disruptions it doesn't seem reasonable to make my life harder for seemingly no known benefit outside of more potential engagement. I've came to realize very much with the fediverse, more engagement does not always equal quality engagement. It is far better to have a smaller tight knit community with a chill vibe over a giant community that is extremely disjointed and unpredictable.
A lot to consider and think about.