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: https://www.hexbear.net/post/280770. After reviewing the thread and the comments, it became evident that allowing Hexbear to federate would violate our rules.

Our code of conduct and server rules can be found here.

The announcement included several concerning statements, as highlighted below:

“Please try to keep the dirtbag lib-dunking to hexbear itself. Do not follow the Chapo Rules of Posting, instead try to engage utilizing informed rhetoric with sources to dismantle western propaganda. Posting the western atrocity propaganda and pig poop balls is hilarious but will pretty quickly get you banned and if enough of us do it defederated.”
“The West's role in the world, through organizations such as NATO, the IMF, and the World Bank - among many others - are deeply harmful to the billions of people living both inside and outside of their imperial core.”
“These organizations constitute the modern imperial order, with the United States at its heart - we are not fooled by the term "rules-based international order." It is in the Left's interest for these organizations to be demolished. When and how this will occur, and what precisely comes after, is the cause of great debate and discussion on this site, but it is necessary for a better world.”

The rhetoric and goal of Hexbar are clear based on their announcement: to "dismantle western propaganda" and "demolish organizations such as NATO” shows that Hexbar has no intention of "respecting the rules of the community instance in which they are posting/commenting.” It’s to push their beliefs and ideology.

In addition, several comments from a Hexbear admin, demonstrate that instance rules will not be respected.

Here are some examples:

“I can assure you there will be no lemmygrad brigades, that energy would be better funneled into the current war against liberalism on the wider fediverse.”

“All loyal, honest, active and upright Communists must unite to oppose the liberal tendencies shown by certain people among us, and set them on the right path. This is one of the tasks on our ideological front.”

Overall community comments:

To clarify, for those who have inquired about why Hexbear versus Lemmygrad, it should be noted that we are currently exploring the possibility of defederating from Lemmygrad as well based on similar comments Hexbear has made.

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

We made the decision to preemptively defederate from Hexbear for these reasons. While we understand that not everyone may agree with our decision, we believe it is important to prioritize the best interests of our community.

You're viewing a single thread.

712 comments

I'm from lemmy.ml, so I shouldn't really have a say in this matter, but I just wanted to give some of my thoughts.
There's no problem in defederating from instances. However, I'm a bit confused by the reasoning given for the defederation. The points highlighted appear to simply be some normal leftist and anti-imperialist ideas, and I fail to see how it signifies intent to violate the rules of the lemmy.world instance (besides maybe point 7, if we were to consider supporting governments deemed "authoritarian" by the west as also being the same as calling for the opression for the people those governments are accused of oppressing (Which I don't believe is valid reason since that's simply not the case. For example, people who reject the idea that there is a campaign against the uyghur ethnic group in China, generally don't do so because they hate that ethnic group, but because they believe the claims are false)).
If leftist instances such as hexbear are problematic, I don't see why instances like lemmy.ml aren't, whose description some time ago was the following:
A community of leftist privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers
Some time ago they removed the word «leftist» in the description, but very much still allow people who hold similar beliefs as the ones you highlighted to use the instance and to express themselves.
- Now that's a discussion, and I appreciate your pragmatic response. The issue seems to be the flaming that is currently happening. Hopefully it cools down, and we can all resume our daily beliefs in a rational way. Right now, it looks like a clear brigade. A fear response to opposing views is common; but you don't get people listening by asserting that what you believe is correct.
  Better to defederate until an understanding can be established about code of conduct. Currently, it looks like a heap of comments that aren't helping the matter.
  From hexbears own announcement, they're trying to tell their users that defederation can happen if they don't play nice. And here we are with users creating discourse because of pre-emptive defederation... and it isn't helping their cause. Defederate and let it bump, it's not their instance to moderate. They won't even allow federation to other instances themselves, without admin approval. How is that fair? If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck... it's probably a duck.
  This looks like and sounds like targeted ideology, that isn't receptive to opposing views. Show good-faith to actual discussion and it wouldn't be a problem. But just look at the comments and see for yourself that this isn't good-faith, it's a thinly veiled attempt at a brigade. And you can ignore the comments and look at the announcement itself: they're trying to keep their users in-check (from the get-go) for polite discussion, but have already failed
  If you don't like my opinion, good! Let's talk about it, cause there's plenty of ways to do so, outside of lemmy.world. That's how it works, and people being mad is not going to change it. Kindness and logic will
  We all know the world's fucked up, we don't need another "saint" telling us they have the solution. We're all pretty freaking over any final solution that anyone has to offer
- The points highlighted appear to simply be some normal leftist and anti-imperialist ideas
  Repeating Putin's BS is neither leftist nor anti-imperialist. If anything it's the far-right that wants to dismantle international cooperation and it's "western" international cooperation under the umbrellas of NATO and EU that's currently helping to fend off an imperialist and fascist Russian crusade. It's not a coincidence that the right-wing and far-right politicians such as US's Trumpists or Hungary's Victor Orban are the opposing helping Ukraine.
- Gold right here 🥇

712 comments