this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
3 points (80.0% liked)

Meta (lemm.ee)

3538 readers
1 users here now

lemm.ee Meta

This is a community for discussion about this particular Lemmy instance.

News and updates about lemm.ee will be posted here, so if that's something that interests you, make sure to subscribe!

Rules:

If you're a Discord user, you can also join our Discord server: https://discord.gg/XM9nZwUn9K

Discord is only a back-up channel, !meta@lemm.ee will always be the main place for lemm.ee communications.

If you need help with anything, please post in !support instead.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
sunaurus@lemm.ee
3
Hexbear federation megathread (lemm.ee)
submitted 1 year ago by sunaurus@lemm.ee to c/meta@lemm.ee
19 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

top 19 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] torknorggren@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks for that very thoughtful statement. I am fine with keeping them federated and letting individual users block what they don't want to see. I find it interesting to see what different communities have to say, even if I find it abhorrent.

[–] Spendrill@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

I've seen the hexbears at work and don't doubt that they'd class some of my views as woefully liberal but in the main I am enjoying being on a site where the left is so unapologetic, doesn't go for all this centrist bollocks and is unafraid to call out bullshit.

Having seen the Overton window constantly shifted to a narrower aspect ratio and then shifted rightwards on reddit was a very disheartening experience and I think seeing active hexbears on all threads will be useful in stopping the uptight right when they inevitably decide that that the fediverse needs shifting towards their own Volkish views.

[–] aleph@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

This was why my eyebrows raised when I saw the Hexbear admin response when they claim that "Russian disinformation is generally either refuted in comments or removed by mods". Kremlin propaganda is rife in communities like chapotraphouse, and it certainly seems like the mods there let anything slide as long as it is isn't outright incitement to violence.

I challenged claims made in a couple of different anti-Ukraine posts and despite the fact there were maybe one or two users whose responses were thoughtful, the majority were outright calling me an idiot and a ~~retarded liberal~~ (edit: correction; dumb fuck)

So far, my impression of HB's userbase is pretty negative because the posts on there that make the front page here tend to be the more shit-posty ones.

That said, I appreciate @sunaurus for the stance he's taking. There is some positive and thoughtful content on HB - you just have to block the noisier and more idiotic communities so it doesn't get drowned out.

[–] AlexisFR@jlai.lu 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, and Russian propaganda is one thing, but he hasn't mentioned Chinese PC one, and I noticed a lot of hexbear users being in support of them, which to me, is as much an anathema to the left as the Kremlin is.

[–] Matt_Glan@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

First of all I would like to offer my support to Sunaurus for this post. I thank him for raising this issue to our instance and for continuing to be discussion led and transparent. I also ask that we discuss this so we are best informed on the Hexbear subject.

I also agree what Sunaurus is saying but would add;

We try to encourage people to engage in a healthy way here on Lemm.ee. Also looking throughout the Fediverse which is growing at the moment we look to encourage that same engagement. This will ensure it’s long term success and resilience. I believe that healthy discussion promotes new ideas, innovation and learning. I do not believe that any abuse, victimisation, harassment or active discrimination has a place.

In the recent days I have seen increased reports coming from content or comments made by Hexbear users. However from what I am seeing although there is a lot, mostly they do not cross the line for significant action although a minority do. So at this time from what I have seen Defederation is not obvious a decision to me. I am expecting the behaviour and style of comments to calm once the excitement of Federating passes. I am also encouraged by the positive steps of the Hexbear admins.

[–] BrrooklynMan@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

as a lemmy.world user, I can’t tell you all enough about how much our quality of life has improved since we defederated form hexbear.net. far less moderation is necessary and general browsing is far more pleasant not having to constantly be bombarded by those awful stickers and brigades of trolls with their endless baiting and attacks.

why should users and mods be constantly burdened day I and day out with users from an instance whose entire ethos is that of shitposting trolls? if lemm.ee is supposed to be a nice place, why would you intentionally let in a group of people you know have zero intention of comporting to your expected code of conduct and have a well-established pattern of behavior that’s hostile, combative, and toxic towards a large portion of your user base?

yes, defederation is a last-resort option, but what other choices do you have when current user and mod options simply aren’t sufficient? defederation isn’t permanent, and if, by some miracle, hexbear users suddenly become well-behaved, lemm.ee can always re-federate with them. if they weren’t the titanic problem they genuinely are, several other instances wouldn’t also be currently discussing defederation in addition to those which already have.

I’m reminded of an old post I once saw about a bartender who kicks out any Nazi who enters his bar, even if they're well-mannered and isn’t bothering other patrons. Even though they may be polite and bothering nobody, eventually, they come back with a friend, then another, then then 10 others, and then BOOM, you’e a Nazi bar.

Don’t make lemm.ee a toxic, hostile, troll-filled hexbear bar. keep it nice. keep it safe. ❤️

edit: not even a day later, and I get this pvt message from a lemm.ee user warning me of this scary-ass comment they got with a stalking/death threat they received from a hexbear troll, with a list of users they feel slighted them and other hexbear users.

HEXBEAR USERS ARE DANGEROUS. HEXBEAR USERS ARE TERRORISTS.

names blurred for safety

[–] RebelOne@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

I'd like to stay federated with hexbear. They bring important information to conversation that people are otherwise not exposed to. American school-taught history is NOT the gold standard in truth.

[–] envis10n@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I posted a comment in the_dunk_tank without noticing where I was. While many people were heated over what I said, it was a misunderstanding due to a lack of specificity and ignorance on my part. After I clarified what I was intending to say, discussion ensued and it was ended on good terms.

The vast majority of users I interact with from hexbear are thoughtful, insightful, kind and genuine individuals that care deeply about humanity and moving forward. The hate that they have is for fascism and actual fascists.

To defederate hexbear would be a disservice to the idea of federated social media.

[–] PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Says the hexbear user.

I mean, seriously?

[–] envis10n@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

I'm a lemm.ee user. I visit hexbear communities as they appear in my feed, much like how you might visit other communities on other instances due to the nature of federation.

Your response to an entire post outlining my experience with hexbear users is "seriously?" Do you have anything else to add? This is supposed to be a discussion. If you have something to add to the discussion, please do so. It's really easy to not respond when you have nothing to add.

[–] julianh@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

I generally agree. I thought hexbear was fine until I saw some of the spam/trolling you mentioned, and then the genocide denial... That got me to start blocking communities there.

With that said I think exploding heads is probably just as bad, if not worse since the mods aren't against the content posted there. I know you said you didn't want to defederate and I kind of understand why, but at least keeping a close eye on the users there would be appreciated.

[–] narp@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not from lemm.ee, but I believe that this problem is something the whole fediverse is facing.

Users from instances like hexbear, lemmygrad, exploding heads etc. seem to have some things in common: -Brigading -Trolling -Spreading misinformation/lies about genocides, wars, etc. -Demanding to be heard because of free speech and "tolerance" -When they face resistance, they get aggressive and you better believe that the comments going against their narrative are getting deleted on their instance

They are using lemmy to spread their propaganda and hate. This is exactly how propaganda is effective: spew the same bullshit as often as possible and, because humans tend to believe things to be true that they see or read a lot, radicalize users through it. Of course that doesn't count for every person on that instance but in the end it doesn't matter if a user is an edgy teenager, a radicalized senior or someone with hundred accounts. They are doing damage and the only way to win against them is to not let them into the playground.

[–] kugel7c@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

First off

and you better believe that the comments going against their narrative are getting deleted on their instance

Is just a baseless accusation at this point.

Secondly if

Users from instances like hexbear, lemmygrad, exploding heads etc. seem to have some things in common: -Brigading -Trolling -Spreading misinformation/lies about genocides, wars, etc. -Demanding to be heard because of free speech and "tolerance" -When they face resistance, they get aggressive

were reported so often it'd be untenable the admins here would probably be more up in arms about it. Seeing as they are seeking open discussion about this issue, I'd defer to them in the assessment that the issue with comments of this kind is with individuals and not one of the instance.

Generally Propaganda is pretty much everywhere and everyone also is regurgitating some version of it, you or other liberal users will spew liberal propaganda, leftist will spew leftist propaganda, the Russian state spews Kremlin Propaganda, conservative Christians will spew conservative propaganda. You have it quite right in how that process happens.

But firstly, you me and everyone, can learn to recognize types of propaganda, and decide which propaganda to accept, and which to reject. Many people here are probably quite adept at this already, but I think the ones that look at the hexbar front page and see a united front of foreign propaganda have likely accepted a certain type of liberal propaganda, and reject much everything else as propaganda, and as such are not properly equipped for a more honest understanding about what the users there are saying.

To that point, I'm obviously spewing leftist propaganda by defending hexbear, but my argument can still be good, and you should be able to accept or reject it despite your biases, by trying to understand it.

And secondly ( and this is roughly following the admins thoughts as well ) liberalism it's propaganda and followers are very common and in my view extremely destructive, sure not as destructive as conservatism or fascism would likely be, but definitely destructive enough to reject it in favor of leftist(communist, anarchist, socialist) ideology instead.

The large majority of (newer) lemmy users likely grew up under liberalism and so surrounded by it's propaganda to accept it at least partially. This includes me, but throughout my life I've learned to reject a lot of liberal propaganda and accept different propaganda instead, because even though liberalism is so common it tends to explain and predict things less accurately and less completely, than socialist or anarchist theory does at least as far as I can see.

[–] Zuberi@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This helped put it in perspective for me honestly. It's bizarre to read somebody much further left than I, explain why my "not left enough" is destructive. I totally get it. Sometimes it's the "well idk... it's better than my OTHER option." But that's such a stupid hill to stand on. We (USA) need to push for more personal powers.

How do you feel about leftism, including those that lemmy.world, say are denying genocide?

Or have I just been fed anti-china sentiment on the whole thing? "China Bad. China hates brown people" kinda shit. Has the UN weighed-in on the situation? I'm very ignorant on the topic and would love a world perspective on it.

[–] kugel7c@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago

First off as I already said I'm obviously also just some guy on the Internet, who might know less about things than it sound like. But when I say liberalism is destructive what I mean is that the ideology proposes systems of representative democracy, free markets and nation states, systems which are fundamentally not equipped for many of the problems the world is facing. Obviously a big motivator here is climate change, but even if you think there is a path within those systems to solve that, there is a nuclear and general arms stockpile that is currently still growing, there is exploration and alienation of the wage worker in the modern world and so on and so on. And I just cannot see a reasonable path until we collectively move on from liberalism.

That's why from some point of view I find mindlessly regurgitating Chinese propaganda, more acceptable than mindlessly regurgitating cnn or whatever, it's mostly just down to me having read the liberal side so often I got tired of it, with the CCP side there's at least ideologically interesting content there, it's just mixed with( post )empire nationalism, Chinese exceptioalism and whatever. So obviously a nation state obsessed with whatever the CCP is obsessed with is bad, but it's trapped in the same destructive system as a country that other countries make their ideolical foundation. All of them are bad, which makes ranking them just sort of stupid unless you are trying to honestly understand the differences or relationships off these countries.

Also systems and people change over time so pinning a people down for the systematic destruction they cause is a difficult thing to do both practically and ideologically, looking at denazification and errinerungskultur, of post ww2 Germany shows this fairly obviously.

Every people will have an uncomfortable time and a difficult discussion about their commited destruction at some point I hope, especially I Believe the West owes this debt to the global south, but there are countless instances of this debt around the world, weather it's Armenians, Palestinians, Roma, Tibet, Bosnia, Uighur, Natives of the Americas, Religious minorities... but it's hard to force this realization.

TLDR: Yeah everyone in the West has eaten tons of anti China bullshit,

China Bad. China hates brown people

Is obviously too reductive for what is a very complicated and deeply connected world, even taking the UNs stance and looking at it gives us just a single additional data point, because while it is a conceptually deeply radical organization, it also has it's own biases. This is true for almost everything you can think of because everything is touched by politics in some way.

Generally trying to learn more philosophy has helped put a lot of this chaos of ideology into perspective. So read or watch something about that, and let new or foreign things in to the point where you feel an understanding about wether you can accept (parts) of it or discard (parts) of it. Thank you for the reply and if you're as terminally online as me I can certainly collect a few YouTube channels I'd recommend.

[–] randint@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

As someone who has gotten many, many, many rude comments from hexbears, I felt the need to share my experience. (Some of the comments from hexbears were polite though.) These comments had me brooding over them all day long for a couple of days. (I have since then moved on.) I listed the links to the rude comments below, but I think I should make it clear that while I used to support the idea of defederating from them, I have changed my stance since I heard about the upcoming changes to Lemmy allowing users to block instances. I am no longer in favor of defederating from hexbear.net. People should be able to decide this for themselves, but it is too much effort to switch instances to decide which instances you don't want to see.

Please do also note that I chose to leave out the polite comments in the list below. If you don't want to click on every link, just check out the first one and the last one.

(roughly in chronological order)

(very long list, click to expand)

There are so many people who believe that the ideology suppressed by the government is always bad. While this is sometimes the case, this is definitely not the case for authoritarianism. (Edit: what I meant was that the ideology suppressed by the government is authoritarianism, which many hexbears seem to support)

Edit 2: Before this is inevitably pointed out, I should admit that some of my comments were rude as well. I apologize for those comments.

[–] paurix@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago

Hey randint,

thank you for providing such an expansive high quality post with references. It must have been disheartening to you to see so many (external) people disregarding the opinion of someone actually living there.

Kudos to you for trying to engage in discussion and getting over it afterwards!

[–] Rhabuko@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

My Instance, that was already defederated from Hexbear, shows around 300 comments right now. Watching this from lemmy.world, that's also defederated from Hexbear, shows a similar number.

Looking directly from the lemm.ee instance, this thread has 1300 comments. Whooping 1k difference. I wonder what that could mean? 🙃

Edit: Just to proof my statement:

[–] AreaSIX@lemm.ee -1 points 1 year ago

I'm firmly against defederating anyone. It's sad that so many just want to remove voices they don't like from a public forum. I believe that we should avoid defederating at all costs, it should be the absolute last measure contemplated after everything else fails. I didn't like their posts for a couple of weeks doesn't even come close to being a good reason IMO.