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1y ago

Hexbear federation megathread

Hey folks

I have been receiving a lot of messages every single day about federation with hexbear. Some of our users are vehemently against it, others are in full support. The conversation does not seem to be dying down, rather, the volume of messages I receive about it seems to be increasing, so I am opening this public space where we can openly discuss the topic.

I am going to write a wall of text about my own thoughts on the situation, I’m sorry, but no tl;dr this time, and I ask anybody participating in this thread to first read through this post before commenting.

Before I go any further, I want to be clear that for anybody who participates here, it is required to focus on the quality of your posts. That means:

Be kind to each other, even if you disagree
Use arguments rather than calling people names
Realize that this is a divisive topic, so your comments should be even more thoughtful than usual

With that out of the way, there are a few things I want to cover.

On defederation in general

First of all, I am a firm believer that defederation must be reserved only for cases where all other methods have failed. If defederation is used liberally, then a small group of malicious users can effectively completely shut down the federated network, by simply creating the type of drama between instances which would inevitably result in defederation. In my view, federation is the biggest strength of Lemmy compared to any centralized discussion forum, so naturally I think maintaining federation by default is an important goal in general.

I am also a believer in the value of deplatforming hateful content, but I think defederation is not the best way to do this. Banning individual users, banning communities and establishing a culture of mutual support between mods and admins of different instances should be the first line of defense against such content. There are some further steps that can be taken before defederation as well, but these are not really documented anywhere (in order to prevent circumvention). The point is: for myself, defederation is the absolute last resort, only to be used when it is completely clear that other methods are ineffective.

Finally, I am wary of creating a false expectation among lemm.ee users that lemm.ee admins endorse all users and communities and content on instances we are federated with. Here at lemm.ee, we use a blocklist for federation, which means our default apporach is to federate with all new instances. We do not have the resources (manpower, skills and knowledge) necessary to pass judgement on all instances which exist out there, as a result, users on lemm.ee are expected to curate their own content to quite a high degree. In addition to downvoting and/or reporting as necessary, individual lemm.ee users are also able to block specific users and communities, and the ability to block entire instances is coming very soon as well.

Having said all that, in a situation where all other methods do indeed fail, defederation is not out of the question. Making such a call is up to the discretion of lemm.ee admins, and doing it as a last resort is completely in line with our federation policy.

Regarding hexbear

Hexbear is an established Lemmy instance, focused on many flavors of leftism. They have quite a large userbase who are very active on Lemmy (often so active that they leave the impression brigading all popular Lemmy posts). One important thing to note is that while some forms of bigotry seem to be quite accepted by many hexbear users (but seemingly not by mods - more on that below), they at least are very protective of LGBT rights (and yes, I am quite certain that they are not just pretending to do this, as many users seem to believe). Additionally, while I have noticed quite high quality posts from hexbear users, there are also several users there who seem to really enjoy trolling and baiting (very reminiscent of 4chan-type “for the lulz” posting), and it’s important to note that this kind of posting is in general allowed on hexbear itself.

The reason this whole topic is important to so many people right now (despite hexbear being a relatively old instance), is that hexbear only recently enabled federation. A combination of their volume of posts, their strong convictions, the excitement about federation, and the aforementioned trolling has made them very visible to almost all Lemmy users, and this has sparked discussions about the value of federation with hexbear on a lot of Lemmy instances.

My own experience with hexbear

I want to write down my own experience with interacting with hexbear users, mods, and admins over the past few days. I believe this experience will highlight why I am hesitant to advocate for immediate full defederation from hexbear at this point in time, and am for now still more in favor of taking action on a more individual user basis. Please read and see how you feel about the situation afterwards.

Background

My first real contact with hexbear users was in the comments section of a post in this meta community requesting defederation from hexbear by @glimpythegoblin@lemm.ee. That post is now locked, because several hexbear users very quickly started doing the aforementioned “for the lulz” type spamming of meme images in the comments (these are actually just emojis, but they are rendered as full-size images on all instances other than the source instance, due to a current Lemmy bug).

I did not want to take further actions in that thread in general (for archival purposes), but I did take one action, which in retrospect was a mistake: I removed a comment which contained the hammer and sickle symbol. I ignorantly associated this symbolism with Kremlin propaganda, and the atrocities my own people suffered at the hands of the soviet union during the previous century. Many users (including hexbear users) correctly (and politely) pointed out to me in DMs that the symbol has a much broader use than just as the symbol of the USSR, and people elsewhere in the world may not associate it with the USSR at all. I am grateful for users who pointed this out to me without resorting to personal attacks.

Let me be clear here: while I do not have anything against leftism or communist ideas in general (in fact in today’s world, I think discussion of such ideas is quite necessary), Kremlin propaganda has no place on lemm.ee. Any dehumanizing talking points of the Kremlin on lemm.ee are treated as any other bigotry, and if communist symbolism is used in context of Kremlin propaganda (that is the context in which I have been exposed to it throughout my whole life), then it will still be removed. But there is no blanket ban on communist symbolism in general on lemm.ee, and discussing and advocating for leftist and communist topics (as distinct from the imperialist and dehumanizing policies of the Kremlin) is certainly allowed on lemm.ee.

Hexbear user response

Coming back to the events of the past few days: soon after my removal of the comment containing the symbol from the meta thread, two posts popped up on hexbear. One was focused on insulting and spreading lies about me personally. Another was focused on diminishing the horrors of the soviet occupation in my country. In the comments under both of these posts (and in a few other threads on hexbear), I noticed some seriously disturbing bigotry against my people. There were comments which reflected the anti-Estonian propaganda of the current Russian state, things like:

Suggesting that my people has no right to exist
Stating that my people (and other Baltic nations) are subhuman
Claiming that anybody critical of both nazi and soviet occupations is themselves a nazi and a holocaust denier

I expect to hear such statements from the Russian state - here in Estonia, we are subjected to this and other kinds of bigotry constantly from Russian media - but to see it spread openly in non-Russian channels is extremely disturbing. Such bigotry is completely against lemm.ee rules in general. Additionally, my identity is public information, because I feel it’s important for the integrity of lemm.ee that I don’t hide behind anonymity. Considering this, I’m sure you can understand why I am very worried about my own safety when people leave comments in many unrelated threads (where my original posts are not even visible), baselessly calling me a nazi and a holocaust denier.

Note that the goal of this post is not to start a new debate in the comments about the the repressions of the soviet union in Estonia or other occupied territories, but if the topic interests any users, I can recommend the 2006 documentary The Singing Revolution (imdb). The trailer is a bit cheesy, but the actual film contains lots of historical footage from the soviet occupation, and also many interviews with people who experienced it, who share stories which are deeply familiar to all Estonians. If anybody is interested in further discussion, then I suggest making a post about it in the Estonian community here: !eesti@lemm.ee.

Hexbear admin response

After the above events had played out, I reached out to hexbear admins for clarification on their moderation policies and how they handle such cases. I was actually very happy with their response:

They immediately removed the personal attacks and dehumanizing comments containing Kremlin propaganda from Hexbear, and assured me that such content is always handled by mods
They told me that while there are all kinds of leftists on hexbear, Russian disinformation is generally either refuted in comments or removed by mods
They implemented some additional rules on hexbear to try and reduce the trolling experienced by many other instances, including ours: https://hexbear.net/post/352119

My personal take-aways

Let me play the devil’s advocate here and employ some “self-whataboutism”: among all users that have been banned on lemm.ee for bigotry, the majority were actually not users from other instances, and in fact people with lemm.ee accounts. If we judge any larger instance only by bigoted posts that some of its users make, then we might as well declare all instances as cesspools and close down Lemmy completely. I believe it’s far more useful to judge instances based on moderation in response to such content. Just as we remove bigoted content from lemm.ee, I have also witnessed bigoted content being removed from hexbear.

At the same time, I am aware of some internal conflict between hexbear users over the more strict moderation they are now starting to employ, and I am definitely keeping an eye on that situation and how admins handle it.

I am also still quite worried about the amount of distinct users on hexbear who have posted Kremlin propaganda. I so far don't have reason to believe that these users are employed by the Russian state, but the fact that they are spreading the same hateful content which can be seen on Russian television seems problematic to say the least, and it remains to be seen if moderators can truly keep up with such content.

Where thing stand right now

I am not convinced that we are currently at a point where the “last resort” of defederation is necessary. This is based on the presumption that our moderation workload at lemm.ee will not get out of hand just due to users from that particular instance. My current expectation is that as the excitement of federation calms down (and as new rules on hexbear go into effect), the currently relatively high volume of low effort trolling will be replaced by more thoughtful posts. If this is not the case then we will certainly need to re-evaluate things.

Additionally, nothing is changing about our own rules regarding bigotry. Especially relevant in the context of Kremlin propaganda, I want to say that dehumanizing anybody is not allowed on lemm.ee (hopefully I do not have to spell it out, but this of course includes Ukrainians, LGBT folks, and others that the Kremlin despises), and action will be taken against any users who do this, regardless of what instance they are posting from.

Finally, I am very interested to hear thoughts and responses from our own users. I am super grateful to anybody who actually took the time to read through this massive dump of my own thoughts, and I am very interested to get a proper understanding of how our users feel about what I’ve written here. Please share any thoughts in the comments.

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1.8K comments

Kremlin propaganda
Okay what is meant by this because I have literally no idea
like, you had previously thought communist symbolism in general was Kremlin propaganda, before it was pointed out otherwise. So what still applies to the term? Any defense of modern russia? defense of the USSR? militant communism in general? Revolutionary Marxism? Its a blanket term that doesn't seem to be fully defined in this post. I would like it if someone clarified this.
- I've received this feedback a lot and I'm starting to see that cultural backgrounds probably have a very big effect on how "Kremlin propaganda" is understood. I think a major missing piece of the puzzle is a lot of the Kremlin propaganda is generally just presented in Russian, and probably the vast majority of Lemmy users don't speak any Russian. I'll have to think about this topic a bit more.
  
  I mean, no one denies that RussiaToday, for example, facilitates Kremlin propaganda (though I have seen good reporting from it occassionally) and that's all in English.
  The issue is that a rather large swath of views regarding the state even from people who hate Russia are held as themselves being "Kremlin propaganda".
  
  Actually, the troll farm operates heavily on the English speaking web although sometimes the propaganda takes a different form than it probably does in countries with large Russian speaking populations. In the US they tend to take right wing positions that are harmful to society such as election denial, advocating violence, basically anything that can destabilize society they will suport. I agree that there should be zero tolerance for Russian propaganda, however it could be hard to define what actually constitutes Russian propaganda. Somebody says the USSR wasn't so bad? They might be too young to have lived through that and don't have the education to know the truth. Somebody says Ukraine is full of nazis and deserves to be war crimed? Ban hammer.
  
  Just wait until you find out what language US/UK troll farms operate in
  
  What if the person is African and RU has helped them achieve freedom from French colonialism? It gets complicated then doesn't it?
- I can't speak for OP, but I see a lot of what I would call "Kremlin propaganda". Which I define support for the Russian government position to such a degree that doesn't make sense to be merely skepticism or support of communism.
  I'm a democratic socialist myself, so I was expecting to find Hexbear mostly agreeable, but instead was shocked at the number of people who espoused talking points I'd expect to hear directly from Putin. Stuff like claiming they're justified in their war against Ukraine is an example that I've seen repeatedly. And in general, I've noticed a shocking amount of support for the USSR and China, which I find bizarre because I thought no reasonable, modern socialist would support a brutal, authoritarian country like those two. Which frankly makes the most likely answer being that they're simply trolls.
  The OP mentioned the instance being strongly supportive of things like LGBT rights, but that is fundamentally incompatible with supporting such anti-LGBT nations (never mind their other human rights abuses).
  
  I'm a democratic socialist myself... I thought no reasonable, modern socialist would support a brutal, authoritarian country like those two.
  This was me a few years ago! What changed my mind was Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti (not a PDF link, but there are tons of free PDFs on that page). This passage in particular stood out to me:
  The pure (libertarian) socialists' ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.
  That was me! I bought in to socialism at an ideological level, but I had not addressed the hard questions of how a socialist society might actually be run in a world of capitalist encirclememt. I found that my then-opinions fit pretty well with "support every revolution except the ones that succeed," which made less and less sense the more I thought about it.
  It's a very short book divided into sections that are easy to jump back into. Because "throw a book at you" leftists are annoying, he also has a ton of lectures on YouTube that cover many of the same points. I'd be happy to shoot you some links or just discuss the main ideas if you're interested.
  
  Forgive me if I’m over-simplifying your position, but did you just say “Who cares if they’re authoritarian, as long as they’re my kind of authoritarian”?
  
  ...no?
  My takeaway from the above passage is that running a state is not a frictionless process in the best of times, to say nothing of the difficulties of running a state under constant attack by the world's most powerful countries. You have to address real problems Iike:
  how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted
  Every single state has some answer to these problems, and every single state uses violence (or the threat of violence) against citizens who do not abide by the law. A state exercising its authority in this way is not de facto authoritarian (a term so loose as to be meaningless, but that's another conversation).
  Another Parenti idea comes to mind: you can compare states to utopia (an impossible standard), to what came before them, or to their peers. Socialists of the kind I replied to (and once was) tend to compare existing socialist states to utopia, and imagine unsuccessful revolutions would have produced a utopia, hence they "support all revolutions except the ones that succeed."
  
  I think there’s a disconnect here. You’re saying that every state uses violence to maintain their rule/internal stability, which is true. But you’re responding in a thread that’s pointing out how weird it is to support LGBT rights on the one hand and support Russia and China on the other, where same-sex couples are not treated equally under the law. So I’m not asking “why are you ok with state-monopolized force”. I’m asking “why are you ok with these particular states”.
  
  First off, let's talk about critical support. No one on Hexbear says China is perfect and without problems and that all societies should be exactly like theirs. Even the most hardcore believers inside the CPC itself don't think that. There's a lot of work to be done. We generally support China because they're actually doing that work, and trending in the right direction, compared to a country like the US which is basically as bad on 90% of China's real issues, way worse on a number of other issues, and is completely stagnant without any hope of progress toward a better society any time soon.
  Second off, basically no one on Hexbear supports Russia, even in that critical sense. This "putin-loving Russia-supporting ukraine-war-supporting hexbear user" that everyone on other instances is so mad about literally just doesn't exist. Russia is a shitty capitalist hellscape. But, we seek to understand why the war in Ukraine is actually happening and what should have been done, and what should be done, by all parties involved to minimize the damage done to the innocent Ukrainians and Russians and whoever else is caught up in it. The "acceptable" liberal viewpoint of the war is that Ukraine was just existing peacefully and then one day, out of nowhere, evil Putin declared that he needed more territory and that they would conquer Ukraine to acquire it. That just isn't what happened. This war is the natural result of a decade of provocation and smaller-scale violence.
  
  a thread that’s pointing out how weird it is to support LGBT rights on the one hand and support Russia and China on the other
  I responded to a comment from a democratic socialist who took issue with support for AES states. LGBT rights were mentioned at the end of the comment as an example, not throughout the comment as its focus. Your initial question to me did not mention LGBT rights, so I didn't address them.
  But let's address them now. First look at Cuba, which the U.S. demonizes as an authoritarian dictatorship and has waged a low-intensity war against for its entire existence. It recently passed, by nationwide referendum, a Family Code light-years ahead of anything the U.S. has at a national scale (note also that many U.S. states are busy stripping away LGBT rights, and gay marriage was legalized in the U.S. only by the profoundly undemocratic Supreme Court, which is likely to reverse its decision in the near future). The Family Code:
  Legalizes same sex marriage (some had been performed before the enactment of this law, by the way)
  Allows same sex couples to adopt
  Requires parents to be respectful of the dignity and physical and mental integrity of children and adolescents, among other moves away from the view of children as parental property
  This is on top of existing policies like guaranteed housing, which is a particularly sharp point of contrast to the epidemic of homelessness among LGBT youth in the U.S. Mind you I've used the U.S. -- the richest country in the world, one that claims to be a bastion of social progress -- as a comparison here, not Cuba's Latin American peers.
  This is already getting long and I'm not as familiar with China, but from what I know China is not nearly as supportive of LGBT rights as Cuba, but also not nearly as hostile to them as the U.S. Same sex marriage is not recognized (although ceremonies do happen), but "couples have been able to sign guardianship agreements offering partners some limited legal benefits, including decisions about medical and personal care, death and funeral, property management, and maintenance of rights and interests." There's undoubtedly a lot more work to be done there than in Cuba, but again, the arrow is pointing in the right direction.
  
  support Russia and China on the other, where same-sex couples are not treated equally under the law.
  You presumably support Ukraine in the war despite them not treating same-sex couples equally as well. Very few hexbear folk have a positive opinion about Russia. It's an autocratic state that murders political dissidents, but so is the United States and most other countries in Europe. We just recognize that a proxy war between the evil empire that runs the world and the evil empire trying to secure itself is not one to get involved with.
  
  Any leftist government that is going to survive the capitalist American hegemony will necessarily be authoritarian, yes. https://youtu.be/5BybTX3qQiU&t=2m20s
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/5BybTX3qQiU&
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
  
  check out this video if you want to have a long and detailed answer on this
  short: no.
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=M4DkZ3CWFOk&
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
  
  The OP mentioned the instance being strongly supportive of things like LGBT rights, but that is fundamentally incompatible with supporting such anti-LGBT nations (never mind their other human rights abuses).
  As a trans woman, thank you for the concern, but I'm gonna stick with my bois and Marxism Leninism
  
  So, you're basically willing to throw the LGBTQ+ community under the bus then. What makes you different than groups like the Log Cabin Republicans?
  
  I'm still confused on what constitutes Kremlin propaganda though. The world is a multifaceted place and I personally like to think I came to my opinions through studying, learning with other people, visiting places, reading history, working for a boss, paying rent to a landlord, etc.. I'm an American and I've never read a word of Russian, and as far as I know I haven't engaged with Russian troll farms or whatever, and even if I have, my political opinions don't come solely from forums or twitter.
  I don't think it's fair to us or yourself to dismiss political opinions you find distasteful as trolling or Russian state-funded propaganda. There are a lot of people in the world, you know? There are all sorts of people like socialists in Africa who might have a very positive opinion of China and things like the Belt and Road Initiative. There are a lot of Chinese socialists who have a positive opinion of China too. There are communists all over the world who don't necessarily share the same immediate distaste for socialist projects of the past or present. Are they all just wrong or disqualified from analysis or what? I'm saying this as a genuine question and I don't mean to sound sarcastic, but I know tones are hard to impart over text like this.
  Are they all parroting propaganda when they're stating their point of view? That's where I get lost. I've been accused a few times now from other instances of parroting Russian propaganda when I don't think I've done anything of the sort. Do I have to put a disclaimer in every post I make about how modern Russia is a bourgeois nation built on oil money that I don't admire? Because I can say that, but it's gonna get tedious.
  Also I am a non-binary queer person and I can't really say much about the socialist countries I admire in terms of LGBTQ rights, since I've never lived there. But I have visited one socialist country (China) and it seemed alright, I guess. Maybe living there would be different, but I did bring up being non-binary to several people there and no one gave a shit. Also saw a bunch of gay bars in Shenzhen, like, everywhere. Anecdotal experience I know, but it is always gonna color my perception of this.
- Hey, I'll pre-emptively apologise for the length of this post, as the topic is complex. Propaganda, nationalism, etc.. in Eastern Europe isn't a trivial topic, and I will tack on specific concerns with supporting Russia in general.
  I think a large component that is missing here is the understanding of how propaganda in that region of the world works. Eastern Europeans in general had been warning about increased Russian aggression for more than a decade, and that it would come as "defense of Russian people". Most of this propaganda has been directed to Eastern Europe first and foremost, which is why they are the most defensive about the current events, they feel threatened, and with Ukraine being the size it is (one of the biggest countries in Europe) most of these countries are definitely "easier to tackle" than Ukraine is.
  Hexbear users, I've been told by members of your community, are overwhelming Americans first and foremost, and you might be the exception, these users are not used to the methodology of the propaganda used here. Your corporate/capitalist propaganda works on fear (like the red scare, they're coming for your bathrooms, etc..), but the type of propaganda we have is best explained as "tell so many lies at once, the truth can't be discerned anymore". There is a reason why Eastern Europe has banned Russian media harder than any Western European country has, it's due to the history and experiences they have endured.
  What I do think is a problem is how hexbear's own announcement post w.r.t federation talks specifically how Ukraine's government is at war with its people. But overwhelmingly its people support the current government, this is from my travels to those regions (yes anecdotal) and talking to people, but also from polls. They of course want an end to the war, but they want to rule themselves, not be ruled by Russians. Putin's war declaration speech that I watched specifically refers to Ukrainian identity not existing, that they are Russians. That Ukraine existing was Lenin's mistake. For Putin this isn't a war only with the government, but much more. So talking about this being a war waged by Ukraine's government on its people muddies the situation, I'll refer back to the way propaganda works in the East as "many lies to hide the truth", this one falls under that (in my opinion).
  That post also talks about how Russia is there to protect Donbas people, which to me is an easy explanation after the fact as their first action wasn't to protect people, but to take over the region around their military base. Crimea was annexed months beforehand. This already makes Russia inherintly a biased participant and so what they say should be highly scrutinized. No country would admit they started a conflict unjustly or for self-interest, it's never happened in history, and the propaganda mill starts before a war starts. Russian media never talked about Ukrainian Nazism until it became advantageous to them. In fact they are currently giving sanctuary to the president who declared Banderas a national hero, Yanukovich, the one ousted by the revolution.
  Lastly, this is a personal opinion that I can't stray from, I'm a firm believer no country with Russia's practices towards lgbtqia+ should receive "critical support" as some of your community members refer to it. This is because I would never give Taliban critical support either, even if they root out horror practices (like the raping of young children), this is because even if they are successful, the result is still oppression and suffering, just maybe a different target. That's not solving the problem, but prolonging it. I didn't support the US in their unjust invasion of Iraq either, their goals were never to improve the citizen's lives, I refer back to Putin's war declaration here.
  Furthermore giving critical support is dangerous. Russia's nationalism is a huge problem for their border countries. I fear, if anything, Putin is containing the problem and in 10 years, when he's gone, we might face worse. Already their state media's talking heads talk about pre-emptive nuking places, taking over the Baltic, etc.. I do fear your critical support is giving undue space to a country who has fairly large ambitions to turn into "Greater Russia" once again, as former prime minister Medveded has happily posted about.
  I do want to close by saying there is a Nazism and nationalism problem in Eastern Europe (West as well, but let's keep the focus on the topic at hand). This includes Ukraine and Russia. I won't make arguments against that. But I firmly believe that Russia's goal isn't to tackle that. Or rather that if people believe that, then Iraq's war was about weapons of mass destruction (it clearly wasn't, and even teenage me in Europe never believed that). I'll redirect to my earlier paragraph where I say "no country will ever admit they started an unjust selfish war". It's actually quite rare in history a war is started in defense of something just, but many wars are claimed in just that name. But I'm of the opinion that Ukraine being with Europe is a safer resolution to their problems than if they were absorbed by Russia, especially with how Putin has referred to them in the past.

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