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2mo ago

A note on fedposting / threats of violence

While I hope that I’m wrong, there is at least a very real possibility that in the immediate future, the US empire will launch an unprovoked and immoral attack on a socialist state (Venezuela) in order to secure that country’s resources. It is understandable that, should that happen, many of you will be feeling extreme anger at these acts and post about it here.

In light of that, the admins and mods of Hexbear figured we’d remind everyone:

No fedposting

That includes, but is not limited to, talking about threats of violence against people or groups of people; including if you add “in minecraft” or “[redacted]”.

We really don’t need to come under fed scrutiny (or worse). Ultimately, fed posting doesn’t even serve much purpose other than “blowing off steam” – and that comes at the cost of potentially putting the site and its users in legal jeopardy. There are more productive ways to vent that anger.

Also, if you end up having a comment removed for fed posting, I’d urge you to not take it personally.

And saying this as a user, not an admin: a little revolutionary optimism never hurt anyone. We must have clear eyes about reality, but as socialists we also should have faith in the power of people to resist oppression.

(Edited for grammar)

97 comments

the safest most effective way to fedpost is by writing your fedposts down on a piece of paper and then sending that directly to the president via the USPS
- Make sure to put the pads of your finger tips cleanly and firmly all over the paper to ensure the feds know you're a professional fedposter
- don't forget to cut out each letter individually from magazines with different fonts and then glue them together onto the page

death to whom exactly is left as an exercise for the reader.
- I like death, vaguely

~~Death, death~~ Incremental change by committee over decades to the IDF!
- Not what's being said. Death death to the IDF is not a clear or actionable threat so it's fine.
  
  It’s an implication of violence and will get you arrested in the UK if you’re Joe Public.

I should add this isn’t based on any specific comments or posts here, just a proactive statement in case something terrible like I mentioned above does happen.

Yeah, as much as it pains me to say it's probably best to protect comrades on here and stop them from fedposting and getting sent to fucking CECOT. I know HB made a name for itself from reddit by allowing much looser speech but you have to weigh if it's worth it to fly off the cuff and wish death on someone in the moment, or have an ounce of protection to stop someone from ruining their life.
- I think it would be good to set some real parameters here on what makes a comment a fedpost. There's a difference between wishing death on someone and making an explicit threat to a specific individuals life (aka actionable threat). Can I not say I wish Netanyahu would just fucking die? Can I not say I wish Trump were killed by a foreign state power? Can I not say I wish Gavin Newsom never makes it to the 2028 election due to an unforseen accident? Seriously, I'm not saying those things, really, I'm only asking if I can.
  
  The heinous stuff we said on reddit that made us notorious was "slave owners should be killed." That's not fedposting. I really fucking hope we will always get to say that and things like it, even things like as mentioned Death to America. I can't imagine HB ever mandating that we can't, at least not until the fascists cracking down all over the net really kicks into high gear. But at that point, I feel like it wouldn't really be Hexbear anymore.
  It really does come down to keeping this place as a site and community safe and functional and even more so keeping the users here safe in general. So clear boundaries on what is and what isn't considered fedposting would be an important thing for us to establish, and it might even need to change as the slide into more overt fascism continues apace.
  
  Agreed but I never thought Hexbear would have done something as cringe as banning the "Lionization of Luigi". Not Hexbear's finest hour.
  And that rule still stands.
  
  Yeah pretty much, like saying "Death to the IDF" I'd imagine is fine, or Death to America, but I'd say no to "someone should shoot Elon Musk in the face with a high powered rifle", if that makes sense.
- I mean you're probably right, but not everyone on here is from the US, right?
  
  Yeah we have an international community, but afaik the admins can't see ip addresses and locations?
  
  US jurisdiction is not a concept I would trust

Understood, from now on I will say "in Garry's Mod" instead
※ This is an American joke

Is Death to Amerikkka fedposting?
I will keep saying it.
- I have made a fedpost.
  You make me want to cry. That's (In my opinion) kind of dangerous. But even so, I do respect YOUR opinion.
  I will make another.
  
  Death to Amerikkka isn't a fed enough post for me. No, I am going to kill Amerikkka. The whole thing. That's not a threat, it's a promise.

Unlimited genocide on the first world

Yeah. Never threaten anyone.
Why would you give them warning lmao
- I like to challenge my opponents to combat so I can face them at their best. Makes the fight better
  
  I cant renounce violence but I never plan to do violence. Sometime it's just the darhmic thing to do
  on the other hand maybe that's why i cant fight for shit lmao. I just do it when im cornered

Are "Down with ICE/any horrible US government agency" posts subject to moderation?
- No kings! -> banned
  
  We stan our Danish, Dutch, English, uh... what others... Spanish?... Why does Belgium have a king its a fucking tiny ass sliver of land?... nah fuck the Sweds and their monarch... also honorable mentions to Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco, and the uncool Luxembourg. Also the pope if you want to be technical.
- No

Times like these are when you must carry the burden of being right. Why be angry when you can be correct?
Talk with your liberal friends and relatives. Point out the material interests of US involvement, then wait for Trump to blurt it all out on TruSus. Watch as reactions go from :smuglord: to :lisan-al-gaib:
Liberals need time to be cooked, and :cool-zone: moments are when the heat is turned up.

my fedposts!
- A lotta y'all still don't get it.
  Fedposters can use multiple slurp juices on a single death threat
  So if you have one actionable call to violence and 3 slurp juices, you can create 3 new pretexts for the FBI

I only fedpost in Minecraft

Not news

Okay I know I've been doing it a lot lately. I'll cool it off, feel free to wipe anything.

Can I fedpost on other instances?
- Yeah but you have to do it from a .world account
  
  and with a VPN
- I strongly don't recommend. In certain situations, you might be defederated from remote instances.

Being polite isn't going to stop feds from tracking down anyone they want to track down and kill/enslave/deport. The Biden administration already declared that anticapitalism is terrorism.
- It won't stop them if targeting Hexbear specifically is what they decide to do, but it'll probably keep us off their radar a lot longer.

Does this include countries and political groups like, picking examples at random, amerikkka and zioniSSts?
- No, “death to Amerikkka” is not an actionable threat.
  
  I long for the day that the US is within close enough striking distance that it IS an actionable threat

What about the WTYP style guide "i hope they have a wonderful time"
- maybe my friend is sending me a gift, i want to be sure i have second strike gifting capabilities

I assume "people or groups of people" refers to specific targeted threats, and doesn't include slogans like "death to america" or "unlimited genocide on the first world"? edit: I see you already clarified this one in another comment as being fine.
and what about posting something like: "I want to [redacted] with a thousand [redacted] until the [redacted] runs red with [redacted]", where no specific threat is made but it's clear that the post is playing with that idea?

can cats ~~eat salami~~ fedpost?

Seems like it's in the same sort of vein. Is this a call to change behavior to be more tame in the use of rhetoric or simply to not escalate it?
Thought about not hitting post but that'd be liberalism.
- This is not necessarily a call to change any current behavior. I’ve been around long enough to know, though, when really bad things happen the fedposting does happen in the immediate aftermath.
  So I guess it’s the later, a request to not escalate.

What are you talking about? I'm a busker. I said I was feeling 🎻.

Fine

been here for years now but I'm still not clear what is meant by fedposting.. can you define it?
- Fed posting refers to the ideas that:
  Federal agents will respond to credible (and in this regime's case, non-credible) threats of political violence.
  And critically:
  /2. Federal agents will pose as "fellow extremists" to induce real comerades to do adventurism or post about doing adventurism, incriminating themselves in the process
- Fed posting = actionable threats = saying stuff that is specific enough for it to translate into violent action. Saying "someone should overthrow the government" is not actionable. Saying "someone really should
  <violent act>
  
  <politician>
  " is actionable (maybe saying it in the form "someone should x" instead of "I will x" changes it, but I wouldn't risk it)
  
  got it, thanks

I thought lemmy was safe in terms of legal issues? Who is going to give users' ip addresses to the court?
- ISPs. Unless TLS is broken they shouldn't know who's who tho.
- Your phone, your browser, your isp, your neighbors phone, a dedicated chip on one of your devices we dont know about
  We realistically have to assume everything is compromised is ways we can't anticipate or evade
- Almost every western country has a history of compelling website owners, or secretly seizing and controlling websites to log anything they want. So they only need to do that, start logging IPs, and the next time you log in job done. No website can really be inherently 'safe' in terms of anonymity from the legal system.
- to be clear, both lemmygrad and hexbear are hosted on cloud companies in western europe, unless they have some weird reverse proxy thing going on i suppose. that means in the worst case scenario, the feds silently read all data going in and out of the servers and all the data on the servers and no one's the wiser
  EDIT: i dont think i should have been so quick to dismiss the reverse proxy thing tho. mao quote and all

Good thing I only fedpromise, posting is for dweebs

i think we should just ban feds from posting here, tbqh

I'm going to kill a zombie in Minecraft and you can't stop me
- Or nazi zombies

97 comments