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:
- 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
- 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
- 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.
I’m just glad you guys are out here putting the crazy on display. I was seriously hoping you would.
I like how you conveniently left out the fact that the Hague issued several warrants over this exact issue, after Putin himself openly admitted to mass abduction of children.
I’m just having a discussion with you about it. It sounds like there wasn’t disinfo so much as a difference of opinion, and you don’t like that people disagreed with you, so now you’re resorting to ableist language. Cool. Thanks for putting it on display like I was hoping you wouldn’t but knew you would.
To be extremely clear so that you cannot weasel out of this - what I am referencing was not a semantic argument. These were people actively defending the practice of invading a sovereign nation while openly stating that Ukrainian national identity should be eradicated (muh Lennin created Ukraine), and explicitly defending the mass abduction of children in occupied territories. Alongside the standard emoji spam, of course.
Don’t play. You and I both know these are canonical narratives on hexbear.
You’re not going to get us on an argument about “national identity” one way or another as this is not something we care about. We care about the affected people of the region getting shelled to shit by fascists for nearly a decade and support it coming to an end as quickly as possible.
Yeah, I agree. I don’t engage with them anymore because they do the same thing Nazis do. Don’t ask what they think of Human Rights.
You will not convince them with words. They are true believers, so they always want to “chat”. Just replace “anti semites” with Communists below.
Jean-Paul Sartre
And here we go again, the false equivalences between Nazis and communists. We can’t be trusted on what we say so defending or explaining our positions is proof. Not doing so is proof. Reacting to such obvious hostile, bad faith attacks is proof.
It’s particularly gross to use that quote, since clearly you don’t know anything about the man who wrote it but are happy to smear his memory and intent to win internet points and minimised the horrors of Nazism.
Sartre was a lifelong Marxist. A man who opposed the Nazi occupation of France, was happy to support revolutionary communist resistance groups, and was a prisoner of war taken by the Nazis. He wrote about the fact that the Soviet Union was a true revelationary project working for the betterment of mankind. He had his criticisms like we all do when it didn’t live up to it’s ideals, but unlike other nations he considered bourgeois colonial powers, he didn’t ascribe it to an innate problem with the USSR. He called the US of the time “dangerously pre fascist”. He strongly condemned the US and South Korea in the Korean War. He was disgusted by the US involvement in Vietnam. Loathed the later French state for their oppression of Algeria.
You’d have called him a brainwashed, tankie, genocide denying, authoritarian, equivalent to the Nazis too. And he’d have fucking hated you and everything you apparently stand for in return.
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Just block and ignore. They do not want to have a conversation. They just want to talk at you. Literally doing what Sartre complained about.
Yes he was a Marxist but here are his thoughts on the Soviet Union:
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/sartre-renounces-communists
Not all, but these particular Hexbear users are living proof of Sartre’s famous quote: “Hell is other people”.
That last bit does a good job of demonstrating that you are just stringing words together exegetically. “Hell is other people” is a more complicated phenomenological thesis that doesn’t just mean “I dislike some people.” No Exit is a ham fisted play, but that gives it the virtue of making it apparent that there is more than just being locked in a room with people you dislike going on.
If Sartre had lived long enough to see the fall of the USSR and Hungary building monuments to nazi collaborators, he would have concluded Stalin and Khrushchev were too merciful.
He wasn’t wrong about the French Communist Party though.
You kind of missed the point. Not sure if you did so deliberately or because you are simply obtuse. That’s one thing I don’t like about you guys; some of you are obviously being intellectually dishonest and playing stupid semantic games, but others seem to actually believe their nonsense, like you going on a rant about Sartre being a Marxist while totally ignoring the context in which the quote is invoked in the first place.
So which is it; are you trying to change the subject for some kind of quick “win,” or do you honestly not understand OP’s point in citing the quote?
Very insightful, just replace anything with anything and it means whatever you want.
Communists and socialists dramatically raised the standard of living in the countries where they took power. Comparing them to Nazis tells us exactly where you’re coming from politically.
Known anti-communist, Jean Paul Sartre.
Oh boy would he have a word with your ignorant ass
ITT: reactionaries being completely oblivious of what Sartre stood for.
How hard could it be to find out that Sartre was a communist? It’s like quoting an anti-Semitic speech by Adolf and saying “just change ‘jew’ to ‘nazi’ below”. This is impressively stupid stuff.
Either the quote is applicable or it’s not. Sartre’s own political leanings have no bearing on that. Are you deliberately ignoring OP’s intent because you don’t have a response?