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.

  • gabe [he/him]@literature.cafe
    2824·
    1 year ago

    I think it’s important to make note of the fact that they were banned on Reddit for good reason. As a community, they have always been toxic and would consistently brigade and harass other communities on Reddit that even remotely disagreed with them on anything. There was a consistent issue in Jewish focused Reddit subs with users of theirs starting fights about Zionism on random Jewish posts and generally harassing to random people that would be remotely critical of communism. They would behave in a similar way to how exploding-heads did prior to being mass defederated, specifically going into threads and brigading/downvoting and attempting to sway discussions in their favor in bad faith.

    • ImOnADiet@lemmygrad.ml
      185·
      1 year ago

      wtf, they banned them for the John Brown posting, not brigading. Also CTH was full of bernie bros, are you thinking of MoretankieChapo?

      • Cassilda@lemmygrad.ml
        21·
        1 year ago

        Don’t forget: they also banned /r/cth so that it would look less partisan when they banned /r/TheDonald.

      • Zaktor@lemmy.worldEnglish
        29·
        1 year ago

        Do we have anything but the CTH mod’s word on that being the cause? Because it’s a pretty transparently dumb reason while most of reddit knew them for trolling and brigading.

        • Move to lemm.ee@lemmy.world
          142·
          1 year ago

          You’re really gonna believe reddit after the shit they just pulled with mods and third party apps? Over the entire userbase of the subreddit? Go ask any socialist subreddit what happened. They all know and will all say the same thing.

          • Zaktor@lemmy.worldEnglish
            26·
            1 year ago

            I don’t even remember what Reddit’s statement was, so trust in them doesn’t enter into it. I simply don’t see any reason to trust convenient narratives from CTH mods. It’s far too cute a narrative from a source that absolutely would make something up for the lulz alone, let alone a story that also casts them as righteous heroes against cartoonishly stupid evil.

            The userbase of CTH and other socialist subreddits only have that same narrative to repeat. Saying “they all heard it too” means nothing.

            • ImOnADiet@lemmygrad.ml
              81·
              1 year ago

              I have literally only ever heard that CTH got banned for John Brown posting, would you like to offer up some evidence they were banned for something else???

                • ImOnADiet@lemmygrad.ml
                  61·
                  1 year ago

                  I am informed on the subject, I used reddit quite heavily and extensively at the time and no one ever challenged the narrative that they were banned for “promoting violence”

                  • SuperZorro@discuss.tchncs.de
                    2·
                    1 year ago

                    “kill the slave owners” right? That was such a dumb reason. My opinion was they needed to ban some leftist because they were banning a bunch of far right subs.

    • CarlMarks@lemmygrad.ml
      197·
      1 year ago

      I for one think John Brown did nothing wrong. Would you please clarify your stance on defending slaveowners’ right to life, as was the Reddit admins’ reasoning?

    • ram@lemmy.world
      13·
      1 year ago

      I think it’s important to make note of the fact that they were banned on Reddit for good reason

      Reddit is an echo chamber. Being banned there is not indicative of anything.