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:

  1. 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
  2. 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
  3. 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.

  • Ech@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    My view is that this federation of theirs is just sketchy. Their announcement post reads as some barely veiled call to propagandize the Fediverse, and the instance itself seems almost proud in a way to have developed their particular methods in their isolation. Though from what I’ve seen, those methods are mostly just whataboutism and “just asking questions”, not anything particularly novel.

    If there was much content or interaction from them that was just neutral, it’d be much easier to swallow, but everything they post or comment always seems be a dog whistle at minimum. And maybe I’m just not noticing all the users not doing that, but the ones I do notice are all over.

    All in all, I’d be more in favor of defederation. I’ve seen enough of this from the right already to have an idea of where this is going, and barring a larger effort from the instance to change, would rather it just got nipped in the bud.

    • booty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      I’m going to engage you in good faith, even though I don’t truly think you deserve it. Of course we want to “propagandize the fediverse” because we think our opinions are correct. If we didn’t think our opinions were correct we’d hold different opinions and want to propagandize the fediverse with those other opinions (like you do). Being a “centrist” or “apolitical” or whatever is itself an ideology, and you are no less trying to push your ideology than we are trying to push ours.

      For what it’s worth, Reddit already tried to “nip this in the bud” by “defederating” us years ago. That’s essentially what the quarantine system on Reddit is. It’s supposed to be a death sentence for a subreddit, because you can’t view the sub on mobile or without a verified email, it never gets advertised anywhere, and any time you try to navigate to it you get a “this subreddit is bad and very no good, you should go elsewhere, are you sure you want to see this terrible content?” And we kept growing during the quarantine so much that the admins had to make up an excuse to ban the sub entirely (and then many other subs which overlapped in userbase, as well as a couple subs that were basically unrelated, just to really stamp out any hint of our userbase).

      Defederating from us won’t solve the problem. Just like on Reddit, we will continue our legitimate criticisms of the system and we will continue to grow and influence the political climate of the fediverse and, unfortunately for the likes of you, there are no Reddit admins here to ban us. Basically what I’m saying is, it’s impossible to get rid of us so you might as well just get used to being called out when you say bigoted shit.

      Also we never dogwhistle. We don’t have to. We’re open and honest about our beliefs. Ask us anything, we’ll answer it, with sources where applicable.

      • Ech@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        How is anything you said in “good faith”? I never said anyone needs to be centrist, nor did I make any reference to Reddit, and I’m not sure what that has to do with anything I said at all, really. I would also love for you to point to anything “bigoted” that I said for you to make that claim.

        This is exactly what I’m talking about. You’re so wrapped up in your “mission” you can’t even consider a context outside of it, and everyone who has any criticism of how you behave is the “enemy”, and make up reasons to discredit them.

        • booty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          This is why I didn’t think you deserve good-faith engagement. Because you’re just going to treat me as if I’m a troll or whatever anyway. Oh well.

          • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            They didn’t treat you as a troll, they asked you about specific parts of your behaviour. You avoided answering this, and instead replied with more loose accusations and hyperbole.

            • booty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              they asked you about specific parts of your behaviour

              Would you like to quote these specific questions?

          • Ech@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Again, what good-faith engagement? All you did was sensationalize points I was trying to make to blow it out of proportion, bring up Reddit for some reason, and suggest I am a bigot, and I called you out on that. Don’t try to act like that’s mistreatment on my part. If you don’t want to be treated like “a troll or whatever”, don’t engage with people like one.

            • booty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              You want to defederate from us because we’re trying to “propagandize the fediverse.” I pointed out that that’s what everyone is trying to do, and also explained why defederating us won’t help with what you’re trying to accomplish anyway, with an example from the history of our community to provide context.

              and suggest I am a bigot

              To be frank, the only thing people are upset at us for is how we dogpile bigots. That’s it. That’s what you want to defederate us for. If you pull the mask off the phrase “propagandize the fediverse” what that actually means is “call out bigots.”

              • Ech@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                You clearly have no idea what I want, even after I explicitly explained it, providing a great example of my point in the process. You’ve made up your mind about what everyone else wants and why they do what they do to justify your animosity, and you won’t be convinced to act otherwise. That is why I’m not interested in remaining federated. Your extremism and aggression is wearisome and I’d rather just not have to see it all the time.

        • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          I never said anyone needs to be centrist,

          If there was much content or interaction from them that was just neutral, it’d be much easier to swallow, but everything they post or comment always seems be a dog whistle at minimum

          It’s not a terrible interpretation

      • dmrzl@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        “I’m going to engage you in good faith, even though I don’t truly think you deserve it.”

        Wall of text introduced by poisoning the well. Exactly the reason I find it hard to take anything from hexbear serious.

        • booty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          300 words is a wall of text?

          And I was proven right that the user in question did not deserve good faith engagement. They dismissed everything I said and refused to actually take part in any sort of conversation, while throwing insults at me.

          • dmrzl@programming.dev
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            1 year ago

            Exactly the intended effect of poisoning the well. So your method of communication works as intended, whether you realize it or not.

            • booty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              It was just part of my honesty. Laying all my cards on the table. I was saying that even though I am an asshole and would rather just reply to you all with pigpoopballs, I’ve gone out of my way to open a respectful dialogue. I’m not going to lie to you and say that I like being civil with liberals who constantly post genocide denial and western propaganda and homophobia and racism. I hate you. But I’m willing to set that aside to have a conversation. Liberals are not.

      • barsoap@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        because we think our opinions are correct.

        Elsewhere in this thread I was told that “hexbear is not a hivemind”. Can you folks at least agree on things like saying “Stalin did nothing wrong and North Korea is a prefect democracy” being a bannable offence? Because there’s already a place in the fediverse for those kinds of people it’s called lemmygrad.ml, you don’t have to harbour them. As of now my overall impression of hexbear users has been quite a bit more positive than lemmygrad.ml ones as in by and large when I explained why their opinion is shit and they were spewing Russian imperialist propaganda they actually listened instead of doubling down on mental gymnastics but on the flipside, speaking as an Anarchist, tolerating tankies means becoming a tankie bar.

      • Ech@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I’m not demanding that you be “centrist”, I’m saying that not everything you post or comment needs to be politically charged. Non-political content exists.

        • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          There is plenty of non-political content on Hexbear, too. Plenty of Hexbear users comment on non-political stuff there and elsewhere.

          Political stuff is the point of friction because politics involves disagreements people really care about.

          • Ech@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            I’m talking about what I notice. Confirmation bias is certainly a thing, but what I’ve seen makes me uninterested in continuing the “test” of federation.

        • Kuori [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Non-political content exists.

          actually no, something you’ll learn pretty quickly once you start becoming aware of politics is that everything is political

          • Ech@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Another fantastic illustration of my point.

            • Biggay [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Since its pretty hard to prove a negative, can you name a topic or thing that isnt political in some way?

              This is why we say that people trying to depoliticize things is an ideology, it is a politics of the status quo. It allows people to be ignorant of the status quo, of who it harms and what it demands. Most status quo is also very conservative, and broadly benefits them the most of all the brands of politics.

          • Ech@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            The fediverse isn’t a “political extremist forum”, regardless of how you conduct yourselves in your own instance. With that comment, I’d figure you’d be fine with defederation.

          • mlc894@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            The fact that it’s a “political extremist forum” is actually a pretty compelling argument for defederation.

    • lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Typically it’s the far right that causes problems but the far left certainly can do the same and I don’t think we should be any more tolerant of bad behavior on the left than we are of bad behavior on the right. The paradox of tolerance is a real bitch and we should be aware of it and remember how things end up when you get too comfortable in letting people be who they are even if who they are is horrible.

      • booty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Hexbear is by far the most tolerant instance out there. How does the paradox of tolerance apply to defederating hexbear?

      • brain_in_a_box [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Political “centrists” also cause just as many problems, they just tend not to be as aware of it because their position is mainstream in the USA. We should indeed be aware of the paradox of tolerance, and remember that it applies to so called moderate opinions just as much as any other.

      • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Nationalism and pro-Authoritarianism are the problem.

        Whilst in the present day in the West we’re more used to getting that from the populist Right (mainly because chinese users tend to stick to chinese platforms), those things are most definitelly present in some of the political discourse from groups not the Right (groups I hesistate in calling Left, as they seem to have lost connection to the principle of “the greatest good for the greatest number”).

        There seem to be a lot more political axes than Left-Right and one of the big ones which is roughly independent of that one is Freedom-Control, which would explain how you end up with deeply authoritarian regimes both on the Left and on the Right - they’re the combinations of Left+Control and Right+Control.

        There’s really is no point in engaging nationalists - an uncritical view of the geographical area on happens to be born in as superior is not logic, rather it’s more like a faith and responds to logic just as well as the religious kind of faith - and as for authoritarians, sadly their entire take on humanity is that the right way to relate to other human beings is to impose your will on them if you have that power, so their “discussion” abilities are pretty limited to justifying or disguising when “their side” (and yeah, they’re broken into “sides”) imposes their will on the unwilling something which in their worldview is not just fine but actually “the right thing to do”.