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.

toasteecup,

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.

ghariksforge,

I had enough of people like you, but you don’t see me asking that we defederate you.

oddsbodkins,

It’s because as a solid minority. That is often hated in the places they once had jurisdiction for good reason. You generally don’t get the chance. Or if you did, it would close you off in a tiny little Echo chamber that’s already far too strong. And I say this as someone who is supportive and open towards communism and abolishing Concepts such as private property and replacing with personal property. But I am sanctially against ml communism.

I absolutely think there can be a discussion about whether or not Vladimir Lenin’s Legacy on the whole was neutral. He definitely did some good things for russia. Though those same things were happening around the world regardless. So it is impossible to say that they wouldn’t have happened without him. But it is possible to say absolutely that a lot of death destruction and brutality were enabled by him. And his ideology single-handedly setback discussions of all left-wing Economic Development for a century or so. Those defending Stalin Mao or even Xi today. Well I don’t have anything diplomatic to say about them.

moosetwin, (edited )

Au contraire, mon ami:

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/5eddeb80-7fbb-40f6-bebd-fd4fccfa8c08.png

link

ghariksforge,

I was demonstrating a point.

BuckRowdy,
@BuckRowdy@lemmy.world avatar

just admit you were wrong. It’s ok.

ghariksforge,

?

you high?

PorkrollPosadist,

Does hesitation mean something else where you live?

XiaoHei,

looks like the lemmy.world admins are doing the right thing to keep us safe from the wokies hopefully they take the time to look at tankygrad (lemmygrad.ml) and the woke developers instance (lemmy.ml) both are MARKIST LENININST and need to be cut off from the free-speachverse

necrxfagivs,

Just block them bro.

xthedeerlordx,

discussions are pointless

I find this to be the most frustrating. hexbear/lemmygrad/lemmy.ml users are the whiniest group of users I see on lemmy. They complain about not having a place to share their views (despite all the instances catered/created for them), then complain about you not sharing their views/diminishing the views of others on the left (echochamber disguised as “open discussions of world views”). It’s wild they’re all complaining about getting defed’ed.

SovereignState,

“Stalin did nothing wrong” posts. Where are those, exactly?

We criticize Stalin plenty. We just don’t buy that he ate babies and murdered innocent farmers with his bare hands.

PoppinKREAM,

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.

Paralda,

Are you the PoppinKREAM from reddit?

PoppinKREAM,

Yes I am, hello o/

1chemistdown,
1chemistdown avatar

Why not kbin?

NightOwl,

Whether it’s reddit or lemmy I’ve always blocked all politics and world/local news related communities, since they rarely seem to really be a place that’s been cordial in the comments. And I’ve moved onto RSS feeds anyways over user submission driven news feeds.

Seems to be what has kept me the most sane and happy using social media.

ech,

Yeah, I checked out Lemmy some time ago and noped out pretty quick after seeing it was mostly just Lemmygrad at the time. Happy to be here now that there’s a lot more going on and not super keen on that face of Lemmy gaining a bigger presence again.

TheSpookiestUser,
@TheSpookiestUser@lemmy.world avatar

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.

Lenins2ndCat,
@Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

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.

deweydecibel, (edited )

(previous comment bugged, reposting it)

Given the way Hexbears own rules are written, the tone and very obvious motivations behind it, I’m not sure we’re missing much.

But would you care to share some examples of what the issues are?

Lenins2ndCat,
@Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

Sorry what? I can’t read context so I don’t quite get what you’re trying to say. Could you maybe quote what you were responding to?

I’m not sure what the problem is with hexbear’s rules. It’s a socialist instance of course it aims to remain socialist. Do you look at the lgbt instances and say “how dare they have motivations to keep their community lgbt!” No of course you don’t. It’s a fundamentally absurd notion.

Hexbear’s goal is to be leftist and have a fucking laugh while doing it. Nothing more. This shit has created a mountain of entertainment, nothing changes for Hexbear but this instance has pissed and shit all over itself.

Kalcifer,

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.

Lenins2ndCat,
@Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

Of course I do have you read my username?

Kalcifer,

Apologies, I did not.

jordanlund,

Freedom of speech does not constitute an obligation to listen.

Good for you!

magnor,
@magnor@lemmy.magnor.ovh avatar

Now if only everyone would be so quick to defederate preemptively from Nazi instances.

magnor,
@magnor@lemmy.magnor.ovh avatar

Not really no. I have a pretty extensive defed list on my instance if you want to check, but it’s not all Nazis (bots as well).

masterairmagic,

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.

jordanlund,

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.

youtu.be/e35AQK014tI

masterairmagic,

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.

XiaoHei,

THIS IS THE SOUND OF FREEDOM!

thank you for speaking up too many woke users in here complaining

SharkyAttack,

What a great sentence, well said. I’m going to use that in the future.

ghariksforge,

For example I don’t want to listen to you. Go away. Defederate yourself.

jordanlund,

You totally have that ability… it’s under “Block User”.

ghariksforge,

That was my point.

Docus,

Congratulation. You are the first user i have blocked.

eroc1990, (edited )
@eroc1990@lemmy.parastor.net avatar

Try telling that to the lemmyers (lemmings?) In this Technology thread that were clowning mastodon.art for blocking social.bbc for BBC’s history of transphobic rhetoric, considering there are a decent amount of transgender people (and other LGBTQIA+ identifying people) are members of their instance. Same situation, definitely not the same reaction.

EDIT: It was in Technology on lemdro.id, not Fediverse. EDIT 2: Spelling

Blamemeta,

BBC is transphobic? Since when?

Caoldence222,

youtu.be/b4buJMMiwcg

This video goes over one egregious instance (actually it turned into a bit of a saga, there were followups as well)

eroc1990,
@eroc1990@lemmy.parastor.net avatar

I’m restating their reasoning. Not speaking firsthand on whether or not they are. Sorry, should have clarified.

Carighan,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah but there’s a big difference.

As people right fully call out in that thread, defederation from the BBC without them having had a fediverse presence to do anything worth defederating with is wild. It’s the same broken argument as pre-emptively defederating from threads was, barring worries about sync-load or something.

But in the case of Hexobear, they do have lots of content based upon which you can judge whether federation with the instance is worth the extra moderation effort for you as an admin or not. In this case the lemmy.world admins decided that it is not worth it, an defederated.

However, importantly they had something to judge what working with the communities from the instance would be like. With BBC or Threads, no one had that. And while every instance admin is of course free to do whatever they want, they’re also making a really good point against the fediverse as a technological solution if they act that way.

Consider that if it were a central site, defederating from tankybear is the equivalent of banning a community. The BBC/Threads thing is preemptively blocking a community from ever being created. There are very rare cases where the latter might be warranted, but it’s tough to imagine scenarios where it would have a meaningful reason.

eroc1990,
@eroc1990@lemmy.parastor.net avatar

I don’t agree that there’s a big difference, though. Yes, one has much more of a base for their claims than the other, but both defeds are based largely on the personal opinions of the administrators of the instances, whether they’re politically motivated or rooted in the desire to not have to moderate and micromanage the content posted from that instance. In that way, both of these are the same decision made on the same grounds.

Carighan,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

but both defeds are based largely on the personal opinions of the administrators of the instances, whether they’re politically motivated or rooted in the desire to not have to moderate and micromanage the content posted from that instance

Hrm, an understandable POV (even though I personally disagree). But then I would also say, what is the alternative? Since a large part of the Fediverse is about everyone running their own custom instance if they want, naturally they’re also the one to decide if that place goes down or behaves differently. I wouldn’t really know how to truly improve upon this.

kplaceholder,
@kplaceholder@lemmy.world avatar

I usually support that sentiment, but it only applies when it is in your hands whether we listen or not. In this case, the admins singlehandedly decided that none of us can. This is pretty much a form of censorship IMO

RaoulDook,

The admins don’t control you. You can have an account anywhere else you want to. So unless you’re paying for the servers here, you can deal with the Terms of Service or not use it.

jordanlund,

As I said in another reply:

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.

youtu.be/e35AQK014tI

tool,
@tool@lemmy.world avatar

Exactly. Freedom of speech != Freedom from social consequences

RightHandOfIkaros,

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.

Pandantic,
@Pandantic@lemmy.world avatar

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”.

RightHandOfIkaros,

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.

FlickOfTheBean,

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?)

Carighan,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

Well, in a truly “free” society, yes freedom of speech would constitute freedom from “social consequences.”

No? That would imply it’s not free, as the receivers aren’t free to act upon the given information freely?

If the society is truly “free”, as in, absolutist free, then if someone said something you didn’t like, you could just punch them in the face without consequence. But that means the original speech had a consequence based on the social interaction with you!

PotjiePig, (edited )

I’m not in favour of pre-emptive defederating. It feels like censorship doing so and that bothers me.

  1. Their note to their users specifically says to keep their anti establishment opinions and trolling to their own communities and don’t spread it further for fear of defederation. It hardly sounds threatening to us.
  2. Defederating can happen at any point, and I think would be better kept as a reactive response and last resort rather than proactive.
  3. The more our large instances start fracturing and closing off from one another the less useful Lemmy will become. You’re hardly blocking out an idealogy, if hexbear users wanted in they could just sign up and that would make it harder to find them. At least having them federated makes it easy to filter out @hexbear if we wanted.
  4. Practicing tolerance goes both ways. Calling communities ‘them’ vs ‘us’ and judging a group based on the noise of the few doesn’t seem like the right approach. If hexbear became a problem and moderators complained of hate speech and conflict then absolutely we use the tools we have to keep things functioning, but filtering out groups because we don’t like ‘their’ belief systems will make us judgemental and biased as a result. This is a platform to promote discussion not an echo chamber to gather like minded opinions and bounce them off each other in perpetuity.
freehugs,

These are very good points, imo. Preemtively banning a sizable community without even a dialogue beforehand will only stir more extreme opinions and division between instances.

deweydecibel,

(Previous comment looks like it was bugged or something. Reposting it)

That’s not the real danger. Anyone that thinks that isn’t going to happen anyway is fooling themselves. All social networks trend toward individual clubhouses, and Lemmy’s design is perfect for that. This is not a fault of technology, it’s a people problem, it will be recreated everywhere one way or another.

The danger with preemptive moderation of any kind is that it turns moderation into gate keeping, and we simply can’t trust that to be even handed, no matter if they’re left, right, or center. There perverse incentives to abuse that are too numerous.

Whether it be users or instances, action should be taken after something has been done, not before. This is one of the slippiest slopes there is and it’s troubling there’s no standard, shared code of ethics admins are using that will prevent that

All of that being said…when I read Hexbear’s rules, the tone and obvious motivations of the admins there, I can’t help but feel like this isn’t unwarranted. For one very basic reason:

Hexbear’s motivation is openly about how it can affect other instances, and it’s rules are basically just telling their users to “go forth and do the thing but don’t get banned”. That, more than anything else, should get a defederation. Instances should not exist for the purpose of influencing other instances. Full stop.

Just…read that shit. Really take in the open contempt they have for other instances filled with people that don’t toe the line. It’s like a ship flying neutral colors coming up on the starboard side but the cannons are clearly loaded, and the deck is filled with peg legs and eye patches. It’s painfully obvious what they want, no parley needed.

Sweetpeaches69,

I completely agree with this well thought-out comment. In fact, point 3 is evidenced in this very comment section.

Carighan,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

I’m not in favour of pre-emptive defederating.

I agree, though I hesitate to call it “pre-emptive defederating”. But I can see the viewpoint.

To me, pre-emptive defederating is what was done by most Mastodon instances with Threads. Or how mastodon.art defederated from BBC. There was nothing to judge there. There was no content. Nobody could have said what kind of content would be seen on threads or the BBC instance. You could guess, sure. But you had absolutely no way of knowing.

With hexbear, there is plenty content there to judge, and historically federated influence has always been the same as local, that is, the behavior of a fediverse community is not meaningfully different outside of their own instance. As a result, the admins of instance Y can judge what federation with instance X would look like, there is data there to look at.

Pre-emptive to me would mean having no community content to judge at all, like the Threads and BBC examples.

The more our large instances start fracturing and closing off from one another the less useful Lemmy will become.

I will add that this is in the nature of the fediverse. It is inherently not useful as a replacement to social media centers such as Reddit, because it’s decentralized nature implies the fracturization has to happen, and social media works best when everyone is in one giant garden party for chance meetings and spontaneous interactions.

That’s not necessarily a doom&gloom thing, it just means that by its very nature, software such as Lemmy cannot be useful to users who are seeking to replace Reddit. It can be Lemmy. Which is something else, albeit superficially similar in some regards.

(edit)
However, in general I do agree that they should probably have been allowed to federate and then re-evaluate based on how it works out. If their posts average X% downvotes, if Y% of local users end up filtering them or if a large portions of moderator actions are just from having to manage those users, they can still defederate.
I looked over the instance, and I cannot see anything I’m missing out on, but I can understand why others would want to at least give them one chance.

JackbyDev,

Yeah, I’m really surprised with regards to point 1. “We have opinions that we recognize are unsavory to others so keep the especially unsavory stuff here so we don’t piss people off” seems like a good thing. I feel like defederating this early may have been the wrong call, but I don’t think regenerating now is the right call either. I suppose the argument is that they don’t believe it will actually be contained.

endlessmichael,

I have lurked here for a long time, but I just don’t understand the logic here. I read the statement that was linked here, and it just seemed like they were saying that they should be respectful and follow our rules? … Isn’t dismantling propaganda… through “informed rhetoric” a good thing? Why are NATO, the IMF or World Bank automatically good? … Aren’t we just creating a bubble by preemptively blocking a large lemmy instance just because we don’t like their political speech? As far as I can tell they aren’t promoting racism or bigotry. Has lemmy.world preemptively banned nazi or right-wing instances?

BehindTheBarrier,

Granted I only see the cherry picked statements in the post, but these things do not speak from a place of neutrality or at the very least openness. When all those things being bad is stated as close to fact, and them being against western propaganda,. They seem, to me, much less like a place that wants no propaganda and discussion of world organizations, and instead it sounds like a place that wants all of it gone and no place for western/left supportive discussion (which can be labeled propaganda, which may be a negative outlook on my side but any other site saying they do not want propaganda of one side usually isn’t very happy about arguments in favor of said side even when said thing is a fact or at least relevant to the discussion)

There were also comments very much critical of federation here because of some political joke posts. If shit post tier jokes on political figures aren’t ok things will work out. because it’s a Chinese communist it’s about, I’m also extremely sceptical of ho well.

With that said, I’m not completely against the federation, but it would require the mods to be vigilant and see if the federation doesn’t harm the general community over time. That might be a lot to ask for, since I do not know how much time and effort they already put into this already.

Double_A,
@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

“informed rethoric” will be some of the most piss poor arguments you have ever seen in your life.

freehugs,

That doesn’t necessarily mean the arguments are made in bad faith.

Carighan,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

No, but it’s still free speech, meaning nobody is forced to listen. In this case the “persons” are lemmy instances. If you talk shit, others will walk away (defederate).

freehugs,

Poor arguments does not equal talking shit. And I would prefer to decide for myself who I do/don’t listen to. It’s the admins’ right to ban instances as they see fit, but I don’t see a good reason to do so preemptively. I’d rather include opinions/ideologies I don’t agree with than shut them out (as long as they follow the rules, to which Hexbear didn’t even get the chance).

TheSpookiestUser,
@TheSpookiestUser@lemmy.world avatar

And I would prefer to decide for myself who I do/don’t listen to.

You can, by spinning up a personal one-man instance and making an account on it, then federating with whoever you want.

Short of that, you’re always going to be beholden to someone. The fact you can even do that is more than is possible on mainstream social media.

freehugs,

I know, I never said otherwise. I just expressed my opinion on the matter. Telling me to go start my own instance if I disagree is kinda proving my point.

TheSpookiestUser,
@TheSpookiestUser@lemmy.world avatar

What I’m saying is that you will never be able to decide for yourself who you do/don’t listen to, even on Lemmy. There will always be mods and there will always be admins wherever you go, unless you just head off by yourself and spin something up, and even then the mods and admins on the communities of the other instances you follow will be able to remove content on their instance.

freehugs,

Facts. I just disagree with the admins’ approach to this particular issue.

Double_A,
@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Just because there are impurities in your fresh water line, it doesn’t mean that you necessarily have to connect it to a literal cesspit.

kenbw2,

Yea implying that we don’t have propaganda and narratives on our side of the wall is naive

If we want the truth then an open discussion is the path. There will be arguments in bad faith, sure. But that’s not limited to “them”. It’s a human discussion thing.

Hubi,

This would be a lot more believable if your account wasn’t just 6 hours old.

Historical_General,

Probably doesn’t want to be brigaded. I’ve had random posts and comments downvoted by neckbeards for no reason. To the point that people in that community (LotR) were replying to me in surprise.

ghariksforge,

shut up troll

nyctre,

Because for these people “informed rhetoric” means quoting russian propaganda websites and repeating keywords to sound informed. They’re no different than flatearthers once you do some research, however. Unlike flatearthers, tho, these guys are trying to undermine progress so they are a lot more harmful

CarlMarks,

Is the Russian propaganda in the room with us right now?

Rom,

“Everything I don’t like is Russian propaganda” lmao get the fuck over yourself. It’s fine to disagree with people, but to claim everything that opposes your viewpoint is enemy propaganda is the most “baby’s first guide to internet discourse” shit ever. Grow up.

nyctre,

Right, my bad, forgot to mention insults.

Rom,

Because dismissing everything you don’t agree with as “Russian propaganda” and “undermining progress” is completely civil.

Double_A,
@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Many things I don’t agree with, are **not ** part of Russian propaganda… You’re creating a strawman argument.

SovereignState,

You’ve done nothing but insult hundreds of people here. All without saying anything of actual substance.

Are you sure we’re the bots?

ghariksforge,

But quoting American propaganda is okay?

Cabrio,

Do you speak disingenuously on purpose? Or are you just an idiot?

endlessmichael,

I hear the accusation thrown around about russian propaganda all the time, and it seems so spurious to me. It seems like a conspiracy theory unto itself. It is thought-terminating. Back when I used to go on reddit, I would get called a bot occasionally myself. It is something people throw out there so they don’t have to entertain any sort of cognitive dissonance. Like, if information is exposing a truth, but you don’t like source, that does not necessarily mean that it is untrue. Im sorry. That is a logical fallacy itself. it also ignores that the US, and US business entities in particular, are much more powerful and influential… I remember reading that US congress spend $300 billion to “counter the malign influence of the CCP” … that is close to what China spent on its military alone in 2022… The US also has a history of buying journalists and waging large internet influence campaigns, among other things… but I haven’t seen people calling other people shills or bots for repeated US-talking points… just looking it up now: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice
cyberscoop.com/meta-blames-u-s-military-for-infor…
theprint.in/tech/…/1114878/

masterairmagic,

american propaganda is strong on the internet.

nyctre,

I’m speaking from experience after wasting countless hours trying to have actual conversations. Even tried direct messages but whenever I did that, it felt like I was speaking to a whole different person. They would clam up and be like “sorry, don’t wanna talk about it” or something.

BelieveRevolt,

Good thing that never happens with the liberals here.

SovereignState,

You should see what happens over on the 'grad when we give liberals reading recommendations.

“Fucking tankies, never willing to open their minds to new ideas.”

“Here’s some new ideas!”

“No.”

BelieveRevolt,

A liberal on Lemmygrad thinking he’s got some new ideas to show the tankies is hilarious.

”Have you even read Xi’s Wikipedia article?”

CarlMarks,

Let me tell you about how calling a Chinese guy a yellow bear is the funniest thing ever and definitely not an unconsciously racist thought-terminating cliché.

RaoulDook,

I guarantee you nobody thinks of it like that except those like you who are trying to undermine the actually funny reality that Xi does look like Winnie the Pooh. Chinese people are not fucking yellow anyway, they’re pretty much the same color as “white” people.

CarlMarks,

I guarantee you that it is blatantly rooted in orientalism and treating 1 billion Asian people as either agencyless victims or buffoonish idiots, and it’s never questioned that crackers “joking” about him a yellow cartoon character would be a problem. This is a longstanding trope with roots in Western “race science”.

You can also find it in the ethnic rhetoric used against Russians at the moment - “savages”, “hordes”, “orcs”, and the classic false trope of sending masses to die as an attritional strategy (the last one also being literally Nazi rhetoric). You also saw it in the anti-brown islamophobia after 9/12.

When the US wants to target an enemy, they have very little trouble playing on the unquestioned racism of their audience. They often don’t even think it’s racism at the time - or even afterwards unless sufficiently embarrassed.

RaoulDook,

Fuck off commie. You’re barely better than a Nazi.

CarlMarks,

Most coherent liberal

Cabrio,

“Here’s some new ideas!”

Hands you a Karl Marx book.

Stupid fucking tankies.

SovereignState,

Hands you a Karl Marx book

I mean, Marx is rarely ever actually recommended to people who are not already socialists of some flavor. His works are important and foundational, but more often than not we recommend more modern texts.

You are speaking only to your ignorance and the hatred that keeps you from engaging with other ideas. I’d go so far as to say you’re proving my point.

There are more modern, digestible pieces of theory and historiography… hundreds upon hundreds of books and articles that would shatter your illusions in an instant if you ever bothered to touch them.

In fact, for any lurkers (not the person I’m responding to, who will likely never pick up another book in their life) who still passively or actively support the U.S. or NATO or the other heads of empire, I recommend William Blum’s Rogue State and Killing Hope. Both peer-reviewed. Intelligence officials have reviewed them and said “I don’t like this book, but it’s correct and well-sourced”.

If you refuse to even engage with the literature, then you are not good faith actors desiring conversation and freeze peach or whatever. You have an ideological agenda.

Give me a question about communism, give me a question about imperialism – I will answer to the best of my ability and will reference writings not from the 1800s. You know how I know more than just what Marx said? Because I read. Literacy is a gift and so many of y’all just proudly waste it.

MarxMadness,

Can’t imagine why someone wouldn’t want to have a DM conversation with a person who thinks they’re worse than a flat earther

lemmyvore,

Ah, but they feel fine presenting their views to a large passive audience?

MarxMadness,

…a forum post, where you might actually have something resembling a real discussion, is of course preferable to someone who thinks you’re an idiot bothering you in your DMs.

ImOnADiet,

Has lemmy.world preemptively banned nazi or right-wing instances?

no. it was an ordeal for them to ban the nazis over at exploding heads.

endlessmichael,

Concerning.

xthedeerlordx,

no. it was an ordeal for them to ban the nazis over at exploding heads.

it wasn’t an ordeal. nazi apologists, tankie apologists. you’re the same, quit acting like you’re different. Coming to other instances to insist your views or how this instance should act. the hypocrisy never ceases to amaze me

ImOnADiet,

Im an evil tankie out to control the other instances, you caught me!?!?!? Only thing I’ve come to do is ask your admins to be consistent and say this is for ideological reasons. Are you going to call the other .world commenters with concerns tankies too lol

xthedeerlordx, (edited )

Are you going to call the other .world commenters with concerns tankies too lol

If they support the promotion of leftist authoritarian propaganda disguised as anti-imperialism? Yes. Just as I would call those who support nazi’s, nazi’s. If it walks like a tankie, talks like a tankie,… but keep acting like the victim. how very on-brand

ImOnADiet,

If they support the promotion leftist propaganda?

Lmao y’all don’t normally go mask off like this. Scratch a liberal ig

(Psst you’re supposed to say “Tankies aren’t really leftists!!!”)

BelieveRevolt,

exploding-heads also got an admin statement full of actual evidence showing how posters there were being racist. Hexbear only gets this frankly extremely poorly written and thinly argued diatribe with no actual substance.

deweydecibel,

I think the issue is, for some, showing Hexbear’s rules makes it self-evident. Unless you think an instance formed with the goal of pushing themselves into other instances isn’t an issue.

Basically, any instance that has such open contempt for other instances in its rules, and has to tell its users don’t fuck around and get us defederated but please do go into other instances and spread the gospel…can you not see why that wouldn’t be welcomed? It shouldn’t need to be spelled out.

C4RCOSA,

YOU ARE NOT QUOTING OUR RULES: hexbear.net/code_of_conduct Those are our rules

Zaktor,

I read the statement that was linked here, and it just seemed like they were saying that they should be respectful and follow our rules?

Read through some of the first set of links if you haven’t. The same admin who’s trying to gently suggest they don’t troll is talking about how their instance won’t brigade lemmygrad because the energy is better focused on the wider war against liberalism in the fediverse. It calls into question exactly how real that suggestion is vs. just a pro-forma attempt to head off this exact result with a toothless suggestion they know no one is going to follow.

BURN,

That’s my take on it too. It’s a token post saying to do it, but we’re going to denounce you if you’re called out.

odbol,

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?

XiaoHei,

wrong that is typical tankie talking points the IMF and World Bank are bastions of freedom like lemmy.world there are plenty of woke instances to choose from go there

ClamDrinker,

Of course you are. There’s nothing wrong with defending your beliefs, or advocating for them in the right context. Especially if they have sound arguments to back them up. (Also, I don’t see any indication why that wouldn’t be allowed based on this post, or the rules of conduct)

But pushing your beliefs is different. It’s about foregoing actually convincing people and instead using underhanded tactics such as propaganda, brigading, or botting to make an opinion seem more sound than it really is. (Not saying your opinion necessarily is, by the way.)

MachineTeaching,

You mean the conspiracy theory that somehow the World Bank isn’t there to do it’s real job, provide loans to poor countries to aid their development, but instead part of some grand scheme to rob poor countries of their resources?

Because what you claim to be well documented isn’t actually objective fact. It’s more construing mistakes these institutions definitely did make to be something they very much aren’t.

mycorrhiza,

“We’ll give you this money if you cut all your social safety nets, depress wages, and hand your resources over to foreign companies.”

“Fuck, who could have predicted that our stipulations would stunt your economy and impoverish your workers? Welp… guess you’ll have to stay poor and keep offering cheap sweatshop labor so we can sell the products at 10x the price overseas. Oh woe is us! Next time, we’d better do the exact same thing over again, proving that we learned from our innocent mistake!”

I’m heading out to meet friends. Don’t take my silence for defeat lol. Hopefully someone picks this up where I leave off.

raspberriesareyummy,

I would like to second this. The OP reeks of opinionated bullshit. Being against NATO and a western hegemony in the world is absolutely a legitimate political opinion, whether you agree with it or not.

XiaoHei,

a legtimate tankie opinion only broke wokeists are against NATO

masterairmagic,

go away troll.

XiaoHei,

another tankie blocked

Aikawa, (edited )

It’s quite funny to see your well-adjusted self going around calling others “woke tankies” when I still remember you defending lemmygrad not so long ago, and being a CPC shill…

Laffytaffer,

Try not to feed the trolls

Aikawa,

That wasn’t my intent; I wanted to point for bystanders that this person’s speech was not so long ago the opposite of what they spout now, further signaling them as the troll they are.

OurToothbrush,

Theyre doing a pretty obvious bit and CPC or Communist Party of China doesn’t have the racist baggage the use of CCP does.

Aikawa,

Noted, I’ll edit my comment. English isn’t my first language, I used this colloquial term without thinking much about it.

GuyDudeman,
@GuyDudeman@lemmy.world avatar

Ahhh… And so the reddit bullshit begins on Lemmy. When will everyone just agree not to be dicks to each other?

Cabrio,

When people stop being stupid morons that inflict their idiocy on the world like a miasma of ignorance. So, never.

GuyDudeman,
@GuyDudeman@lemmy.world avatar

Good to know.

Aikawa,

Must I understand that you think I’m a dick for pointing out the hypocrisy of someone going around insulting people?

GuyDudeman,
@GuyDudeman@lemmy.world avatar

We’re all being dicks.

ClamDrinker,

The opinion of Hexbear doesn’t seem to be the problem, and because of certain ideological overlap to users here that should be quite obvious in my opinion. You seem to have focused on the wrong part of the OP.

The problem is that they are presenting themselves as an ideological army. And especially that the admins of Hexbear seem to support this position, rather than it just being some rogue users.

Imagine if a Lemmy instance opened up for a specific religion and their whole point was to inject themselves into as many discussions as possible to push information favorable to their religion. The problem isn’t that they believe in their religion, or even that they want to make the best case possible for it. It’s the fact that they are trying to wield open discussions as a sword to convert people regardless of relevance or appropriateness.

kenbw2,

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

Coelacanth,
@Coelacanth@feddit.nu avatar

I like your take a lot. It also sounds like lemm.ee might align with your wanted policies, if you don’t want to selfhost.

kenbw2,

Hm, they’ve pre-emptively blocked threads.net. But yea the list is shorter

Cabrio,

Fuck that, I spend enough time arguing with ignorant uneducated fuckwits on the Internet without being exposed to a hive of wilful stupidity.

CarlMarks,

Hi there, potential new friend! Since these folks are willfully stupid, can I assume you’re familiar with their positions and background, and have read my books? Which one is your favorite?

Cabrio,

Yes, they’re so wilfully stupid that they limit their understanding of social development to what they can dredge out of history and apply idealisms to reality with the willingness of authoritarians.

CarlMarks,

You said yes but didn’t answer my question! You’ve read my books? Which is your favorite?

Cabrio,

You haven’t written any, there’s a fellow by the name of Karl Marx that has a few, and he’d be an intellectually engaging enough fellow to converse with.

But you? You are but a pathetic wannabe facsimile with no purpose beyond a poor attempt at humerous, though disingenuous, engagement.

CarlMarks,

It sounds like you get the dumb joke that is my username. Congratulations! With that in mind, perhaps you’d like to take a third try at answering a simple and relevant question?

Have you read Karl Marx’s books? Which is your favorite?

Cabrio,

Do you practice being this stupid or does it come naturally?

CarlMarks,

Is reading scary?

Cabrio, (edited )

Must be for you since you keep avoiding it. Answer my question and I’ll answer yours, it’s a simple question, do you practice being this stupid or does it come naturally?

CarlMarks,

Tantrum noted, accepted, and appropriately celebrated.

Cabrio,

No tantrum, it’s a simple question. Why can’t you answer it?

Cabrio,

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/8981766f-74ab-4446-8b70-0a1b0d54b23f.jpeg

foggy,

Grow the fuck up. Carl Marks isn’t an author. You’re not Karl Marx, he is very dead. They’re not your books, and no one came here to have that conversation. Go somewhere else. I heard hexbear is neat.

CarlMarks,

Excuse me, officer. I’d like you to arrest this person for JESTING in my thread.

foggy,

This is not your thread. Get fucked.

CarlMarks,

It’s 100% my thread, lol. Nothing even remotely threatening, just tantrums and liberals telling on themselves. And all I have to do is ask nicely whether someone has read the basics to have their opinions. The answer is always no, because having opinions is clearly much more valuable than doing anything to earn them.

This works out great for me.

foggy,

Do you really think people haven’t read Marx? Are you that pretentious? Like I said get fucked.

CarlMarks,

Yes, of course I think that. Even self-proclaimed Marxists have often barely read Marx, let alone liberals that speak entirely in vagaries.

At best, someone claiming to have “read Marx” has skimmed and misunderstood The Communist Manifesto. That is, incidentally, not a book, more like a slightly extended pamphlet.

I’m guessing you don’t talk to people, and haven’t read Marx beyond the above description.

foggy,

I have an undergrad in sociology you troglodyte, and am more of an Emile Durkheim and Max Weber person.

Now go smell your own farts, Id never purposely converse with someone so painfully pretentious.

Do get fucked. Any response to this, I’ll just block you. Cheers.

CarlMarks,

Sounds like I was right lol

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Comedy is hard. I suggest trying another thing.

CarlMarks,

Sorry but I just learned that sarcasm and jokes are disingenuous so I think I’m gonna spend my time getting upset about things I’ve never tried to understand instead.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

See above, re: comedy being hard.

Lenins2ndCat,
@Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

and apply idealisms to reality

Marxism is a materialist philosophy, it is specifically anti-idealism. I suspect this is a case of a person that does not understand what idealism actually means in this context though so I’ll help out with a very simplified explanation:

Idealism = the belief that human beings control their environment through the use of ideas. That humans have ideas, and then use those ideas to impact their environment.

Materialism = the belief that human beings get their ideas from the material conditions that they find themselves in. That it is actually the environment that human beings exist in that gives them their ideas.

Marxism is a fundamentally a materialist philosophy. Its key thinkers were viciously anti-idealism and sought to ground marxist analysis in scientific analysis, hence the nickname “the immortal science”. Liberalism on the other hand holds idealism as its core tenet and believes that if you just get enough people to change their ideas you can create change. Hence why many liberals think you can just convince the rich to go completely against their material interests with discussion rather than understanding that they hold their ideas because they are the rich, because of the material conditions they have that differ from the working class.

duviobaz,
@duviobaz@lemmy.world avatar

Pseudo-leftist like you tankies do not belong here or anywhere else. Go back to your wannabe-commie instance. While you are defending imperialism over there, we will be here having our fun - in reality

Lenins2ndCat,
@Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

That has fuck all to do with idealism or materialism.

Cabrio,

Idealisms in this case is referring to the attempted application of one’s ideals, not the philosophy of idealism. Materialism is a Marxist ideal for example.

I suspect this is a case of a person that does not understand what idealism actually means

If self awareness was a disease you’d be the healthiest person alive. Funny how you tried to throw your pseudo intellectual weight around but missed the first important step of ensuring you had adequate cognizance of the message you were responding to.

Asking a simple question about my use of idealism, or for that matter having more than passing grasp of English, would have clued you onto your misinterpretation.

If you had you’d have saved yourself a lot of keystrokes.

foggy,

And this conversation right here is why it’s a good thing we defederate.

Conversations like this are weaponized by groups like them. It’s not a good faith attempt at reaching common ground. It’s pigeonholing arguments for dunks and upvotes in an effort to destabilize the more unified conversations that are organically arising.

mimichuu_,

Then make your own instance and turn it into a safety bubble just for you. Don’t ruin it for everyone else.

Cabrio,

Don’t like that we don’t want you here? Then make your own instance and turn it into a safety bubble just for you. Don’t ruin it for everyone else.

mimichuu_,

You’re the one that doesn’t want to see us. I’m more than fine with seeing you.

Cabrio, (edited )

And I’m more than fine to tell you that I don’t want to see you, doesn’t mean I have a problem insulting your beligerence and stupidity, just that I prefer not to, but if you have a problem hearing that you know where the door is.

remkit,

Well, it’s their instance, they can do what they want with it. You should definitely save your $ and setup your own instance so you can federate with whatever you want.

Dekudibusei,

Given their outings, I don’t think you can expect them ye respect other instances’ rules. That will give mods a very hard time, which makes effective hosting of lemmy.world an issue. That’s not a good thing.

AlmightySnoo,
@AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world avatar

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.

WhiskyTangoFoxtrot,

I find it hilarious that the tankies rail against “maintaining the status quo” but in practice all they do is shit on anyone making actual progress in favour of wanking about some glorious revolution that will never come.

Chreutz,

That sounds an awful lot like ‘we know we’re a minority, so we have to cheat, otherwise it might also look like we are, and that would be unfair! (read: we might be rightfully ignored for our minority opinions)’

_Sprite,
@_Sprite@lemmy.world avatar

wtf is wrong with these people

1984,
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

It’s not so different from how most of us feels about reddit is it?

The OP didn’t make it clear that the post was about reddit, not Lemmy.world.

urist,

I can’t speak for everyone but, no actually. I think a lot of us just left and took our content with us (comment deletion). I couldn’t care less if people are creating bots or being trolls to “destroy reddit”, but no, I’m guessing that most of us aren’t going out of our way to pollute communities that we no longer enjoy.

Sounds pretty toxic honestly.

Though, I don’t agree with this pre-emptive federation. Seems premature.

1984,
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

And I think it could be the same on hexbear, that most users won’t go out of their way to pollute Lemmy.world.

But we will never know if we don’t try it.

raltoid,

It’s the conspiracy theorist mindset:

They’re people who wish they were smart, and can’t handle that they’re not. So they latch onto ideas that most people agree are dumb. Then use that to convince themselves that they’re super geniuses who have realized the truth of something that even scientists couldn’t figure out.

Then when they’re challenged with evidence or facts, they double down and start insulting or even assaulting people in response. Because they don’t see it as evidence in an argument, they just think the other person is calling them stupid and that really strikes a nerve.

TL;DR: They’re in denial and project their own self-hatred onto others.

CarlMarks,

Some conspiracies are real, and are some of the most harmful things on the planet. They’re both evil and banal, and they look like petrochemical consortia trying out some new PR firms or Victoria Nuland casually talking about who should be put in political leadership in Ukraine post-Euromaidan.

The people who are best-informed get pretty invested in opposing those harms and wonder why (some) others are so viciously opposed to learning about them.

Tabitha,

This is what true projection is.
“Everybody who disagrees with me is a moron who thinks they’re smarter than they really are. If only they were as smart as me”

Kalcifer,

Your comment’s intent is rather dubious – why post a quote from Lemmygrad, when the original post was talking about Hexbear? I encourage you to state that your quote is from Lemmygrad within the comment itself, instead of hiding it behind a link.

TheSpookiestUser,
@TheSpookiestUser@lemmy.world avatar

Cause maybe lemmygrad should be defederated as well.

Kalcifer,

Be that as it may, the comment is rather misonformative, as it is currently written. It is evident that the main topic of conversation here is Hexbear; therefore, people scrolling through the comments are going to be expecting that all comments will be talking about Hexbear. The posted quote could very easily be interpreted as a quote from Hexbear, given the context, if read in passing by someone who doesn’t feel motivated enough to follow a link.

ImOnADiet,

I too think we should de-federate instances based off a post made a year and a half ago from a user who doesn’t use the site anymore, and even only 3 of the commenters still use the site (a few of the commenters are actually banned!)

TheSpookiestUser,
@TheSpookiestUser@lemmy.world avatar

I mean personally I’m 100% down to defederate from any instance that not only harbors but supports Russian invasion of Ukraine apologia. The fact some people intended to be brigadey is just extra reason in my book.

ImOnADiet,

then the lemmy.world admins should put that in their code of conduct. I don’t know how old you are but I sure hope you would have had this same energy for Iraq and Afghanistan, or even Vietnam! (you would be cheering on the empire then I can almost guarantee you :p)

TheSpookiestUser,
@TheSpookiestUser@lemmy.world avatar

I’m not an admin, this is just my opinion.

And yes, I can also denounce unnecessary American invasions in the name of “freedom” at the same time. This isn’t some kind of sport, I don’t need to pick a team and stick with it. I simply find it kind of hypocritical that a lot of the same people hypercritical of American intervention on a global scale are cool with Russia’s invasion because it is “anti-NATO” or some such. People are fucking dying, it’s hell, not a game. That plus, no matter how you slice it, Putin’s regime is certainly worse than the current American climate - I can at least actually vote for the next president and criticize what they’re doing without fear of falling out a window.

ImOnADiet,

I’m not talking about right now, it’s common and easy to condemn America’s past crimes in today’s climate, I’m saying you would have been supporting and peddling American propaganda back then too. You don’t listen to what we actually say. we don’t like Russia. We don’t think the invasion is “cool”. We think the USA provoked them (and ruined peace talks). we view America as the great Satan that oppresses the world and crushes communist and anti-colonial movements everywhere, and anything that destroys its hegemony of the globe is a good thing in our eyes, even though it’s a fucking travesty that working class Ukrainians and Russians are dying right now in a proxy war between Russia and the United States. That’s why we advocate for peace talks.

TheSpookiestUser,
@TheSpookiestUser@lemmy.world avatar

and anything that destroys its hegemony of the globe is a good thing in our eyes

And there’s where you not only lose me but get me to think that anyone peddling that kind of absolutist rhetoric should be defederated from. There are things worse than America, if you can believe that.

ImOnADiet,

I would love to hear what you think is worse than this empire that is founded on settler-colony genocide and slavery, and has legitimately been a cartoon level evil villain for a 100 years

1984, (edited )
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

You guys are arguing about things you cannot ever change. We get born in random spots on the planet, and we have evil leaders at the top of every country and organization in my opinion. There is no point trying to force your world view on someone else. They won’t change their mind.

Human leaders want power, not peace. The only rational thing is to despise all of them.

People who argue go like “they did a, b,c - see how evil they are? Other side: yeah but what about x, y, z that is even more evil?”.

It’s just wasting your lifes arguing without any chance of making any progress convincing the other side.

ImOnADiet,

I disagree, strongly, but that’s a more respectable opinion than wanting to ban an instance because they disagree ideologically

1984,
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

I think it’s about moderation in practice. Mods would have a huge workload to moderate all kinds of heated discussions.

ImOnADiet,

There’s not that many hexbear users, quite a few of them want to stick to hexbear anyways

SovereignState,

What a misanthropic worldview.

1984,
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

Yup.

TheSpookiestUser,
@TheSpookiestUser@lemmy.world avatar

Gee I dunno, a country with even worse civil rights that has no free elections and is actively performing an invasion right now?

America can be bad and Russia can be worse. It’s allowed.

ImOnADiet,

who gives a shit about who has better “civil rights” I care about my country bombing children in the middle east. Regardless I don’t wanna hear shit about civil right from an American, we imprison more people by number and per capita than anywhere else on the planet. Our police departments are run by fucking criminals, and you want to compare civil rights? Ask communists like the Black Panthers what civil rights they got - oh wait you can’t, because our government assassinated and arrested them

TheSpookiestUser,
@TheSpookiestUser@lemmy.world avatar

I give a shit about civil rights because people live here? Ideally a country would have decent civil rights codified into law and not bomb children abroad.

Yeah all that shit does and did happen. I said “even worse” for a reason.

Russia is still worse off in that field. Which is why picking them to root for purely because it might put a dent in America’s influence (spoilers, it’s not even - if anything it’s strengthened it) is just… I don’t understand.

EDIT: You know I feel the need to just extra-emphasize this:

who gives a shit about who has better “civil rights”

This kind of shit is why no one likes tankies. It’s almost stereotypical.

ImOnADiet,

You know I feel the need to just extra-emphasize this: you totally sidestepped my point about the genocidal nature of the United States and how it’s wrapped into its very being. Probably because you don’t care about the plights of indigenous people, or at least not enough to actually work towards rectifying that harm

ImOnADiet, (edited )

give me examples. there’s not a single fucking thing that Russia is doing that we aren’t either actively backsliding into or are already as bad or worse. We oppress communists harder, we have more problems with racism, red states are actively genociding trans people while the dems act like they’re powerless to stop them, I’m sure gay marriage is next on the chopping block, we imprison more people than them, we have invaded and bombed way way way more countries than them, we actively coup other nations, what are we doing better than Russia in? Climate action , maybe, I haven’t looked into it…

if anything it’s strengthened it

You really need to stop reading only western news outlets, have you not seen what’s going on in South America and Africa?

kmkz_ninja,

Ok. Now what? Do we keep bitching or are we going to actually do something?

CarlMarks,

Did you have an opinion on the killings in the Donbas from 2014-2022? People getting locked in a union hall that was set on fire? The promotion of neo-Nazis to “handle” the ethnic Russians there?

Or did you only begin caring about Ukrainian lives when it was 24/7 on Western media, acting like Russia’s invasion had no background, like Minsk II never existed, etc?

A follow-up: have you opposed the US-backed Saudi genocide in Yemen with the same ferocity? That one doesn’t get as much play in the media, but a child dies there every minute or so due to the US-backed blockade, preventing basics like food from getting to the population.

MarxMadness,

The U.S. has fought maybe two justified wars in its existence, but trust me, this one is good for real!

AlmightySnoo,
@AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world avatar

read the entire post, you’ll see this exact link being mentioned there as Lemmygrad defederation was also considered

AngrilyEatingMuffins,
AngrilyEatingMuffins avatar

That’s a different instance, though, right?

skullgiver, (edited )
@skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl avatar

[This comment has been deleted by an automated system]

polskilumalo,
@polskilumalo@lemmygrad.ml avatar

One year ago, and the guy hasn’t posted since then. Like ffs guys we had a home turf advantage if any idiot were to do it they would’ve done it by now, and the best part: they were talking about reddit.

You really will take something as stupid as this to spin it in the most unsincere and negative light you can? Seriously?

iridaniotter, (edited )
@iridaniotter@lemmygrad.ml avatar

One year later and nothing has been done! So much for leftist “organizing”!

Edit: The Leninist downvote brigade continues! Up yours, woke moralists!

simply_surprise,
@simply_surprise@lemmygrad.ml avatar

It’s a year old post about brigading Reddit, that garnered disagreement and a lukewarm response.

AlmightySnoo,
@AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world avatar

40 upvotes, 4 downvotes, thread is still up and instance admins had no issues with it.

BelieveRevolt,

The thread is from a year ago. Do you really expect the admins there to delete year-old threads just so people couldn’t trawl through them in bad faith?

Also, Lemmygrad != Hexbear.

Redhotkurt,
Redhotkurt avatar

It's so melodramatic, it sounds like a child's attempt at satire. Like, try saying that out loud and not cringing.

jake_eric,

I’m gonna come out and say, even with the statement, I’m not in favor of preemptive defederation like this.

I know the admins of an instance are hosting us basically out of the goodness of their own hearts, and I appreciate that. And I understand they can do whatever they want, and we can move to a different instance if we want. I get it.

But I joined .world because I wanted a neutral instance that would connect with pretty much everyone unless they were particularly problematic. Could hexbear be particularly problematic? Sure, maybe. But I think there’s a big difference between defederating in response to a problem and defederating in anticipation of a potential problem, especially since the users aren’t given a chance to discuss it. Like, I know we’re not technically entitled to give our input if we’re not admins, but I think it would be nice, y’know?

If it was just some small instance of trolls that’s one thing, but hexbear is actually quite a big instance, so this is a very impactful decision. I don’t like it being made preemptively behind the scenes like this.

astraeus,
@astraeus@programming.dev avatar

The users already made their intentions clear with their instance rules acting as proxy. It’s an aggressive stance and it is not conducive to fair and open conversations about anything.

freehugs,

Seconded

APassenger,

Is joining hexbear an option for you? It’s not like we’re obligated to only have one account across the lemmyverse.

jake_eric,

Sure, but having fewer accounts is easier: that’s the whole purpose of federation in the first place, isn’t it?

It’s fine now, but I haven’t been on Lemmy for that long, and I don’t want to have to make a new account every few months to see a new instance.

Lifecoach5000,

Well I think this is just the nature fediverse as well. You gotta respect the admin and it’s really not super hard to use multiple logins with different instances via an app.

Jilanico,
@Jilanico@lemmy.world avatar

If Lemmy starts to allow seamless migration of accounts across instances, this will become less of an issue. But I suspect creating multiple accounts isn’t going to be palatable to most users.

Zaktor,

A single login solution is to find a third party that federates with both lemmy.world and hexbear. Hexbear’s list is pretty limited so it’d have to be one of those, but unless others follow lemmy.world’s choice you’ll be able to see and post on both instances.

solrize,

Maybe “federation” or something like it should actually take place on the client side, so you’d join instances with almost the ease of subscribing to communities. Then the client code would handle combining feeds, using the right credentials to post to a given place, funnelling DM’s from multiple instances to a single inbox, etc.

I think if we are here now, the fediverse vision has already failed. Defederation is a last resort yet this is the third round of drama in the 1 month past redditgeddon? Two actual defederations and one extended discussion set off by a single troll on another instance.

So, I think fediverse decentralization hasn’t yet gone far enough. Thus the idea of handling instance coordination on the client rather than leaving it up to server admins.

MisterFrog,
@MisterFrog@lemmy.world avatar

The more servers we defederate with, the fewer posts will show up in our feeds from everywhere. People aren’t going to make an account for everywhere. I’m not particularly sad about this server in particular, but in general the Lemmy.world admin trying to stop people running into content that isn’t illegal is annoying and him imposing his ideology on lemmy.world, which paints itself as neutral.

MisterFrog,
@MisterFrog@lemmy.world avatar

The more servers we defederate with, the fewer posts will show up in our feeds from everywhere. People aren’t going to make an account for everywhere. I’m not particularly sad about this server in particular, but in general the Lemmy.world admin trying to stop people running into content that isn’t illegal is annoying and him imposing his ideology on lemmy.world, which paints itself as neutral.

d4rknusw1ld,

Find another instance? That’s the beauty of the fediverse.

jake_eric,

Well yeah, I already said I know that’s the go-to if you don’t like one instance. But I’d still like to be able to express my opinions before doing that. It’s not that big a deal but I’d still ideally rather not, y’know?

Zink,

This is exactly the thought process I went through while reading the post. Doing it preemptively can make it come across like you’re severing the connection due to opinions rather than rule breaking.

But still, THANK YOU to the admins, in general. I am not accusing you of anything negative like that. I trust that you thought it through way more than I did. Thanks for keeping this big general insurance of ours awesome.

SheeEttin,

Well, you picked the wrong instance, then. Lemmy.world never claimed to be neutral. The goals have always been clearly stated, currently here: lemmy.world/legal

jake_eric,

Well the server is described up at the top as a “generic Lemmy server for everyone to use,” which feels like it’s setting up to be a pretty neutral stance.

Cornelius_Wangenheim, (edited )

Hating tankies is a neutral stance. Red fascists deserve just as much scorn as the regular kind.

Astrealix,
@Astrealix@lemmy.world avatar

They specifically said they’re being trolls and going to brigade tbf.

jake_eric,

That first bullet is saying “don’t do stuff that’s going to get us defederated” to their users, no? It’s a bit tongue in cheek but I feel like it’s not as aggressive as some people are describing. The whole server came from a subreddit that was very memey/shitpost.

Zaktor, (edited )

I think their admins are doing an honest job trying to put out reminders for good behavior (**edit: I hadn’t originally followed the links to the admin’s comments elsewhere, I no longer think they’re doing an honest job), the problem is that the sub they grew from never heeded similar admonishments and their federation post explicitly says they will not be moderated for activity outside of hexbear, so it’s really just a suggestion, not a rule.

I don’t agree with anti-western ideology being a good reason for defederation, but I do expect hexbear to be a major source of trolling from past experience with r/CTH. Reddit post-Donald and post-CTH bans was a noticeably less trolly (NOT saying they’re even remotely equivalent, just both were sources of trolling and were banned at the same time).

C4RCOSA,

Concerning

Shinhoshi,

Wasn’t The_Donald already abandoned by its members before Reddit banned them to make it look like they were being neutral?

Zamboniman,
@Zamboniman@lemmy.ca avatar

As always, the limits of tolerance are met when it comes to suggesting we tolerate intolerance. The boundary must be set there.

thal3s,
@thal3s@sh.itjust.works avatar

You don’t welcome cancer in to your body because you support all life.

Nazis and Russian trolls are not here to debate or inform. Their sole purpose is to degrade trust in democracy, spread propaganda, and other heinous shit.

Defederation is our only defense and we owe it to users to fight hate and lies.

iridaniotter,
@iridaniotter@lemmygrad.ml avatar

Unfortunately for you, the userbase of Hexbear is predominantly non-Russian! Ergo, your conclusion is incorrect!

ronalicious,

russian trolls aren’t necessarily russian… remember that donald trump guy?

iridaniotter,
@iridaniotter@lemmygrad.ml avatar

Oy vey. Conspiracy theories are against the Code of Conduct! Rule 3. I’ll leave you with a warning.

Blamemeta,

Well, okay, tankie scum. Happy with that label?

jake_eric,

The thing is that kind of example assumes that it is cancer. Which is something I’m not happy assuming yet, especially without discussion.

Hexbear has over 20k users. I find it hard to believe they’re all Russian trolls, or even that most of them are.

AnonymousLlama,
AnonymousLlama avatar

A perfectly fair and balanced opinion. It's ultimately up to the admins since they've effective got to clean the mess if it happens, but gauging community sentiment would always be nice

Jilanico,
@Jilanico@lemmy.world avatar

Well said.

Like, I know we’re not technically entitled to give our input if we’re not admins, but I think it would be nice, y’know?

Admins not bothering with users’ thoughts or opinions is what brought us here from Reddit. I wish they would poll us, even informally, before making these kinds of decisions.

DougHolland,
@DougHolland@lemmy.world avatar

Your desire to “connect with pretty much everyone unless they were particularly problematic” is admirable,. Just remember, please, that the wider the gates are opened, the more idiots wander in and the more work for mods and admins.

After dealing with the first thousand or so idiots, you can smell 'em coming. I’m with the admins on this.

Zaktor,

Non-federation with a CTH-successor certainly makes running a community on lemmy.world more desirable. Back on reddit, before the bannings about 1/3 of mod actions were from TD users, 1/3 were from CTH users, and the last 1/3 was just randos. It’s not like CTH was just a regular sub, they were the source of a lot of moderation.

jake_eric,

Sure, I’m aware of idiots on the internet, but if we tried to avoid idiots on the site we wouldn’t federate with anyone. Lemmy.world is specifically billed as a “generic Lemmy server for everyone to use,” I want the gates to be open fairly wide, that’s why I’m here. Not for everyone, like I’m glad we defederated with exploding heads, but we still gave them a shot first and there was at least some more community discussion on it before that decision was made. That’s what would make me feel a lot better about this.

DougHolland,
@DougHolland@lemmy.world avatar

“Give them a shot first” is easy to say, but it’s hours or days of moderators and admins’ lives.

Jilanico,
@Jilanico@lemmy.world avatar

Avoiding echo chambering (is that a verb?) will take work. Admins and mods should be willing and ready to do that for the health of the fediverse.

Fwiw, I was a reddit mod for a sub of 4.3 million, so I’d like to think I’m not being naive about this, but I could be wrong…

Angry_Maple,
@Angry_Maple@sh.itjust.works avatar

I would like to start off with apologizing for if this comes off harshly.

I respect that you were a mod for a community that size, but I’m not really sure that I can give that much credit without knowing more. Reddit had all kinds of mods. Good mods, bad mods, sleeping mods, controlling mods, chill mods, etc. Reddit hasn’t exactly had much of a great reputation for many of it’s mods and admins, you know? I’ve seen some very bizarre things happen on that website in the past regarding certain mods, to put it one way.

Since this is a different platform with different groundwork, I would imagine that the tools would probably be at least a little bit different. Maybe the mods who used to moderate 24/7 have decided to spend more of their time on their hobbies or with their loved ones. Maybe they are on a different platform. Maybe they got bored of moderating, who knows.

I think that we should make sure that we keep human expectations for people if we want to keep our mods good and happy. I think that that’s another way that Reddit really messed up. Reddit’s 24/7 pressure to constantly moderate probably led to a lot of mods becoming burnt out. If people try to treat volunteers as employees, they’re likely to lose many of those volunteers. I mean, these people are already going our of their way to help contribute.

I have to say, I see a hell of a lot more "other people need to do xy " on this thread, than I see “I think x is missing. I’ll help add it!”.

Jilanico,
@Jilanico@lemmy.world avatar

Not harsh at all 🤝 I respect your perspective, but I stand by my comment. If we sign up for a job, we should do right by it. Also shameless plug: the community was r/streetwear and you can find us at !streetwear

P.S. feel free to peruse my history on r/streetwear to judge if I was a lazy/crazy mod

AnonymousLlama,
AnonymousLlama avatar

Echo chambering is arguably one of the worst things that can happen to a group. There's plenty of reasons why you'd want to disassociate with various people, but the prevailing notion of "oh I don't like what they say, let's defederate" I'm seeing around here is shocking.

The counter argument is always the paradox of tolerance, that you can't tolerate intolerance and while that's good and fine, it feels like nowadays that people will use any excuse to silo themselves. For example people cheering on de-federating from a group of potentially 20k users because some of these users might be bad actors

MarxMadness,

As others have pointed out, the population of the whole fediverse is currently less than a bunch of subreddits with far less than 4.3 million users. Mod/admin energy shouldn’t be taken for granted, but people are way overstating the potential for issues.

A game thread on any popular sporting event has way more comments and problems than basically any post in the history of this place.

SovereignState,

They chose to be admins and moderators. Perhaps they should be expected to administrate and moderate.

histy,

deleted_by_author

    •
    Caoldence222,

    tbf all costs (besides probably labor, which isn’t insignificant, but harder to quantify from the outside) are paid by donations, so it isn’t just the kindness of their hearts opening their servers to us. They also chose to present their server as a general purpose one where everyone is welcome (within reason)

    Sentrovasi,

    In another very real sense, their users chose the instance they're on. People were asking at the beginning what the difference between each instance was. This is how the admins have chosen to administrate and moderate. Maybe it's the users who should recognise that the shoe is on the other foot.

    Fwiw though, I don't disagree with the choice to defederate.

    AFKBRBChocolate,

    I get your argument, but I’m with the admins. It’s not like a shop keeper closing their doors because they see someone coming with tattoos and a biker jacket. It’s more like they’re closing their doors because they heard the person saying they make their living shoplifting and they intend to shoplift in that store. Hexbear stated pretty explicitly that they intend to be a problem. No reason to wait for them to do that.

    jake_eric,

    I’m not really seeing it to be honest. That first bullet point there seems pretty clearly saying to their users to not be a problem so that they don’t get defederated.

    I’m sure you can find someone calling to brigade such and such on there somewhere but they have over 20 thousand users total. That’s a lot of people to rule out.

    AFKBRBChocolate,

    The message is pretty clear though: be as subversive as possible but don’t set off the alarms that will get us defederated. I don’t see them telling their users to be good, I see them telling them not to get caught.

    AngrilyEatingMuffins,
    AngrilyEatingMuffins avatar

    If the rule is fifteen pieces of flair you shouldn’t need to be like pretty boy Bryan and wear thirty seven to be on the law’s good side.

    MarxMadness,

    There is nothing wrong with following the rules and being “subversive.” That is literally just challenging people’s ideas.

    AnonymousLlama,
    AnonymousLlama avatar

    Feels like a pretty big call to look at a place that has 20k users and think they're all trolls and bots. I get that people aren't interested in differing opinions / discourse nowadays, but defederation before even giving it a go feels a little weak.

    Lenins2ndCat, (edited )
    @Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

    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:

    1. “Western propaganda” - Is capitalist propaganda. Of course socialists oppose it, we oppose capitalism.
    2. “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.
    3. “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 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.

    MoistWanted,

    Bye Felicia

    Lenins2ndCat,
    @Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

    Going nowhere fashy fash

    chrisbit,
    @chrisbit@leminal.space avatar

    I have no skin in this game as I run my own instance, but well said. I couldn’t agree more with your counter points. This move, taken with the delay in defederating from fascist instances, has to be a big concern for the leftist community on LW.

    Buelldozer,
    @Buelldozer@lemmy.world avatar

    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.

    GONADS125,

    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…

    WldFyre,

    Wild that you’re being downvoted for this IMO

    C4RCOSA,

    You are literally quoting the WRONG INSTANCE’S rules I know that liberals are loath to read past the headlines but this is so egregious it is hilarious.

    Historical_General,

    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.

    Buelldozer,
    @Buelldozer@lemmy.world avatar

    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.

    Historical_General,

    I don’t think they were going to, since Hexbear doesn’t actually have downvotes. Only upvotes. And the post above apparently cuts out the part where they’re told to follow the rules.

    If they wanted to misbehave they could do it already. I’ve personally had posts and comments mass downvoted and people have complained elsewhere. The only thing this defederation will contribute to is an increase in alt accounts and the very misbehaviour you fear. This is a Lemmy problem, not a Hexbear one.

    necrxfagivs,

    I’m shocked by this post. And looking for a new instance.

    I wanted an instance that doesn’t defederate based on ideology (except fascist instances) and of a generalist nature. I want to browse the wide fediverse from an instance where I’m allowed to be a socialist, but clearly lemmy.world is not the one for me.

    Any recommendations?

    Lazz45,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    Lenins2ndCat,
    @Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

    They do not federate with grad or hexbear.

    chrisbit,
    @chrisbit@leminal.space avatar

    I run a general leftist instance that you could check out. I only intend to defederate fascist and NSFW instances.

    Lenins2ndCat,
    @Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

    After scanning through a few options, Lemm.ee looks extremely promising.

    redtea,

    Lemmygrad. Most users are ML. But users joining discussions and asking questions in good faith is welcomed and encouraged. It rarely defederates from any other instance. MLs argue for the ‘ruthless criticism of all that exists’ so it doesn’t make sense to ignore speech (i.e. defederate from instances) that one doesn’t agree with ideologically.

    Lenins2ndCat,
    @Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

    Lemmy.ml probably? Otherwise I don’t know. It is the most competently run in terms of not engaging in this defederation bullshit outside of illegal/hate content, but it also took part in actively trying to push users to move here. I’m almost certain that they’ll regret having done that given what this community is doing though and won’t be actively promoted by lemmy.ml anymore.

    Will take some time to go through the others and figure out who isn’t being ridiculous. Then I guess everyone will start promoting the one that makes the most sense.

    Coelacanth,
    @Coelacanth@feddit.nu avatar

    Lemm.ee has a great, reliable admin and doesn’t defederate unless instance rules are explicitly broken or network abuse occurs, as far as I know.

    GreenCrush,

    Good. I commented earlier about how horrible hexbear was. I signed up for hexbear, hoping to meet leftists, but these are not leftists. They just parrot Chinese/Russian propaganda. They have no original takes, no critical thinking. Call me whatever, but, I’m pro NATO. I don’t give a shit about what bullshit propaganda you show me from a totalitarian regime. If the U.S. is bad, then the CCP is pure evil.

    XiaoHei,

    thank you for your bravery it is clear that the FIFTY CENT is here (paid wokies)

    SankaraStan,

    Surely you could just block individual users that you find horrible instead of the admins blocking an instance of 20k users?

    queermunist,
    @queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

    Critical thinking is when you believe US antiChina propaganda.

    Cabrio,

    Critical thinking is when you believe China, it’s not like they hide that their government is authoritarian trash.

    queermunist,
    @queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

    it’s not like they hide that their government is authoritarian trash.

    All I hear you saying is they don’t hide the truth.

    Doublethink.

    Cabrio,

    If you believe that then you’re just as wilfully ignorant as the people you accuse of ignorance. Do you practice being this stupid or does it come naturally?

    nephs,

    It’s funny how people in the west can’t imagine on their wildest dreams an actually competent government that won’t just be controlled to make things easier for their rich elite (the bourgeoisie, for the well informed).

    Cabrio,

    It’s funny how tankies make assumptions like ‘can’t imagine competent government’ because instead of wanting to tear down the most successful institutions of human health, safety, and wellbeing we want to tear down the shit ones spreading the most hate and suffering first, including the ones in our own back yards.

    OurToothbrush,

    instead of wanting to tear down the most successful institutions of human health, safety, and wellbeing

    No, we don’t want to tear down Cuba.

    Cabrio,

    No, we don’t. Just be cause the US does something doesn’t mean ‘the west’ supports it, even Americans think it’s stupid to still be sanctioning Cuba.

    It’s like you practice being disingenuous because you can’t practice being intelligent.

    OurToothbrush,

    I believe you missed the joke.

    OurToothbrush,

    Reread what I wrote, you missed the joke.

    Cabrio,

    Poe’s law. Explain yourself.

    OurToothbrush, (edited )

    You claimed socialists shouldn’t try to tear down some of the best systems in the world, I said that none of us are going after Cuba.

    Edit: my bad, I got you confused with another thread.

    I’m not sure they’re from hexbear, but IDK. It is a silly bit but I dont get why it is bothering people so much?

    Cabrio,

    All good, I get what you were saying though, viva la Cuba.

    queermunist,
    @queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

    Just be cause the US does something doesn’t mean ‘the west’ supports it

    It literally does.

    Otherwise the rest of the West would do literally anything to stop the US when it does awful shit.

    Cabrio,

    You have a misapprehension of how international political influence works.

    That’s like me saying your country supports slavery because you haven’t stopped the US from having legalised slavery in their constitution for prisoners.

    Or you support genocide because your country hasn’t stopped Russia from going to war.

    Or you support racism because your country hasn’t made all the countries in africa stop being racist.

    queermunist,
    @queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

    My country does support slavery, because my country is the US. It also supports genocide because it’s the US and it supports racism because it’s the US.

    Blaming me for that would be ridiculous, because I’m basically powerless. But like, I can criticize the UK for not standing up the US on its use of prison labor and its genocidal programs and its racism. I can criticize France and Canada and Australia for it too.

    Let’s not pretend the West is powerless to stop the US from doing whatever it wants. If they wanted to, these countries could make the US hurt for the things it does and force it to back down. They could even force the US to stop supporting Israeli apartheid.

    They won’t, because they ultimately support the US more than they dislike the things the US does.

    Cabrio,

    I love it when a voter blames everything outside of their country for how their citizenry votes.

    queermunist,
    @queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

    Barely half of the citizenry here votes, and when they do they often see their votes discarded because of electoral college bullshit.

    In my state they destroyed the results of the 2020 caucus by sabotaging the vote counting app to stop the socialist from winning.

    Lets not pretend like voters have power lol

    Cabrio, (edited )

    They have the power, choosing not to vote is choosing not to use that power, nobody outside of your country will make your voters vote, these are systems your countrymen built and voted to implement, if half of them chose not to vote then they agree with those systems by default.

    Can’t reply edit:

    It doesn’t matter how rigged it is, it got that way because the people that voted did so for representatives that implemented these systems. The electoral college isn’t even your only hurdle, there’s first past the post, and gerrymandering too, both things implemented by the representatives of the voters.

    People don’t vote because they’re stupid, lazy, and disinterested. There’s no fixing the ignorance of someone who decides to throw away their only chance to influence their country, no matter how small or futile it seems, choosing not to try is the same as giving up.

    queermunist,
    @queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

    50% of the presidents in my lifetime were elected despite losing the popular vote.

    And, again, remember the 2020 Iowa caucus. They destroyed the caucus to stop the socialist.

    That’s why people don’t vote. It’s literally rigged.

    PeleSpirit,

    It has a hanky vibe to it, I think it’s a conservative version of Stephen Colbert.

    crius,

    The fact that Russia and China are still even considered “Communist” is just happening for the US propaganda really.

    They are regime that are moved only by greed.

    squiblet,
    squiblet avatar

    Their politics, like Chapo’s, confuses me. I try reading it and their positions and beliefs don’t seem coherent or to line up with anything I understand.

    raspberriesareyummy,

    This is not a pissing contest on whose propaganda you like better. The US, Russia & China international politics have all been evil throughout history, and the only reason other nations don’t stand out as much is because they are currently not world powers. You only like NATO because you prefer their propaganda - and possibly because the p.o.s. Putler unknowingly was baited into the greatest NATO PR campaign of all times in Ukraine. Nevertheless, defederating from servers who are making statements against NATO and the western world order is a very brainwashed and dumb move.

    kmkz_ninja,

    And Hitler was baited into invading Poland by the Jews, I assume?

    Pili,

    If you want to meet leftist, you will meet people who are against NATO and who know all the evil the USA has done. Those are entities that have spent the last 100 years genociding left leaning people with the help of fascist groups all around the world, so of course we aren’t friendly to them. If you aren’t aware of that, you may be from Europe, so I suggest you research Operation Gladio to have an example of what they did here, to their supposed allied countries.

    If you’re not open to those ideas, I really don’t understand why you were hoping to meet leftists.

    kbotc,

    Being against NATO is concisely being Pro-Russian. You cannot separate the two as NATO only continues to exist as a counter to Russian nuclear imperial ambitions.

    It is possible to be critical of the US without pro-Russian stances.

    Cassilda,

    Nah, NATO and Russia can both be bad. Of course, I remember back when liberals used to criticize Dubya for “with us or against us”.

    kbotc,

    What do you expect to happen if NATO goes away in your eyes? Really lay it out for me.

    redtea,

    World peace would be a step close, for a start.

    kbotc,

    In what fantasy land does dissolving NATO end Russia’s imperial ambitions. They’ve taken a chunk out of multiple neighbors, as long as they were not part of a defense pact, they were targeted.

    redtea,

    I fear that we have reached an impasse in this conversation already. To continue talking would risk talking past one another. All I can do is proffer this meagre offering: www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2451jFeZp0

    redtea,

    What was NATO doing in Yugoslavia, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq? How many Russians are there in Iran, Korea, or Syria?

    kbotc, (edited )

    NATO wasn’t in Iran, Korea, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya. Lotta swing and misses there. It really feels like maybe you either don’t know what you are talking about or are arguing straight up in bad faith, and at this point I think it’s bad faith.

    EDIT: I do take back Libya. NATO enforced the no-fly zone, and the arms embargo.

    redtea,

    You can pretend that NATO member states are separate from NATO if you like but we can’t really continue a conversation if you think the people behind NATO are not also the same people behind the wars and/or embargoes of the above states. Just because the swap the mask every now and then doesn’t mean it’s a different actor.

    kbotc,

    I would figure someone who spends countless hours arguing the minutia of Marxist thought would have some idea of how words have meaning and when they are used incorrectly, the person using them incorrectly likely has an agenda.

    Your agenda seems to be being a useful idiot for a guy who is currently committing genocide and you’ll just make up whatever you can to validate your predetermined opinion. Don’t do Putin’s work for him.

    redtea,

    Marxism is dialectical and historical materialism. It is the analysis of contradictory and internally-connected relations and processes. To detach NATO from the actions of its member states is anti-dialectical.

    Additionally, as you say, words have meanings. When people criticise NATO it is as a stand-in for the imperialist world order. It includes the IMF, World Bank, the WTO, the ‘international’ courts and rules, and all their elements and capitalist lackeys. You’re making a semantic argument, which misses the crucial point: that NATO and its member states are concerned only with the wealth and power of their bourgeoisie, regardless of Russia.

    I’m not trying to hide the fact that I have an agenda, that we can’t have world peace until there are no more imperialists, which includes and is often, in ordinary language, represented by NATO. If you interpret that as support for Russia, there’s not much left for us to discuss.

    curryandbeans,

    How many Russians are there in Iran, Korea, or Syria?

    Lots? With plenty of bombs, aircraft, and chemical weapons?

    SankaraStan,

    what? lmao you can absolutely be against NATO and not be hollering and hooting for Russia. This isn’t a Marvel movie, you can have nuanced takes with what is a proxy world war decades in the making

    Buelldozer,
    @Buelldozer@lemmy.world avatar

    lmao you can absolutely be against NATO and not be hollering and hooting for Russia.

    Sure, I don’t think anyone is really arguing against that. However when you’re against NATO right now when most, if not all, of its members are currently helping Ukraine against Russia and you are coming from an over-the-top Communist instance like hexbear it looks like nothing more than Tankies being Tankies.

    planish,

    What does it even mean to be “against NATO”? Is it, like, saying “the NATO alliance ought to disband because the terms of the alliance are bad for my country actually”? Is it like “I hope NATO countries lose all their wars”? Or like “NATO is a dangerous thing to exist because it allows an invasion of Country X, which is likely to happen, to result in a global thermonuclear war”?

    A bunch of countries could be arming Ukraine without the sort of all-for-one, one-for-all terms of NATO specifically that make it likely to figure prominently in any explanation for why we have all died of nuclear weapons.

    SankaraStan,

    the person i replied to said that you cannot be anti-NATO and anti-Russia, that is what i was responding to

    Buelldozer,
    @Buelldozer@lemmy.world avatar

    Ah, sorry that misunderstood. Carry on!

    kbotc,

    Not really. NATO only has a single purpose: Containing Russia’s imperial ambitions. No NATO, Russia goes whole hog reclaiming the land they consider “theirs” as we are currently seeing in Ukraine.

    It is like saying “I can support worker’s rights but I’m against unions”

    If you take away the protection the imperialists will do the imperialism thing.

    SankaraStan, (edited )
    • bombing yugoslavia famously because Hillary Clinton requested the bombing and Bill relented that was the first time she talked to him in 8 months after the Lewinsky scandal
    • bombing kosovo creating more death and destruction than the conflict had until that point
    • funding stay behind missions in europe like Operation Gladio
    • Hiring wehrmacht generals as 3 star NATO generals (Hans Speidel and Adolf Heusinger)
    • economically crushing the poorer countries within the EU with loaded IMF loans

    are weird ways to contain russia’s ambitions

    it’s also really weird to refuse several offers of peace from russia in the last 20 years and instead march aggressively towards them, going back on every agreement back dating back to Yeltsin (really, further back than that but we’re talking Russia post-USSR here). seems like those leftists might have something of a decent critique around an organisation doing those things since its inception

    kbotc,

    Ah here goes the fun one where you explicitly support a genocide, confuse NATO with the IMF, and regurgitate Russian propaganda that countries that feared Russia blackmailing the US to join NATO was a “march on Russia”

    This is why I said what I said, and stand by what I said: Anti-NATO is literally Russian propaganda dressed up.

    SankaraStan, (edited )

    i don’t know what you’re talking about with the genocide comment edit: oh you think because i criticized NATO bombing civilians, i’m pro-genocide. incredible

    Greece had to take the IMF loans to continue being in NATO and the EU, that was part of the agreement

    i don’t know what you’re talking about with Russian blackmailing, I was referring to the 00s expansions of NATO that violated the agreement between Russia/NATO to stop expanding

    kbotc,

    You brought up Kosovo, you know, defending the war where Slobodan Milošević was committing crimes against humanity, including genocide.

    Again: The EU is not NATO. The IMF is not NATO. Greece did not take the loan out to “stay in NATO” and that’s a bad faith argument from you.

    Poland blackmailed the west to become part of NATO.

    The bad faith pro-Russian straight up propaganda argument comes out again. There was never an agreement to not expand NATO. There was one diplomat that offered it, but it never made it further than that. Never written down, and the Russian President agreed that it was not part of any agreement.

    Stop citing Russian lies and I’ll stop calling you a pro-Russian useful idiot.

    SankaraStan,

    my sibling in christ you can look at the IMF loan document for Greece online for free. It states they needed funds to stay in NATO and the EU. Greece spent 7.5 billion on NATO contributions last year, that money doesn’t come from nowhere

    i don’t know what you’re talking about with poland, i never mentioned anything about blackmail and I don’t think that

    my language re: kosovo came from amnesty international. you can read their report here. nato used depleted uraniam weapons, cluster bombs, and indiscrimately murdered thousands of civilians, upwards of 5,000 in some counts though this report limits totals to the hundreds

    redtea,

    NATO’s purpose is to guarantee the freedom and security of its members through political and military means.

    www.nato.int/nato-welcome/index.html

    It would seem that NATO itself disagrees with you.

    Edit: NATO are the imperialists. By any definition. Please read any of the following authors’s works on imperialism/empire: Hobson, Hilferding, Lenin, David Harvey, John Smith, Michael Hudson, Zac Cope, Anievas and Nisancioglu, Samir Amin, Giovanni Arrighi, Paul Kennedy, or Niall Ferguson.

    ghariksforge,

    Why is it wrong to be critical of western propaganda?

    lemmyvore,

    Because “critical of western propaganda” is a front for promoting authorianism and intolerance. The “western propaganda” they’re critical of include human rights, inclusiveness, social security etc.

    BelieveRevolt,

    social security

    lmao

    Western countries, famous for loving social security.

    Carighan,
    @Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

    Yes, as “western countries” famously is not just the US.

    BelieveRevolt,

    Let me guess, your examples are Finland and Sweden, two countries that have been gradually dismantling their welfare states for decades?

    antik,
    @antik@lemmy.world avatar

    Every European country has social security

    Lenins2ndCat, (edited )
    @Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

    Achieved by the ideology of the very people you’re currently suppressing. All you’re doing is moving this community hard-right, alienating the left by saying “this is not for you”.

    How do you think this discussion is gonna go down every single time this community ever gets linked anywhere now? It’s gonna be “the community that banned socialists” and it’s gonna attract the neoliberals and the far right as a result while ensuring everyone that leans remotely left says “oh, fuck that then”. It’s a completely shortsighted move for the future of the instance. It’s going to have nazi bar syndrome.

    As soon as we had that PM where you said “survival of the fittest” to me I knew something was up. You literally quoted Thatcherite/Ayn Randian philosophy to justify selectively not intervening in name squatting and community theft, a move that completely fucked over this instance’s potential to work with any subreddit modteams in further hastening the reddit migration. Livid that I was led on by this place to begin with.

    antik,
    @antik@lemmy.world avatar

    Oh you mean that time where you asked me to remove the current mod from !gamingcirclejerk? Where you asked me to either add you as a topmod or rename the existing one because you were the moderators of that community on Reddit?

    I told you to pick it up with the current one or to create it on another instance. I said that with your entire reddit community behind you you would quickly become to bigger “gamingcirclejerk” without me having to intervene. It was in that context that I called it “survival of the fittest” of communities on instances. Nothing too philosophical about that.

    Feel free to post our entire conversation here.

    Lenins2ndCat, (edited )
    @Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

    Yes I do mean the time the official gamingcirclejerk team asked you to stop the misrepresentation of this GCJ, which is literally stealing the branding, and the graphics created by the official team on the subreddit, and presenting itself as a continuation of it. I asked you to resolve it. Whether that meant putting the official team in charge, or whether that meant some other resolution, because attempts to reach out were being ignored. I am not misrepresenting that conversation, neither are you really I don’t see a reason to contest that other than me as topmod, nobody suggested anything other than the existing team being added to it, most likely in the existing hierarchy but we didn’t get that far in conversation did we? So given there’s no much disagreement on the content let’s just skip to the end eh?

    Antik: “And what’s wrong with there being two GCJ’s? Surivival of the fittest basically. If you have a better team you can outgrow the current GCJ on lemmy.world easily - especially since you will be linking from the original subreddit.”

    GCJ: “Because it’s our labour? After 12 years of putting in the work to build and manage the existing community it sticks in your throat to have someone come along, use the same name, take the branding that we made with our own hands so they can benefit in taking over from the 12 years of labour that we performed to get it to where it is. If you worked on lemmyworld for 12 years, brought it up to hundreds of thousands of people with a history of thousands of media articles about its antics and influence on the industry you might also have a problem with someone else then using the same name, graphics and branding to take over simply because they typed in the name first.”

    And there was no response from then on.

    After discussing it with some of the team gossip got around various reddit mod backrooms and bish bash bosh nobody wanted to have anything to do with this space anymore because it doesn’t respect the work and effort people put into creating those communities and bringing them up to what they are today.

    Like, what exactly did you expect this response to do? Inspire faith in the way this team respects other teams, wants to maintain positive relations and genuinely does care about the work people put into their communities? It was flippant. And the expectation was that same flippancy about everything would be the experience modteams would all get if communities were made here - so they weren’t, with completely valid concerns.

    And now what’s happening? More incredibly shortsighted decision making. This topic is going to come up every single time lemmyworld is ever mentioned now. It is going to haunt the site. And on top of that the site already struggles with clear wreckers trying to harm it, coming from fascists or from some other instance that wants to see it fail or maybe reddit, who the fuck knows. And now it’s taken the risk of adding thousands of extremely pissed off and sleighted leftists to that, completely unnecessarily, because you know damn well they absolutely wanted to play nicely. Are these the actions of an instance carefully thinking about its health(avoiding drama that inspires unstoppable wrecker behaviour that constantly cripples the site) and maximising its growth(networking with and promoting the transition of users from elsewhere) while promoting a positive environment(making people nice to each other instead of hostile)? Fuck no they’re not.

    antik,
    @antik@lemmy.world avatar

    You seem to be leaving out the parts where you asked me to remove the current mods from the community. And where you said that the GCJ community “might not understand my actions” and become hostile basically.

    So honestly I already stopped caring about whatever you had to say afterwards.

    Lenins2ndCat,
    @Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

    Nah mate pretty damn sure I told you I wasn’t sure what the position of the team would be until further discussion… A further discussion that didn’t happen because ignoring that response sealed everything.

    At this point communications have clearly broken down to the point we will nitpick forever though.

    antik,
    @antik@lemmy.world avatar

    I told you I would contact the moderator of the community if you let me know what you would be willing to give. I asked you if you were willing to work with the current team and you said “that depends on the vibe”. So you were asking the community to be forcibly handed over to you while giving me NOTHING to work with. And instead of having a discussion with “the team” to find out what their position was you relied on me to do your bidding.

    The moderators of !gamingcirclejerk weren’t even using any of the artwork or branding you were talking about. I went over to the subreddit and both the banner and icon were completely different.

    The amount of reddit mods that contact us and asking for some kind of special treatment is insane. This is not reddit 2.0, but good news: LW is not the whole fediverse. Why not make your gamingcirclejerk community on lemmygrad or hexbear?

    Lenins2ndCat,
    @Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

    weren’t even using any of the artwork or branding

    Yes they were. That’s not true again. It has changed since which is certainly an improvement, but hardly the whole issue.

    Looking at lemm.ee maybe, but thanks for the suggestions.

    Cabrio,

    Is that the best you’ve got? Systems that have been “gradually dismantled for decades” but still provide a higher quality of life for their citizens than not just the US but every single authoritarian government. Also the list is a lot bigger than two countries.

    Do you practice being this stupid or does it come naturally?

    Tabitha,

    What on earth are you on about? The USSR provided guaranteed housing and employment for all citizens. Cuba has a world-class universal health system despite more than half a century under economic sanctions. China will exceed the living standards of the Western working class within this generation. And the “welfare” states of the West, even before they were dismantled, were only possible under capitalism because of the enormous wealth that the West had accrued by economic imperialism.

    Cabrio,

    How’s that USSR working out?

    Yes, Cuba, a country that despite not having the ability to exploit ‘the global south’ still has better health and happiness than “exploitative” countries, refer to my last point from the rest of the conversation below that you chose to ignore, you’re agreeing with me.

    China has just been through the harshest pandemic lock down of all countries and still failed to avoid economic suffering, are you really so ignorant to think their populace is happy? The same populace with 24% unemployment in the under 25 age bracket? The same populace under the boot of an authoritarian leader that disallows dissent?

    Do you practice being this stupid or does it come naturally?

    Tabitha,

    Can you name a single Western government with a higher approval rating than the CPC?

    Cabrio, (edited )

    So it’s both. Avail yourself of your ignorance.

    BelieveRevolt,

    I mean, that’s the best the West has got. Everywhere else, social security is considerably worse and means-tested. Plus, both have got right-wing governments that aren’t exactly fans of social security: the last right-wing Finnish government introduced an ”activation” system for unemployment which was so bureaucratic a lot of people’s benefits were cut for not being able to jump through arbitary hoops, and they’re bringing a similar system back, as well as cutting many, more focused benefits. What @Lenins2ndCat said also applies here, since the whole welfare state only exists due to the CIA funding social democrats during the Cold War as a counter to socialism.

    There’s many more factors to consider than whether or not a country is AuThOrItArIaN. A country living off the backs of the global south can give its citizens a better standard of living than countries in the global south? Surprised Pikachu.

    Cabrio, (edited )

    I mean, that’s the best the West has got.

    Are you sure? And yet, even if it is, it’s still providing better quality of life for more citizens than anything that came before it.

    Plus, both have got right-wing governments that aren’t exactly fans of social security

    You mean there’s a number of voters that would vote for non-socially democratic parties and that those parties would try to dismantle socialised institutions? Surprised Pikachu.

    You are aware that there’s idiots voting for anti-social parties in even the most socially advanced countries too right, you’re not just disingenuously blaming the ineffectualities of the system on those that support it, right?

    What does the CIA have to do with the anti-social masses in all the other countries around the world? Doesn’t take a psyop campaign to find authoritarian morons.

    There’s many more factors to consider than whether or not a country is AuThOrItArIaN

    Yeah, like how their populace votes.

    A country living off the backs of the global south can give its citizens a better standard of living than countries in the global south?

    No shit. Just like a country that engages in good faith democratic representation and supports social services can also provide better healthcare and happiness index ratings than the US, Russia, and China.

    Double_A,
    @Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    Name a “non-western” state where you would like to live and enjoy their social security.

    Tabitha,

    Have you ever lived off social security?

    ghariksforge,

    The society that spent the last 20 years in a murder spree in the Middle East does not get to lecture anyone about intolerance.

    How many countries has America invaded in your lifetime? How many murders have American thugs committed?

    TheLurker,

    Ah yes, not unlike your glorious Soviet overlords right? I mean they have never invaded a middle eastern country and indiscriminately killed men, women and children.

    That’s the thing about you communists, you seem to only ever remember the shit others have done and not your own.

    ghariksforge,

    Which Soviet overloards? There never was Soviet rule in my country. Stop talking nonsense.

    TheLurker,

    Ah yes, ignore the point and try to argue something irrelevant.

    Communism is a shitshow and has been every time someone tried to implement it. The Soviets literally littered Afghanistan with “toy bombs” in order to mame children in order to try and clog up medical camps and prevent people from fighting them. So yeah, we can stand on the high ground here because we didn’t do that shit.

    Capitalism sucks, but it has an objectively better track record on human rights, human development and social inclusiveness than ANY example of communism throughout history.

    Lenins2ndCat,
    @Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

    Capitalism sucks, but it has an objectively better track record on human rights, human development and social inclusiveness than ANY example of communism throughout history.

    Factually untrue. When compared at an equal level of development socialist countries provide a better physical quality of life.

    TheLurker,

    And remind me, what are the top ten countries with the highest rankings in life expectancy, education, safety, personal freedom and personal wealth?

    Here let me make it simple, none of them are communist and none ever have been.

    That abstract may as well read as communist fan fiction. Because 100% their “socialist” examples are all democratic capitalist nations.

    That’s the thing about the USA, they don’t know what socialism really is. So any country with public health care gets call “socialist”.

    Lenins2ndCat, (edited )
    @Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

    100% their “socialist” examples are all democratic capitalist nations.

    What? No they fucking aren’t. They are all literally the countries that you would call tankie. You have not read it. Bozo.

    The actual socialist countries included(quoting from the study): China, Cuba, Mongolia, North Korea, Albania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, USSR, Czechoslovakia, East Germany.

    Liberals and literally just telling bare-faced lies. Name a more iconic duo.

    TheLurker,

    The link only contains the abstract and doesnt name any countries. So if you have read the full paper and that is their claim then that paper isn’t worth shit.

    Do you honestly expect anyone to believe that fucking North Korea ranks highly in ANY developmental index. What a fucking joke. Get your head out of your ass.

    The current top ten countries on the international recognised human development index are, in order: 1 Switzerland 2 Norway 3 Iceland 4 Hong Kong 5 Australia 6 Denmark 7 Sweden 8 Ireland 9 Germany 10 Netherlands

    …wikipedia.org/…/List_of_countries_by_Human_Devel…

    You are full of shit and fucking moron, so get fucked idiot.

    Lenins2ndCat,
    @Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

    Do you honestly expect anyone to believe that fucking North Korea ranks highly in ANY developmental index. What a fucking joke. Get your head out of your ass.

    What are you imagining the country as? Do you think it’s some country where people push carts? It’s certainly not sunshine and roses but I think you’ll be surprised to hear 50-80% of the population owns a smartphone and at least 6million of the population use a contract mobile operator. www.38north.org/…/twenty-years-of-mobile-communic…

    Looking into ownership rates of basic stuff like this is a pretty good way to get perspective on this kind of thing, especially when so far out of touch.

    ghariksforge,

    This is nonsense.

    How many countries has America invaded in your lifetime?

    The point is that America is a murderous nation.

    Kalcifer,

    Be that as it may, why should people be prevented from questioning it? Isolating people does not make them better informed. Conversation does. All that isolation accomplishes is creating echochambers --which only serves to strengthen their beliefs.

    Buelldozer,
    @Buelldozer@lemmy.world avatar

    why should people be prevented from questioning it?

    They aren’t and they aren’t even being prevented from doing it on this very instance. There’s pleny of anti-western and anti-capitalist sentiment in here, particularly from lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml. My take away on this is that the Admins are defederating from hexbear due to their stated plan to propagandize the shit out of every instance in the fediverse. Who wants to deal with a coordinated army of tankies coming from another instance?

    JackBruhhh,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    Angry_Maple,
    @Angry_Maple@sh.itjust.works avatar

    Think of it like a social contract. If you don’t play by the “rules”, you’re not protected by those same “rules”. If someone is intolerant, it’s silly for that person to expect people to extend them the same courtesy that they themselves refuse to extend to others. Hypocritical, too.

    It’s kind of like the free speech thing. Maybe you could talk about grass for days on end, but that wouldn’t mean that anyone would have to listen to you talk about grass for days on end.

    lemmyvore,

    It is, but it’s necessary. Look up the “paradox of tolerance”.

    masterairmagic,

    For these racists folks anyone who is not a Westerner is subhuman. Their voices do not matter. They should shut up and know their place.

    You are the intolerant one.

    Viking_Hippie,

    Yeah, you’re thinking of (and listening to, by the looks of it) western propaganda institutions such as the John Birch Society, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party neoliberal leadership 🙄

    CarlMarks,

    The authority of the working class and intolersnce for Nazis, sure.

    Re: human rights, inclusiveness, and social security: bullshit. Not even on the same planet at those who bring skepticism towards hegemonic propaganda narratives, and particularly from a socialist perspective, i.e. the preemptively banned instance.

    Lenins2ndCat, (edited )
    @Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

    Every fucking “social security” that exists in the western world was achieved by those of us that wave the red flag ffs. 5 day week? Socialists. Most of your holidays? Socialists. Worker protections? Socialists. The length of your work day? Socialists. Healthcare? Socialists. Eliminating child labour? Socialists. The list goes on and on and on.

    And inclusiveness? How the fuck do you work out that the only lemmy that has visible pronouns is not inclusive? 20-30% of the userbase is trans ffs. It’s MORE inclusive that this instance which has left transphobic and hateful posts up for many hours at a time on occasion. The post that looked like a relic from r/fatpeoplehate was up for 12 hours before it got taken down.

    BelieveRevolt,

    There’s a user down in the comments with a history of transphobic garbage bragging about not having been banned yet. Liberal inclusivity.

    Lenins2ndCat,
    @Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

    ffs

    TheLurker,

    Try again boot licker. Literally a 5 minute google search disproves all your commie propaganda bullshit.

    en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workweek_and_weekenden.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state

    As for public holidays, each country has there own. In the west most of them are either national days of recognition or religious in nature.

    Lenins2ndCat,
    @Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

    Which union movements led to the implementation of those policies and who were the prominent leaders of the unions in those movements? Maybe look into whose blood was spilled in the streets fighting for it too.

    Linking to a wikipedia page and vaguely gesturing is functionally meaningless.

    Maybe look up the International Workingmen’s Association, and the 8 hour day movement, which followed the Nine Hours Movement of 1871–72. Or read a little about where the weekend comes from.

    TheLurker,

    Ah yes the old catch cry of the commies, trying to paint the picture that labour unions are synonymous with communists parties.

    Yes, UNIONIST, not fucking communists fought and died for workers rights. You lot just latched on to it like a fucking parasites you are so you could bolster your image.

    Here is how your glorious fathers of communism “supported” trade unions. Spoiler Alert, they didn’t.

    …wikipedia.org/…/Trade_unions_in_the_Soviet_Union….

    Tabitha,

    You know you’re really arguing with an intellectual heavyweight when they keep quoting Wikipedia

    TheLurker,

    Wow great counter argument you really came with some quality material there.

    At least I provide a source. You lot just use “trust me brah, I smoke a lot of weed”. Which is not surprising as you lot are all such massive cliches. Whining about the “corrupt capitalist pigs”, as you activatly participate in it. Bitching about the evils of consumerism as you down your third from Starbuck mociato, shopping on Amazon for the latest iPhone.

    Tabitha,

    Did communists steal your grandfathers farm or something?

    Lenins2ndCat,
    @Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

    None of those unions had liberal or conservative leaders numbnuts. They were built by socialists, just like all the new unions you’re seeing pop up today. The Amazon union? Chris Smalls? They read lenin mate.

    TheLurker,

    Oh really, of course you can provide evidence for this bold claim right? Oh wait, absolutely you cannot because it is a ridiculous statement which is clearly untrue.

    Your whole premise is that communism is good and capitalism is bad. As if the world is that black and white. You sound like a first year political science student who just got done reading Manifest der Kommunistischen.

    Lenins2ndCat,
    @Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

    I know because I personally spoke to him when he came over to the UK to help with some strike action that was happening here, Coventry if I recall correctly? But I guess you want video or some shit? Hasan and Chris Smalls quoting and big-ing up Lenin on stage?

    Your whole premise is that communism is good and capitalism is bad. As if the world is that black and white. You sound like a first year political science student who just got done reading Manifest der Kommunistischen.

    Yes. Communism is good and capitalism is bad. All of human history shows revolutions caused by class struggle drive forward human progress from one stage of society to the next. Communism will win. It is inevitable. No matter how many of us that you kill off.

    TheLurker,

    See that is how little you know. No form of government is inherently good or bad, it is how it is run.

    The fact that you won’t move to any of the communist “workers paradise” countries is the proof that you lack conviction in your beliefs. You are a hypocrite.

    CarlMarks,

    Don’t forget our militant labor anarchists as well, they also did a ton of work building up unions in the west.

    Lenins2ndCat,
    @Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world avatar

    Yeah for the sake of the historical battle I’m including everyone under the banner. Honestly not much infighting at that time other than at the intelligentsia level, which is obviously different to the organising and ground level.

    mimichuu_,

    Labour unions are not the same as a communist party or vanguard but to claim they’re not mostly organized and consisting of socialists is just immensely naive and stupid.

    TheLurker,

    Mostly is not ALL as was the previous claim, and I’ll bet most of you don’t work, let alone done manual Labor or been in a union. So in reality you have no fucking clue what you are talking about.

    mimichuu_,

    You know, as a general internet arguing advice, when you have no points to make anymore, and the response you write to the other person is literally just a bunch of insults, it’s probably better to just disengage.

    CarlMarks,

    The welfare state was a response to the militant labor movement that had already won most of those concessions for their own members and were threatening to do a lot more. This dovetailed with a need to counter the very real welfare state pioneeted by the Soviets decades earlier.

    An easy place to begin informing yourself is to read up on FDR and where his motivations for The New Deal came from, and who he wanted to defang.

    TheLurker,

    Oh here we go, FDR was a communist, is that what you are trying to imply? God damn you lot are either brain-dead or brain washed.

    If communism is so fucking great why does it fail all the fucking time hey? 🤦‍♂️

    CarlMarks,

    FDR was a communist,

    I’m actually implying that he was an anticommunist and that The New Deal was an attempt to mollify more radical elements, including militant labor.

    If communism is so fucking great why does it fail all the fucking time hey?

    Communist countries, i.e. those run by a communist party, have consistently punched above their weight, particularly considering the relentless attacks they face.

    For example, compare the struggles of Haiti to those of Cuba. Haiti has suffered under neocolonialism and with basically zero counterweight to the constant imperialism directed at them, including still being forced to pay debts to France for their own liberation from a slave colony and undergoing several Western-supported coups, on top of the constant drain of resources and underpaid labor that come with the territory of exploitation by international capital.

    Cuba, despite blanket sanctions and constant targeting by the global seat of capital for over half a century, provides massively better lives for its people, with better literacy and infant mortality than the US. It’s still a poor country, understandably, but it teaches a simple lesson about how international capital actually functions for imperialized countries.

    Happy to answer more questions.

    Viking_Hippie,

    A prominent example you left out: American politicians and the billionaire-owned media don’t like when someone brings it up, but the man who more than anyone else has been hailed by the establishment as the embodiment of peaceful struggle for civil rights, Martin Luther King Jr, was a pro-union socialist and would have been as disgusted by the neoliberal hypocrites in charge of the Dems as the blatant racists of the far right

    https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/2fdb5c98-b5ba-4f40-8ee4-0f597cd6c5a2.jpeg

    redtea,

    a front for promoting authorianism and intolerance

    Like defederating from an instance whose user-base appears to have different views to one’s own.

    The “western propaganda” they’re critical of include human rights, inclusiveness, social security etc.

    You won’t find a single leftist who doesn’t argue vociferously for these things. It is the essence of being a leftist. It’s what unites them even when they disagree theoretically about the exact root of a problem and of how to uphold them. What they criticise is the idea that these things are possible under capitalism. Any cursory—critical—reading of human rights literature or liberal theory will reveal this. What you’re missing, if this is your interpretation of radical thought, is class analysis. If you are interested in the contradiction between capitalism and inclusivity, you could start with Marta Russell, Capitalism and Disability: Selected Writings.

    In this context, where the discussion is about Hexbear, you only have to read their Code of Conduct: www.hexbear.net/code_of_conduct:

    • We are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all, regardless of gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, personal appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, age, religion, nationality, or other similar characteristic.
    • Do not use homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, and other reactionary aliases or other nicknames. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudice. …
    • We will ban you if you insult, demean or harass anyone. That is not welcome behavior. This is distinctly different than ribbing or grilling someone. …
    Zagorath,
    @Zagorath@aussie.zone avatar

    This is what I find absolutely crazy. I am, by and large, in agreement with socialists on economic matters. But why do they always support China and Russia? Like wtf? In what world is the genocide being committed against the Uyghur people cool? In what world is banning access to free communication including many of the largest websites worth defending? Why is it ok to lock up gay people? How is aggressively invading a neighbouring country cool? How is threatening to invade a neighbouring independent country (which has been de facto independent for over 70 years) whilst frequently flying your military into their airspace as a form of threat somehow the actions of the good guys?

    You can believe in socialist economics without needing to defend the extreme authoritarian nature of countries that pretend as though their economy runs on socialist principles (or worse, which are the explicitly non-socialist successor state to a country that formerly professed to socialism). Tankies make no fucking sense to me.

    ghariksforge,

    China lifted hundreds of millions of people from poverty in one generation. This is pretty impressive.

    Stovetop,

    Literally so did the Nazis.

    Anemia,

    You can do good things and bad things at the same time. What I find funny is people complaining about censorship and at the same time support states like Russia and China, their extreme censorship goes hand in hand with the authoritarian rule.

    ghariksforge,

    Censorship in China does not have an impact on my life, or on the life of most people here. Let the Chinese people be the judge of what happens in China.

    On the other hand, censorship here matters a lot to us.

    FlyingSquid,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    I’m sure it doesn’t have an impact on your life… if you agree with whatever the government does.

    ghariksforge,

    I don’t live in China. But I live in a country where there are millions of refugees fleeing America’s wars.

    FlyingSquid,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    Do you not understand what the general ‘you’ means? I wasn’t talking about you in specific.

    Chinese people who support the government obviously have no problem with the censorship and oppression. Plenty of Chinese people do, which is why they do all they can to get around it- like refer to Xi Jinping as Winnie the Pooh (until that was outlawed).

    Also, America bad does not equal China good.

    ghariksforge,

    The same applies in reverse. China’s problems do not excuse the fact that America is a murderous nation that has invaded/bombed multiple countries in recent times.

    FlyingSquid,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    Did anyone make that suggestion?

    Anemia,

    That may be true but it should be considered before defending China in a conversation. Otherwise it would be like me advocating social justice and at the same time defending the Iranian government. All I’m saying is freedom of speech goes together with China like oil with water. But if you don’t really defend China then my comment doesn’t really apply.

    That being said I do tentatively (don’t really know the content of hexbear) disagree with defederating.

    guriinii,

    I’m pretty socialist and incredibly anti-authoritarian, so seems odd to me that socialist societies are pretty authoritarian. It should be the other way but I guess power hungry arseholes corrupt everything

    redtea,

    What do you mean by socialist? You support someone like e.g. Bernie Sanders, or?

    guriinii,

    Free health care, free education, social housing. Things like energy, food and water not to be profited.

    I know of Bernie Sanders but don’t know much about him.

    mycorrhiza,

    That’s social democracy — capitalism with safety nets. Socialism implies that workers control the means of production.

    GameGod,

    They always say the same opinions because it’s part of a massive astroturfing campaign by Chinese and Russian state actors. They’re both attempting to sow discord in the West and lay the foundation to ramp it up to interfere in the 2024 US election.

    Do you remember what a shit show Reddit became in 2016? We’ve seen this exact pattern before, where a deluge of people with the same carefully calibrated opinions on everything appear out of the blue. They want to create the illusion that there’s some popular movement towards all these inane opinions, and you can even see from the comments on this thread. They’re using the same known troll tactics to push this (eg. “Just asking questions”).

    This a good test of Lemmy’s moderation and federation model and will be indicative of how it fairs next year when these campaigns really ramp up. Good on the admins for taking this seriously and nipping it in the bud.

    Viking_Hippie,

    Far from all socialists are tankies but yeah, tankies are a maddening bunch of hypocrites for sure!

    redtea,

    What do you mean by socialist economics?

    You’ll be hard pressed to find anyone on Hexbear (or Lemmygrad for that matter) who ‘supports Russia’ or thinks it’s ‘ok to lock up gay people’. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. If you read Hexbear’s Code of Conduct, any kind of bigotry will result in a ban: www.hexbear.net/code_of_conduct

    Tabitha, (edited )

    This is the real reason why Hexbear cannot be federated.
    There has been a large push to redefine Marxists Leninists as ‘Tankies’. They are this associated with bizarre, reactionary micro-ideologies, uninformed cliches about supporting Russia, etc.
    Any interaction with hexbear users would quickly dispel such ideas.
    Communists do not ‘support’ Russia, - the Russian oligarchic state represents everything they despise. But these are people who are highly engaged with politics. And their worldview is a lot more nuanced than the average person, who doesn’t have any particular interest in politics and so will only pickup the general gist of mainstream narratives, and accept them without much criticism.
    So for example, in relation to Russia, while Marxists do not support their war in Ukraine, they do recognise that Russia was baited into that war by the West, and by a Ukranian state that was captured by a minority of far-right fascists following the Maiden revolution. That is geopolitical realism, and has nothing to do with ideology. No Marxist supports the economic system or cultural bigotry of modern Russia.
    Socialism naturally aligns with the humanist value systems that most people hold, and which Western countries claim to uphold even as their actions contradict them. It is essential for those who would uphold the status quo to shut out socialist voices and paint them as extremists. Your confusion - ‘why would people who extol equality and tolerance support inequality and intolerance?’ - is really answering your own question. They don’t.

    p03locke,
    @p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    Holy lack-of-paragraphs, Batman!

    BURN,

    Russia was not baited into a war. They attacked a sovereign nation and expected no resistance.

    This is why it’s a good thing that LW is defederating.

    mycorrhiza,

    Even in the 90s, analysts understood that Russia viewed NATO expansion as an existential threat. Now missiles on the border can strike Moscow in 5 minutes. America nearly invaded Cuba under similar circumstances, during the Cuban missile crisis. The missiles were withdrawn from Cuba before that could happen.

    BURN,

    Still doesn’t mean they were baited. They attacked an independent nation and got what they deserved.

    mycorrhiza,

    Got what they deserved? Ukraine isn’t winning. Both sides are locked in a stalemate. Maybe that’s what you meant.

    mimichuu_,

    Just because you redefine a narrative in Russia’s favour as “nuanced” doesn’t mean you’re now somehow not saying pretty much exactly what Russia wants you to think and say. Same for all the defenses of China and Vietnam.

    Tabitha,

    I honestly don’t know what your trying to say. Do you imagine socialists care whether their views are supposedly to the benefit of one or another capitalist country? Our views are not informed by the interests of capitalist countries full stop.

    mimichuu_,

    What I’m trying to say is, if you push rhetoric that supports and subscribes to a state’s narrative, that doesn’t change no matter how nuanced or informed you say your rhetoric is. The effects of it are the same.

    planish,

    My view of the socialist position on China is that it is not “the Chinese state is good”, but rather “stop being mean to Chinese people”.

    China is an empire, and socialists hate empires. But the US is also an empire (in that there’s a core that gets all the good stuff and a periphery that gets the good stuff extracted from it, which for the US is often places not technically in the country but in practice obligated to listen to it). So when the US comes in all scandalized and decides that what we really need to do to save people from the Chinese empire is to make sure that US companies don’t lose market share in GPU computing, and can manufacture solar panels at competitive prices, and that people get their short videos from Instagram Reels and not TikTok, the socialists are very suspicious. The net result looks a lot more like imperial protectionism and/or racism than a coherent anti-imperial program.

    I’m not sure why this ends up as a socialist talking point? Maybe because the nonsense of the policies seems obvious? Maybe because it seems like warmongering and wars are terrible and so it must be stopped at once? Maybe just to get a break from telling people that they should probably make sure people have houses?

    queermunist,
    @queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

    My view of the socialist position on China is that it is not “the Chinese state is good”, but rather “stop being mean to Chinese people”.

    As a socialist, my view is that China is the lesser evil compared to American hegemony

    planish,

    I’m not sure it’s feasible to try and compare the two in an objective way. It’s easy to know which oppressive empire one personally prefers, but trying to actually reach consensus on which was better or worse using some kind of convincing evidence would be so complicated that it would probably amount to a waste of everyone’s time.

    _jonatan_,

    I just want to say that most communists/socialists are not in favor of china or other authoritarian “communist” regimes (any country where factories need suicide nets can hardly be called communist, even if you disregard all the other ways they fail at communist ideals).

    Unfortunately tankies are incredibly loud and often well-organized. They are just authoritarian dickriders, no better than the imperialist they claim to oppose.

    Anemia,

    I agree, but I’m not so sure that it’s the case in the more extreme communities, otherwise those views would be downvoted/grouppressured out to a larger extent.

    Dekudibusei,

    To be fair, this sound like a Muslim decrying that ISIS doesn’t consist of “actual” Muslims. If they themselves identify as Muslims, or communists in this case, that’s what counts for me. You can’t wipe your driveway clean of that stain just by saying “meh, they’re not really communist”.

    _jonatan_,

    I do agree that’s it’s a bit of a “no true scotsman” fallacy, but on the other hand many states call them themselves “democratic” without being so. At some point you have to look at the actual ideology and see if the state lives up to it. And nearly all self-proclaimed communist states simply do not. But it doesn’t really matter if they are “real” communists or not - they are not what a lot of communists/socialist believe in and support.

    redtea,

    Where are these communist/socialists that you’re speaking of? In the west?

    redtea,

    most communists/socialists

    are in China and the rest of the global south.

    What passes for socialism/the ‘left’ in the US/west is ‘progressive’ liberalism. I encourage you to read the classic and modern texts of liberalism with a critical eye. Then read Marx.

    Otherwise, you could start with Zac Cope (critical of China/Marxism-Leninism).

    Tabitha,

    Communists practice critical support. To quote Marx, “Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.” We do not believe China’s economy is socialist. But the CPC has lifted more people out of poverty than any government in history, at the same time that living standards for the Western working class have collapsed. In so far as they support the working class, we critically support the CPC.
    What you call ‘Tankies’, is a word that has been used to associate Marxist-Leninist’s with all kinds of bizarre micro-ideologies. But Marxism-Leninism is the primary form of communism in most countries in the world, and in that sense most communists will practice critical support towards AES states.

    redtea,

    Exactly this. Even the CPC doesn’t claim to have achieved socialism yet. They don’t plan to achieve it till ~2050 (although seeing how they smash all other targets, they might get there a bit sooner).

    _jonatan_,

    I can agree that getting people out of poverty is cool. But tankies generally don’t practice “critical support” of CPC. They practice unwavering boot-deepthroating. I have never heard anyone from that side of the left say (or acknowledge) anything negative about CPC. Any critiques put up is usually dismissed as “CIA propaganda”.

    Tabitha,

    There are a wide range of views towards China among communist and amongst ourselves we argue about them a lot. The thing is, a lot of the criticisms of China that the average Westerner has, are naturally informed by the Western media. This is understandable, but it leads to criticisms that often aren’t based in reality. I don’t know how many times I’ve had someone tell me, for example, that China is a warmongering, imperialist state, when in reality they haven’t been in a war for more than half a century. So this creates the idea among non-communists that we are aligned and have a unified, uncritical front in regard to China, whereas actually nothing could be further from the truth.

    nsfw_alt_2023,

    China has been engaged in hostilities with India trying to expand their border in the last year, so the “You silly westerners don’t understand China doesn’t do war anymore” is exactly the kind of bullshit nonsense that people are being critical of pro-China users. Arunachal Pradesh does not belong to China.

    redtea,

    Echoing/adding to Tabitha’s point, it gets tedious very quickly to argue with liberals about China because they’re rarely well informed.

    Marxism stands for the ‘ruthless criticism of all that exists’ and the ‘concrete analysis of concrete conditions’. China does not get a free pass. But it’s not very productive to argue with someone who isn’t concerned with material reality in China because they’ve been led to believe falsehoods spread by liberals.

    One of the reasons you don’t see the critical side to the ‘tankie’ analysis of China is because you might never have got to the point where you’re talking about China (as opposed to what westerners think about China).

    If the ‘tankie’ has to debunk a blatant lie for the millionth time, a constructive conversation cannot follow unless the liberal is willing to move past that point. The liberal must first accept that they might be wrong and then continue the discussion beyond where it usually ends—which is usually where the liberal accuses the ‘tankie’ of arguing in bad faith for daring to investigate an issue beyond the headline.

    (Again, to caveat this, by liberal, I mean pro-capitalists, not the ‘progressive’ liberals of the US.)

    ProdigalFrog, (edited )

    I am, by and large, in agreement with socialists on economic matters. But why do they always support China and Russia? Like wtf?

    Socialist covers a pretty wide swath of political ideologies. Some of them buy into the old propaganda that Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Xi, etc, were actually on the right track, and that we can only achieve some sort of utopia with extreme authoritarianism first. They’re generally no better than people on the right who fall into the Trump cult of personality. There’s a lot of denial on both sides.

    The type of Socialists that are generally more sane and denounce those dictators for the monsters they were are the the Libertarian-Left ideologies, like Anarchists.

    redtea,

    This is a gross mischaracterisation. Please read https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Socialism:_utopian_and_scientific by Engels. This is the basis of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Xi, etc’s thought: all these figures are Marxist-Leninists, who reject the idea of utopia. Everything is contradiction. The Marxism you refer to, which is mainly Marxism-Leninism, is not teleological.

    eluri,

    I just think it’s funny how exploding heads took lots of polling and hand wringing before defederation and socialists get defederated on sight. I also think we should add “This is an expressly pro-NATO instance” to the front page, so people realize this before they make an account here.

    Philolurker,

    To be fair, the hand wringing activities around exploding heads probably included a lot of soul searching and deciding what is and is not important to the admins. Stands to reason that having learned and made some decisions from that would make the process faster next time around.

    Historical_General,

    They absolutely should make clear their political positions for clarity and transparency’s sake.

    monobot,

    “This is an expressly pro-NATO instance”

    This is my reasoning too, add to it IMF and World Bank an d be clear where you are at.

    We can clearly see people here cheering for NATO and other western military organizations to arest and kill people, but talking agains those organizations is forbidden.

    Mentioning anything agains what mass media is serving just gets you massive amount of downvotes, same like on reddit.

    If you are preventing discussion and diverse opinions you will make the same echo chamber social network as corporations make.

    We won nothing.

    shufflerofrocks,

    Disappointing as fuck. You’re defedarating based on ideological differences and a guess that they won’t engage in good faith? And you’re reaching that paltry conclusion after cherry picking posts?

    Not to mention the posts you’ve shared aren’t bad at all? They’re literally asking their users to engage properly in a civil manner.

    Big yikes man.

    Tb0n3,

    Sounds like defederating from a propaganda factory. Commies are one thing, but disingenuous tankies will contribute nothing of value to anything.

    masterspace,

    The instance’s goal is to spread propoganda. They’re not defederating due to ideological differences they’re defederating because that instance’s express goal is to spread their ideology (propogandize) others.

    It’s no different from defederating from an instance setup by Pepsico that was purely setup to advertise Pepsi to the wider fediverse.

    kugel7c,

    If you don’t believe this instance is also spreading it’s ideology I don’t think you understand the word ideology, actually stating the express purpose of the instance is a very good faith way of doing that, as opposed to doing what every liberal org will do and spread it’s ideology while pretending it to be just factual/just how the world works. Your Pepsi point, and the fact Pepsi would never do it like that, they’d likely just use accounts on some genpop instance, makes it pretty obvious that communities stating what they are doing at least have a chance to engage in good faith.

    gon,

    IDK, I don’t think this is the right move at all… The announcement post and the comments you pointed out were cherry-picked and misinterpreted. They are an ideological instance. You wouldn’t say blahaj.zone is trying to “spread” LGBTQ+ “ideas”. They’re just a specifically queer instance.

    Everything Hexbear said was, the way I read it, in the direction of “let’s behave and be good with the federation”. I think you’re just confounding your own ideologies, and the way you think things should be done, with what the community at large wants.

    That being said, IDC that much, but I do disagree.

    PS: Posting from my lemm.ee account because this post doesn’t show up on my lemmy.world account for some reason.

    martoon,

    We seem to be many to share this view. Really disappointing from Lemmy.world and very concerning for its future.

    weeahnn,
    @weeahnn@lemmy.world avatar

    They are an ideological instance. You wouldn’t say blahaj.zone is trying to “spread” LGBTQ+ “ideas”. They’re just a specifically queer instance.

    Can you not see the problem with this?

    gon,

    No. Can you try and make it clear, so I can see the problem?

    weeahnn,
    @weeahnn@lemmy.world avatar

    They are an ideological instance. You wouldn’t say blahaj.zone is trying to “spread” LGBTQ+ “ideas”. They’re just a specifically queer instance.

    Some things that we probably agree; Hexbear is an ideological instance. While blahaj.zone is an instance for LGBTQ peeps. My big problem with this comparison is that they are not the same. No one becomes LGBTQ, people are born that way, while your political beliefs are the exact opposite. You are not born thinking that you are a communist, a liberal, or a nazi. In reality, a bunch of things happen in our lives that make us feel closer to certain kinds of thinking. Your phrasing of that statement made me think that you might believe that one could be born a certain way regarding their political ideology the same way that people are born gay, or trans for example.

    queermunist,
    @queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

    The choice to come out of the closet is liberating and I’m glad I did it, but being anti-closet is an ideological stance.

    Caoldence222,

    The original phrasing was flawed, yes, but blahaj.zone isn’t ideologically neutral.

    They are a queer instance, but they aren’t just a queer instance, are they? They don’t merely accept anyone who is queer (queer racists, or TERF lesbians, for example, wouldn’t be welcome), nor do they ban people who aren’t queer at all. So the dividing line is ideological.

    The line is more like: support for queer rights. They even specifically outline a philosophy of inclusion and empathy in their sidebar. But we wouldn’t ban them for trying to spread their ideology

    weeahnn,
    @weeahnn@lemmy.world avatar

    My opinion on that is that blahaj.zone is first and foremost a place for LGBTQ people to post about LGBTQ/ LGBTQ adjacent stuff. Now correct me if I’m wrong but from what I can see, nowhere does it say anything about any sort of ideological belonging. Yes, it does talk about empathy for others, inclusion, and acceptance, but it does not mention any ideology. I believe that you can be inclusive, and have all these other traits, whether you are a leftist or a liberal. Maybe it just me but I don’t believe that empathy, acceptance etc are ideas that have to do anything with a certain ideology, to me they are just basic human decency.

    Meanwhile, Hexbear has the following on its this:

    A leftist social platform centered around community building through discussion, shitposting memes, and sharing content.

    So no I still don’t think you can compare blahaj.zone and Hexbear.

    GONADS125,

    This is entirely reasonable to me. I don’t believe there is any good reason to federate with instances that are intending to astroturf, censore dissenting information, and peddle propoganda. You can see their vote brigading in a post on c/fediverse discussing this situation.

    Federating with such instances does more harm than good, providing an audience for propoganda aimed at fomenting extreme perspectives thru deviant misinformation and content/narrative control.

    Creating those kind of fringe echo-chamer instances is how we end up with toxic and extreme groups like SRS and incels or the donald (on reddit). They can even start out as satire and then quickly devolve into toxic hate.

    The argument that we want a diverse fediverse doesn’t mean that we should federate with toxic instances with bad intentions. That’s not the kind of diversity that we should be promoting. That’s the kind of toxic userbase that should be quarantined…

    Starlet, (edited )

    “Echo-chambers are bad, and that’s why I support defederating with instances that I disagree with”

    EDIT: The reason Hexbear disabled downvotes is because we want people to talk to each other rather than downvote and move on.

    What did I say that was wrong?

    SovereignState,

    Absolutely nothing. Hypocrites simply cannot stand being reminded of what they are.

    GONADS125, (edited )

    What you said wrong was provide a false equivalent.

    Protecting users from toxic instances is not a bad thing, and is not counterintuitive to producing a healthy and diverse fediverse.

    Whereas lemmy.world allows criticism of all governments and governing styles. The only anti-free speech instance in this discussion is hexbear.

    MaungaHikoi,

    Sorry brother, the hive mind detected wrongthink and you have been punished for it.

    Angry_Maple,
    @Angry_Maple@sh.itjust.works avatar

    You summed a lot of their points up into one blunt sentence, which also implies that you were not actually looking for discussion here.

    Comments like this are almost like a different flavour of a downvote.

    Your comment had no counter arguments, no questions, no sources or reasonings, no related points, but instead it’s just a very shortened “quote” of what you were responding to.

    Your comment also didn’t really actually add anything to the discussion other than showing that you think of that person’s comment negatively, just like a downvote would have shown.

    Irony, imo.

    Starlet,

    I think the point I was making was obvious. You’re just being obtuse on purpose.

    To spell it out:

    Hexbear is going out of its way to avoid becoming an echo chamber by federating with liberal instances. Blocking Hexbear is obviously more echo chamber-like than allowing it, and opposing echo chambers is clearly a nonsense reason to defederate.

    CarlMarks,

    Hexbear disabled downvoting because it was being used by transphobes to bully trans users. They’d wait for a trans user to post and then pile on with downvotes so that their comments would always begin in the negative.

    lemmy.world can’t even be bothered to ban transphobes.

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