Update:
The comments from this post will not be removed as to preserve the discussion around the announcement. Any continued discussions outside of this thread that violate server rules will be removed. We feel that everyone that has an opinion, and wanted to vent, has been heard.

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Original post:
Yesterday, we received information about the planned federation by Hexbear. The announcement thread can be found here: https://www.hexbear.net/post/280770. After reviewing the thread and the comments, it became evident that allowing Hexbear to federate would violate our rules.

Our code of conduct and server rules can be found here.

The announcement included several concerning statements, as highlighted below:

  • “Please try to keep the dirtbag lib-dunking to hexbear itself. Do not follow the Chapo Rules of Posting, instead try to engage utilizing informed rhetoric with sources to dismantle western propaganda. Posting the western atrocity propaganda and pig poop balls is hilarious but will pretty quickly get you banned and if enough of us do it defederated.”
  • “The West’s role in the world, through organizations such as NATO, the IMF, and the World Bank - among many others - are deeply harmful to the billions of people living both inside and outside of their imperial core.”
  • “These organizations constitute the modern imperial order, with the United States at its heart - we are not fooled by the term “rules-based international order.” It is in the Left’s interest for these organizations to be demolished. When and how this will occur, and what precisely comes after, is the cause of great debate and discussion on this site, but it is necessary for a better world.”

The rhetoric and goal of Hexbar are clear based on their announcement: to “dismantle western propaganda” and "demolish organizations such as NATO” shows that Hexbar has no intention of "respecting the rules of the community instance in which they are posting/commenting.” It’s to push their beliefs and ideology.

In addition, several comments from a Hexbear admin, demonstrate that instance rules will not be respected.

Here are some examples:

“I can assure you there will be no lemmygrad brigades, that energy would be better funneled into the current war against liberalism on the wider fediverse.”

“All loyal, honest, active and upright Communists must unite to oppose the liberal tendencies shown by certain people among us, and set them on the right path. This is one of the tasks on our ideological front.”

Overall community comments:

To clarify, for those who have inquired about why Hexbear versus Lemmygrad, it should be noted that we are currently exploring the possibility of defederating from Lemmygrad as well based on similar comments Hexbear has made.

Defederation should only be considered as a last resort. However, based on their comments and behavior, no positive outcomes can be expected.

We made the decision to preemptively defederate from Hexbear for these reasons. While we understand that not everyone may agree with our decision, we believe it is important to prioritize the best interests of our community.

  • maegul (he/they)English
    244·
    1 year ago

    Not a lemmy.world user, so just sharing my thoughts/ideas on this at a general level

    1. Mutual Respect Pacts — Could instances not federate by agreeing to moderate their own users that breach the other instance’s CoCs/rules? For example. Lemmy.world finds a hexbear user to have breached lemmy.world rules. Temporarily bans them from the community and reports it to hexbear. Hexbear are expected to act against this user (either with a warning, temporary ban etc). And of course vice versa. Obviously, should the situation become unworkable, more drastic action can take place, but it seems like a reasonable approach to trying to retain federation between groups that might not see eye to eye but want to work out a way to remain civil with each other.
    2. Foyers for engagement — Some here seem to have problems with the loss of lemmy.world’s apparent “neutrality” in defederating from hexbear. However one feels about lemmy.world … having a space in which ideologically opposed people can engage in civil and well moderated interaction is still valuable. Maybe an instance dedicated to politically/ideologically diverse/broad federation but strict civility requirements would be valuable. A kind of foyer or public square in which you can seek out diverse and controversial opinions. Lemmy.world doesn’t need to be that for it to exist on the fediverse. And such a space living on a dedicated instance with its own approach to (de-)federation would probably make sense.
    3. Community management as a user — While defederation is part of life on the fediverse, the management of communities as a user does get somewhat more complex with more fracturing. The platform can probably help, with user defined multi-communities and sorting algorithms that surface posts from smaller communities.
    4. Self hosting — Self hosting is the direct way to opt-out of another person’s admin choices. Spacehost is providing managed hosting for lemmy (and soon many other fediverse platforms) (see also the core dev’s mastodon account). Generally, IMO, single-user entities will make more sense over time on the fediverse. Of course, if you have the skills, you can just do it yourself.
    • poVoq@slrpnk.net
      123·
      1 year ago

      Mutual Respect Pacts — Could instances not federate by agreeing to moderate their own users that breach the other instance’s CoCs/rules? For example. Lemmy.world finds a hexbear user to have breached lemmy.world rules. Temporarily bans them from the community and reports it to hexbear. Hexbear are expected to act against this user (either with a warning, temporary ban etc). And of course vice versa. Obviously, should the situation become unworkable, more drastic action can take place, but it seems like a reasonable approach to trying to retain federation between groups that might not see eye to eye but want to work out a way to remain civil with each other.

      This is exactly why they are being de-federated. The Hexbear admins have openly stated that they don’t consider their users behaviour on other instances their problem, except that they would find defederation slightly inconvenient and against their openly stated goal to use federation to brigade other instances. This is extremely bad faith behaviour and sadly consistent with the conduct of the CTH/Hexbear community over the years. Don’t let them gaslight you into believing they are the good guys.

      • maegul (he/they)English
        1·
        1 year ago

        I’m not really commenting about hexbear or lemmy.world here as I don’t know enough to do that. I’m speaking generally about defederation “drama” and trying to think through ways in which it could be different in the future, where, at least based on what I’ve observed over on mastodon, improvements could be IMO made on this front.

        Thanks for your input though!

        The Hexbear admins have openly stated that they don’t consider their users behaviour on other instances their problem

        I mean … could a conversation be started between admins about this? It seems some good faith has been lost already, so I wouldn’t expect much. But as a user, and probably like many others, it would be generally nice if conversations, preferably open ones, happened (which isn’t to suggest that they don’t or that admins are doing a bad job!)