Lemmy.world Hexbear Statement

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.

————-

Original post:
Yesterday, we received information about the planned federation by Hexbear. The announcement thread can be found here: 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.

MeowdyPardner,
MeowdyPardner avatar

This is super disappointing. With the release of Sync I was looking for a lemmy-based home but if L.W is defederating instances for being anti-imperialist or left of liberal then that rules it out for me. And no I'm not a hexbear member but this makes me want to be. It's also astonishing to see that many people here think that not viewing NATO in a positive light means that you must support Russia. Like, the enemy of your enemy can also be your enemy you know.

awwwyissss,

I’d love to see Lemmygrad cut off, it’s full of propaganda and malicious users.

aspensmonster,
@aspensmonster@lemmygrad.ml avatar

Lemmy.world, you are positively glowing right now :3

It never ceases to amaze me how threatened liberals are by tiny groups of commies. And of course, the fact that a bunch of liberals are busy denigrating the very commies that made their migration away from capitalist Reddit possible in the first place is, unfortunately, very par for the course for liberals.

queermunist, (edited )
@queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

If opposition to Western propaganda and Western imperialism is against your rules, it’s certainly your right to defederate. I made the right choice jumping ship from .world back when you refused to preemptively defederate from Threads!

Faresh,

I’m from lemmy.ml, so I shouldn’t really have a say in this matter, but I just wanted to give some of my thoughts.

There’s no problem in defederating from instances. However, I’m a bit confused by the reasoning given for the defederation. The points highlighted appear to simply be some normal leftist and anti-imperialist ideas, and I fail to see how it signifies intent to violate the rules of the lemmy.world instance (besides maybe point 7, if we were to consider supporting governments deemed “authoritarian” by the west as also being the same as calling for the opression for the people those governments are accused of oppressing (Which I don’t believe is valid reason since that’s simply not the case. For example, people who reject the idea that there is a campaign against the uyghur ethnic group in China, generally don’t do so because they hate that ethnic group, but because they believe the claims are false)).

If leftist instances such as hexbear are problematic, I don’t see why instances like lemmy.ml aren’t, whose description some time ago was the following:

A community of leftist privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers

Some time ago they removed the word «leftist» in the description, but very much still allow people who hold similar beliefs as the ones you highlighted to use the instance and to express themselves.

MrShankles,

Now that’s a discussion, and I appreciate your pragmatic response. The issue seems to be the flaming that is currently happening. Hopefully it cools down, and we can all resume our daily beliefs in a rational way. Right now, it looks like a clear brigade. A fear response to opposing views is common; but you don’t get people listening by asserting that what you believe is correct.

Better to defederate until an understanding can be established about code of conduct. Currently, it looks like a heap of comments that aren’t helping the matter.

From hexbears own announcement, they’re trying to tell their users that defederation can happen if they don’t play nice. And here we are with users creating discourse because of pre-emptive defederation… and it isn’t helping their cause. Defederate and let it bump, it’s not their instance to moderate. They won’t even allow federation to other instances themselves, without admin approval. How is that fair? If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck… it’s probably a duck.

This looks like and sounds like targeted ideology, that isn’t receptive to opposing views. Show good-faith to actual discussion and it wouldn’t be a problem. But just look at the comments and see for yourself that this isn’t good-faith, it’s a thinly veiled attempt at a brigade. And you can ignore the comments and look at the announcement itself: they’re trying to keep their users in-check (from the get-go) for polite discussion, but have already failed

If you don’t like my opinion, good! Let’s talk about it, cause there’s plenty of ways to do so, outside of lemmy.world. That’s how it works, and people being mad is not going to change it. Kindness and logic will

We all know the world’s fucked up, we don’t need another “saint” telling us they have the solution. We’re all pretty freaking over any final solution that anyone has to offer

XiaoHei,

i hope that the admins decide to BLOCK you as well sad to see so many woke instances here but after lemmy.world blocks hexbear and lemmygrad and lemmy.ml (MARKIST LENINIST) we can have a productive safe space

Deftdrummer,

Gold right here 🥇

woelkchen,
@woelkchen@lemmy.world avatar

The points highlighted appear to simply be some normal leftist and anti-imperialist ideas

Repeating Putin’s BS is neither leftist nor anti-imperialist. If anything it’s the far-right that wants to dismantle international cooperation and it’s “western” international cooperation under the umbrellas of NATO and EU that’s currently helping to fend off an imperialist and fascist Russian crusade. It’s not a coincidence that the right-wing and far-right politicians such as US’s Trumpists or Hungary’s Victor Orban are the opposing helping Ukraine.

C4RCOSA, (edited )

It is because they didn’t think about it, they have a single power admin, Antik, who enforces his ideology on the rest of the team who just nod along. Look at the time between @XiaoHei post and this one.

He is even in this post arguing with @Lenins2ndCat and getting bodied, hilarious as fuck.

Real authoritarian ruler hours, makes a decree, tries to argue, gets demolished by facts and rhetoric, abuses admin power to remove posts and ban users.

The mods of !politics had to make a post in !moderators here lemmy.ml/post/1582975 to get Antik to stop abusing his power in their community

XiaoHei,

keep my name out of your mouth wokie you will be banned soon and sent back to the caves you came from

Cassilda,

This is the best bit I’ve seen today.

antik,
@antik@lemmy.world avatar

So I’m the power admin and XiaoHei is my alt? What the hell are you people on. Just check the modlog, it’s all public.

It’s not because you post a wall of text that you are right. Lenins2ndcat asked me to hand over a community to her that was registered by someone else. And you guys back her up on this? That it would be fine to just take it from someone else and give it to her? neat.

Oh and Yobuckstopshere and I talked that one out straight away. That’s a post from a month ago. It wasn’t even that he disagreed with that user being banned. But we’ve since set up a channel to better coordinate with the communities.

YoBuckStopsHere,
@YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.world avatar

Just FYI, the link you posted has long been solved and was from the first few days of the surge. Antik wasn’t abusing his power in our community in the slightest. That discussion actually led to some great cooperation between the mods and admins that have made LW even better, how we would moderate our communities, and the means to create a fantastic service for all of you.

Lenins2ndCat,
@Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

Completely own fucking goal too.

Like, what has he achieved here?

Hexbear was going to cause no problems. This has caused no problems for Hexbear - on the contrary it’s REALLY FUNNY. All it has achieved is pissing off half this userbase, splitting the community and making a mockery of everything this instance pretended it stood for.

Complete own goal, entirely for egotism and ideology.

C4RCOSA,

Antiks

Lenins2ndCat,
@Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

Lmao https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/133c0467-1f79-478f-a435-a01c748fea93.png

tymon,

y’all are incredibly embarassing

comfy,

If this was a specific-purpose non-politics instance like many are, I’d say power to you. But for an general-purpose instance that advertises itself as being:

A generic Lemmy server for everyone to use.

Lemmy.world is a general-purpose Lemmy instance of various topics, for the entire world to use.

…then there’s a need for some serious self-examination. Preemptively blocking thousands of users, and talking about blocking another long-lasting substantial community because some other community made comments about them? This is disappointing, this does not sound properly thought-out.

You’re right, defederation should only be considered as a last resort. Not as a broad-spectrum discriminatory first action.

XiaoHei,

this space can not exist with a woke tankie instance they will stick their fingers inch by inch to spread their wokism here

reverendsteveii,

last resort

preemptive

??

Cassilda,

It’s the Rumsfeld doctrine.

shadearg,
@shadearg@lemmy.world avatar

Defederation should only be considered as a last resort. However, based on their comments and behavior, no positive outcomes can be expected.

Pretty self-explanatory. Read the highlighted examples.

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.

People are tired of giving air to that crap. At best it’s disingenuous, dumb, and dangerous.

Federation is a privilege. The largest Lemmy instance has a right to decide what they are willing to platform and promote. That is their right, just as it is with every other instance on the Fediverse.

reverendsteveii,

you can argue whether it’s their right, or the right thing to do, but it can’t be a last resort and the first thing you try.

Docus,

/s ?

ajrwill,

Ignoring the fact that most complaining here are likely members of that instance, I don’t understand users’ insistence that they shouldn’t be defederated. Are most ignoring the numerous examples of Reddit subs users inferred “likely won’t be a big deal” becoming obviously problematic down the line, with the inevitable ban/quarantine occuring with most upset it wasn’t dealt with from the start?

ram,

Are most ignoring the numerous examples of Reddit subs users inferred “likely won’t be a big deal” becoming obviously problematic down the line, with the inevitable ban/quarantine occuring with most upset it wasn’t dealt with from the start?

You’ve just explained how Reddit became an echo chamber which is the same road lemmy.world is taking.

ajrwill,

I’d agree with you except the instance isn’t being removed from the site, so you still have the choice of creating an account for that instance, or creating your own self-hosted one instead.

queermunist,
@queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

Chapos quarantining and eventual banning was unjustified.

comfy,

Large, explicitly general-purpose communities shouldn’t be defederating with such trigger-happiness. It’s damaging to its own users ability to join communities they like, and for other instances’ users to constructively post and support their own communities. The point of federation isn’t to form cliques.

Also, it’s in pretty bad faith to assert that most of the people complaining must be from Hexbear. Most of the posts I’ve seen so far pointing out the contradictions in this announcement are from long-time active accounts from all around the place. (Your account, on the other hand, is literally one post old…)

Cabrio,

Funny, all the tankies responding to me are fresh accounts with activity in this post only.

lemmyZee,

I would like to thank everyone who came to lemmy.world and ended up recreating Reddit, warts and all. Looking forward to your announcement to kill 3rd party apps next week.

SankaraStan, (edited )

Defederation is happening based on Hexbear’s potential comments and behavior when there are some absolutely unhinged lemmyworld comments in this very thread.

But it’s Hexbear that “wants to be douches.”

aquinteros,

i dont like extremists on my feed, good work

mycorrhiza,

the planet is on fire and a handful of companies control most of the global economy and most of the world’s governments

FluffyPotato,

Authoritarians that like soviet iconography ain’t going to fix that or even help.

mycorrhiza,

I’ll paste a quote from a book called the Jakarta Method, which details the US-backed mass killing of over a million communists in Indonesia:

This was another very difficult question I had to ask my interview subjects, especially the leftists from Southeast Asia and Latin America. When we would get to discussing the old debates between peaceful and armed revolution; between hardline Marxism and democratic socialism, I would ask: “Who was right?”

In Guatemala, was it Árbenz or Che who had the right approach? Or in Indonesia, when Mao warned Aidit that the PKI should arm themselves, and they did not? In Chile, was it the young revolutionaries in the MIR who were right in those college debates, or the more disciplined, moderate Chilean Communist Party?

Most of the people I spoke with who were politically involved back then believed fervently in a nonviolent approach, in gradual, peaceful, democratic change. They often had no love for the systems set up by people like Mao. But they knew that their side had lost the debate, because so many of their friends were dead. They often admitted, without hesitation or pleasure, that the hardliners had been right. Aidit’s unarmed party didn’t survive. Allende’s democratic socialism was not allowed, regardless of the détente between the Soviets and Washington.

Looking at it this way, the major losers of the twentieth century were those who believed too sincerely in the existence of a liberal international order, those who trusted too much in democracy, or too much in what the United States said it supported, rather than what it really supported – what the rich countries said, rather than what they did.

That group was annihilated.

FluffyPotato,

Considering the first thing Lenin did when getting to power was kill actual socialists that wanted democracy, I’ll never side with MLs(or more like stalinists since that ideology has little to do with Marx or Lenin). And my family got to experience the soviet regime first hand, loosing many friends and family to their death camp thinly veiled as work camps. MLs are as useful as nazies when it comes to finding solutions to humanity’s problems.

mycorrhiza, (edited )

First, the Kronstadt rebellion was 100 years ago and has nothing to do with the struggle of people today to improve their lives. Second, it happened in the immediate aftermath of a bloody civil war against the capitalist-backed white army, before the soviet government had even fully established itself. Lenin viewed the rebellion as an existential threat, and said as much in his letters at the time. Third, you just read a passage about the bloody annihilation of open, democratic socialist movements throughout the 20th century. The Kronstadt rebels demanded that the nascent soviet union become one of those. How do you think that would have ended? Two decades later, the nazis would invade the soviet union and attempt to genocide the russian people. How would that have gone in your timeline? Ultimately, in 2023, none of these questions matter. There are more pressing concerns than whether or not Lenin overreacted to the Kronstadt rebellion in 1921. It’s only ever brought up as a gotcha to shut down socialist discussion, most people who mention it have never read about it and don’t give a shit about it as a historical event.

FluffyPotato,

Instead the soviet union genocide it’s neighbours while allying with the nazies so that was not an improvement.

Also yea, the US is like the #1 killer of socialist governments, that’s not really news. And I don’t doubt that if it was between anarchists and authoritarians, the authoritarians would shoot the anarchist without hesitation to rule over the working class with an iron fist like it has happened every time so the choice is meaningless, actual socialists die in either case.

mycorrhiza, (edited )

genocide its neighbors

Most historians — not communists, just regular academics — agree the famine was not a deliberate genocide. Read the preface to The Years of Hunger. The authors, R. W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft, are neither communists nor supporters of Stalin. Theirs is one of the definitive accounts of the famine, referenced on Wikipedia and cited often in other academic works.

allying with the nazis

This is facebook meme-tier history.

First of all, when the Molotov-Ribbentrop nonaggression pact (not an alliance) was signed, both parties expected to fight each other in the near future. Hitler viewed war with the Soviet Union as “inevitable.” Stalin expressed similar feelings. The pact was a temporary delaying tactic that allowed the Soviets to prepare for war while Germany focused on other targets.

Second, Stalin approached Germany only after France and the UK had already rebuffed his 1939 offer to form an anti-fascist alliance. Stalin offered to send France and the UK a million troops in 1939 and was denied. Nonaggression with Germany was his only other option. Even the US state department confirmed this was Stalin’s rationale for a nonaggression pact with Hitler: “The Soviets signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany after the British and French rejected Soviet offers to establish a military alliance against Germany”

Third, everyone else had already signed pacts with Germany at various points in the preceding decade:

1933 - UK, France, Italy, Germany - The four powers pact

1934 - Poland and Germany - Hitler-Pilsudski Pact

1935 - UK and Germany - Anglo-German Naval agreement

1936 - Japan and Germany - Anti-Comintern pact

1938 - September - UK and Germany - German-British Non Aggression Pact (Munich Agreement)

1938 - December - France and Germany - German-French Non Aggression Pact

1939 - March - Romania and Germany - German Romanian Economical Treaty

1939 - March - Lithuania and Germany - Non aggression ultimatum

1939 - May - Italy and Germany - Pact of Steel (Friendship and Alliance)

1939 - May - Denmark and Germany - Non aggression pact

1939 - June - Estonia and Germany - non aggression pact

1939 - July - Latvia and Germany - non aggression pact

1939 - August - USSR and Germany - Molotov-Ribbentrop Non Aggression pact — the only one liberals care about

Belligerents signed and broke pacts left and right.

FluffyPotato,

I’m not even talking about the famines soviet incompetence caused and deliberately worsened. Their death camps killed 1-8 million people, nobody knows exactly how many because, unlike the nazies, soviet records were absolute garbage and all accounts come from guards and prisoners. They also tried to destroy the culture and language of the occupied areas and replace the local population with Russians.

Not a meme considering exactly that happened, they agreed to divide Europe between themselves and not attack each other. Stalin absolutely wanted an alliance with Hitler and nothing indicates he was interested in fighting Hitler until he invaded. He got rid of Jewish diplomats to make Hitler happy. When Hitler invaded he refused to act since he did not want to believe that his ally betrayed him. I don’t doubt Hitler intended to break their alliance. Also are you saying if no one else wants to ally with you then allying with nazies is a good idea?

mycorrhiza,

I’m heading out to meet friends, and I also feel like I’m talking to a brick wall. Take care.

Blaidd,

Tankie memes will surely fix it /s

Aux,

Do you live on Venus?

mycorrhiza,

nah, “planet on fire” is a bit of hyperbole to describe a planet where we are sprinting past tipping point after tipping point on our way toward unrecoverable warming, ecological collapse, drought, famine, mass migration, resource wars, genocide, and ultimately the collapse of our complex, interconnected, fragile global economy.

poopsmith,
@poopsmith@lemmy.world avatar

Honestly, I don’t mind this considering the examples given.

Caoldence222,

maybe take a look for yourself… you probably don’t agree with everything posted there, but the cherrypicked examples aren’t representative of the whole instance. In fact there’s a sizable amount of people on hexbear.net that don’t want to federate period because they don’t want to get into political slapfights and be exposed to transphobia/otehr bigotry

p03locke,
@p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Defederation should only be considered as a last resort. We made the decision to preemptively defederate from Hexbear for these reasons.

Defederation should only be considered as a last resort. We made the decision to preemptively defederate from Hexbear for these reasons.

Defederation should only be considered as a last resort. We made the decision to preemptively defederate from Hexbear for these reasons.

a last resort. preemptively defederate

a last resort. preemptively defederate

a last resort. preemptively defederate

a last resort. preemptively defederate

JigglySackles,

This has been a demonstration in the use of markdown syntax…

GBU_28,

A last resort yes.

Do you think the admins would be convinced to observe the rules of other communities? Obviously not, by there own words.

IverCoder,

They have a point. But as a Filipino who’s very concerned about a possible Chinese invasion (though I live far down south so my main concerns are whether Mindanao regions’ budgets can handle all the Taiwanese refugees and movers from Luzon) I’m very skeptical of their actual agenda.

BloodForTheBloodGod,

Tankies are fine with Imperialism when China does it.

They like to forget that non western states have agency and are able to be Imperialist.

Buelldozer,
@Buelldozer@lemmy.world avatar

I’m very skeptical of their actual agenda.

You should be, it’s an instance dedicated to Tankies.

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