Can we defederate with Hexbear?

Here's my view. Lemmy.nz is intended for an NZ audience. Hexbear has been defederated from 5 of the top 8 largest instances. This is problematic for us, as their All is much more likely to show lemmy.nz posts than All on other instances. It starts to feel like we're being brigaded, even though we aren't, because their instance is the 10th largest Lemmy instance and yet they don't see most Lemmy posts (but they do see ours).

I don't have a problem with international audiences occasionally posting in our posts, even people with no connection to NZ. I think it provides some great perspective on our issues. But when you post a thread, and it gets overrun with international users, I think this becomes a problem.

This may not seem fair on them, but what I want is a friendly-feeling community, and recently we have had a different vibe.

Personally, I have become less inclined to participate. I've written up a post about the Papakangahorohoro street, then decided not to post it because by the time I'd written my 150 word article the thread had such hexbear comments as "Get over it crakkkas" and "sounds like the crackers should go back to europe if they dont like it".

I want to participate in a friendly community, and the last couple of days I have felt like I didn't want to participate because of the hexbear participation - and the participation of others stemming from that. For that reason, and no other, I think we should defederate. However, I want to hear what others think. Some counter-arguments would be great.

Yeah, I have been attempting to avoid defederating with instances from mine but with HexBear I just kind of had to because they were taking over every popular post.

Edit: I did read OP's initial exchange and I think OP massively overreacted and the HexBear commenters were largely fine. However, the wider issue still stands which is why I did in my case.
- They got that response because of the poor reputation their instance already has, I wasn't in the mood to engage with them.
Please defederate. There’s too much noise here now.
Here’s my view. Lemmy.nz is intended for an NZ audience. Hexbear has been defederated from 5 of the top 8 largest instances. This is problematic for us, as their All is much more likely to show lemmy.nz posts than All on other instances. It starts to feel like we’re being brigaded, even though we aren’t, because their instance is the 10th largest Lemmy instance and yet they don’t see most Lemmy posts (but they do see ours).

I could be wrong, but my understanding is that when instance like hexbear is defederated, they can still see your posts, they can even comment and vote on them. You just don't see it anymore. They would have to defederate on their side too, to completely block it.
- You're on kbin.social, so I'm gonna make some assumptions about how it works, because I really only have a decent understanding of lemmy - though I'm assuming this is how other activitypub federated services work too.
  
  While it may seem like you (on kbin.social) are replying to this post (on lemmy.nz), that is not the case. You server has a copy of the reply and all the other posts and comments. When you comment, it gets posted to the kbin.social community (magazine?) called !newzealand@lemmy.nz.
  
  Behind the scenes, your server will syncronise your copy with the official lemmy.nz copy.
  
  A user on (say) lemmy.world will also have a copy on their server. Your server will not send your comment directly there, rather it sends it to the only source of truth (the community host server), then the host server will send it out to all servers where there is a subscriber.
  
  By defederating, they will no longer get any updates for any lemmy.nz communities, but will still see their own comments (and other users on their server will see them).
  
  Honestly, I'm not sure what happens when e.g. a lemmy.nz user posts to lemmy.ml who are one of the few large servers still federated with hexbear - do the comments go to hexbear? Not sure. Do hexbear comments made to lemmy.ml federate back to lemmy.nz? Again, not sure (I suspect not).
- they can still see your posts, they can even comment and vote on them. You just don't see it anymore.
  
  This would actually be ideal, as long as their downvotes don't get federated back to us.
Does lemmy not have a block user function where you won’t see their comments? I guess that doesn’t help when you want to wholesale block users from an instance.

I personally haven’t seen anything worth defederating over so far. In any case I usually just scroll past or don’t interact with comments that are inflammatory. However as you’re the admin it’s your call. My only reservation is that we don’t have many contributors as it is.

Also you should have posted your 150 word article anyway.
- Personally I would much prefer the smaller, tight knit group of NZ and NZ-adjacent posters over a swarm of non-NZ users that are posting here because they can't see the vast majority of posts on lemmy (out of the top 8 servers, there are about 36,000 monthly active users. Of those, about 2/3rds of those users are on servers that have defederated with hexbear.)
  
  My 150 word article would have led to more... discussion - and I just didn't have it in me to start a conversation like that where there were already aggressive and flippant comments.
- Not built into the platform, but some apps have it.
I'm glad you see the problem.

https://hexbear.net/post/423647

https://hexbear.net/comment/3824503

Just to inform this conversation about why OP is having a fit

Well I think that comment did deserve what it got in the second one. Cant we all (in NZ) pronounce Ngāruawāhia fairly well?

I wouldn't support defederation based on those two threads, but you hexbears can be a bit 'hot' in some topics
- Papakangahorohoro
  
  I saw the word once I just typed it from memory. You tell me if I got it wrong. No brainer
- As I keep saying, they're all like that.
  
  They just flood a thread with the most abrasive takes possible, every single time. I believe 196 has already defederated for similar reasons.
Lol what a baby

I have temporary blocked hexbear so we can have the conversation in peace.

Edit: Apparently I needed to hit save, so now we are temporarily defederated from hexbear.

I've read the various comments about it and have no idea why you would have to defederate with them. As long as they play by the rules it should be fine. Just downvote if you don't agree. The voting system will take care of it.

I think defederation should be a last resort.
- Currently less than 1/4 of the votes on this post (the post itself) are from users subscribed to this community. Hexbear users far outnumber us, it's not even remotely close. With 5 out of the 8 instances with over 1000 monthly active users having defederated them, we are showing up much higher in their All feed. Lemmy.world defederated them, and they have more users than all the other 7/8 put together. Over 2/3rds of lemmy content is no longer available to them, so they see our posts about random NZ stuff, and decide to comment on them. Because there are so many of them, it floods the posts.
  
  Basically, it takes us from being a community of NZ and NZ-adjacent people, to being a community of international hexbear users talking about NZ. It completely changes the tone of the instance.
  
  It's not something they have done (other than whatever made the others want to defederate), but the point of the fediverse is to curate who you federate with in order to build the community you want, then people join the instances that curate the way they want. I'm not so keen on a community of hexbear users talking about NZ. The occasional one was fine, but to have our threads swamped is just not what I'm here for.
  
  Also, hexbear users are filling all the posts from different instances trying to decide if people want to defederate or not. It's bad taste.
  
  I try not to be a "my way or the highway" kind of guy, but I haven't yet seen a good counter-argument to my other post.
- Downvoting doesn't work when there's more of them than there are of us, and they all upvote each other.
- Agreed. Defederation is a last resort. Let's not be our own circlejerk.
Thank you. They show up like ants any time Hexbear or the CCP is mentioned.
There's nothing more permanent than a temporary solution that works, eh dave?

I feel the fact you decided this was necessary kinda proves my point though.
- Lmao you toadie, listen to yourself
- Not really, I messaged @dave so he could be on top of it if it got 'interesting'.
  
  Now you have got very anti hexbear and 'they' have not been antagonistic in this thread.

Actually after reading the context, I don't agree with OP at all. I want more places to have Te Reo names, and I want people who dislike it to complain so they can be shut down. I love Te Reo and I want to defend it.

Setting aside the Te Reo argument, in my opinion the OP is guilty of much of what they accuse others of and appears to taunt others into further participation (again, my opinion). If lemmy.nz is going to become a closed community, it will simply become an echo chamber of that closed community - this is the biggest failure of social media - is that what users want lemmy.nz to become?

Keep it open. If it becomes a closed community, I'll probably wander off.

I suspect Lemmy will grow (or die) to allow those that create continual problems to be banned or similar - perhaps we just need to wait a little longer for those features? Defederation seems far too coarse/broad brush to me for what I perceive to be, at this point in time, just a nuisance that can be ignored.
Here here!

If you’re getting that worked up about mild non-offensive inane comments I hate to imagine how worked up you get using a self-checkout machine. Chill out.

Holy shit dude, have you used one?

Please place item in bagging area. Are you using your own bags? [Yes]. Please wait for staff member to come over and give you permission to use your own bags. Would you like a receipt? [No]. Please take this 30 centimetre long piece of receipt paper that isn't a receipt, it's just printed with stuff you don't want.

I don't think it's justified getting all upset about a few comments, but if I saw an article about someone getting arrested for smashing a self-checkout machine then I'd assume the machine probably deserved it.
- It constantly thinks I've placed an improper amount of weight and I'm stealing. As if I'd steal at the most watched area of the store like a chump. And the attendant has to come over four times!
- I have actually abandoned my shopping and walked out because of one of those things.
- They're beyond annoying for sure, but I use them every chance I get. My grocery bill has gone way down since I've learned how to use self checkout... properly.
- Don't forget that Countdown is trialling video surveliance at them... as if those places don't make you feel like enough of a criminal as it is.
Once again, the issue is that none of them actually participated meaningfully in the discussion, just turned the thread into one big circle jerk.

None of the individual comments were particularly bad, it's the overall effect that is the issue.
- the overall effect he's objecting to is a general anti-racist sentiment, just to clarify that for everyone

Every time I read a stupid comment and then check the instance 100% of the time it's hexbear.

So far I've not seen any rule breaking posts.

Edit: I made this comment after only seeing hexbear users in few nz thread but after seeing more and seeing how the partcipate. I think we should defederate. They will never participate in good faith as they are an extremist instance. Majority of the big instances have already defederated with them so its not like we will be singling them out. On the point of "diverse viewpoints", policy so far bans extreme right wing instances and extreme leftwing instances. All the reasonable view points that a hexbear user could provide can be provided by the many leftists across other instances.

Yeah, that's exactly the issue. Nothing of value comes from their instance, but they do follow the rules.
- Then why is it an issue?
Regarding the edit, what is their instance actually about, what are their leanings? I haven't been to visit, and don't really want to.
- They're anti nato communists and some socialists. I took a geez at their "why does everyone hate our instance thread" and it seems that in their words, since they have been on the platform for 3 years they have a strong instance culture. They are used to fighting and battling trolls so when they see something they don't like they swarm on it and argue aggressively.
  
  From my opinion its a political community that focuses on pushing extreme left wing views. They are anti western, anti capitalism and anti racism and bigotry. I laughed because one of the reasons they keep giving for being hated is because "they're always right".
- Tankies. They are pro authoritarian communist or socialist regimes like China and USSR, and anti western liberal capitalist democracies like US and NZ.
  
  They got banned from Reddit and moved to an isolated Lemmy instance long before the rest of Lemmy got big, but decided to experiment with federation fairly recently.

I would not support defederation based on this exchange. Surely the bar must be high for such an action?

Fair enough, I appreciate the civil response.
Honestly if someone wants to point out how awful Hexbear is, op posted some poor examples.

If you spend a little time there you'll see things more along the lines of "you're gonna get the wall when we start the revolution" with a ton of upvotes.

This would be one of the funnier defederation reasons so I support it on behalf of hexbear

I never thought something so lukewarm would provoke such a response.

Who they choose to federate with is totally their choice, and I'm sure that - despite any protestation from my behalf that it's a functionality spurious label - I'll be branded a tankie, so probably going against the Code of Conduct here.

Shame that I'll no longer see content from my cousins across the ditch if they do split, but them's the breaks I guess.
We are making contingency plans for Operation I-Kiwi Freedom.
Fuck off, we're talking about you, not to you.
- I was browsing new, and it's just very silly so I had to comment. I'm not being inflammatory so it's OK.
- What the fuck is wrong with you?

There is a big difference in attitude, huh? I don't care so much about who was wrong/right in that thread but aggressively namecalling and strawmanning people over something as irrelevant as the name of a street is just toxic behaviour.

As an afterthought, perhaps if they want to stop being defederated by instances they should have a good long think about how they interact with other communities. Shitposting can be fun but it's stupid and rude when you're entering someone else's space.
There was a huge difference in the tone of conversation before and after dave's temporary defederating, both on the topic of defederating, and the discussion that kicked all this off.

Now there's only two people calling me racist.

So as an update, Hexbear have defederated us after a brief chat I had with an admin. They updated their instance on it here:

Removed lemmy.nz from our allow-list due to irreconcilable political differences between the instances. As well as them committing to permanently blocking hexbear.net

https://hexbear.net/comment/3833816

That's not quite how I remember the conversation going, in fact I feel like I said it wasn't permanent (or at least that's what I was trying to imply):

Thanks for reaching out. I do intend to monitor the situation, in particular when more granular tools are available. But for the moment I think we will just watch from the side lines.

But hey, it is what it is.

This has "you can't fire me, I quit" vibes.

Does this mean they can see us, but we don't see them, or are we invisible to them?
- I think because we currently have them blocked, and they have now blocked us, this I think means that neither of us see each other (on any server).
- "You're not breaking up with me! I'm breaking up with you!"
Can't say you didn't try. Nice work.
That's actually funny.
Well done Dave. Think you handled it well.

I'd be fine with defederating. I don't care if they bring in more numbers and more 'engagement' if that engagement is generally shit and too difficult for the mods to moderate with the current tools available. I'd much rather be part of a smaller but friendly community that is actually familiar with NZ, than a larger more popular one that just turns into another cesspit.

Seems like a good move. It's a crap dynamic at this point. Maybe later we could re-federate once the numbers aren't so skewed. If people from there feel the need to discuss NZ issues they still have options. They can join here. They can make their own NZ sub if NZ issues are so important to them.

Being on an instance that defederated them, noticably better now. Just do it....

I wasn't around when they still on World, but I did see the equivalent to this post on 196.

Essentially the same concerns were raised.

I have filtered out a lot of the spammer accounts that just spew nonsense.

On one hand I'm lucky I can do that with sync. But on the other hand we shouldn't have to resort to whackamole.

I wouldn't mind if it was a few "bad apples", but every single fucking one of them are here to start arguments, call people racist, and generally act in the most abrasive manner possible.
- What's the argument there? People shouldn't have oppositional discussions online? You just want to live in an echo chamber?
  
  One of the saddest things about silicon valley social media products is the way they silo people off and prevent exchange of ideas.
  
  And here on lemmy, reddit users who got used to it silo themselves off willingly.
- i mean, bro, you're being racist as fuck in that other thread.
  
  i'm not from hexbear, you gonna start a thread about kbin, now, too?
Please share a list of spammer accounts so we can point and laugh (at you)
- That makes no sense?
  
  The app I use has a built in filter. You just add a user to the filter and you don't see their posts or comments.

I like having an instance that isn't defederated from too much (except CSAM) because I enjoy being able to see and subscribe to what I want. Hexbear is a shitty place, but I don't like the idea of defederating because my feewings got hurt. I would prefer defederating because it's a legal/human rights necessity.

Have lemmy.nz reached out to hexbear? Do they know that their bombastic persona can be overwhelming for a small instance? Sounds corny but maybe we just ask them to go easy.

They aren't ever going to chill out. Their entire purpose is to brigade, attack, harass, and argue in bad faith. The admins pretend to care about this, but they're in on it as shown by this image. They're getting defederated a lot right now because they cannot ever behave.
- It was the whole point of them refederating (they used to run on a fork of Lemmy) to "dunk on libs" and brigade in general

If you're going to defederate from everyone that's stupid, you're going to be very alone. And then there's the technical difficulty of having to defederate from yourself.

Might I suggest that next time you spawn, you do so on a planet that does have intelligent life? Kind of pointless to complain about idiots when you were the one that decided to be a human just before planetary annihilation.

It wouldn't be defederating from everyone. Only defederating from extremist instances who only seek to push their views on everyone. Eg exploding heads, hexbear and lemmygrad.

Nothing they say is relevant to the nz threads they post in.
Decided to be a human. What kind of backwards shit are you pedaling?.. They're just as old as any other humans on the planet.
- I don't know what the fuck they're on about, to be honest.
Least misanthropic nerd

I do not support defederating. I want diverse viewpoints. I suppor5 inclusivity. I don't mind offensive posts. I can block them myself if I don't want to see them. Please don't speak for me.

My dude, what lemm.ee defederates from is different than lemmy.nz. Every instance can make their own block list after all
- Yes and no. We are here on lemmy.nz, a locally focused instance. Many users want to participate in NZ related content, and may be from NZ, even if their accounts are not on lemmy.nz. If hexbear is defederated, then they won't be able to participate in any of the NZ communities, and this impacts all users wanting to participate here.
  
  With that said, this (original) post has less than 1/4 of the up/down votes from users subscribed to this community, and an even smaller fraction are lemmy.nz users, so for sure there are a lot of people participating in this thread that are not invested in the outcome.
Paradox of tolerance
- I prefer "contract of tolerance": once you stop showing tolerance you are no longer entitled to it.