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Update on federation

Hey hexbears just want to update everyone.

We took the weekend to properly consider and are removing: programming.dev , aussie.zone , and lemm.ee from our allow-list.

We will look at refederation with lemm.ee after local-only communities are developed. When that feature is available we would really like to consider changing every hexbear community to local-only except for chapotraphouse, askchapo, news, and the_dunk_tank. The final say on if a community is local only or not is 100% up to the mod team on that community.

The reason for this is that lemm.ee despite having twice our monthly active users has a 700k annual comment rate to hexbear's 1 million, in addition lemm.ee has very little active communities that do not exist on hexbear.

Resulting in lemm.ee benefit of federation being votes and views, with a secondary benefit of comments.

However, as expressed by users belonging to marginalized groups, comments from .ee users are often lib-shit and in some cases outright hostile. While many on hexbear love dunking on these lost libs the duty to protect marginalized users is much more important.

The end vote for programming.dev and aussie.zone was a tie, so we decided to break the tie in favor of defederation. The decision on lemm.ee was much harder as the average user did express desire to remain federated however the admin team decided that a temporary removal from our allow-list was the best option.

As an admin team we have never wanted to prioritize growth, and we wanted to give federation with liberal instances a try, however we consider providing a safer browsing experience for marginalized users more important than the opportunity to dunk.

While user side instance blocking and local sort are options, neither address the issue of federated instance users coming into posts in hexbear communities to make reactionary comments.

Thank you everyone who gave input and please provide any feedback, comments, concerns, etc in comments.

final vote count:

federation

all 32

aussie.zone 27

lemm.ee 41

programming.dev 27

lemmy.blahaj.zone 5

defederation

all 40

aussie.zone 19

lemm.ee 4

programming.dev 19

lemmy.blahaj.zone 43

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250 comments

  • Disappointing. I'd hoped the community here would not pointlessly isolate itself but that appears to be what it wants to do.

    Gonna have to

    and use something that's not defederated from everywhere.

    • I also find the reasoning a bit flawed. We need user turnover and influx, not for growth, but in order to keep a stable environment. Without it, hexbear just becomes the same 20 bitter people arguing with each other ready to eviscerate each other over minor disagreements in the next pointless "struggle session". As what happened for years before federation. Federation has improved the signal to noise ratio in some ways.

      Also with per instance and per community blocking in the latest versions of lemmy, I wonder how necessary this all this. Will users still see federated comments in hexbear posts, if they have blocked the instance?

    • Let me know what you find, a community with consistent negative growth and no path to positive growth isn't going to last forever, so it would be good to know where others end up as the slow and steady drip of users out of Hexbear continues.

      • There's always Lemmygrad of course, though it's not a leftist-unity platform and the general vibe is very different (more serious ig?)

        But man we should at least stay federated with lemm.ee, that instance's admin has been very reasonable and it hasn't caused much trouble at all; nothing that banning any troublemakers can't fix.

        • I agree. The community agreed too if you look at the votes, but that's the way it goes. It's not a democracy and nobody is pretending it is.

          Unfortunately I believe that Hexbear is a left unity platform in name only if there isn't anyone that Hexbear is trying to be unified with.

    • pointlessly isolate

      however we consider providing a safer browsing experience for marginalized users more important than the opportunity to dunk.

      • As far as I'm concerned that's what moderation is adequate for, not the defed button. Without isolating itself Hexbear was already one of the best spaces online for marginalised people, particularly lgbt, period, I can't think of something comparatively better. Compromising the ability to spread leftist ideas to others in order to go above and beyond already being the best just isn't necessary, it's actively detrimental even.

        • Compromising the ability to spread leftist ideas to others in order to go above and beyond already being the best just isn't necessary, it's actively detrimental even.

          By what metric? We're federated with other instances still. They aren't all far left. They're reading what we're saying and the message is still getting spread. Our ideals are spread through interacting with people offline too. Not being able to reach ee users doesn't make for the fall of hexbear.

          Hexbear was already one of the best spaces online for marginalised people, particularly lgbt, period, I can't think of something comparatively better

          When marginalized users are actively saying please make this compromise (not even fully defed), I don't think it should be such a difficult decision or be misconstrued as isolating. We're not isolated and that was never an option in the poll

          • doesn't make for the fall of hexbear.

            I never said it was. I'm sure it will trundle along for years and years like most niche sites do. Something Awful still exists and hasn't "fallen", but existing is a different thing to having relevance or influence.

            • I think you really just value "influence" over marginalized comrades when you say stuff like this tbh

              • I don't really want to start a fight over this but I will say I firmly believe the western leftist martyrdom mindset is the preference to fail by striving to be "perfect" instead of succeeding with imperfections.

                I don't really like the tone of the responses either, I've ignored it but they have consistently felt like you're implying I'm not part of the marginalised. "Marginalised comrades" applies as much to me as anyone.

                • No where have I said that you're not marginalized, but I am saying that in this case you dismiss anyone who requires more safeguards in the community than you do

                  • Requires? I think that's the wrong language. They would prefer more safeguards, they don't require them as they use plenty of other sites without them.

                    The issue here is a site policy issue, by having no firm position on federation/defederation "Hexbear will not defederate except for X reasons", the door is open for it to be pushed upon by everyone, for any and every reason. If that door were closed we simply wouldn't be having this conversation, and those people would still be here, using the site as-is, because they already use it.

                    • They would prefer more safeguards, they don't require them as they use plenty of other sites without them.

                      I absolutely don't. It really speaks for this place that i come here in spite of the userbase being mostly cis men, but the reason why it stays that way is decisions like this one.

        • The thing is, no matter how well moderated the site is (and I believe it already has exceptional mods), you can't stop some users from seeing the ridiculous fascist takes before they're taken down. There's a reason some users need to be banned instead of just selectively taking down their bad posts, the same principle applies to whole instances.

          I don't think Hexbear has ever been the place to radicalize libs in, either. It's been a place for people who already had the right ideas to find likeminded people and get access to more resources, sure, but we've never really tried to be the first step in the pipeline. I don't see the problem with compromising our ability to reach libs if it means we're losing good comrades who don't wish to see the occasional fascist stroll in here.

          Concerns that this is gonna lead to a gradual declination of the userbase are more well-placed, and hopefully we can figure out a way of attracting the right kinds of users to Hexbear. But I really don't see why it's of any use to attract people that have no interest in picking up a book or even watch a video longer than 4 minutes. I realize that we have some comrades here that we brought over from .ee, sure, but the juice ain't worth the squeeze IMHO.

          • It hurts the communities for marginalised people too whether they realise it or not. Where do they think new users come from? They don't spontaneously appear from thin air they appear because other people are exposed to them in other spaces.

            Before reddit existed on the internet there was an entire wealth of private forums for lgbt people (and every other niche hobby or topic you can think of). All of these forums were significantly better than reddit in terms of safety for lgbt people. Being safer and better spaces didn't stop reddit slowly devouring their userbases until they all closed down though, which reddit did by being an everything-in-one-place site of convenience because people didn't really wanna logout and login to 100 different private forums and wanted the convenience of an algorithmic homepage that could highlight when some of their rarely visited communities had something worth seeing, because manually visiting all of them would be a pain.

            • Also like, being federated gives LGBT people on other platforms exposure to and access to this platform, which spreads awareness of this community existing for them in the first place.

    • Were you leaning towards just plain lemmy.ml for your account instance or somewhere else? Only reason I don't say lemmygrad is for wider leftist appeal (nothing against Lemmygrad y'all are great)

250 comments