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.”
- https://lemmy.world/comment/121850
- https://lemmy.world/comment/1487168
- https://lemmy.world/comment/1476084
- https://lemmy.world/comment/171595
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3648500
Overall community comments:
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3526128
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3526086
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3652828
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.
- https://lemmygrad.ml/post/158656
- https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/882559
- https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/540170
- https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/446529
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.
What is it with Lemmy and far-[left | right] politics…
They get banned from Reddit and come here, and create their own little echo chamber
I’ve not seen much right-wing politics on here thank the gods, but the leftwing stuff comes simply from the fact that that is the ideology of the platform’s creator.
I see a few far right posts here and there, probably moreso than I saw on Reddit. I don’t know if it is just because Reddit’s algorithm was hiding those posts or what though.
Yeah I am finding Lemmy to be a haven of fringe political idealists, which is kinda scary.
That’s what happens when Reddit unilaterally bans everyone but those with milquetoast opinions. Those people have to find somewhere else to go. It’ll change over time as people migrate.
Fairly easy to set up an instance which can be explicitly moderated on ideological grounds.
A huge influx of initial Lemmy users came from banned Reddit users after Reddit kicked out a few tankie subs. Most of them flocked to servers like lemmygrad, but the more neutral lemmy.ml has the as well because the federation feature meant they didn’t necessarily need to flock to a dedicated server.
You see similar patterns on other socials as well. Trump’s Twitter clone (which runs on Mastodon) and platforms like Gab have attracted people kicked out of platforms that didn’t want to deal with their extremism for right-wing stuff.
Every time a major platform kicks out a bunch of extremists of any kind, there’s a whole bunch of people looking for a new home, and Lemmy’s “Reddit but under our own control” setup is very attractive to those people.
It’s no different from the massive influx of Lemmy users after Reddit decided to kill the API, except that those people left not because their fews weren’t tolerated, but because of an issue with their platform.